Fact Checkers Silent as 8-Year-Old Image Goes Viral, Claiming It’s a “Russian Mobile Crematorium” in Mariupol
By Matt Agorist
There is no doubt a slew of war crimes currently being committed in Ukraine by the Russian invading forces. War is hell and it drives people on all sides to carry out atrocities which are unthinkable to most.
As this outlet has reported for the last six weeks, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal whose actions have taken the lives of hundreds of civilians in Ukraine, including many women and children. There is no shortage of evidence of these crimes which makes one wonder, why on Earth legacy media would take to faking it, which begs the next question of why fact checkers aren’t fact checking it?
We are told that fact checkers exist to ensure that disinformation and lies do not go viral and so people have a meter pointing them in the direction of the truth. However, time and again, these fact checkers are exposed pushing the establishment narrative — facts be damned — instead of actually seeking that truth.
A telling example of fact checkers pushing narratives rather than seeking facts can be found in a recent tweet and article about an alleged “Russian mobile crematorium” being used to burn “tens of thousands” of bodies, supposedly killed by Russian forces in Mariupol.
“Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol,” the tweet states, claiming that Russia has carried out a mass genocide.
“Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.”
“According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, “covering up the traces of crimes.”
The tweet was accompanied by an image of one of these alleged mobile crematoriums.
Nexta is a large media outlet in Eastern Europe with nearly 1 million followers on Twitter and, if you simply carry out a reverse image search of their tweet, you’ll easily verify that they are lying to every one of them.
The image in the tweet above is actually a screen shot from an 8-year-old YouTube video.
The truck in the image above is reportedly from a 2013 video of a demonstration of the in-50.1 waste disposal machine — not a mobile crematorium.
As of the writing of this article, the high and mighty fact checkers are choosing to remain silent on the issue. Even more telling is that Twitter — who bans scientists and doctors for presenting factual information that challenges the status quo — has yet to place a “warning label” on the image, letting users know it isn’t real.
This silence by fact checkers, who are notoriously fast in “fact checking” information that challenges the establishment’s narrative, is telling.
What’s more, the fact checkers are also silent on the liberal media outlets in Europe who are also using the image to claim that Russian troops are collecting and burning the bodies of “tens of thousands of civilians” in Mariupol in an attempt to hide the scale of Moscow’s massacre, which they are comparing to ‘The new Auschwitz’.
This photo and others like it are part of a much broader campaign of misinformation which has been waged since the start of the war.
The Ghost of Kyiv story was an inspiring tale of a single Ukrainian fighter pilot who took out multiple Russian aircraft. It was pushed by the president and multiple officials from Ukraine. The only thing was,it was fake.
There was also the story of Snake Island, in which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine personally announced the deaths of soldiers allegedly killed by Russian troops, only to announce later that no such attack happened and all the men who were “killed,” were actually alive.
Make no mistake, Russia is also involved in a heavy propaganda campaign. They have been caught lying about Ukrainians bombing hospitals and indiscriminately killing civilians. They have also been caught stoking multiple fears of “false flags” which never happened and were used as a pretext to invade Ukraine.
However, the fact checks on Russian disinformation appear to roll out at a much faster pace than the easily debunked lies about them.
Misinformation and disinformation have long been tools in both starting and during conflicts. Americans should know this the most as we’ve been led in to multiple wars based on lies started by politicians and echoed by mainstream media.