False claim that Brigitte Macron was born a man has roots in pandemic-era France as distrust of politicians peaked
W
hen the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, took the rare step this week of filing a US defamation lawsuit against the rightwing podcaster Candace Owens, it marked a new phase in a legal battle on both sides of the Atlantic against the false claim that Brigitte Macron is a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux.
The Macrons’ US lawsuit attacked what it called the “verifiably false and devastating lies” being repeated online by Owens that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born a man. The lawsuit said evidence clearly disproved this “grotesque narrative”, which had become “a campaign of global humiliation” and “relentless bullying on a worldwide scale”.
The case prompted broader questions this week about how conspiracy theories spread worldwide, whether they can be stopped in the courts and what this false narrative, which began in France after the Covid pandemic, says about French society’s distrust in politicians.
