Mark Carney's French comments misrepresented as 'satanic' chant
- Published on April 4, 2025 at 17:03
- 3 min read
- By AFP Canada
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"Canadian PM Mark Carney Utters Satanic Mantra in Response to Epstein Island Question from Audience," reads the headline of a March 27, 2025 article from The People's Voice, a website that has frequently spread misinformation.
The article claims Carney "stumbled into a strange, trance-like recitation of what some described as a Satanic mantra" after an audience member questioned him about alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier who died in jail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
Similar claims spread in videos on Facebook, Threads and X. Jim Ferguson, a former Brexit Party candidate in the United Kingdom, claimed Carney uttered "an unknown, eerie language" that was "not anything recognizably human" in response to the interjection.
The posts appear to expand efforts to link Carney -- a former central banker in both Canada and England -- to Epstein and conspiracy theories surrounding the financier's life and death. Some posts pointed to Carney's association with the World Economic Forum, another frequent target of misinformation (archived here).
After winning the Liberal Party of Canada's leadership race, Carney became the country's prime minister on March 14. He quickly called a snap federal election, now scheduled for April 28.
During the campaign to lead the Liberals, AFP debunked several fake images generated using artificial intelligence technology that purported to show Carney with Epstein and Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022.
The attempts to link Carney to the sex trafficking scandal stemmed from a picture on the photo-sharing platform Shuttershock of him next to Maxwell at a 2013 festival (archived here). A columnist wrote that the photo was taken at an event organized by Carney's sister-in-law but cited an unnamed source saying the prime minister and Maxwell are not friends.
AFP has not found any authentic images of Carney with Epstein.
Speaking in French
The online claims about the Liberal leader's response to heckling about Epstein are inaccurate. He was not reciting a demonic script; he was speaking French.
In the clip shared online, Carney speaks in sentence fragments and with a noticeable accent, saying "honnêtement" and "il n'y aura," which in English mean "honestly" and "there will not be."
A reverse image search surfaced footage from the same rally on the Canadian Cable Public Affairs Channel's YouTube page, revealing that the event took place March 26, 2025 in Kitchener, Ontario (archived here).
The longer video on YouTube shows the interruption precipitated boos from the crowd, with Carney denouncing the "politics of division" and conspiracy theories before resuming his discussion of Canada-US relations.
The leader continued in French: "Aux États-Unis il n'y aura jamais de droit pour la langue française." Translated into English, that means: "In the United States, there will never be rights for the French language."
The prime minister flipped between both languages throughout his speech, as is customary for Canadian politicians seeking national office.
An X account that shared one of the first posts tying Carney's speech to satanism later claimed it was a joke.
AFP reached out to the Liberal campaign for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation during the Canadian election here.
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