Old Protest in Austria Falsely Linked To Germany's Christmas Market Attack

Fact-check: An old video is going viral to claim that it shows a protest in Austria against the recent Christmas market attack in Germany.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing a protests is going viral on social media where users are claiming that it shows Austrians protesting for "remigration of foreigners".

Context: This comes after five people, including a child, were killed when a man drove a car into the crowd at Christmas market on 20 December in Germany’s Magdeburg.

• Following this, the far-right protesters held anti-immigrant protest in Magdeburg and users are linking this video to these protests.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false.

• This video is from July 2024 and shows a protest from Austria but it is being shared out of context.

How did we find out the truth?: We divided the video into multiple keyframes and performed a reverse image search on Google and this led an X (Formerly Twitter) post by @AFpost on 20 July 2024.

It carried the same video and stated, “Remigration rally in Vienna today.”

• Taking a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search on Google and came across a report by Associated Press, which was shared on 21 July 2024.

• It stated that clashes were witnessed when protesters tried to disrupt a march by hundreds of right-wing extremists in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

• It further stated that these protests were done to advocate for “remigration,” a term used for the mass return of migrants to their countries of origin.

• Image shown in the report also matched with the banner seen in the viral video.

This video is from July 2024.

(Source: VOA/Screenshot)

Similar images from the protest can also be seen on Getty Images here and here.

Conclusion: An old video is going viral to claim that it shows a protest in Austria against the recent Christmas market attack in Germany.

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