Many internet users suspected the footage was faked using AI or other means when it first surfaced, but people close to long vowel told AFP it was genuine.
“The president took a moment with his wife (Brigette Macron) after his speech (on Monday evening). He was confronted by a group of young people who were singing … ,” he said.
In the night-time video, Macron can be seen reading from his phone the words of “”.Shelter“, a song about a lodge in a mountain range on France’s southwest border with Spain, surrounded by men in their 20s and 30s, singing loudly.
At first the event may appear to be a welcome display of engagement with voters for the president, whose reforms, including raising the pension age, have earned him widespread hostility in recent weeks.
But the video was first published on the Facebook page of an organization named “Projet Canto”.
While the group describes itself as preserving traditional songs in digital form, the left-wing newspaper Liberation reported last year that it was founded and run by far-right activists and that its app had links to Nazi Germany. Was offered to record the song together.
Macron “couldn’t know the background of everyone he was talking to at the time,” the person in his entourage said.
The group told Liberation last year that “political songs are part of the history of song, that’s why we’ve archived them,” adding that it also had “far-left” songs in its catalog.
Macron previously sang “Le Refuge” during a visit to the Upper Pyrenees in 2022.