A video was shared on social media on Tuesday of French President Emmanuel Macron singing a traditional song in the street after a televised speech trying to ease tensions over his unpopular pension reform measures.
There were those who suspected the veracity of the images when they first appeared, even assuming they were generated by artificial intelligence or some other means, but people close to Macron told AFP it was a real shot.
“The president had a moment with his wife (Brigitte Macron) after his speech (Monday evening). They met a group of young people who were singing. He joined the group and sang with them a song from the Pyrenees that he knows and likes,” sources tell AFP.
In the night video, Macron can be seen using his mobile phone to find out the lyrics to the song “Le Refuge”.
Macron a chanté “Le Refuge”, un chant Pyrénéen, après son allocution de lundi, avec un groupe de soutien de Canto, une application fondée par des militants d’extreme-droite qui diffuse des chants fascist et nazis… Hallucinant https: https://t.co/HvIiuK3A9K pic.twitter.com/Tt3v6o0tqD
– Nils Wilcke (@paul_denton) April 18, 2023
Initially, the moment may have been interpreted as a demonstration of closeness to the president’s voters, whose measures, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, have met with widespread opposition in recent weeks.
But the video was first published on the Facebook page of an organization called “Projet Canto”. Although the group describes itself as a proponent of traditional songs in digital format, the left-wing newspaper Liberation reported last year that it was founded and run by far-right activists after making recordings of songs with links to Nazi Germany available on its app. .
Macron “couldn’t know the background of every person he spoke to at the time,” a person belonging to the French president’s entourage told AFP.
The group told Liberation last year that “political songs are part of music history.” “That’s why we keep them,” the group said, adding that they also had “extreme leftist” songs in their catalog.
Macron previously sang “Le Refuge” on a trip to the Pyrenees in 2022.
Source: DN
