On June 30, 2024, after the results of the first round of elections to the French National Assembly were announced, a video of the fire went viral on the Internet. It was alleged that it was filmed in the north of Paris - supposedly opponents of the far right thus expressed their protest against the victory of the National Rally. We decided to check whether this fire is connected with the election results.

On June 30, the first round of early parliamentary elections took place in France. At 20:00 local time, exit poll data began to arrive, according to which the far-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, was in the lead by a significant margin. The official results of the first round confirmed these data: the “National Rally” gained 33.15%, the bloc of left parties “New Popular Front” - 27.99%, and the pro-presidential alliance “Together!” remained third with 20.76%. In some cities, including Paris And Lyon, protests began. That same evening, a video began to circulate online that allegedly showed a fire set after the results were announced. Some publications specified that opponents of the far right set fire to a market in the north of Paris. Among the Russian Telegram channels that reported this are: Readovka (572,000 views at the time of writing the analysis), “Ne.Sugar"(266,000), "Newsach / Dvach" (244,000) and "Voblya•news"(144,000).

In the video, which circulated on the evening of June 30, a low building is on fire. The video gained popularity after it was published in X, a publication sympathetic to the far right. Frontières. The post (now deleted) indicated that it was taking place in Bobigny, a northern suburb of the French capital. Then about the fire and its political implications wrote politician, former adviser to Marine Le Pen Bruno Attal. He shared the publication of Frontières and accompanied it with the text: “The scum from Bobigny do not like democracy. Now we need to give power to Jordan Bardella!”

The news about the unrest in Bobigny looked plausible: this Parisian suburb is considered dysfunctional. In 2005 it was there started pogroms of shops, burning of cars and clashes with the police, which did not subside for a week. One more wave of unrest was in Bobigny in 2023.

The video, which went viral on the evening of June 30, was actually filmed in this area, on the avenue Hotel de Ville.

Google Street View images taken in 2023 show the site to be a small vacant lot with trash cans next to it. Apparently, it was they who were burning, and not the market, which does not exist in this part of the street.

The second discrepancy is that the sky in the video is too bright (the preliminary election results, as mentioned above, were announced only in the evening, at 20:00 local time). In addition, the video is accompanied by a voice-over commentary from the author: a female voice says that this happens “at 5 o’clock.”

This was later confirmed by local authorities. Prefecture of the Seine-Saint-Denis department reportedthat the fire occurred at 17:30 and has nothing to do with the reaction to the result of the parliamentary elections. According to TF1 TV channel, the trash cans actually caught fire.

Thus, the fire in the suburbs of Paris is not related to the reaction to the results of the first round of parliamentary elections in France. It occurred 2.5 hours before the announcement of the exit polls and cannot be considered a response to the results of the far right.

Photos in the regionOzhke: screenshot “Checked”