People are interested in social events like protests and discuss them more on social media. However, some such posts are misleading. This is our investigation into such in Poland.
Social Media Posts
Social media has been flooded with colourful images purporting to show 300,000 Poles protesting against migrants and for Christianity in Warsaw in late November
We decided to do a fact-check on this.
Fact Check
A simple reverse image search reveals that the footage does not capture the mass protest recently, but a march held in Warsaw to commemorate Polish Independence Day on November 11, 2017 ( here ).
An original video can be found in X Below, which was published in 2017.
Sixty thousand people took part in the march ( here ). Some of the marchers were nationalists, chanting anti-migrant slogans such as “Pure Poland, white Poland” ( here ).
Despite the fact that not all marchers were nationalists, foreign media outlets presented the event as a march of radical right-wing supporters ( here and here ).
CNN reported that one of the main organisers of the march was the radical right group “Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny” (Polish: “National Radical Camp”), which speaks out against Muslim immigrants, LGBT rights, and the European Union ( here ).
However, the then Polish Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński criticized the way foreign media presented the event, saying: “In Poland, extreme political groups are marginal. They have never received significant support from Polish voters in any elections, and this is obvious. But in such a situation, (these groups) are trying to exist” ( here ).
In 2020, the Polish prosecutor’s office dropped the case it had opened regarding the Independence March case, but the country’s human rights commissioner appealed this decision ( here ).
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Conclusion
As per our investigation, we were able to find out that the video footage being shared as recent anti-migrant and pro-Christian protests in Poland are misleading. The footage is related to the independent day events of Poland in previous years, not recent or current events or not related to any anti-migrant or pro-Christian protests.
Title:These Are Poland National Day Celebrations!! NOR Pro Christianity or Anti-Migrant Protests!!
Fact Check By: Kalana KrishanthaResult: Misleading
