This Facebook post with a screenshot, supposedly of The Guardian opinion supporting looting in France is FAKE.

The opinion is said to have been written by Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a lawyer, author, and activist, and had the headline, “I fully support the looting in France by the disenfranchised black youth. Call it reparations”.

The sub-heading stated: “It’s not looting when intergenerational trauma forces thousands to seek reparations for being sold into slavery.”

“The usual Guardian race biting rubbish,” the post quotes the lawyer-activist as denouncing the purported opinion.

There have been protests in France since 27 June 2023 after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the country. There were reports of looting in different cities during the protests.

However, a Google search for the purported opinion write-up established that The Guardian did not publish such an article on 1 July 2023.

Mos-Shogbamimu also denied in a Facebook post authoring the article.

The lawyer-activist cautioned: “Be aware that there are many fake headlines & lies circulating about me everyday by racists/racial gatekeepers to incite hate against me and to attempt to silence me.”

Mos-Shogbamimu added: “It’s been going on for a long while now. This is an example of them creating a fake Guardian headline about the France riots.”

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a screenshot of an opinion attributed to The Guardian supporting looting in France and finds it to be FAKE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape the government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visitpesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.