Jean-Baptiste Marty / Photo credits: YAMIL LAGE / AFP 7:15 a.m., March 18, 2024

Minors are increasingly targeted by sectarian aberrations.

According to an Intelligence note that Europe 1 was able to consult, young people are increasingly affected by conspiratorial speech and behavior.

Educational teaching, but also social networks, serve as a vector for disseminating these theses for adults wishing to expand the conspiracy sphere.

This is a phenomenon that is increasingly worrying the authorities.

According to information from Europe 1, minors have become the preferred target of sects and adults committed to conspiracy theories to expand their community.

Beliefs such as the denial of the September 11 attacks, the flat earth or even the creation of AIDS in the laboratory are taught to these children from a very young age.

Schools outside of contract

More vulnerable due to their incomplete cognitive development, targeted children are removed from the traditional school system.

Non-contract schools are multiplying everywhere in France.

120 are created each year.

There are more than 2,500 in mainland France, where around 100,000 students are enrolled.

In some of these schools, minors are exposed to conspiracy theories, with an educational program different from that taught in schools with a partnership with the State.

In 2023, a teacher at an establishment in Colmar lit a fire in an enclosed area.

The children had to stand in the smoke for between 5 and 10 minutes in order to stimulate the sensoriality, awaken the senses and the child's individual thinking.

Cognitive delays

Another scourge noted by the authorities is the cognitive delays among these minors affected by these sectarian excesses.

The age theory is particularly relayed in certain non-contract schools with an educational approach divided into four phases: the first birth, until the age of seven, where the child receives little school education.

>> LISTEN - 

Conspiracy and obscurantism: how to renew the dialogue?

The second birth, from age seven, where the child begins to learn to read.

The third birth, from the age of 14, with the start of scientific education.

Finally, the fourth birth, at 21, where the young adult is considered perfectly autonomous.

Minors are thus behind in terms of educational development compared to a student receiving traditional training.

Thus, an 11-year-old child, educated in a school located in the Meuse, and demanding alternative education, did not know how to read when he went to middle school.

Bodily violence

According to the authorities, children living in these environments are more exposed to physical abuse, torture, touching and even rape.

Cases have been observed in particular in the environment of anthroposophical schools where educators choose not to intervene during acts of violence between students so as to “not cause the child to set back irreversibly in his karma”.

Adult followers of these conspiracy theories spread their practices in certain schools outside of the contract.

Refusal of vaccination is established in some of these establishments, endangering the health of students.

For example, a measles outbreak developed a few years ago in a school in Colmar.

Children attending these schools are therefore more easily exposed to diseases and infections.

>> READ ALSO - 

How are conspiracy theories born?

Social networks, a recruitment channel

Faced with the development of social networks, sectarian groups use these channels as a means of recruitment.

Minors have become a preferred target for these adults who are committed to conspiracy theories.

The growing distrust of institutional discourse is part of this recruitment and support for conspiracy theories.

With reassuring speech and the illusion of a dangerous world, with state institutions at its head, minors are more easily affected by these theories.

In this context, the authorities are warning of the dangers represented by these currents of thought.

To combat these abuses, the government has created, with Miviludes and prevention associations, an action program aimed at protecting minors.