On July 24, 2018, Konstantine Morgoshia, member of the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots party and businessman affiliated with the ultra-nationalist movement Georgian March, uploaded a post on his Facebook page, saying that Athens fire is nothing but vengeance for the Greek sins. Morgoshia also attached eight images to the post. He claimed that the first four images were taken during the Athens Gay Pride Parade and the next four images depict the Athens fire. The post has a total of 181 shares, as of July 26.
The images posted by Morgoshia have nothing to do with the Greek Gay Pride Parade. The first photo depicts an online store male model. The second photo apparently shows an image ad of the hotels in Mexico and Spain. The third photo depicts a gay pride parade in Israel instead of Greece and the fourth photo shows only a small section of a road, which could be taken anywhere in the world. (Fabulouseyebrowthreading)
Photo No. 1
The image clearly shows that it does not depict a gay pride parade.
After rechecking the image in Google Search, it appeared that a man is just a model of one of the online stores, posing in various t-shirts.
Photo No. 2
This photo is used by various hotels as an image ad and it has nothing to do with the Athens Gay Pride. For example, the same photo can be searched on the websites of several hotels in Mexico and Spain and it depicts the moment of taking the selfie.
Photo No. 3
The third photo shows the Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv instead of Greece.
Photo No. 4
The fourth photo depicts only a small section of the road painted in rainbow colors that makes it impossible to identify its exact location.
About Konstantine Morgoshia
Konstantine Morgoshia is a member of the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots party. He was a candidate of the Alliance of Patriots in Mtskheta single-mandate constituency in the 2016 parliamentary elections. He is among those persons who make donations to the Georgian March.
During the May 11-13, 2018 developments, Morgoshia, together with Georgian March, was one of the organizers of counter demonstrations. In that period, ultranationalist and pro-Russian groups united their forces under the umbrella of Georgian March and formed the so called Agreement of National Forces. Dimitri Lortkipanidze, former member of Nino Burjanadze’s United Democratic Movement and presently head of the Tbilisi-based Primakov Center, also joined the Agreement.
Prepared by Lizi Sreseli,
Myth Detector Lab