{"id":32315,"date":"2019-04-03T20:28:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T14:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/?p=32315"},"modified":"2019-04-03T20:28:53","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T14:58:53","slug":"did-a-british-political-analyst-call-rahul-gandhi-stupid-no-its-a-fake-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/did-a-british-political-analyst-call-rahul-gandhi-stupid-no-its-a-fake-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Did a British political analyst call Rahul Gandhi ‘stupid’? No, its a fake account"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tweet by\u00a0Brandon Davies (@BrandonDav_<\/em>), a user, who joined Twitter on March 30, 2018, went viral on social media yesterday. A glance at the profile suggests that the account has garbed an identity of a ‘British Nationalist’, looking to cover the upcoming general election in India.<\/p>\n

On April 2, Davies, who claims to be a resident of the United Kingdom\u00a0<\/em>tweeted<\/a>, “I followed the 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 Lok Sabha elections closely. After analyzing all of them, I can say that I have never seen a PM candidate as stupid as Rahul Gandhi.”.<\/em> The message tweeted by Davies claims that in his analysis of the previous general elections, he has never seen a Prime Ministerial candidate as stupid as Congress President Rahul Gandhi. The tweet attempts to mock Rahul Gandhi as a ‘stupid’ PM candidate.<\/p>\n

Despite a small following, the tweet was retweeted over 4,000 times at the time of writing this article. It was retweeted by many prominent BJP supporters including the BJP spokesperson Tajinder Bagga.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fake account<\/h1>\n

It is surprising that this tweet was retweeted thousands of times, despite the fact that the handle has a rather small following of less than 1000 at the time of filing the article.\u00a0A reverse search of the profile picture on Google establishes<\/a> that the account has appropriated an identity of a British man by using a picture of a deceased person named George Mills, who died<\/a> in a yacht crash in 2016.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Moreover, the account is also retweeting tweets written in Hindi. It is highly unlikely that a British National would understand Hindi.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After the account was exposed on Twitter<\/a>, the profile picture was removed while the user name was changed from “Brandon Davies”<\/em> to “Comrade Brandon Davies”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now, the fake account has changed its profile picture to a photo of Nigel Addison, a 62-year-old whose profile picture was misused<\/a> to set up a racist Twitter profile in March 2018.<\/p>\n

\n

If they can troll then why can’t I? Hey 5 Rs. M trolls, this DP is dedicated to you all. #NewProfilePicture<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/y01IirmSgU<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Comrade Brandon Davies (@BrandonDav_) April 3, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Screenshot circulating on social media<\/h2>\n

Vivek Shetty, founder of fake news website Postcard News<\/em> also posted<\/a> a screenshot of the tweet calling the fake account, “A British political analyst”.\u00a0<\/em>Chowkidar Yogesh Dangayach Namo, a Facebook user<\/a> had also shared the screenshot with the same narrative.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A tweet from a fake account ridiculing Rahul Gandhi was shared widely. There is no ‘British political analyst’ by the name of Brandon Davies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Tweet by\u00a0Brandon Davies (@BrandonDav_), a user, who joined Twitter on March 30, 2018, went viral on social media yesterday. A glance at the profile suggests that the account has garbed an identity of a ‘British Nationalist’, looking to cover the upcoming general election in India. On April 2, Davies, who claims to be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":32390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"an_content_type":[739],"coauthors":[152],"class_list":["post-32315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","fact_checks_claim_type-social-media-claims","an_content_type-fact-check"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2019\/04\/Fake-account.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32410,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32315\/revisions\/32410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32315"},{"taxonomy":"an_content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/an_content_type?post=32315"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}