Brazil's anti-far-right strategy targets Le Pen and CNews visibility in France

The victory of Brazilian President Lula was aided by a digital strategy that involved flooding social media with supportive content while ignoring far-right posts, a tactic now being promoted in France to counter the far-right. This approach aims to reduce the visibility of figures like Marine Le Pen and media like CNews. The strategy, pioneered by lawyer Andre Janones, relies on mass mobilization through WhatsApp channels to share memes and hashtags, while avoiding engagement with far-right content to prevent algorithms from amplifying it. Janones clarified he advocates ignoring, not blocking, such accounts, as blocking can still signal engagement to algorithms. In France, the hashtag #BloquonsLextrêmedroite is trending, and La France insoumise has launched a similar WhatsApp channel to coordinate supporter activity. However, the effectiveness of this tactic on the 2027 presidential election, where the RN is currently favored, remains uncertain.