On YouTube, Instagram, Gettr or Twitter, radicalization of far -right influencers

They are called Papacito, the Raptor, Greg Toussaint, Valek or Estelle Redpill and seek to form the political culture of a young audience.

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“Democracy works on the presumed stupidity of the mass, by definition, manipulable beast.” At the end of June, on Youtube, Papacito displays all its disappointment. The far -right youtubeur – a qualifier he rejects – believed for a moment in the victory of Eric Zemmour in the presidential election, because of his “enormous energy”. Since the defeat, he advises his community to withdraw from the world. The urgency, fleeing the big cities, these “crime nests” and going to live in the countryside. “Equip yourself to defend yourself,” he suggests, while implied.

At 36, Ugo Gil Jimenez, a Toulousain of Spanish origin, qualified by Eric Zemmour as “sympathetic” and “intelligent”, dissects on politics and has dispenses his life advice to Internet users since 2018. His channel YouTube has 184,000 subscribers. But we can now find him on his other channel, “Les Radourtards”. He is not alone in the radical right niche: the Raptor has 736,000 subscribers, Valek, 383,000, Greg Toussaint, 324,000, Stéphane Edouard, 318,000, Baptiste Marchais, 267,000 and Bruno Le Salé, 270,000 . Besides YouTube, all these little people are also present on Instagram, Gettr or Twitter … To live, some sell coaching, like Stéphane Edouard, specializing in seduction, or nutrition products, such as the Raptor, passionate about fitness. Others, books, like Papacito, who is thus regularly invited by André Bercoff on Sud Radio or by “VA +”, the YouTube channel of current values.

These influencers seek to form the political culture of a young audience, generally aged 15 to 35. Some videos can be viewed millions of times. “Sometimes as much as those of TF1 or France 2. It is a lot for political content,” said Tristan Boursier. According to this doctoral student in political theory to Sciences Po Paris, there is not, on the other side of the political spectrum, a community of such magnitude: “On the left, the most important influencers are usul and hello Sadness. “The first has a partnership with Mediapart, and the second has 234,000 subscribers.

masculinism,” anti-equalism “,” white supremacism “

In the far -right movement, influencers are rarer. The best known is Estelle Redpill. At 26, the young woman, who has 15,800 subscribers on Tiktok, is not afraid to shock. In one of her latest videos, she puts the role of the United States into perspective during the Second World War. If they “released us from Nazism”, it is to better “manipulate us later”.

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/Media reports.