In January 2024, a video of producer Damon Imani, speaking at the World Economic Forum, shouting insults at its founder and other participants, went viral on the Internet. We decided to check whether this actually happened.

It is stated that 19 seconds video, which published some information portals - fragment from a broadcast from the WEF, in which a man standing behind the podium against the background of the forum logos shouts obscenities at the forum founder Klaus Schwab and the event participants. He shouts: "I am grateful to the World Economic Forum for the opportunity to stand on this stage and say: 'Go to hell, Klaus Schwab, and go to hell, the new world order. We the people were born free and will remain free, and you and all your globalist friends, including everyone in this room, can go to hell!'" After this, the founder of the WEF and the President of Switzerland, Viola Amerd, who were supposedly present on stage at that moment, get up and leave, and the broadcast ends. The scandalous video was shared by social media users (“VKontakte", X, Facebook) And blogging platforms, as well as the authors of many popular Telegram channels, for example “Bocharik (yep, that same one)"(253,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) and "Blue Z beard"(78,000 views).

World Economic Forum is a non-governmental organization created by German economist Klaus Schwab in 1971. Every year, the WEF holds a summit in Davos, Switzerland, where political, business and cultural leaders from around the world come to discuss prospects for global economic development, political problems and other current issues. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Klaus Schwab launched an initiative called “The Great Reset”, within which he proposed to consider the pandemic as an opportunity to restructure the global economy in order to create a “healthier, fairer and more prosperous future.” Conspiracy theories immediately arose around Schwab's initiative - supposedly the real goal of these changes is to create an authoritarian world government led by powerful businessmen and politicians. Since then, both the WEF and Schwab himself have repeatedly become targets of fake news. Thus, earlier news spread on the Internet that in order to combat climate change, the WEF proposed put to sleep million domestic cats and dogs, which forum participants called for to be allowed marriages with animals and that Schwab's father was a confidant Hitler. All of them turned out to be false.

“Verified” was unable to find news about Damon Imani’s resonant speech at the WEF in any reputable media. A search on the site itself didn’t yield anything. forum. IN program The event, which in 2024 took place from January 14 to 19, did not include a speaker with that name.

The video itself looks suspicious: if you look closely, it is noticeable that although Imani, Schwab and Amerd are on the same stage, the lighting of their faces is significantly different, as is the quality of the image - Imani is visible more clearly. This suggests that the figure of the odious speaker was simply added to the video during editing.

If you Google Damon Imani's name, you can find his personal website. It says he is an Iranian-born Danish producer and artist who creates videos on a variety of topics, including social issues and current news. It is also noted that Imani's content is known for its satirical nature. On January 17, 2024, Imani published a video recording being analyzed on several of his accounts at once - on the platforms YouTube, X And Instagram. Under each of the posts there is a note: “Satire, but true” (a paraphrase of the common English phrase “Sad but true” - “Sad but true”).

Later, Imani posted several more videos about the EEF on Instagram - each of them was also accompanied by a clarification about the satirical nature of the publication. For example, in one of rollers Imani stands on the podium with a black eye and first apologizes for swearing at the WEF participants, and then starts shouting them again. On Social Network X, a note was added to Imani's post as part of the Community Notes program, which gives users the opportunity to refute inaccurate messages or complement manipulative posts with arguments. Imani was indignant, that he himself marked this post as satire, and it was precisely the link to his post with this mark that was used in the Community Notes comment as confirmation of unreliability. He stated that by marking a post as untrue, they are simply trying to deprive him of monetization.

Fact checkers from the agency AFP found a video from the forum that was used to create Imani's video. The moment where he supposedly speaks from behind the podium, addressing Schwab, who is sitting on stage, taken from the broadcast of the welcoming speech of WEF President Børge Brende, whom the creator of the video being analyzed replaced with his image. Borrowed from the same post fragment, where Schwab and Amerd leave the stage, supposedly outraged by Imani's speech.

Thus, the video where one of the WEF speakers Damon Imani allegedly insults Klaus Schwab and other forum participants is the result of video editing, and its author is Imani himself. He posted the video on his social networks, clearly explaining that it was satire, but many Internet users mistook the video for the real thing and distributed it with appropriate comments.

Cover photo: YouTube video screenshot Damon Imani Reposts