Russian propaganda echoes the wave of far-right rallies in the UK that spread across the country in late July. Pro-Russian Telegram channels spread the news that graffiti by artist and activist Darren Cullen with the late Princess Diana appeared on the streets of London in support of far-right anti-immigration rallies.
What preceded
On July 29, in Southport, a man attacked a dance class, killing three and injuring eight children. Before then-17-years-old Kardiff-born teenager was named as an accused of “Southport stabbing,” social networks were filled with misinformation and disinformation that the attacker was a Muslim Syrian refugee who got into the country illegally. Violent anti-immigration rallies with slogans like, “We want our country back,” followed, attacking, in particular, the Southport Mosque.
Now, it would be incorrect to make online posts responsible for anti-immigration rallies. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism writes, some people at rallies “acknowledged the suspect was not Muslim nevertheless expressed Islamophobic and racist views.” BIJ also didn’t find conclusive evidence that the posts in social media was manufactured by Russia, writing that blaming outside actors for political violence is convenient, yet it obscures the deeper societal problem in Britain: that “migrants have been so effectively scapegoated online and offline that it takes very little to ignite popular anger.”
Although Russian involvement in spreading the initial falsehoods about the attacker’s identity is not proven, Russia has definitely exploited anti-immigrants and anti-Muslim sentiment behind the rallies. This debunking piece is one example of the way they’ve done it.
What happened
The propaganda Telegram channel Sheikh Tamir (Шейх Тамир), which regularly spreads Russian propaganda, wrote (archive) that such media outlets as The Sun, Daily Mail, and BBC News had posted the news that graffiti by British-Irish artist Darren Cullen had appeared on the streets of London.
The graffiti depicts the late Princess Diana and a quote:
“Great that I’m dead now and can’t see all the shit that’s going on in the UK.”
Other pro-Russian Telegram channels, such as Shkvarka News (Шкварка News), Kremlin’s hand (Рука Кремля), Russia and Ukraine News: Special operation Z (Россия и Украина новости: Спецоперация Z) (archive) also shared the news.
In the posts themselves, authors, in various ways, say that the graffiti was made to express Princess Diana’s imagined anti-immigrant sentiment. One of them translates, “On the graffiti in London appeared a legendary Princess Diana that expresses white England’s attitude towards the situation with migrants in the country. When the police beat and arrest its citizens who want migrants to stop killing children, it’s total crap.”
Analysis
Since the propagandists’ news story included screenshots from the Instagram pages of three different media outlets, such as The Sun, Daily Mail, and BBC News, we first checked the pages of the media outlets on this social network. We also checked these media outlets’ official websites and other social networks using the keywords “Darren Cullen” and “Princess Diana” for the last two weeks since the wave of anti-immigrant far-right rallies began.
The Sun has an official website and pages on X, Instagram, and Facebook. After checking this media outlet’s social media news feed and pages, we found that no information about the graffiti with Diana was published. In addition, by comparing the format of the stories, we found a discrepancy that could indicate a fake.
The media outlet’s logo is placed automatically and remains the same in all stories except for the one announcing a story about graffiti. As you can see, the name The Sun, located on the red rectangle of the original story, underlays the account name, while it does not on stories from posts used by pro-Russian channels.
Another publication that allegedly posted the news about graffiti is the Daily Mail, which has an official website and pages on X, Instagram, and Facebook. We did not find any news about graffiti with Diana in the social media news feeds or on the pages of the outlet. Still, when we compared the format of the stories, we found a discrepancy: Daily Mail puts an additional logo on its stories. Meanwhile, stories used in posts we analyzed do not have such a logo.
The third media outlet that reported the supposed appearance of a racist graffiti, BBC News, has an official website and pages on social network X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We also did not find any such news using the keywords “Darren Cullen” and “Princess Diana” on the website of this media outlet or in social media.
The next step in our analysis was to review the biography and works of Darren Cullen, the alleged artist of the graffiti mentioned in the propagandists’ news. Darren Cullen is a British-Irish artist and activist who creates satirical works on various topics. His work can be found on his website and pages on sX and Instagram under the nickname Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives.
After checking out the artist’s latest posts on social networks X and Instagram, we found a refutation of the news that the graffiti with Diana was his work.
“Obviously this is not my work, those news outlets never posted those stories, and the quote on Telegram (last slide) is the polar opposite of my views on immigration and these racist riots. I’ve no idea how far these have been spread but its incredibly bizarre that they decided to use me as part of Russian propaganda efforts,” Darren Cullen wrote.
So, this is fake news, shared once again by pro-Russian Telegram channels, which promotes a racist narrative in supportof far-right rallies against migrants that spread across the UK in late July. As you can see, Russian propagandists capitalize on far-right sentiment across the board, ally with the far-right, promote the same narrative in its country and Ukraine — and to distinguish Russia from countries where “police protects migrants.”
Conclusion: Fake
Author: Olha Yakovleva
Editor: Yana Sliemzina
Translator: Karina Bondar
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