Tainted by numerous accusations of antisemitism, activists of the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) movement in France enthusiastically embraced a supporter named Pascal Olivier Chiron, who wears a kippah to their protests.
A middle-aged man with short grey hair who says he is a Jewish-born convert to Catholicism, Chiron has filmed himself at protests in order to counter French media reports of antisemitism within the grassroots populist movement.
“International media have relayed this evidence that the government and the French media are lying, and that there is no racism or antisemitism among the Gilets Jaunes,” Chiron wrote on Facebook after he was filmed attending a demonstration.
A day earlier he wrote, “Baruch Hashem! [Hebrew for “God bless”] I wear a kippah and a yellow vests and it’s all good. I do not suffer any form of antisemitism. On the contrary!”
This appeared to be good news following the international shock last week after the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who has declared his support for their cause, was mobbed on the street by yellow vest protesters. Demonstrators shouted “Dirty Zionist” at Finkielkraut and told him to “go to Tel Aviv” as police officers escorted him to safety.
But the France Info radio station discovered a very different Chiron than the Jewish “anti-Zionist but not an antisemite” he purports to be: In fact, he is a propagator of Nazi antisemitic propaganda and an admirer of at least two convicted Holocaust deniers in France.
On December 20, Chiron posted on Facebook a Nazi propaganda poster from Serbia depicting a smirking, hook-nosed man wearing clothes emblazoned with Stars of David. The figure operates marionettes resembling Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, France Info reported.
Another image he had shared showed a hook-nosed President Emmanuel Macron and another man resembling Nazi depictions of Jews cowering at the feet of a far taller man wearing a yellow vest. On December 31, Chiron posted a picture of people wearing yellow vests alongside the comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, a Holocaust denier and propagator of antisemitic hatred. The people in the photo are shown making the quenelle gesture, popularized by Dieudonne that resembles an inverted “Heil Hitler” salute.
