Aldean’s Video Uses Old Protests From Other Countries

July 21, 2023 Idiocracy, Pop Music

PolitFact reports:

PolitiFact dissected the video and found that although many of the clips we were able to verify do come from news footage of real events, many of the scenes depicting crowd violence are from outside the U.S., including Ukraine, Germany and Canada, with one dating as far back as 2010.

Protesters run down fiery street (1:35): We found this stock footage available to purchase. It originates from a 2019 protest in Barcelona, Spain, according to a 2020 NBC News article. NBC reported that the clip was used misleadingly at the 2020 Republican National Convention in a video that criticized crime and rioting as a “taste of Biden’s America.”

Woman flipping off police officers (0:27): This footage was captured in Berlin in 2017, according to the stock footage website Pond5 where we found it posted for purchase.

Masked protester in blue puffer jacket throwing item at police (1:38): This comes from a 2013 protest in Kyiv, Ukraine. Reuters photographer Stoyan Nenov captured a still image of the same person. The photo was embedded in an article from French news service Radio France Internationale, with the caption, “Protesters storm the presidential administration building.”

Police charging at crowd of protesters (1:54): Using the hotel name, Hotel de l’ITHQ, and a reverse-image search, we tracked this clip to a stock image website and to a YouTube video of a 2013 protest in Montreal, where riot police charged a group of students protesting a rise of tuition fees in Quebec.

Read the full article. There’s much more. The TikTok clip linked below provides an excellent breakdown of each scene and its origin.



Tags

© joemygod.com 2025