An image has gone viral on social media platforms like Twitter showing a stolen police van that’s supposedly from the riots currently happening in France. And despite being seen my millions of people, the image isn’t real. It’s a screenshot from a 2022 Netflix movie.
The image has been shared by several accounts with “verified” blue checkmarks, including Proud Army Brat, Out of Context Human Race and Economista Sincero, racking up over 9 million views in total. But ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter back in October 2022, the social media platform doesn’t actually verify users. Anyone with $8 to spend per month can get the blue checkmark.
One Twitter account wrote that the image showed “Middle East immigrants” in France who had been welcomed as “peaceful”—putting the word in scare quotes.
“Riots have now begun in Italy, Belgium, and the UK. THIS is what is coming here if people don’t wake TF up to the harm of a totally OPEN BORDER!” the American-based account continued.
In reality, the image is taken from a clip of the 2022 French movie Athena. As you can see from the YouTube video below at roughly the 1:20-minute mark, the footage wasn’t captured during the current unrest in France. And anyone with Netflix can watch the movie in its entirety today.
France is currently struggling with social unrest after cellphone videos surfaced of a police officer killing a teenager during a traffic stop on Tuesday. The 17-year-old, only identified as Nahel, is of Algerian descent and his killing has caused immense anger in immigrant communities of France.
The riots have taken place over the past five days and the grandmother of Nahel has called for the violence to stop, according to a new report from Reuters. A crowdfunding campaign set up for the police officer who killed the teen has reportedly raised over 670,000 euros, or roughly $730,000.
A number of fake photos and videos have gone viral in recent days claiming to show violence in France, including one video that supposedly depicts a “sniper.” But, as I explained on Saturday, that sniper video is actually a joke from March about the video game Call of Duty.
It’s always interesting to see fake photos and videos go viral during times of civil unrest, because it’s unclear what the motives of the people spreading those images might be. The havoc caused by rioting over the past five nights has been well documented and there are plenty of real photos showing buildings on fire and clashes with police.
But I suppose popular filmmakers are inherently going to create images that are more interesting to look at, even while the real world is burning. That still doesn’t answer the question of why they spread fake images. Yes, some nation-states have a long history of actively engaging in misinformation campaigns to sow discord or influence popular opinion. But some people simply aren’t very smart and have much larger audiences than they probably should, given their reach.
I have no insider knowledge as to why a Twitter account like Proud Army Brat would be sharing an image from a movie and passing it off as real. But whatever the motivation, it’s completely fake.
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