Motorcycle rally video from Brazil misrepresented as Michigan anti-Muslim protest
- Published on August 11, 2026 at 18:50
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
Social media posts are claiming a video of a massive motorcycle convoy shows riders heading to Dearborn, Michigan to protest the city's large Muslim population after US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed secured the Democratic Party's nomination in a pivotal 2026 midterm race. But that is false; the video was actually filmed a month before the August 4 Michigan primary election, and AFP geolocated it to a highway in Brazil.
"Motorcycle Rally Heading to Dearborn, MI," says an August 8, 2026 post sharing the clip on X.
Similar posts linking the footage to Dearborn spread across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok after left-wing upstart El-Sayed beat out the Democratic Party establishment's candidate in Michigan's August 4 primary race. El-Sayed, a former local government health official, is a Muslim candidate born in Detroit to an Egyptian father and American mother.
Several of the posts sharing the video referenced an August 18 event being organized by Jake Lang, one of the more than 1,500 defendants who was charged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and pardoned by President Donald Trump. The far-right provocateur is planning a "Christian Crusader March on Dearborn" to "Stop Islamification of America" that is meant to coincide with a city council meeting that day, according to a post on X.
But the aerial footage of motorcyclists is unrelated to any event in Dearborn, a city with a large Muslim and immigrant population that has frequently been a target of misinformation.
Reverse image searches revealed the video has circulated since at least July 4, 2026, when it appeared on TikTok (archived here).
The original TikTok video was not labeled with any contextual information, but the poster published several other similar clips in the span of a few days that he described as showing the Brazilian motorcycle club Insanos MC riding along Rodovia dos Bandeirantes, a highway in the state of São Paolo (archived here, here, here, and here).
An Instagram user who describes himself as an Insanos MC spokesperson also shared a version of the original aerial clip on July 6 (archived here).
The motorcycle group had advertised the charity event, called Bonde Pela Vida, on Facebook, saying it would take place across three days from July 3 to July 5 (archived here). Afterward, they posted several highlight video compilations (archived here and here).
AFP independently confirmed the location by identifying several markers in the footage -- including a radio tower and a red-roofed building -- and then using Google Street View imagery to find a matching vantage point along Rodovia dos Bandeirantes (archived here).
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation about US politics here.
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