U. S. Far-Right Activists Promote Hacking Attack Against Macron -<br />By MARK SCOTTMAY 6, 2017<br />After months of trying to move the political needle in favor of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, American far-right activists on Saturday threw<br />their weight behind a hacking attack against her rival, Emmanuel Macron, hoping to cast doubt on an election that is pivotal to France and the wider world.<br />In response, Mr. Macron’s team said the hackers had included fake information alongside authentic material “to sow doubt.”<br />“Intervening in the final hour of the official campaign, this operation is clearly a matter of democratic destabilization, as was seen in the United States during<br />the last presidential campaign,” Mr. Macron’s campaign said in a statement late Friday, minutes before the communications prohibition went into effect.<br />Within hours after the hacked documents were made public, the hashtag #MacronLeaks began trending worldwide,<br />aided by far-right activists in the United States who have been trying to sway the vote in favor of Ms.<br />Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag<br />with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks.<br />While there is no evidence that the breach against Mr. Macron’s campaign was organized by this loosely connected group of far-right campaigners, the American activists have been gathering on sites like 4chan<br />and Discord, which were previously used to coordinate support for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.
