Traditional song shortly after his sermon. President of France Emmanuel Macron was filmed on a Monday evening singing in the middle of the street along with passers-by.

The video was released as Macron struggles to navigate a pension reform crisis that is hurting his popularity.

The video was posted by an organization that, according to the newspaper Liberation, has links to the far right. Macron’s entourage, however, assures that the president did not know the passers-by who invited him to sing with them.

According to Le Point, Macron was walking with his wife in the evening along Notre-Dame-de-Champs street in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, which is about three kilometers from the presidential palace. He then met a group of people who invited him to sing with them, one of the “singers” told Valeurs actuelles.

🔴 Quelques minutes of April #allocationpresidentialEmmanuel Macron was filmed singing “Le Refuge” on the streets of Paris, in the center of the support group of the Canto app. pic.twitter.com/lUZJXZULNZ

— Nicolas Boutin (@NicolasBoutin11) April 18, 2023

Many netizens thought it was a montage or a deepfake.

Macron, who previously defended his controversial reform, found himself singing Edmond Duplan’s “Le Refuge,” a traditional Pyrenean song he “knows and loves,” the sources say. “At the time, he couldn’t have known the background of every person he spoke to,” insisted the same source.

The first video was posted shortly after midnight on the Facebook page of the Projet Canto organization of the same name.

The video is accompanied by the caption: “Only the mafia and Projet Canto can blackmail the president.” This organization positions itself as a protector of cultural heritage that preserves traditional songs by digitizing them. However, an investigation by the Liberation newspaper in 2022 found that it was founded and run by far-right extremists and that its app contains, among other things, nationalist songs or other songs associated with the Third Reich.

“The political song is part of the history of the song, and therefore it is registered. Some are connected to the far right, others to the far left (…) Our choice is to simply register all popular songs, ”the organization replied at the time.

Another video showing the start of filming was released today by journalist Valeurs actuelles. Passers-by yell at Macron, and one of them asks, “Do you want to sing with us?” The image is cut, then Macron is shown asking, “How do you know this song?” and another suggests they sing Le Refuge together. “Let’s play Refuge,” replies the President, who sang it another time during a visit to the Hautes-Pyrenees in 2022.

Source: RES-IPE