Raphaël Glucksmann, lead candidate of part of the French left for the European elections in June, has given up his 60,000 followers on TikTok. Speaking on France 2 public television, on Tuesday, April 2, he said that he abandoned the Chinese social media platform because he refused to "play the fool," all while denouncing foreign interference. The platform has been accused by its detractors of giving Chinese authorities access to user data.
In 2023, the European Commission, followed by the European Parliament, banned the app on their employees' work devices. Back in 2022, the European Parliament had published a report stating that "evidence shows that malicious and authoritarian foreign state and non-state actors, such as Russia, China and others, use information manipulation and other interference tactics to interfere in democratic processes in the EU."
However, many of the main lead candidates of French parties are crazy about TikTok: Jordan Bardella of the Rassemblement National (RN, far-right) has a million followers; Marion Maréchal (Reconquête !, far-right) has 97,000; Manon Aubry, head of the La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) list has 41,000; and Marie Toussaint of Les Ecologistes (Greens) with her 1,257 followers. However, with the Chinese threat looming over TikTok, should French candidates for the European elections give up the app?
'Decerebration of the masses'
Samuel Lafont, a Reconquête ! activist tasked with the party's digital strategy, slammed Glucksmann's decision: "He's shooting himself in the foot. He's going to lose influence by leaving TikTok." In the EU, more than 134 million people use the app every month. Reconquête ! therefore intends to rely on the platform to "reach the maximum number of people," said the far-right activist, who also claimed to have "already recruited people spotted on the app."
For La France Insoumise, MEP Leïla Chaibi, who has gained quite a following on the social media, came to the same conclusion. On her profile, she posts videos showing the "behind-the-scenes" activity of the European Parliament. She said that "we need to communicate in all directions," and that TikTok is "a way of reaching out to young people who are very far removed from politics, especially given the abstention rate."
The Les Républicains (LR, right) party's lead candidate François-Xavier Bellamy, meanwhile, admitted to having "hesitated for a long time about getting involved in this platform, before deciding to try and offer more challenging content" for young people, "so as not to leave the field open to simplistic arguments." According to the weekly magazine Le Point, the head of the LR list had even told his troops at the start of the campaign that "[he would go and] make 20-second videos published on Chinese propaganda platforms to participate in the decerebration of the masses."
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