French officials blasted conspiracy theorists for sharing disinformation and for going “so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs” after posts went viral on X/Twitter
French officials have lashed out at online claims that President Emmanuel Macron was hiding drugs during a high-profile meeting with European leaders.
Viral claims that French President Macron hid a bag of drugs emerged on X/Twitter during a meeting between him, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The claims were widely viewed on the platform on Sunday, two days after the three leaders arrived in Ukraine, where they joined world leaders to heap pressure on Russia to end its war in the country.
The bizarre claims soon attracted tens of millions of views, despite showing little credible evidence to support their accusations.
A video of the meeting showed all three leaders sitting down at a table before the French president removed a tissue from view. But within hours, viral claims were made about the tissue, with major accounts – which have been accused of spreading conspiracy theories – claiming it was drugs that were being hidden from view.
“When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs,” said the official X/Twitter account for the French President. “This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”
Photos shared along with the statement included ones of the tissue on the table as well as Macron greeting Mr Starmer. A caption shared on the photo of the tissue read: “This is a tissue. For blowing your nose.” Since being shared late on Sunday night, the post has been viewed more than 384,800 times.
The office issued the statement in response to viral claims made by right-wing and conspiratorial accounts on X/Twitter, many of which were viewed hundreds of thousands or even millions of times.
Disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who previously falsely called the Sandy Hook school shooting a “giant hoax,” had posted: “A bag of white powder on the table. Macron quickly pockets it, Merz hides the spoon. No explanation given.”
He then claimed all three leaders present looked completely “cracked out”. The post went viral on X/Twitter with more than 19.1 million views as of this morning.
A similar post was shared by the account Dr Simon Goddek, who previously shared an alerted image falsely claiming Michelle Obama is a man. His post said: “DEVELOPING: Macron, Starmer, and Merz caught on video on their return from Kiev. A bag of white powder on the table. Macron quickly pockets it, Merz hides the spoon. No explanation given. Zelensky, known cocaine enthusiast, had just hosted them. Connect the dots.”
The claims were shared without providing any evidence to lend credibility to their claim. But the comments quickly went viral in right-wing and conspiratorial circles on the social media platform.
BBC Verify reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh hit out at how the post went viral on the platform, despite there being no evidence to back up the outlandish claims. He said: “This is the insanity that goes viral as news these days.
“Over 6 million views, 11,000 retweets, and 38,000 likes for a tweet by Alex Jones in which he claims the leaders of the UK, Germany, and France were sniffing coke right in front of cameras.”
X/Twitter has become one of the largest platforms where misinformation is spread. Tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired the platform in October 2022, and proceeded to gut the organisation’s moderating teams and restored banned accounts, among which were ones that had shared anti-Semitic posts.
The platform was a main source of misinformation and disinformation during the 2024 riots in the UK following the Southport murders, where a false name of the perpetrator was shared to make it appear as though he was a Muslim asylum seeker. But defenders of Mr Musk’s platform claim the platform allows for free speech and have since defended its community notes feature that aims to better inform users about particular posts.