The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ended up raising its voice. On June 13, the Quai d’Orsay recognized and publicly denounced an attempt to manipulate public opinion in France. The culprit is to be found on the side of Moscow, the diplomats then said. A rare public denunciation, whereas for ten years, the Kremlin’s words have been relayed in France, via blogs or political figures.
This is what his book says How Putin conquered our brains, ten years of Russian propaganda in France*, independent journalist Elie Guckert, who worked for Mediapart or the British investigative site Bellingcat. He explains for 20 minutes how Moscow’s point of view ended up on blogs marked by the extreme right, but also taken up by political figures.
There are two spheres which relay Kremlin propaganda in France: the conspiracy sphere, which has been running blogs for at least ten years, and the political sphere…
I hadn’t seen things like that, but indeed, there is a conjunction between what we can call the complosphere and certain political formations, through which the stories of the complosphere go back.
What is interesting here is that this complosphere is connected to the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus. This is particularly the case with the one which will be active on the Syrian conflict from 2011. We have personalities like Thierry Meyssan [pour qui le 11 septembre est un complot intérieur]Alain Soral, who have business ties with the Assad regime and with Moscow and who also have political connections.
There is an emulation that takes place between these two poles. In the complosphere, we produce stories that can touch everyone. These stories will then go back, in the vast majority, to the far right, but also to a good part of the radical left, notably that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
What is the link between the war in Syria and Russian propaganda?
There is [à l’époque] a whole mobilization in France of the complosphere, particularly of the far right, to make the Syrian revolution appear to be a Western plot, to sum things up very briefly.
At the time of the chemical attack in Ghouta in 2013, there was a strategic interest on the part of Russia, which is allied with the Syrian regime, to do everything so that the West did not intervene and did not come to punish Bashar. Al-Assad. The complosphere is mobilizing in Syria and in the service of the Kremlin to support the Syrian president. These personalities of the complosphere, like Alain Soral or Thierry Meyssan, are already widely highlighted by RT at the time.
Still on Syria, the most obvious link is that of the “reinformation” site InfoSyrie, which was founded in 2011 by Frédéric Chatillon, who was at that time one of the main communicators of the National Front, as well as a close friend of Marine Le Pen, and who himself has business ties with the Syrian regime. There, we are right in the middle of the far-right networks of the time. Alain Soral is himself a former National Front executive.
In fact, it is a political ecosystem. It’s a small world where everyone knows each other and works together.
With the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have we observed a retreat by far-right and far-left leaders from pro-Russian positions?
There was a shock effect just after the invasion: on one side or the other, we really tried to make people believe that we had never been pro-Russian. Very quickly, the pro-Russian speeches resumed, but in another form, calling for de-escalation, for not delivering weapons to Ukraine. Ultimately, in my opinion, there was no big change. There was a short period of time after the invasion where you had to “hide”, but it didn’t last very long. This applies to major public figures who are [interviewées] in the mornings every day. But at the “base” level, the personalities who hang out on the “reinformation” sites, it did not change one iota even after the invasion.
In the book, you mention several blogs that relayed pro-Russian propaganda. Ultimately, the audience of these sites was not so marginal…
I think that this is indeed the mistake we may have made for ten years, to consider this entire fringe of the web as a marginal thing, a few idiots in their corners who have their blogs. This is a mistake, because there are a lot of blogs. If we add up the audience of each, it starts to add up to something quite substantial.
I think that the press, especially at the beginning, on Syria, had not yet become aware of the power of these spheres on the Internet, and of the fact that they perhaps even had a power and an impact which would be at the less as strong, or even more so, than that of the “mainstream” press. We have since realized this with other events, whether Brexit, the American election or Covid in France. These are spheres which have a very strong impact on the public debate and which also have an impact on the speeches which go back to the political environment which obviously go to the “mainstream” media.
You recall that this propaganda, in fact, is sometimes invited in these major media…
Russian propaganda attacks on several fronts at once. She will flirt with the margins, in the complosphere, with the “infrequent”. At the same time, it also attacks the elites. We are nevertheless obliged to note that there have also been strong pro-Russian voices in France, particularly on the right, including a former prime minister, a former president of the Republic. All this does not play out [uniquement] via reinformation blogs, but also via institutions like the Franco-Russian Dialogue of Thierry Mariani [eurodéputé du Rassemblement national].
As for the “mainstream” media, there is a way of providing information which can pose a problem and which can lead to participating in propaganda in an involuntary way, but with an impact which is much stronger than what can be produce the complosphere.
There was a real problem – even if it calmed down in my opinion – the first year of the invasion, I was still very shocked to see to what extent we very often gave the floor to Russian officials. We know, when we do this, that we are officially giving voice to Russian propaganda. And in the name of balance and five minutes for one, five minutes for the other, we gave the floor to the spokesperson for the Moscow ambassador to France for a year.
In my opinion, French journalists do not know how to properly interview personalities like that. You can very well interview a Russian official, I even think you should, but when you look at the way the BBC does it, it’s something else. The interlocutor does not feel at home, he is still confronted with what Russia is really doing in Ukraine, to the point that it is indeed often very informative since these interlocutors find themselves either admitting things or kicking in touch.
In June, the Quai d’Orsay denounced a Russian manipulation operation, where media, including 20 minutes, were imitated. This operation, called Doppelgänger, was amplified by fake sites and fake accounts. Could Russia do without the traditional relays it has in France ?
So, I wouldn’t say things like that. Many people who worked on Russian propaganda believed that troll farms were over. We can clearly see that this is not the case with this operation. This means that Russia is pulling out all the stops: on the information front, it can attack on all fronts at the same time.
The operation was also fueled by opinion relays in France. Thierry Mariani, the MEP of the National Rally, co-president of the Franco-Russian Dialogue, himself gave an interview to one of the fake media created by Doppelgänger. Yves Pozzo di Borgio, a former senator, had relayed a false article from Doppelgänger on Twitter where he has many subscribers.
A priori, the latest Doppelgänger operations, in terms of impact and audience, are not crazy. But if you start to have a former French senator who relays the publications, that’s something else.
* Published on October 19 by Plon editions