Leader of Britain First, Paul Golding, Shares Fake Video Claiming that London Muslims Celebrated the Paris Attack

Paul Golding, the leader of far-right group Britain First, has been condemned for posting a Twitter video which he claimed showed “a crowd of ‘moderate’ Muslims celebrating the Paris terror attack in London”.

The video footage is real but Golding’s description is a complete fabrication – the scenes filmed have nothing to do with Islam or terrorism.

In reality, the video is footage of cricket fans celebrating Pakistan’s victory over Sri Lanka in 2009.

In the video, none of the men are wearing Islamic dress and at one point, one of the crowd hugs a white woman who wanders through the scene.

The men are not flying flags or banners with a religious message nor are they chanting support for the attack.

Instead, they are flying the flag of Pakistan and chanting “Pakistan”.

The video is still available on YouTube, correctly described, and clearly labelled and dated as “Pakistani celebrating 20/20 jeet 1 tooting”, uploaded on 22^nd June 2009.

As Channel 4 demonstrated in response to Golding’s post, it is possible to confirm that the upload date is correct by using open source tools like Amnesty International’s YouTube DataViewer.

Golding was swiftly condemned for his misrepresentation of the video.

In December, Golding was jailed for eight weeks after for breaching a court order not to enter a mosque or encourage others to do so.

Just nine days after the original injunction – which prohibited him from entering any mosque in England and Wales without prior invitation – Golding drove four Britain First members to the Al-Manar Centre in Cardiff for a ‘mosque invasion’.

See our Mend Community Twitter post here.