Paris (AFP)
"It is not a virus, it is a tool to use their power", asserts the Dutch Monique Lustig.
In Germany, Hellmuth Mendel says: "The Covid is a fable of the international financial mafia".
“What if we were finally in a film?” Asks Frenchman Christophe Charret.
From The Hague to Stuttgart via Paris, they say they are fighting against "control of conscience", "pedophile" networks, the "Plandemia" invented according to them by a ruling caste with dark designs.
They see themselves as defenders of an "alternative discourse" to official truths and feed on the example of the American QAnon to infuse their conspiratorial reading of the news on social networks.
Driven from Twitter or YouTube, they consider themselves persecuted and have withdrawn to secondary platforms to exchange information - mostly false - that the "mainstream" media, according to them, hide.
AFP immersed itself in this broth of European conspiracy culture.
There are QAnons, ultra-Protestants, anti-vaccines, right-wing populists, environmentalists adepts of soft therapies, business leaders, the unemployed and even doctors ...
A motley team whose rise in power worries the intelligence services, who fear a destabilization of European democracies.
The "QAnon theories are coming to France", notes the French national intelligence coordinator Laurent Nunez.
"The conspiracy has taken off significantly with social networks, we see that it is also organized in clandestine cells. Obviously it is a threat."
On the networks, the European groups QAnon or related swarm and bring together: 30,000 Telegram subscribers for DeQodeurs in France, more than 100,000 for German conspiratorial figures Attila Hildmann and Xavier Naidoo, almost 150,000 for the British Charlie Ward who drinks his subscribers with montages pro-Trump.
And in families, some find themselves powerless in the face of the excesses of their loved ones, as evidenced by Paul, who experienced his mother's slow slide in the other side of the looking glass.
"She lived a recluse, she spent an incredible amount of time on the internet, looking for answers to her rage against the injustice of the world. She drank 24 hours a day on YouTube, the conspiracy channels were her only window to the world", tells this 48-year-old French bookseller.
"Containment was the icing on the cake, the Covid, the confirmation of all its theories on the end of the world".
"There is a cocktail in place: the weakening of the socio-economic fabric, a strong movement of expression protesting digital platforms where it is easy to relay conspiratorial speeches and upcoming electoral deadlines", notes a community source intelligence in France.
"For ten or fifteen years, these are movements that have always more or less existed, they feed on an anti-system conspiracy. There is a porosity with tiny ultra-right groups", analyzes his side. senior French intelligence official.
The new phenomenon is the aggregation of "people from quite varied universes".
- The Bill Gates obsession -
In mid-March, under the low sky of Uithoorn, a small peaceful town south of Amsterdam, Lange Frans invites us with a quick step to enter his recording studio.
"No mask here", launches mockingly, this rapper who enjoyed little glory in the 1990s, for whom the Covid is a "supermarket flu".
Between two musical metaphors, he tells, obviously proud, the "underground concert" without barrier measures in which he participated the day before.
In recent years, his podcasts have been popular in the Netherlands, talk shows where he invites a personality to take an "alternative" look at the news.
Covid, MH-370 crash, child crime, UFOs: all the subjects that exhilarate the conspiracy sphere go there.
“Take the money trail!” Urges Lange Frans (“Le Grand Frans” in Dutch), in his studio dotted with AC / DC posters and guitars.
"Take Bill Gates, people should find out about him, he has no medical degree or expertise in vaccines. The only reason he's so listened to is because he has the money," explains the forty-something whose YouTube channel is regularly closed.
- Skepticism -
That same Sunday in the Netherlands, the day before the legislative elections, 3,000 people gathered on the Champ de Mars in The Hague against the anti-Covid restrictions.
A happy carnival strictly supervised by the mounted police.
The country was rocked weeks earlier by several nights of unusual riots when a curfew was imposed.
In the demonstration, we find arm in arm populist activists, denouncers of a world government, defenders of natural medicines ...
A common denominator unites them: skepticism in the face of official discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Who created it?
Each offers a different answer, but two avatars of global capitalism return regularly: World Economic Forum organizer Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates.
Jeffrey, a 21-year-old student, distributes leaflets denouncing the "Grand Reset", the World Economic Forum's plan to revive the economy after the Covid-19 which, according to him, conceals a control of freedoms and a reduction of the population .
"For many it's too crazy to be true, but they've been working on it for over 20 years," conservator Monique Lustig assures without blinking.
"The globalist elite are taking advantage of the situation to create a new society," adds Ard Pisa, a former banker who has been converted into the defense of alternative medicine to cure cancer.
- "Deep state" -
The Hague rally is no exception in Europe: protests against anti-Covid restrictions systematically drain a good number of conspirators.
In Denmark, members of the "Men in Black" group ensure that the coronavirus is a "scam", while in Berlin, the QAnon flags bloom in these gatherings which can bring together up to 10,000 people.
A handful of them even tried to force their way into parliament last August.
According to a study published in September 2020, a third of Germans believe that "secret powers" control the world.
And in this conspiratorial pot, the themes dear to the QAnon are one of the basic ingredients.
Thus, in The Hague, the former banker Ard Pisa puts forward one of the favorite themes of QAnon supporters: "Eight million children disappear every year, it's part of our world, we must not close our eyes, there are a lot of hushed up pedophilia cases ".
In fact, this figure, regularly passed on by child protection NGOs, includes all reported disappearances including runaways, an overwhelming majority of which have been resolved.
"QAnon is a point of convergence for far-right groups, people who believe in UFOs, those who think that 5G will be used to control people", decrypts Tom de Smedt, Belgian researcher author of several studies on the movement in Europe.
Born in the United States, QAnon became known to the general public in January during the invasion of the Capitol.
It takes its name from cryptic messages posted by a certain "Q", believed to be a senior US official close to former US President Donald Trump.
Very active in the United States since 2017, he notably defends the idea that a "deep state" piloted by a handful of elites rules the world order.
The fake Pizzagate scandal where Democrats were accused of being the head of a pedophile network is one of the foundations of their fight.
- "Tipping of the world" -
“Q's messages are the conspirator's bible!” Smiles the Frenchman Christophe Charret.
This affable and athletic entrepreneur, who receives AFP in his modern house in the Paris suburbs, defines himself as a "moderate conspirator".
8:00 p.m. approaching, Prime Minister Jean Castex has just announced that part of France is going to be re-defined.
In the living room, Christophe Charret's giant screen remains off.
Everything takes place in his office, in the basement, where he is preparing to intervene in the News of the Human Alliance, an association with 12,000 subscribers on the Telegram network which decrypts the news in conspiratorial style.
The credits follow at a breakneck pace images of the Kennedy assassination, September 11, 5G, Trump, the vaccine, French infectious disease specialist Didier Raoult, controversial advocate of hydroxychloroquine, or even - and still - Bill Gates, mounted on music worthy of the best Hollywood blockbusters.
"The world is led by a financial-technological conglomerate which controls the sovereignty of peoples. Technology makes it possible to do worrying things, the control of conscience in particular is not a myth", affirms Christophe Charret, a "Q" in light garland, lit behind him.
That evening, in a video that approaches 30,000 views, he talks about vaccines, Joe Biden but also the humanitarian actions organized by the association which raises funds for students in need.
"We are on a tipping point of the world, two camps clash and those who hold the reins are not our friends. They will do everything not to let them go, but forces are working for a future D-Day, he is preparing things, "he concludes, insisting on his peaceful engagement.
- Fallback to Telegram -
The die-hard QAnons are relatively discreet and rare in Europe, with the movement's DNA remaining deeply American.
But their ideological base is found everywhere.
"All European QAnons support the official narrative, that is to say support for Trump and far-right ideas" even if "each group adapts its messages to local interests", notes the director of strategy of Israeli cybersecurity firm ActiveFence, Nitzan Tamari.
The rumors relayed on Telegram by this conspiratorial "hard core" end up entering the public debate.
"Twitter has done a tremendous job of deleting accounts," recalls researcher Tom de Smedt.
But this digital sweep has not reached the roots of the success of these theories: “There is a feeling of anger that is neither left nor right, but rather anti-elite. And that feeling has not disappeared ".
In January, across the Rhine, in a formidable practical case of an Arab telephone, thousands of messages suddenly denounced on several networks the desire to create "masturbation rooms" for children in a nursery in Teltow, south of Berlin.
The information was relayed by some elected officials of the far-right German party AfD and even prompted a majority member to criticize this initiative.
It all started with a misinterpreted local newspaper article.
In France, the documentary Hold-Up, a jumble of almost three hours, offering a platform for conspiratorial stories from doctors, deputies, researchers and sociologists supported by a rhythmic editing, has been seen by several million people.
The film has become a reference for all those who doubt, whatever their political ground.
"This film is a synthetic work of all the dynamics of the conspiracy of the moment. They have speeches everywhere, we have to have them too", warns a person in charge of the majority in France, one year from the presidential election.
In 2019, a study by the Jean Jaurès Foundation showed that the electorate of the head of the French far right Marine Le Pen was by far the most permeable to conspiracy theories.
- The windfall of the populists -
In the Netherlands, after a campaign focused on hostility to anti-Covid measures while maintaining the vagueness of conspiratorial discourse, the populist formation Forum for Democracy has quadrupled its number of legislative seats.
In Urk, a small fishing town nestled within the ultra-Protestant "Bible Belt", where measles was still hitting in 2019, Forum made the biggest progress by coming third.
"People here have doubts about the vaccine for medical reasons - we do not know the effects - but also religious (...) God gives us health and disease. Can we interfere in his plans?" , wonders Reverend Alwin Uitslag, who receives AFP in his house adjacent to one of the many churches in the village.
Like Forum, some European populist parties do not officially embrace conspiracy rhetoric, but keep an ambiguous discourse, attractive to an electorate often disgusted with politics.
In the land of Baden-Württemberg, a German bastion of the protest against sanitary measures, Christina Baum tows under a beautiful sun.
A few days before the elections, this regional spokesperson on health issues for the AfD party, addresses the issue of the Covid with her supporters without mask or taboo.
One of them, Hellmuth Mendel pleads against this "fable of the criminal international financial mafia".
For Christina Baum, there is no question of contradicting these speeches: at the AfD, all opinions are welcome.
"What do you want to do with these people? Do you want to tell them that they are completely excluded from society?"
- Election deadlines -
"Those who vote for far-right parties have a stronger tendency to believe in conspiracy theories linked to Covid. This is the case for one in five AfD voters," said a February 2021 report by several NGOs including the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
Speeches which find an echo in France, in particular with Les Patriotes, a sovereignist party whose leader Florian Philippot denounces "Coronafolie".
If it is for the moment confined to a few formations, this cocktail of multiple conspiratorial speeches mobilizes the European intelligence services.
In Germany, the "Querdenken" movement, opposed to anti-Covid measures, is under increased surveillance, also because of its links with movements close to the far right whose speech actively advocates the questioning of the Constitution.
"We are working with a clearly demarcated group of people, who we find to have contact with the extremist scene. Conspiracy theories can act as an accelerator of radicalization and a gateway to extremism," says an intelligence official. in Baden-Württemberg.
Having become mainstream, viral and unifying, conspiracy theories could open a door destabilizing democracies.
"We are worried about the violent act of these individuals," admits the senior French intelligence official who underlines "Russian state information interference" via his "RT and Sputnik channels".
The popular Telegram and VK messengers, two of the main social networks where conspirators hang out, share the same creators, the Russian brothers Durov.
In Germany, "recently, the atmosphere in the demonstrations has become much more aggressive," abounds the official in Stuttgart.
"What is more dangerous are not the few radicals, it is the kind of tidal wave that leads to mistrust and increasingly strong mistrust vis-à-vis institutions", says the French researcher Sylvain Delouvée.
Will this tidal wave gain momentum?
"The stake is to know if the election will channel or not this will of protesting expression", concludes the source of the community of the French intelligence.
The elections to be held in the coming year in France (regional and presidential) and in Germany (legislative) will provide some answers.
© 2021 AFP