Stories about how the French seer Nostradamus, or Michel de Nostredame, allegedly predicted President Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines have resurfaced, but are Nostradamus predictions really true?



Facebook pages such as “Duterte News Everywhere,” “Duterte News Portal” and “Duterte” were among those pages that re-shared the stories on January 12 and 13.

They shared stories published by blogs such as thinkingpinoys.info, philrepublicnews.com, and newscenterph.info.

We checked the other contents on these blogs and these are the things that we discovered from each blog:

advertisement With thinkingpinoys.info, we found it sharing the fake story about Miss Universe 2017 Demi-leigh Nel-Peters saying she dreamt of working with Duterte; how the CHR will help the suspect in the killing of an OFW’s wife and daughter; Senator Risa Hontiveros wanting to help female driver Cherish Interior against bashers and her insulting Bacolod, among others.

The blog philrepublicnews,com has published several fake, dubious stories on its site, including the made-up story about Hontiveros helping Cherish Interior to file cyberbullying charges against her bashers; how the results of the VP poll recount has been released by the Comelec; and the conspiracy theory about how it was not actually the late Senator Ninoy Aquino who was shot at the tarmac when his plane landed in Manila.

Newscenterph.info seems to be a relatively new site, with some stories having misleading headlines. For instance, there was an article with a headline claiming that South Korea “will be” the Philippines’ third telecommunications company when there is no certainty yet that a South Korean firm will take the slot.

If these blog did not bother verifying the veracity of some of its articles’ claims, it might have done the same thing when it published the story about Nostradamus’ alleged predictions about Duterte and the Philippines, too.

This is what one of the blogs claimed Nostradamus said about Duterte and the Philippines, complete with their interpretation of what the seer allegedly said.

However, we also found that the same blog, thinkingpinoys.info, has this disclaimer that says, “This website cannot guarantee the legitimacy of some of the information contributed to us. You may do additional research if you find some information doubtful. Thank you for being considerate.”

It meant that even the blog that is spreading the story about Nostradamus predicting that Duterte would become the Philippines’ next leader is not 100% guaranteed legitimate or accurate.

This prediction story first went viral in 2016.

Even Duterte supporter and now Communications Asec. Mocha Uson shared the prediction in 2016.

“Nakakatakot naman ito, matagal na palang napredict ng isang magaling na propeta na is Nostradamus ang mangyayari sa Pilipinas at kasama si Duterte sa mga prediksyong ito!” she wrote in her Facebook post on May 15, 2016.

But if you click on the link to the story by crackerdaily.com, the page no longer exists.

MemeBuster previously debunked a story about this Nostradamus prediction and how Duterte was allegedly called a “messiah” but the story came from the satirical site thephnews.blogspot.com.

And it seemed like many of Nostradamus’ alleged predictions have been misinterpreted and forcefully linked to some significant happenings in the world, including the 9/11 attack, Hitler’s leadership, Louis Pasteur and his discovery, and more. But the seer’s predictions and their alleged links to said events have been debunked by Listverse.

Fact-checking site Snopes also debunked a few of the predictions that were attributed to Nostradamus, including those about 9/11, former US President Barack Obama, former George W. Bush’s election, and more.

This is what Snopes has to say about Nostradamus’ quatrains and how they allegedly predicted various events in the world:

“The French physician and astrologer Nostradamus (1503-1566) penned numerous quatrains populated by obscure imagery that the credulous have ever after attempted to fit to the events of their times. These predictions can often ring somewhat true because the images employed are so general they can be found in almost every event of import, but by the same token the prophecies are never dead-on fits because the wordings are far too general. Not that this stops anyone from believing in them; our society’s need for mysticism runs far too deep to ever allow for that.”

After having debunked several of Nostradamus’ alleged predictions, what Snopes is trying to say is that many of the French astrologer’s rhymes were forcefully interpreted and translated to seemingly fit the major happenings in the world, ending in what is essentially a fabrication, a fake prediction.

