A recent video of protests in Italy shows someone scaling the front of a building and removing the European flag hanging from it.
The video was actually filmed in 2013, and isn’t related to the recent general election in Italy.
A video shared on Facebook claims to show a protester removing the European flag from a building in Italy on 24 September 2022.
The next day, the country voted in a general election, following which far-right politician Giorgia Meloni is set to become the next Prime Minister.
But videos of the same incident from other angles show that the footage was actually filmed in 2013, during a protest by neo-fascist group Casapound. One member of the group can be seen climbing the front of the Rome headquarters of the European Commission (the executive arm of the European Union) and removing the flag.
The false claim that the video shows an incident this year was circulated by, among others, a news website called the Western Journal, in an article published on 25 September which was headlined “Italians Tear Down EU Flag as Right-Wing Coalition Comes to Power”.
The Western Journal has since retracted its article. A spokesperson told Full Fact: “While we had noted in the article that we had been unable to verify the video’s provenance, our headline claimed that the video recorded events that took place this week, which is not true.”
For more on what to watch out for when looking at footage you see circulating online, see our How to spot misleading videos guide.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the video was taken in 2013.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.