Outdated looting footage misrepresented amid anti-LGBTQ backlash against Target

"No worries. It's just Target @Target getting 'TARGETED,'" says one May 26, 2023 tweet sharing the clip. At some point when all the retailers shut down in these neighborhoods the looters will be squealing when they have nothing to loot. Note the Pride sign at the 14 second mark."

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Screenshot from Twitter taken May 30, 2023

Another post adds: "Angry about PRIDE merchandise being sold, a group of MAGA extremists decided to loot a Target store. This is right wing conservative behavior, folks."

Similar posts have spread across Twitter and other platforms such as TikTok as US conservatives protest Target's sale of products commemorating pride month, celebrated in June.

The big-box retailer, which has faced disinformation and boycott calls over its pride collection, said May 24 it was withdrawing some items because of threats to its employees.

But the video predates the backlash by three years.

A reverse image search surfaced the footage in a May 2020 tweet (archived here) from Max Nesterak, a Minnesota-based reporter.

"(The video was recorded) on May 27 at a Target in Lake Street in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd," Nesterak told AFP when it was similarly misrepresented in April 2023, confirming he recorded the original incident.

Floyd, a Black man, was killed when a police officer kneeled on his neck, sparking anti-racism protests across the United States.

Some of the social media users who falsely claimed the 2020 video showed conservatives reacting to Target's pride merchandise in 2023 suggested elsewhere that they were joking or explicitly acknowledged doing so in jest -- calling it "sarcasm," for example.

But many posts lacked such disclaimers.

Right-wing commentators Ian Miles Cheong and Elijah Schaffer -- both of whom have previously promoted misinformation -- also shared a separate video alongside captions that similarly described it as footage of conservatives ransacking a Target location. Both indicated in follow-up posts that they were meant as satire.

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Screenshot from Twitter taken May 30, 2023

"When I post a video of Black Lives Matter rioters destroying a Target store and label it conservative destruction of Target stores and call it transphobia, it's supposed to be sarcastic," Cheong said in an audio recording. "It's to make a point that conservatives don't do this."

Julio Rosas, a senior writer for the conservative website Townhall, posted the original footage (archived here) on May 28, 2020.

"That is my video taken during the BLM riots in Minneapolis in May 2020. It was recorded the same day it was posted," Rosas confirmed to AFP in a Twitter direct message, adding that he had noticed posts that seemed to be recirculating the clip for satirical purposes.

AFP contacted Target for comment, but no response was forthcoming.