Video shows US veteran threatening anti-Trump protesters, not pro-Palestinian demonstrators

An old video of a World War II veteran threatening to shoot anti-Trump protesters has resurfaced in Chinese social media posts viewed hundreds of thousands of times that falsely claimed he was angry with pro-Palestinian demonstrators at an American college campus. The student-led protests over the soaring death toll from Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza have led to weeks of turmoil, clashes with police and mass arrests. The video, however, was filmed more than four years earlier during a Veterans Day parade in New York City.

"US veteran berates pro-Palestinian college students and says he'd like to kill them if he had a gun," read the simplified Chinese caption of a video shared on Weibo on April 27, 2024.

The video appears to show an elderly military veteran in full dress uniform arguing with a group of protesters, and asking someone to hand him a gun so he can shoot them.

"Anybody that holds a sign up against our president is what upsets me," he said.

The post was shared over 400 times and viewed more than 730,000 times before it was deleted.

The same video was shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on Weibo, where it was viewed over 100,000 times.

It was shared as pro-Palestinian protests spread to more college campuses in the United States, as authorities appeared to be running out of patience and police began to push back forcefully.

The activists were calling for a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas, as well as for colleges to sever ties with the country and with companies they said profited from the conflict.

The war was triggered by Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The protests posed a major challenge to university administrators who were trying to balance campus commitments to free expression with complaints of anti-Semitic incidents and allegations that campuses were encouraging intimidation and hate speech.

The video, however, was unrelated to the pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Veterans Day parade

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to similar footage posted on the verified channel of NowThis Impact on November 15, 2019 (archived link).

The video was titled, "WWII Veteran Attacks Anti-Trump Protesters at Parade".

Text on the video indicated it was filmed on November 11, 2019.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video used in the false post (left) and the NowThis Impact video (right):

The NowThis Impact video shows a longer exchange between the uniformed veteran and the protesters, and included shots of their signs which called for the impeachment of then-president Donald Trump.

The confrontation was also filmed from a different angle by CBS News and captured in an AFP photo (archived link).

While US presidents traditionally mark the day by laying a wreath at a vast military cemetery in Arlington, near Washington, Trump was in New York, where he got a cool reception from some in the staunchly Democratic city.

The veteran who confronted the protesters was identified as Jimmy Bishop by American magazine Newsweek (archived link).

According to an obituary posted by a US funeral house, Bishop died in May 2022 (archived link).

AFP has previously debunked other false claims about the Israel-Hamas war here.