TESTIMONY. Fake volunteer, he plans to “sabotage the spirit” of the Paris 2024 Games

Fake volunteers have infiltrated the ranks of the 45,000 volunteers selected for the organization of the Olympic Games, scheduled for July 26 to August 11. Franceinfo: sport met one of them.

France Télévisions – Sports Editorial

“Before you go in, can you give me your phone please?” For Michel*, who receives us in his luxury apartment, all precautions are good to take. Our smartphone ends up in the microwave, along with hers and that of her roommate, for this first meeting of a few minutes. Michel is a “indignant radicalized” facing the organization of the Paris 2024 Games, as it defines itself. A “fake volunteer”, as they are called. Selected from among the 45,000 volunteers for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP), he infiltrated the ranks of volunteers with the aim of sabotaging the organization.

Since the start of last winter, franceinfo: sport has gone in search of these “false volunteers”, a source of concern for the Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop) and the French government. How many are they ? Nobody knows. Several people, likely to become infiltrators within the volunteers, were contacted. Only Michel agreed to explain this commitment. Franceinfo: sport was able to consult and authenticate the official documents of his selection as a JOP volunteer, as well as his assignment and his missions to the Games. “I am someone who slowly but gradually became radicalized, into far-left ideas,” does he define himself.

After several indirect exchanges, via a third person, and three initial informal interviews, he finally agreed to speak. Michel, a thirty-year-old with no criminal record, a computer engineer by profession, looks like everyone else. This semblance of anonymity serves him in his project, but he is particularly suspicious. For several months, all correspondence with him was carried out on an encrypted and secure messaging platform, so as not to expose his “blanket” in danger.

Because, since the start of the year, the French intelligence services have already sidelined no less than 1,618 people. Among them, several hundred were identified as “volunteers who clearly did not have good intentions”, according to the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. On the other hand, according to our information, the intelligence services in charge of the screening investigations concerning the 45,000 volunteers [1 million d’enquêtes ont été lancées au total] have all the trouble in the world to identify these famous “fake volunteers”. When contacted, the Interministerial Delegation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Dijop) did not respond to our requests.

Michel assures him: he “does not, under any circumstances, foresee violent and extreme action”. “I am not risking prison for the action I am taking. Ultimately, a little police custody or a fine at worst, but nothing more,” he says.

Its goal ? A “sabotage. The word is strong, he concedes, pausing for a long time. But I use it a little because the idea is above all to sabotage this festive spirit. I want to cause panic in the organization. Be careful, don’t paniche justifies himself. Because my goal will never be to endanger others, but to make my action visible, in the eyes of the world if possible.”

“The idea is rather to make people talk about themselves, the messages that I want to convey, and to tickle the repressive impulses of the State.”

Michel, “fake volunteer” during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games

at franceinfo: sport

According to the Paris 2024 “Olympic and Paralympic Volunteering Charter”, sanctions may vary, depending on the seriousness of the facts, from a simple “warning” to “legal and judicial proceedings” passing through the “revocation of volunteer status”.

What are his motives ? For Michel, the turning point came recently. “I am one of those outraged following the pension reform [mouvement social de janvier à juin 2023]and it was after that that I wanted to get involved in this movement [contre l’organisation des JOP de Paris 2024]”, he confides. At that time, several collectives launched an appeal on social networks, around the hashtag #PasDeRetraitPasDeJO. The Covid-19 crisis has completed a phenomenon of radicalization at home: “While cooped up at home, all alone, I took the time to develop my thoughts on the world by reading many different authors such as [Jean] Jaurès or [Pierre] Kropotkin”, in what he calls “a literary retreat”. “I came to the point of telling myself that concrete actions were needed, that I do something”he concludes.

His speech is rehearsed, centered on social injustices: “The government [français] tries to hide social povertyhe accuses, except that we don’t live in the Paris of the film Amélie Poulain”. Michel refers in particular to the expulsion of more than 2,000 students from their university accommodation requisitioned by Cojop, and to the displacement, to other cities, of homeless people or migrants… “I’m talking about deportationMichel ventures. I know that’s a strong word. But it’s a word that has meaning. You just have to open a dictionary to see what it means and you are literally in the very definition of deportation.” THE Larousse yet defines a “deportation” by “transfer and internment in a concentration camp located in a remote area”. “There is a connotation, he minimizes. It is also voluntary. It’s the idea of ​​questioning what we are capable of doing for leisure, and to entertain the gallery internationally.”

His speech goes further: “The goal is also to show the authoritarian excesses of so-called democratic states, he incriminates. France is not the one they want to show to the world!” For him, “Today’s France is not only that of the opening ceremony on the Seine, it is also that which empties and ‘sanitizes’ its streets, which expels its precarious students from their homes.”

“What really revolts me are all these social questions. My goal, ultimately, is to make the invisible visible.”

Michel, selected among the 45,000 volunteers for the Paris 2024 JOP

at franceinfo: sport

For several months, Michel has been thinking about the different actions he could take. He refuses to reveal its outlines, but hopes to be able to carry out “an action which will make noise, and which will disrupt good organization and TV broadcasting” of the test to which he was assigned. To do this, he seeks to get closer to a collective or an organized group, with which he would share “certain values” and the desire to make common demands. But if his contacts remain unsuccessful, he will launch an individual demonstration. His choice has not yet been made.

*The first name has been changed