In December 2023, the Internet circulated a video allegedly showing a protest by a Muslim who had moved to Europe. We checked whether this description of what happened is correct.
In the nine-second video, a man stands in a characteristic pose over the products in the meat department of a supermarket, while gurgling sounds can be heard. The person who takes it off his back says something in an unknown language and then says in English: “We don’t eat pork.”
According to social networks, the case takes place in one of the supermarkets in the Netherlands, and the creators of the video are Muslim migrants, who thus show their attitude towards a product that is dirty from an Islamic point of view. With a similar description, the video went around many Russian-language social networks, and gained the greatest popularity in “VKontakte" and Telegram - on the channels "Ax 18+"(1.8 million views at the time of writing), "Nevzorov"(480,000), "Sanya in Florida"(402,000), "Trash. Tin 18+» (292,000), Voblya (133,000), "Bottle" (130,000) and "Eggplant"(128,000).
The language spoken by the man filming the process is indeed Dutch. His full sentence goes like this: “Bro, are you a radical just because you don’t eat pork? Wow! We don't eat pork! We don't eat pork!
Videos in Russian-language social networks spread from the afternoon of December 17. However, it is easy to notice that it became popular in other languages even earlier - for example, on the social network X there is an English-language publication with over 3 million views. Then, on the afternoon of December 17, a video with the corresponding description shared British right-wing politician, ardent opponent of Muslim immigrants Paul Golding (more than 1 million views). The video did not go unnoticed by the Dutch right - the recording also published Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party that won the recent elections. At one time he stated, which would have driven the Prophet Muhammad out of the country if he had been an immigrant.
The earliest publication of a viral video detected by “Verified” took place much earlier - on December 14, it was done in TikTok And Instagram users with the same name buurtwachtt.
As in Wilders' tweet, the Albert Heijn supermarket is the location of the action - it is mentioned both in hashtags and in the subtitles of the video. However, in the original source there is no hint that the authors of the video are migrants and/or Muslims.
In general, buurtwachtt’s social media accounts are full of humorous videos with prank elements, and in some videos the blogger, standing with his back to the camera, also imitates urination.
At the same time, it is highly doubtful that the hero actually did this - the liquid has no color, and, most likely, the bottle of water that the Dutchman carries with him in some other publications is used. In the case of the supermarket, not even a stream is visible, and the sound of rushing water is probably a superimposed sound effect.
Fact checkers from Snopes contacted with the authors of the video through social networks, and they confirmed that there is no real urination in the video. They noted that the sound of dripping urine was added through an audio editor, and also reported the Muslim religion of the hero of the video, who, however, is not an immigrant. On December 20th it was released on the buurtwatcht Youtube channel video entitled “I Fooled the Whole World,” in which the author explained in detail the mechanics of this and similar bottle pranks. Then “Verified” contacted the press service of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain. They replied that they conducted an internal investigation into this matter and found out that there were no reports of incidents from the stores.
Thus, the video that spread across social networks is a prank that was not accompanied by real urination, and the scandalous context was added to it by other users who took it at face value.
Cover photo: screenshots from social networks
Read on topic:
- Is it true that video shows migrants jumping off a bus in Germany to avoid deportation?
- Is the video of three French women beating up a crowd of migrants in an underground passage true?
- Is it true that the mayor of Yakutsk refused to remove pork from the menu of school canteens at the request of Muslims?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
