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  • 2018-03-06 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Little Girl Have a 'Joker Smile' Carved Into Her Face in South Africa? (en)
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  • In March 2018, amid political upheaval in South Africa as Cyril Ramaphosa replaced former president Jacob Zuma, who resigned in a cloud of corruption charges, rumors flew about extreme violence as its new government weighed land expropriation — in which unused farmland would be taken from the rich and given to the poor — which has created rumors that a violent white genocide is underway. Propagandists enthusiastically jumped on that narrative, seizing onto a photograph which purportedly shows a young white child who had been horribly brutalized and given a Joker smile (a reference to the comic book character the Joker, in which the victim's face is sliced or split from the corners of their mouth to their ears, making cuts and scars appear in the shape of a smile; it is also called a Chelsea smile or a Glasgow smile) by local savages. This image has been associated with the claim that a white genocide was occurring in South Africa since at least October 2017, but it received wider attention a few months later when it was shared by Twitter user @BasedStickman_, a far-right activist whose real name is Kyle Chapman: This image was later re-shared on 4Chan, where it was posted along with messages littered with racial slurs encouraging users to spread the false story on social media: This image, however, does not show a little girl who had a Joker smile carved into her face by savages in South Africa. It is a reappropriated image of a little girl who suffered horrendous injuries after being attacked by a dog. Charlaine Guarini was three years old when she was attacked by the family's boerboel in Brits, South Africa, in September 2017. A second gruesome image of her injuries can be found here. Charlaine survived the attack and received 70 stitches to her face. We were also able to locate images of her during her recovery: Violent farm attacks (called plaasmoorde in Afrikaans) are a genuine problem in South Africa; however, despite wild claims by far-right figures that these attacks amount to a white genocide, many international outlets note that there is not enough reliable data to tell if white farmers are specifically being targeted. As fact-checking site Africa Check says, it is nearly impossible to calculate because of both lack of agreement on what constitutes farm murders, and fuzzy math further clouding the issue: This image has nothing to with farm attacks or an alleged white genocide in South Africa. Propagandists simply used an image of a severely wounded child in order to elicit a strong emotional reaction from viewers in an attempt to further a specific agenda. (en)
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