Before her account was suspended, Estelle RedPill was followed on TikTok by more than 120,000 subscribers. – TikTok screenshot
- In recent months, many personalities and far-right groups have launched an assault on TikTok, the video platform very popular with young people.
- “I have seen a lot of leftist propaganda, pro-LGBT and Islamic proselytizing. It bothered me enormously, and I said to myself that something had to be done, ”explains Estelle RedPill, a far-right influencer who is widely followed on TikTok, who claims to be“ patriotic ”.
- “There is a clearly strategic interest in being present on TikTok. The objective, for the extreme right, is to reach a young public, less attracted by traditional political formations ”, explains Nicolas Baygert, doctor in information and communication sciences and teacher at Sciences Po.
Just one year before the presidential election, and a few weeks before the regional elections, the French far right has decided to invest more in the field of social networks. Already very active on Twitter or Facebook, personalities from the fascosphere are starting to land on TikTok, the platform for fun videos very popular with young people. “Under 22s stay two, three hours a day on TikTok, where all of the politicized videos are leftist. We completely missed this field. The whole generation will be devastated. We don’t realize the consequences, but it’s scary ”, warned last November
on Twitter Damien Rieu, co-founder of the far-right movement Generation Identity, and candidate for the National Rally in departmental elections in the Somme.
His alert seems to have been heard since, in recent months, many personalities and far-right groups have launched an assault on the Chinese platform, like Thaïs d’Escufon, spokesperson for Génération Identitaire, or the student union La Cocarde, close to the National Rally (RN), which claims nearly 3,000 subscribers. Elected officials and politicians, such as Jordan Bardella, vice-president of the RN, have also taken the plunge. But in recent weeks, far-right proselytism has been taking place mainly through influencers who try to legitimize the identity doctrine on TikTok, by broadcasting playful and attractive videos, but whose message remains clearly racist and xenophobic.
“Countering leftist and progressive discourse”
Estelle RedPill, whose real name is Estelle Rodriguez, is one of those “patriotic” tiktokers who today proclaim their attachment to “their identity”, and their rejection of immigration. The young woman, a former model – whose nickname RedPill refers to the red pill of Matrix, which reveals the true reality of the world, which has become the symbol of the conversion to the ideology of the alt-right American – started videos on TikTok at the start of the first lockdown, last April. “I’ve seen a lot of leftist propaganda, pro-LGBT and Islamic proselytizing. It bothered me a lot, and I said to myself that something had to be done ”, explains Estelle RedPill to 20 minutes.
The content posted by the influencer quickly went viral. Tight-fitting outfits, hairstyle and make-up… Estelle RedPill’s style has won over many Internet users. But under this picture girly, above all, the young woman conveys a completely uninhibited racist discourse. ” The solution ? Send foreigners home, ”she says in front of the camera, in short videos where she also explains“ How I managed to convert a leftist to my far-right ideology with my charm ”or stigmatizes, most time, foreigners who would benefit from family allowances while giving pride of place to the conspiracy thesis of the “great replacement”.
Influencer marketing “to get ideas across”
Followed by more than 120,000 subscribers on TikTok, her “Iledeserte1” account was one of the biggest in the fascosphere, before being suspended last week following reports – she has been very active on Instagram and YouTube ever since. Very proud of her audience and her community, Estelle RedPill assumes to use her image and her physique to rally internet users to her cause. “I use Instagram and TikTok codes to get my ideas across. We rather want to listen to a girl who presents well. It is simply marketing, ”recognizes the young woman of 25, who specifies“ speaking on his behalf ”, without“ being assimilated to a political structure ”.
Estelle RedPill is not the only one to campaign on the niche of “patriotism” and “defense of French values”. Lucas Dylan, another influencer from Toulouse, also has several million “likes” on TikTok. “He created his account shortly after me. We met because there are very few of us on the right, ”explains Estelle RedPill, who refutes the term“ extreme right ”. “We share the same fight, and we are proud to have founded the patriotic current on TikTok”, adds the young woman, who also quotes ThoniaFr, another figure of the movement, followed on the platform by more than 60,000 followers, and who comes from create your own YouTube channel.
These new faces of the extreme right use the codes of the new platforms and do not hesitate to play with their image and to show derision and second degree to disseminate a political discourse. “TikTok is not a platform like the others, it is above all an agora dedicated to the creative and playful performance, explains to 20 minutes Nicolas Baygert, doctor in information and communication sciences, and teacher at Sciences Po Paris. There is a phenomenon of personalization, those who use it will not only be content to circulate a message and comment on it, as on Facebook or Twitter. They themselves become the content, and some can thus become real actors of political information. “
“Capturing a new audience” as the elections approach
Many nationalist accounts, showing their support for Marine Le Pen or the polemicist Eric Zemmour, have also flourished on TikTok in recent months, by appropriating the codes of the platform to increase their audience. “There is a clearly strategic interest in being present on TikTok. The objective, for the far right, is to reach a young audience, less attracted by traditional political formations. It relies on content conveying a capital of sympathy to make itself known, and capture a new audience ”, adds Nicolas Baygert, who takes for example Vlaams Belang, the main far-right movement in Flanders (Belgium), which today mobilizes a large community on the platform.
Because abroad too, the extreme right formations have invested the popular social network of young people. A strategy directly imported from the United States, where supporters of the alt-right quickly took over TikTok, especially under Donald Trump’s tenure. “Today there is a real desire to invest in a more ideological way these new platforms, where there is less moderation and censorship compared to traditional social networks. And this, all the more so with the approach of important elections ”, notes the specialist in political communication.