This video shows a Brazil carnival in 2018, not a party in Italy
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 13, 2020 at 16:49
- Updated on September 2, 2020 at 17:11
- 3 min read
- By Charlotte MASON, Maria Clara PESTRE, Cecilia SORGINE
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“God has every right to be angry with humanity, this was the last gay conference in Italy before the virus attack”, reads the comment on a Facebook post shared more than 1,000 times since it was published on April 1.
The accompanying video shows crowds of mostly men wearing colourful vests or topless. Many of them are kissing and dancing as music plays in the background.
The claims have been widely shared on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, often attracting homophobic comments.
AFP ran a reverse image search using verification tool InVID-WeVerify and found several tweets from February 2020 claiming the video shows the Bahian Carnival, an annual festival in the Brazilian state of Bahia.
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— Andrew Petter Nold Long ?? ?? TRABALHANDO ? (@Andrew_Petter) February 22, 2020
?? CARNAVAL na BAHIA - QUEM VAI? ??
. pic.twitter.com/OV8avpwkTa
AFP’s Rio de Janeiro bureau confirmed that the music playing in the background is a popular Brazilian carnival song called “Minha pequena Eva”.
Zooming in on a higher quality version of the footage reveals the word “Crocodilo” printed on the back of the colourful vests many of the festivalgoers are wearing.
AFP ran a Google search for the phrase “carnaval bahia crocodilo” and found results for “Bloco Crocodilo”, one of dozens of street parties that take place during the annual Bahian Carnival, also referred to as Carnaval de Salvador after the state capital.
“This year is a World Cup year, it’s carnival!” says the woman talking to the crowd in Portuguese 19 seconds into the clip.
AFP ran an advanced search on Twitter for posts with the words “bloco crocodilo” from 2018 - the year of the last World Cup - and found a tweet posted by local reporter Alan Alves on February 11, 2018.
“The crowd at Bloco Crocodilo, hosted by Daniela Mercury (Brazilian singer, editor’s note) is already looking forward to the start of the parade in Barra,” the caption reads.
A galera do Bloco Crocodilo, que será puxado por Daniela Mercury, já aguarda ansiosa início do desfile na Barra. #carnaval2018 pic.twitter.com/z5t46AlpSX
— Alan Alves (@alan_tiago_) February 11, 2018
The rainbow-coloured “Crocodilo” vests visible in the tweet from 2018 are identical to the ones in the footage currently circulating on social media.
Bahian Carnival goers are issued with a t-shirt, known as an abadá, as proof they have paid to attend an event. Specific t-shirts are valid for one event and the design therefore varies from street party to street party and from year to year.
The rainbow “Crocodilo” t-shirts are also visible in a broadcast from Brazilian TV channel Terra (see 6’18). The hashtag #carnavalnoterra2018 on the screen at the start of the broadcast confirms the footage shows an event from 2018.
According to programmes for the Bahian Carnival, there were two “Bloco Crocodilo” street parties on February 11 and 12, 2018 around the coastal area of Barra in Salvador.
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