Photo claiming to show Russian space chief making Nazi salute debunked after social media frenzy
A photo picturing a man, similar in appearance to Russia’s space chief, making a Nazi salute went viral on Sunday. Journalists and public figures picked it up as an exposé but the image got promptly debunked.
An undated black and white photo posted by Alex Kokcharov, a country risk analyst, was accompanied with the claim that the young man producing a Nazi salute and holding a banner reading ‘Whites of all countries unite!’ was actually Dmitry Rogozin.
Many journalists picked it up, without bothering to authenticate the picture including Andrew Roth, the Guardian correspondent in Moscow. It was also retweeted by British investigative journalist John Sweeney and others.
Well done by the photographer to get the Nazi salute, white power slogan and torch all into a very tightly cropped shot. https://t.co/eUG6lq55D9
— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) 21 октября 2018 г.
Since Rogozin was born back in 1963, the man pictured seems too young to actually be the politician. A Russian journalist posted pictures of the space chief with the Soviet Army in the 1980s to prove the point in a Twitter thread.
This is Rogozin in the 80s, and it doesn't take a facial recognition expert to determine that these are two different people. pic.twitter.com/Z7RaVzpWak
— Alexey Kovalev (@Alexey__Kovalev) 21 октября 2018 г.
The photo of the man, said to be Rogozin, was cropped out of a larger image, apparently uploaded online by LiveJournal user igor1 back in 2015. The undated picture seems to show a nationalist gathering in support of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which ended in the early 1990s.
One of the nationalists holds an issue of the ‘Narodniy story’ leaflet, briefly published in the mid 1990s by the long-defunct ‘Front of National-Revolutionary Action’ organization. Given the theme of the gathering and the leaflet presence, the rally likely took place early in 1994.
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