This claim is inaccurate: the images are from Carrickfergus in July 2015.

A still image from the BBC News appears in widely shared and copied Facebook posts, showing a Nazi flag flying below the Union flag on a lamppost near a UDA logo. The text below the image states that:

“Loyalists out today celebrating VE day when in some of their own areas they fly Nazi flags. You can’t teach that level of stupidity.”

Text in the Facebook posts often adds that “Loyalists celebrating VE Day in Belfast. They are also flying Nazi flags and Israeli flags in the same areas. Irony is definitely not lost on them.”

Another version suggests: “Only in Belfast can you see VE day flags, Nazi flags and Israel flags on the same poll. Some serious political confusion there.”

The earliest recent use of this image (with the red and white BBC News icon added) was on Twitter on 8 May 2020. Later versions add the textual comments underneath.

A search for ‘BBC News Nazi flag Belfast’ brings up an article about Carrickfergus, as one of the top results.

The image is from a BBC News article from 8 July 2015, about members of the community taking down Nazi flags that had been erected on lamp posts on the Glenfield estate in Carrickfergus.

You also can see the UDA sign on the side of the building beside the electricity substation on the junction of Oakland Drive and Sullatober Close in the Glenfield Estate in Carrickfergus on Google Street View. Note the double roofline of the building behind the UDA sign, which matches that in the image published in the BBC’s article in 2015.

The image being shared clearly predates VE Day in 2020 and is not from Belfast.


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