One in ten French people believe that the Ukrainian government is a junta infiltrated by neo-Nazis.

28 percent of the population believe that Russian-speaking Ukrainians welcome Putin's "military operation".

Although it should be clear to everyone that the tanks are not greeted with flowers as liberators.

Juerg Altwegg

Freelance writer in the feuilleton.

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According to 30 percent of the French, the West has encouraged Ukraine to join NATO and the EU.

In fact, Germany and France rejected the rapprochement, which Ukrainian President Zelenskyy accused Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who is now calling for Bucha's visit to reassure himself of reality.

Every second Frenchman is said to be convinced of the correctness of at least one of the statements made.

This finding is formulated by a study by the Paris Institute for Opinion Research IFOP.

Its directors include the well-known political scientist Jérôme Fourquet, whose bestseller “L'archipel français” is considered one of the most accurate descriptions of contemporary France.

The investigation “Désinformation, complotisme et populisme à l'heure de la sanitaire et de la guerre en Ukraine” was directed by filmmaker François Kraus and financed by the Reboot Foundation, which operates in America and France and is dedicated to education in critical thinking.

One in ten believes in nanochips in vaccines

Most vulnerable to Putin's propaganda are the voters of the politicians who systematically downplayed him: first and foremost the sympathizers of the rhetorically adept, well-read and intellectually adept extremists Éric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

During the election campaign you spread the arguments of Russian propaganda.

François Kraus emphasizes the importance of sources of information: Radio listeners are more immune than those who only get information from the Internet.

The easiest people to manipulate are in social networks.

Since the pandemic, more than a third of respondents believe in conspiracy theories.

Among the voters of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it is just over fifty percent.

"The fake news about Covid-19 continues to circulate, although it has long since been refuted by science," says Helen Lee Bouygues resignedly.

She is the founder and director of the Reboot Foundation.

According to the study, one in ten people believe the vaccines contain 5G nanochips that are implanted in them for monitoring purposes.

Respondents believe the vaccine has caused tens of thousands of deaths (19 percent) and poses a threat to women's fertility (16 percent).

Russian propaganda thrives amid Covid conspiracies.

The study substantiates this finding with overlaps and describes how vaccine skeptics mutate into Putin sympathizers.

It is based on the evaluation of a little more than 2000 questionnaires filled out on the Internet in the first half of March, which pollsters consider to be representative.

Nevertheless, one would do well not to give up “critical thinking” when dealing with them either.

Not every lie is a conspiracy theory.

The fact that 31 percent of the French oppose the ban on RT and Sputnik does not prove that they believe their propaganda.

Zemmour and Mélenchon, whose supporters are most critical of the ban, did not take the tale of NATO's provocations from RT France.

However, objections to the study do little to lessen the shock of the study.

It paints a picture of a society from before Descartes and the Enlightenment.

Its members elude reason, they live in a world of superstition.

Sixty percent believe in witchcraft and/or clairvoyance.

One in three fears the evil eye.

The authors of the study state that the results confirm the results of previous surveys.

There are three times as many conspiracy theorists among the superstitious than among the rest of the respondents.