US politicians, commentators misrepresent fictional pride flag skit
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 19, 2023 at 22:01
- Updated on September 21, 2023 at 22:42
- 4 min read
- By AFP USA
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"They need to stop teaching this stuff to our children. Are you glad this mother did this? I am," says a September 17, 2023 post with the clip from an Elon Musk parody account on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The video gathered hundreds of thousands of interactions in English and French posts. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, both of whom have previously spread misinformation, amplified it.
Since 2021, many state lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools, notably in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis backed a ban on lessons related to gender identity and sexual orientation, often called the "Don't Say Gay" law (archived here).
But the clip is a scripted, fictional scene.
A reverse image search leads to a September 16 Facebook post (archived here) sharing the video with the title: "Mother tears down Pride Flag."
The account belongs to a creator named "Jibrizy" who says he is "a director making conversational topic videos that feel reel." This page has a verified badge with Facebook and lists him as a comedian.
Around six and a half minutes into the video, the comedians say: "This is all the skit." The woman who took down the flag smiles on the right side of the shot.
AFP further identified the clip as a skit by searching on TikTok for the hashtags #school, #teacher #viralvideo #class and #student. It revealed several videos filmed in the same classroom setting (archived here). They feature the identical woman who was said to be the angry parent, but sometimes she portrays a teacher or a student (archived here, here and here).
Comments on TikTok pointed to a page called "Kenyon's Friends" on Facebook, as a source for the videos.
Similar footage with the same classroom layout and actors appears elsewhere on the "Kenyon's Friends" Facebook page (archived here).
"Kenyon's Friends" uploaded and deleted the pride flag video. A September 18 post with the clip is archived here.
"Please be advised that this page's videos are intended for entertainment purposes only," says the caption of a skit published in August 2022 (archived here). "The videos on this page include scripted dramas, satires, parodies, magic tricks, pre-recorded videos, and other forms of entertainment."
The post continues: "Names, characters and incidents are often the product of the director's imagination, so any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental."
AFP contacted "Kenyon's Friends" for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
Hate speech, including posts spreading the false narrative that LGBTQ people are "grooming" children, have proliferated on X since Musk took over the company in 2022. Laws aimed at supporting transgender youth have also been hit with disinformation campaigns.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the LGBTQ community here.
September 21, 2023 This article has been updated to add information on the director of the video and background on anti-LGBTQ legislation in the United States.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
