“Meme Macron out of existence… We need to stop this creep Macron from cucking up Europe.” WARNING: This post contains graphic images.
On Sunday night, this 4chan thread appeared a few hours after pro-EU centrist and former investment banker Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist and former leader of the National Front Marine Le Pen were declared winners of the first round of France's presidential election.
The thread was posted on 4chan's /pol/ board, which has become a central hub for far-right extremism over the last few years.
Users post anonymously on the message board, but the country their IP addresses belong to show up as tiny flags next to their randomly generated user IDs.
The thread was started by a Swedish user who asked members of the community if they could help him create memes and misinformation about Emmanuel Macron that could then be translated and spread across the web.
The original poster suggested they focus on a narrative that Emmanuel Macron was secretly sleeping with his wife's 30-year-old daughter, Tiphaine Auzière.
The age difference between Macron and his 64-year-old wife, Brigitte Trogneux, has become the subject of widespread international attention. Trogneux was Macron's high school drama teacher.
An American user then appeared in the thread and put in a photo of Auzière superimposed over Macron, writing "something to start memeing about."
