The UEFA European Championship is entering its final stages, but what should be a celebration of European football has been clouded by false claims online designed to stir up hatred against marginalised groups.
It’s not just the world of politics, science and health that are targeted by online misinformation.
Often, sports and our other favourite pastimes can come under fire from dubious claims, too. This time, it’s the UEFA European Championship 2024.
Here are a few examples.
A picture appeared on social media supposedly showing a football fan dressed as Adolf Hitler in Germany during the first round of matches.
It was shared widely both on Facebook and X, but the photo isn’t from this year’s Euros at all.
Instead, it dates back to a Halloween party in October 2022 and was taken on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, in the US.
We can find the original image on X, as posted by StopAntisemitism on 30 October 2022.
The group said it was “nauseated” that someone would dress up as Hitler for Halloween and said that the costume was meant to do one thing: spread hate.
Another misleading claim online attempts to blame the post-match mess on migrants.
This video, shared on social networks, shows Römerberg Square in Frankfurt littered with rubbish and empty food and drink containers.
It’s been posted with captions such as “not sure how long Frankfurt will survive the consequences of mass immigration”.
But the video has nothing to do with immigration at all.
What it does show is the mess left by football fans following the match between England and Denmark on 20 June.
Various other videos and posts show the square packed with fans before and during the game or in the aftermath, where the rubbish can clearly be seen.
German police did not tell fans to choose weed over alcohol
Moving away from xenophobic misinformation, a false claim of a different kind emerged towards the start of the championship.
Euronews has already covered allegations that German police were encouraging fans to smoke weed instead of drinking alcohol while visiting Germany to watch the Euros.
The claim seems to have sprung from a report by UK tabloid The Sun, which quoted a police spokesperson as saying they would be more likely to target aggressive people drinking alcohol than a group smoking weed.
Police in Gelsenkirchen have since rebutted this.
They said they’d ensure everyone’s safety regardless of the intoxicants consumed.
“We do not explicitly encourage football fans to smoke weed,” the spokesperson said.
