Arron Banks’ Leave.EU fake exposed. But does anyone even care?

Alleged Russian propaganda bullhorn, leave dot EU, were not afraid to provoke and galvanise outrage.

Often at the supposed “fake news” media, who were apparently “hiding the truth” from voters.

But even a cursory examination of some of their most provocative videos show that it was in fact Arron Banks’s leave. eu that was creating fake news, while railing against the fabricated “worrying scenes neglected by the British media”.

Take this campaign video, from 4 weeks before the referendum in 2016.

The title ominously told voters:

“Worrying Scenes in Europe neglected by the British Media”

The video went viral. It was viewed 1.4 million times on Facebook.

The campaign video was an edited collection of various riots and protests, spliced together with simple headlines like “Athens anti Austerity riots” and “French labour law riots“.

Along with more provocative headlines like: “French Muslim riots” and the most provocative of all

“Migrants drag women into subway in Germany”

The context of the whole video is obviously disingenuous. Lumping together protests in Athens, Paris and a crime in Cologne as a reason to “vote leave”.

Which is of course absurd. An obvious piece of insane propaganda designed to make people feel unsafe and scared, when in fact they are perfectly safe.

Anti Austerity riots in Greece by pensioners in 2015 and 2016 are not a danger to people living in the UK, clearly. Nor are “French labour riots” anything new, or a danger to anyone in the UK, or even in France really.

But one suspects that those elements of the video were just filler. The entire point of the video being to make sure people saw the “rape” in the “German subway”, as it is the most impactful and distressing part.

Based on the comments on Facebook from the time, it had the most impact with viewers and caused the most outrage, too.

How we know Leave. EU’s video was a scaremongering, calculated, Fake:

Firstly, the alleged propagandists at Leave. eu appear to have ripped the video from Liveleak.But as they did so, they reduced the quality of the video.They posted a more pixellated version than the original. Reducing the quality of the video meant that the posters, sign and graffiti, seen on the walls, were harder to make out and read clearly.As they were mostly in Arabic, not German, leave .eu would presumably wanted to have blurred these to conceal the fact that it was not in Germany at all.The original video is available online, for example posted by Daily News Egypt.It’s listed as happening in Tahrir Square in Cairo on June 30th 2013: Secondly, the people at Leave. eu, or perhaps someone who ripped the video previously, edited the video so that the Arabic “No Smoking Sign” was not visible at the top of the screen.They cropped the top of the video so it was hidden.You can see the sign, in Arabic, in the Daily News Egypt version, as well as the other Egyptian versions available online. Because of course signs in “Germany” don’t tend to be in Arabic and English.

Original: Leave. eu cropped version, missing most of the Arabic portion of the sign:

Debunked. But do people even care, if it plays to their fears?

Unfortunately, the fact that the video is a complete fake, as well as the truth that the “British media” aren’t covering this up at all, didn’t seem to matter to many who were already on board with the general message.

Even though it was in fact leave.eu who were deceiving these people, quite outrageously. While projecting their own deceptive behaviour onto “The media” and pretending to be exposing a conspiracy.

None of this seems to have mattered.

There were a few commenters at the time who calmly debunked the video. Pointing out that it was in Cairo, not Germany.

But the responses were all the same. They didn’t care.

Some examples below:

“Doesn’t matter, they’re still animals”

“Does it matter what country?”

“This may not have happened in Germany. But it doesn’t matter, similar stuff occurred”

“Are you saying that nothing happened? I don’t believe that”

One man, who clearly supported Brexit, actually realised that he was being duped.

But instead of being annoyed, or even concerned at the motives of the deception, he commented praise for Leave.EU. Thanked them for their campaign.

His main concern was that the “scum” of the remain campaign might be able to make political hay out of it.

Plenty of other commenters on the campaign video felt angry that the BBC was hiding something from them and were glad Russia Today/RT could help them see the “truth”.

This video was viewed more than 1,000,000 times before the referendum. If it was on TV, would we accept it? If it was in print, would we?

Just because it’s on Facebook, or the internet, it seems like no one cares and there is no penalty.