Sometimes, the most blatant fabrications can be enough to elicit reactions. At night on Sunday, May 11, the Elysée's X account posted a message to clarify that Emmanuel Macron had not, in fact, been filmed with an embarrassing bag of cocaine, as many conspiracy theory accounts had claimed over the weekend.
"This fake news is being spread by France's enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation," the Elysée wrote in an English-language tweet, all while zooming in on the supposed cocaine bag. "This is a tissue, for blowing your nose," the message clarified. Usually, the government avoids responding to particularly outlandish rumors.
Since May 11, after videos of a meeting between Macron, new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on a train headed to Kyiv, were released, several pro-Russian accounts have accused the French president of trying to hide a bag of drugs when the photographers arrived. They based their allegations on low-resolution video excerpts.
"A cocaine night with buddies?" asked a conspiracy theory account named "Véritiste" ("Truthist"). "When will there be drug testing for all politicians?" another user decried. Others described Merz's pen as either a straw or a "coke spoon." The allegation was picked up by the "pope" of American conspiracy theories, entrepreneur and pundit Alex Jones, who was convicted in 2022 for having called a school shooting a "hoax." "All three of the 'leaders' look completely cracked out," he wrote.
The claims were widely shared on X, a social media platform that has become a hub of misinformation since it was bought out by Elon Musk at the end of 2022, though they had already been swiftly debunked by several observers, fact-checking journalists and vigilant users. As promptly noted by the fact-checking service CheckNews and as evidenced by other, high-definition photos and video reports, the alleged suspicious "baggie" was, indeed, just a simple paper tissue.
This is not the first time that pro-Russian conspiracy theory circles have tried to depict Macron as a cocaine addict. Already in 2017, when emails belonging to Macron's campaign team were hacked in the period between the two electoral rounds of the French presidential election, far-right accounts had attempted to make people believe that these contained proof that Macron had ordered cocaine while he was a presidential candidate.
Since then, several incriminating pieces of content have sought to portray him as a regular drug user: for example, through edited footage of moments when Macron has touched his nose in public, as the magazine Marianne reported in 2023.
In January 2023, Emmanuel Pellerin, then a Macron-aligned MP, stepped down from his role in the president's party after admitting to having used cocaine, following an investigation by the website Mediapart. The situation reportedly left Macron "embarrassed," wrote Europe 1, a media outlet owned by Vincent Bolloré. However, the president's name never came up in the scandal.
Since Macron's first election to the presidency, his relationship has been the subject of numerous defamatory attacks. Besides allegations of drug use, the president has, among conspiracy theory circles, been portrayed as being homosexual, and his wife, Brigitte Macron, as having been born a man, under the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.