The Facebook page “On aime la France sans islam” (We like France without Islam) frequently shares racist and Islamophobic content. On March 1st, it posted a report from the French news channel BFMTV which had been edited in several places. The report details the policies of Franck Briffaut, the far right National Front (FN) mayor of Villers-Cotterêts, in northern France, who was elected in 2014. It shows the town’s residents to be generally satisfied with their mayor, but two interviews criticizing the mayor were removed from the original report.
The first deleted passage is an interview with Mohamed, 19, a preparatory class student. He says that he plans to vote for the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron in next month’s presidential election. The second passage is an interview with Adil, another student who “leans towards voting for [far-left candidate] Jean-Luc Mélenchon and doesn’t want the Front National to govern”.