Conspiracy theorists are circulating a video on social media claiming it shows a "crisis actor" pretending to have died from Covid-19.
The video, first shared on social media last week, appeared to show an individual in Germany emerging from a body bag during a live news broadcast before a woman appears in the frame attempting to zip the individual up.
Crisis Actor Hired to Play Dead?
The footage was used to push the claim that the individual was hired to play dead alongside others as part of a sinister effort to exaggerate the dangers of Covid.
"If you can't nail the role of 'dead guy in body bag' you probably aren't cut out for acting!," one user who shared the clip on Twitter, captioned the post.
Watch the video below:
The term "crisis actor" refers to someone who is paid to play a disaster victim or wounded soldier during emergency and military drills. However, conspiracy theorists have co-opted the term in recent years, falsely claiming the victims of tragedies such as mass shootings are actually crisis actors.
Footage is from a Climate Change Protest in Austria
We can confirm that the clip has been taken out of context and does not show crisis actors in Germany. It, in fact, shows climate change protestors in Austria. The news clip used in the post stems from a Feb. 4 segment from OE24, a Vienna-based station.
The clip is in German, the official language of Austria. It features a group of protesters staging what appears to be a "die-in," a type of protest where demonstrators lie down to represent fatalities.The people in the video are not crisis actors – they are protesting climate change. There are several hints in the clip that reveal its true context.
For starters, the segment's news ticker reads, "Vienna: demo against climate policy," when translated to English, according to Google Translate. Furthermore, the original broadcast clearly shows other individuals dressed as grim reapers holding signs that read "Climate protection law saves lives" and "current climate policy does not," according to a Google translation of the text.
