Latest / Stay in the Room Podcast / The Roundabout

Transcript

The Roundabout · Stay in the Room Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This project supports Ukraine's right to defend itself, and Europe's security.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It holds every source to the same evidence standard, including its own side.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of November 2018,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I drove into Lyon from the north,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: on my way to Lemanueyes for the ski season, with everything I owned in the car.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Protesters had shut every booth at the toll plaza on the A6.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: They left a couple of lanes open with the barriers up,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: so the traffic went through in a long, slow procession.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Flags.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Fireworks.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Flares.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And riot police, waiting in the background.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I watched expensive cars being singled out and scratched.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: As I went past, someone was trying to set one alight.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I sat in the procession, added up what I would lose, and crawled through with everyone else.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was frightened.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I also understood them.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is the part I have carried since.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Gillet Shorns had started out over a rise in fuel tax,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: and they had picked a target you could stand in front of,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: the cars of people who would not notice the price.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Weekend after weekend,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: at roundabouts across the southeast,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: they handed out leaflets, and you did not get through without taking one.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: They knew what they were angry at, and they knew where to stand.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Eight years on, the name is back, and so is the fuel price.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: In early September,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: a young man with no known political ties,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Posted a TikTok video, angry about the cost of fuel, that proposed a date.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday, the 17th of October.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Other accounts dressed it up as the return of the Gillet-Shawns.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pupils had already been out for weeks over their schools.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And by the day, the unions had joined too.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Several mobilisations met on one date.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: By late that night, the Prime Minister, Sébastien Le Cornu, put arrests at 1,200.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Lyon, rioters set fire to the tourist office on Place Bellicourt.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: In Marseille,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: several dozen forced open the doors of the city hall and toppled a bust of Marianne.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Limoges,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: the prefect of Hart-Vienne said the town hall was largely lost to
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: a fire he called deliberate.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: In Britain,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: in early September,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: hundreds of protesters clashed with police in Portsmouth after a dinghy landed.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Two nights later,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: masked protesters turned up outside a Portsmouth hotel, looking for asylum seekers.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: They had found the Pakistan under-19 cricket team.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So who moved the street?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is four questions.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Who started it?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who made it big?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Who turned it violent?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And who amplified it once it was underway?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Postel states are active in this space.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is documented.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: This piece tests the first two questions.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Does the public evidence show hostile states as the principal driver of
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: the mobilisation and its early spread?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here is what would prove me wrong.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: If published platform or government data showed state-linked networks driving most
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: of the early reach, of the calls to protest in France or Britain, I would be wrong.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say so.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The other two questions,
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: who turned it violent,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: and what later amplification did, The public evidence does not yet settle.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: On the road.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: In France, the school strand came first.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pupils had been out for about three weeks,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: over teacher shortages, crowded classes and crumbling buildings.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Interior Ministry blamed ultra-left groups for the attacks on police and public buildings.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Marseille's mayor condemned the vandals in blunt terms and described the damage as limited.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is the French street.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Students, Unions,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: fuel price anger,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: and a violent fringe the ministry blames, and Marseille's mayor condemns.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Britain is a different crowd.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hope Not Hate counted at least 251 anti-migrant events across 77 places between June
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: and December last year.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: It describes hardened far-right activists standing beside local people taken in by
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: the promise of safety.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: UKIP, Patriotic Alternative,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: and Britain First are among the organisations named
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The organised core I can document in Britain is far-right and anti-migrant.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: In France, the Ministry blames the ultra-left.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: These are not mirror images.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Handing out the leaflets.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: The leaflet of 2018 is the feed of 2026.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The mechanism is old.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Someone hands you a date and a reason.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The distribution is new.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: A roundabout reaches the cars that pass it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: A feed reaches millions and nobody has to stand there.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: In France,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: this autumn,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The leaflet was a TikTok video, and Le Monde traced it to its young author.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Two French sites, citing Le Monde, report that vigilance.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The French state's watchdog on foreign digital interference found only minimal,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: opportunistic foreign activity around it, of no significant reach.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I have not seen that finding at source.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Le Monde also found a dozen accounts,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: all created or renamed on the 9th of September, that shared the call intensively.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It calls that a typical practice.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has said, by whom.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: A claim travels furthest when nobody has to answer for it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: After Southport in 2024,
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: the false name of the suspect was among the first posted,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: by a website called Channel 3 now.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found its Facebook page,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: was run by administrators in Pakistan and the United States,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: and it called the case for Russian involvement, weak at best.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: A Russi analyst, writing personally, Judge the Kremlin the likeliest foreign actor.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But he concluded that most of the content was home produced,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: and the Kremlin lent a helpful megaphone.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it is not state activity at all.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: When X began showing account locations last November,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: some UK-focused pro-reform and far-right accounts turned out to be based in India,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Switzerland and Spain.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: The data can be skewed.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But those are people, not states.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I see the same thing in the Facebook groups I use.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Accounts that behave like bots, posting the same lines at all hours.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: In those threads, the origin is simply assumed.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Russia.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or Iran.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: It may be.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have no evidence either way.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Only a pattern I recognise.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody in those threads has any more than that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: During the Brexit referendum, patterns like that were what first made me suspect.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some accounts were pushing lines from outside the country.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Suspicion, not proof.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then as now, behaviour tells you that something is automated or coordinated.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It does not tell you whose it is.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: The States.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I grant the premise in full, and the record is public.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: On the 7th of October,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: France's foreign ministry summoned Iran's ambassador over what it called
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: a disinformation campaign by the Iranian authorities.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: About the school movement.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It named official Iranian foreign ministry accounts as the source of false content.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Viginum has documented 77% information operations by the Russian network known
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: as Storm 1516 between August 2023 and March 2025.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The foreign ministry condemned them in May 2025.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: The premise does not carry the conclusion.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: A French disinformation researcher told one newsletter this week.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: That he saw accounts matching the Storm 1516 pattern.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Join in once the riots were underway.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is second hand.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what he describes is amplification after the fact.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The same newsletter relays a report from the French outlet,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: La Lettre, of an official document attributing the signature of the Iranian regime.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: To French language accounts that circulated images of the clashes.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have not seen the document.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The strongest claim the other way.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is a France culture statement by the journalist Frédéric Martel,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: as relayed by the French tech site Cryptost.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Citing intelligence sources,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: he said influences backed or amplified by Iran,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Algeria and Russia help mobilize rioters.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have not heard the broadcast, and the claim is unconfirmed.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If it is borne out, it moves towards what would prove me wrong.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have found no public attribution of the violence to a foreign state by any French authority.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: In Britain,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: the Home Secretary's statement to Parliament,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: on the 12th of October,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: set out Iranian proxies, arson in North London, and threats to the Jewish community.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is a different category of activity.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: It said nothing about the anti-migrant protests,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: and I have found no attribution of them to Russia or Iran.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: None of that proves absence.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: A state does not have to create a grievance to exploit it,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: or organise a march to make it likelier to turn violent.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: No public attribution is not the same as no operation,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: and amplification after the start can still change what happens next.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I keep three things apart.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: The grievances over fuel, schools and boats, are domestic and documented.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: The date came from one young man's video,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: as Le Monde traced it,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: and the vigilant finding,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: as relayed, points away from significant foreign involvement.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: In the call's early spread, For Britain, the case is thinner.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing I have found traces the early spread of the Portsmouth calls.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Either way.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So on that side, my answer rests mostly on absence.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: An absence is weaker evidence.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: What happened once the riots were underway is the open question.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Martel's claim sits right on it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: The people leaning in.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: The loudest are not hiding.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: In a Truth Social post reported on the 6th of October,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump said the French students' protest was really about Islam,
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: wanting to take over a once great country.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Newsweek noted that the post offered no evidence.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Macron, through his spokeswoman,
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: said the pupils were being exploited with an election six months off,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: and opposition parties reported to be seizing on the demonstrations.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: In Britain,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: on the night of the 6th of September in Portsmouth,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: A Reform UK councillor posted on X that more than a hundred men had arrived
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: by dinghy, and Nigel Farage said only Reform will send the boats back.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen nothing to suggest that Reform organise the protest.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: The two countries differ, but one mechanism runs through both.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: An event arrives, and politicians name a villain, while the facts are still coming in.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: None of them needed a bot.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Anger had an address in 2018.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: At the Toll Plaza, the target was money.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the people at the roundabout knew where to stand.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Britain this autumn, the address, at one hotel in Portsmouth, was a cricket team.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: They had the anger and the wrong door.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: The gangs that sell the crossings were nowhere near that hotel.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The hotel was what they could find to stand in front of.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The fuel price, the classrooms and the boats were all there before anyone posted about them.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever is leaning in, they are leaning into something that was already there.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Start with who is standing in the road.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The French street events were reported by I-24 News, AFP, AQ2 17 and 20 Minutes.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: The TikTok call was reported by Public Senate and Le Monde.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The dozen accounts are from Le Monde.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Viginum finding is reported by Claire View and La Clépublique, citing Le Monde.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The state record comes from the French Foreign Ministry and the UK Home Office.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Martel claim is relayed by Cryptost and is unconfirmed.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Full sources are at the foot of the written version.