Experts weigh in on how an internet hoax about kidnappers driving white vans lead to 'collective hysteria' and near-lynchings in the Paris suburbs.
Paris - How did an internet hoax about kidnappers driving white vans lead to "collective hysteria" and near-lynchings in the Paris suburbs this week? Experts say it is a combination of old-fashioned prejudice and modern technology.
"There's a Romanian network of organ traffickers. They're everywhere in the suburbs," wrote one user in an online post above a picture of the ubiquitous white van, a common sight on French streets. But like many online hoaxes -- or offline rumour-mongering -- the warnings bring to mind some infamous cases from the past, making them sound plausible.Aurore Van de Winkel, an academic who tracks urban legends and hoaxes, says French people are still traumatised by the serial killers Marc Dutroux and "the Ogre of the Ardennes" Michel Fourniret who used white vans to abduct their victims.
They usually entail a message warning about suspicious people approaching children or women and include a picture of a van, or a first-person account from someone recounting how a family member or friend has gone missing. Speaking this week, he saw a parallel with the attacks in Paris on ethnic Roma people, some of whom saw their vans set on fire and their families terrorised by mobs carrying petrol cans and metal bars.
Communities of Roma people have lived in France for centuries, but tens of thousands more moved from Bulgaria and Romania in southeast Europe after the countries joined the EU in 2004.
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