Posts falsely link old swastika photo to Zohran Mamdani campaign
Another adds: "Zohran Mamdani's senior advisor Linda Sarsour. But I'm sure he only hates Zionists not Jews."
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Screenshot from X taken August 12, 2025
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Screenshot from X taken August 12, 2025
Similar posts spread across X and other platforms, including Instagram, more than a month after Mamdani officially became the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York City.
The self-declared democratic socialist, a rising star on the left who would become the first Muslim to hold the office if elected, upset former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in a shock primary victory in June.
The 33-year-old has staked his campaign on a message of lower rents, free daycare and buses, and other populist ideas. He has also been an outspoken critic of Israel, accusing the key US ally of committing a genocide in Gaza amid its war with Hamas.
But there is no evidence that the photo spreading online shows Sarsour -- and the activist is not a member of Mamdani's team.
"That person depicted in the photo is not me and I do not hold any official positions in the Mamdani campaign," Sarsour told AFP in an August 13 email.
On Facebook, where Sarsour's profile features a "Zohran for New York City" cover photo, she further clarified that the claims were false.
"Just figured out why i am getting an influx of some of the most despicable hate filled messages and emails," Sarsour wrote in the August 11 post (archived here). "The opposition is recirculating an old debunked photo. An outrageous image they purportedly say is me and it clear as day that IT IS NOT."
Sarsour is a longtime and prominent Palestinian-American activist from New York who earned recognition from former president Barack Obama's administration as a "champion of change".
Among other leadership positions, she was a founding member of the "Women's March" movement that spearheaded mass protests against President Donald Trump, before she stepped down in alongside two others amid accusations of .
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Linda Sarsour speaks the keynote speaker at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health's inaugural commencement ceremony June 1, 2017 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York (AFP / TIMOTHY A. CLARY)
While she publicly backed Mamdani, her support has not extended to an official campaign role (archived here).
An August 13 New York Times analysis of Mamdani's "inner circle" lists two senior advisors but does not mention Sarsour (archived here).
AFP contacted the Mamdani campaign for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
Dubious origins
Reverse image searches revealed the photo of a woman beside swastika graffiti has been online since at least 2012, when it was posted to a Polish internet forum with no accompanying information detailing where it was taken or who it depicted (archived here).
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Screenshot from wiocha.pl taken August 13, 2025
In her Facebook post disavowing the picture, Sarsour blamed far-right activist Laura Loomer -- who has repeatedly promoted online disinformation and suggested the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job -- for linking it to her.
Loomer included the image in a 2018 article attacking Sarsour on "Big League Politics," a conservative site AFP has also fact-checked.
Reuben Moreton, a facial identification expert and director of Reli, examined the swastika image in comparison with photos Sarsour posted in 2011 and 2012 (archived here, here and here).
The low resolution and compression of the swastika photo limits the conclusiveness of a facial examination, Moreton told AFP, but while the two women have "some general similarities" between their eyebrows and mouths, "there are also observable differences."
He pointed to the morphology of their noses, the overall proportions of their faces, the fullness of their cheeks and other details.
"These observations support the proposition that the images of the individual stood next to the swastika and the images of Ms. Sarsour depict different people," Moreton said in an August 14 email, adding that an automated facial-recognition algorithm also produced a score indicating .
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation targeting Mamdani here, here and here.
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