Majority of France’s ‘yellow vests’ believe Diana was assassinated

ALMOST six out of 10 self-professed “yellow vest” protesters in France believe that Diana, Princess of Wales, was assassinated, according to a new study, suggesting the movement is steeped in conspiracy theories.

The high figure among so-called gilets jaunes was part of a study looking at 10 conspiracy theories widely circulated on social media since the movement began in mid-november. It found 40 per cent of them believed in at least half of the theories. In most cases, they were more than twice as likely to believe a theory than the national average.

By comparison, some 34 per cent of the general population said they believe that Diana’s death in a car accident under Paris’s Pont de l’alma in August 1997 was a “masked murder”, according to the Ifop study. That tallies roughly with a 2013 Yougov poll in the UK, which put the figure at 38 per cent.

The poll also reveals that almost a quarter of gilets jaunes are convinced that a terror attack on the Christmas market in Strasbourg last December was a government tactic to distract from their latest protest. Only 10 per cent of the rest of the French population share that view.

The Ifop study was conducted for the Jean-jaurès Foundation, a think tank, and the group Conspiracy Watch.

It found that an inordinate number of yellow vests – some 59 per cent, compared to 37 per cent of French people in general – said their information came from online videos and social media rather than “official” news outlets. Many protesters are virulently anti-mainstream media and several journalists have been attacked.

“These channels (social media) are massively used by the younger generations and the popular classes (to which many yellow vest sympathisers belong),” said Ifop’s Jérôme Fourquet.

“Over time … a veritable counterculture and alternative vision of the world has built-up in parallel to a mainstream reading. While this reading remains dominant in the major media and among the most educated, settled and older population, whole planks of society no longer believe in it and have flipped into cultural and ideological dissidence,” he said.

The yellow vest movement originally sprang up on social media in response to tax hikes on petrol and diesel. It then snowballed into a national revolt in provincial France against high taxes, the cost of living and the perceived elitism of the Macron presidency.

But in findings that appear to counter previous claims that the movement is entirely social and economic and nothing to do with immigration, half (46 per cent) of the gilet jaunes interviewed told Ifop they adhere to the farright theory of “great replacement”.

In other words, they believe immigration is deliberately being orchestrated by “political, intellectual and media elites in order to replace the European population with an immigrant population”. Only a fifth of the general population share this view.

The Ifop study was conducted among 1,506 people from Dec 21-23.