The President of Angels for Peace was not assaulted during the recent unrest in France

By: Sam Doak
July 5 2023

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Context

On June 27, 2023, police fatally shot a teenager in a suburb of Paris. This has triggered widespread civil unrest across France, with protests and riots occurring in numerous towns and cities. 

As events in France have unfolded, social media users have shared many clips showing disorder and violence in the country. One particularly viral video shows a man being assaulted by a group of men as he appears to attempt to remove himself from the confrontation. While this video existed for days without social media users identifying the individual, recently, some have attempted to ascribe a new narrative to the footage.

One such person is Paul Golding, the leader of the British far-right political party Britain First. Writing on Twitter, Golding stated, “It turned out that the person who was beaten by Muslims in France was the president of the "Angels for Peace" association, which works to keep refugees in France. #FranceRiots #FranceHasFallen #FranceOnFire.” While Golding failed to provide evidence to substantiate his claim, his tweet garnered over 11,000 retweets and 29,000 likes. 

While it seems that this claim has been widely believed, Logically Facts has closely examined the footage in question and found no evidence to support it.

In Fact

In order to fully investigate Golding’s claim, Logically Facts geolocated the footage to Bordeaux docks. This was possible due to the placement of a distinctive streetlamp in the background of the video. 

Conducting several searches containing keywords related to Bordeaux, migrants, and the name Angels for Peace, Logically Facts could not find a single instance of this claim that was backed by any evidence. No reputable outlets have reported that an individual from an organization of this name was assaulted or even affected by the recent civil unrest in France. 

Finding no coverage of this alleged incident, Logically Facts searched for the organization Angels for Peace. No publicly available record of an organization of this name and description exists in France or elsewhere in Europe. 

The Verdict

No organization called Angels for Peace matches the description given by Golding and others. A thorough search of publicly available information revealed no evidence to support claims that a leader of a charity of the nature described was assaulted in the location shown or elsewhere in France. This claim has therefore been marked as false.