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Type of site | Online newspaper |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Intermarium Foundation |
| Founders |
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| URL | www |
| Current status | Active |
Visegrád 24 is an account onX (formerly Twitter) and news website that publishes opinions and often unverified information related to current events, including theRussian invasion of Ukraine and theGaza war.[1][2] One of its founders is South-African Polish content creator and advertiser Stefan Tompson.[3] It has close ties to theLaw and Justice party,[4] as well as to other conservative parties in theVisegrád Group countries, as the name suggests.
Visegrád 24 was founded in January 2020. According to a 2022 analysis done by Polish investigative journalism outletOKO.press, it was started by an anonymous Polish group; they claimed: "We are just a group of friends who are interested in theVisegrad Group and the3SI. Most of us work in news in our own countries, most are conservative, although we have different opinions."[4] According to the analysis, the profile was at that time an unofficial profile of the Visegrád Group. It had primarily been promoting Prime Minister of HungaryViktor Orbán and other right-wing politicians in the group, was sympathetic to United States presidentDonald Trump, and contained negative content about Western European political leaders.[4]
Amid theRussian invasion of Ukraine, Visegrád 24 grew in popularity, which resulted with Visegrád 24 being referenced by both Polish and international media, includingCNBC,Daily Express,Euractiv andThe Times of Israel.[4] In March 2022, researchers from the Faculty of Social Sciences of theUniversity of Tartu listed Visegrád 24 in their list of reliable sources of information related to the war in Ukraine.[5]
Research conducted by theUniversity of Washington's Center for an Informed Public in October 2023 found that Visegrád 24 was one of the seven most influential Twitter accounts with regard to news coverage of theGaza war. The researchers described the accounts as "new elites" due to exercising "disproportionate power and influence" over coverage of the war.[6][7][8]
As of July 2024, Visegrád 24 has over one million followers.[9]
In 2022 and 2023, Polish media outlet OKO.press and Visegrad Insight published, respectively, that Visegrád 24 was a propaganda and misinformation hub funded by the Polish government.[4][10] The left-leaning Israeli newspaperTheMarker wrote in December 2023 that Visegrád 24 "spreads a blatant pro-Israel and pro-Ukraine narrative, including throughfake news" from "a pair ofPolish right-wing extremists who take anIslamophobic andxenophobic line".[11][12]
In March 2022, Visegrád 24 posted an unsourced tweet falsely claiming thatLeonardo DiCaprio had donated $10 million to Ukraine. The false story was picked up by news outlets around the world, such as India'sHindustan Times, the U.K.'sThe Independent and theDaily Mail, and American conservative websitesThe Daily Caller and theWashington Examiner, before being retracted.[13] Visegrád 24 also posted a fake story claiming thatPornhub had blocked access from Russia.[14][1]
In October 2022, Visegrád 24 posted a video claimed to show a recently mobilized Russian soldier.Reuters found that the video dated back to at least February 2021.[15]
In May 2023, Visegrád 24 shared footage of a fire inKrasnohvardiiske, falsely claiming that it showed a crashed helicopter inBelgorod.[16] That July, it misrepresented footage ofWigan Athletic football fans as showing Ukrainians celebrating the country'sattack on theKerch bridge.[17]
Visegrád 24 was the first foreign social media account to publish a video of Finnish Prime MinisterSanna Marin's "party speech" in August 2022.[10] The OKO Press article, which investigated the activities of Visegrád 24, considered the role of the first publisher of Visegrád 24 at a time when Marin was the prime minister duringFinland's NATO membership application. OKO Press' article described the publication of the video as indicative of the typical modus operandi of the Russian intelligence service. The video received about 10 million views on Visegrád 24's account.[4]
The University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public stated in an October 2023 report that Visegrád 24 was primarily posting emotionally-charged content, with some posts using divisive imagery and "culture war" framing. They noted, "While traditional news does at times use such imagery as well, the sheer volume of these tweets, combined with the lack of deeper analysis or context mentioned above, created for our analysts the sense of a constant stream of decontextualized anger and violence when analyzing these accounts."[6] Visegrád 24 has described environmental activistGreta Thunberg as a "Hamas propagandist", portrayed Israeli comedianYoni Sharon as a Palestinian and misrepresented footage by Palestinian journalistMotaz Azaiza to depict Israeli activities in a positive light.[2]
In October 2023, Visegrád 24 posted a video that it claimed to show a pro-Hamas demonstration inBarcelona, Spain.Snopes found that the video showed authentic footage of a pro-Palestinian demonstration, but none of the demonstrators had openly expressed support for Hamas.[18] Visegrád 24 also posted aCNN clip that claimedbabies had been decapitated by Hamas duringtheir initial attack on Israel. CNN later issued two corrections; the Center for an Informed Public noted they could not find any corrections by Visegrád 24 about the rumour.[6]
In November 2023,Bloomberg News found that Visegrád 24 was one of the influencers that went viral by posting misinformation since the start of the war, citing an instance where Visegrád 24 claimed without evidence that theTaliban had asked the Iranian, Iraqi and Jordanian governments for passage to join with Hamas.[8]
In December 2023, Visegrád 24 posted a video clip on X from 2015 of a man who shouted at Israeli soldiers before falling. In the post, Visegrád 24 posed the question, "What is going on here? Is Pallyywood [sic] in action?", in reference toPallywood, a derogatory term used to describe alleged staged suffering by Palestinians.[19]
By late 2025, Visegrád 24 launched a new website and social media account titled Middle East 24, taking over some of its Israel-Gaza coverage and using similar tactics. Notably, all stories are published anonymously, with only a generic username as the byline, and at least one title was inadvertently revealed to be AI-generated to boostSEO.[20]
In February 2024, Visegrád 24 posted a video of a controlled demolition in Turkey that it claimed to show a mosque being demolished in China. It deleted the tweet after other users pointed out the video was not from China.[21]
Polish journalist Adam Starzyński and content creator and advertiser Stefan Tompson were identified by OKO.press as being behind Visegrád 24.[4] On 2 March 2024, Visegrád 24 tweeted that Stefan Tompson was the founder.[3]The Jewish Chronicle also cites Tompson as the founder.[22] The OKO.press investigation also listed Wojciech Pawelczyk, a collaborator of Polish-Americanalt-right commentator and conspiracy theoristJack Posobiec.[4]
Polish journalist Adam Starzyński has worked for the English service of the right-wing Polish television channelTelewizja Republika.[10][4] Starzyński is also known to have run a very conservative Twitter account, BasedPoland, which had 150,000 followers before Twitter deleted the account. Starzyński is a key figure in the MEGA movement (Make Europe Great Again), an informal movement similar toDonald Trump'sMake America Great Again campaign that seeks to spread xenophobia and populist views.[4][10] The BasedPoland account was known for itsanti-refugee content and praise offar-right political leaders, including the Polish government,Jair Bolsonaro,Matteo Salvini, andViktor Orbán. Starzyński supports Ukraine and the European far-right on social media under the name Adam Starski. Starzyński has worked for the State of Poland Foundation since March 2020.[4][10]
Tompson (born 1993 or 1994)[12] is a Britishcommunications manager of Polish and South African descent.[22] He grew up inLondon andParis in a family of Polishémigrés.[12] He studied at theFrench Lycée inSouth Kensington, later transferring toRichmond Upon Thames College inTwickenham. He graduated fromUniversity College London in 2014.[22]
Tompson has been working in Poland since 2014 and has been running an English-language YouTube channel aboutPolish history since 2020. He has received funding from the Polish Film Foundation and his videos have been published on the Visegrád 24 account. In an interview withRzeczpospolita in September 2022, Tompson said that he created the Visegrád 24 accounts and maintains them together with his friends who work in the social media industry. He denied the claim that the video featuringMarin was the first to be published on Visegrád 24. He also considered the Prime Minister's celebration at a time of geopolitical tension questionable and stated that he believed that many supported Finland's NATO membership application only because “Sanna Marin is a beautiful woman”.[10] According to Tompson, liberal views are overrepresented on social media compared to conservative views. He condemned Viktor Orbán's pro-Russian views on the war in Ukraine, but stressed that Orbán's view of the West's identity crisis is correct and that spreading that view was not in the interests of Russia. Tompson works for the Polish public broadcasterTelewizja Polska.[4]
In 2024, Tompson toldThe Jewish Chronicle that his support of Israel "is not an act of altruism, it is an act of self-interest" and that Israel "is at the frontline of the battlefield ofradical leftists in Western democracies who have, for some reason, joined forces with the Russia-China-Iran bloc". He also stated, "Anyone who says it isan apartheid state in Israel and the Palestinian people are subjugated should go toRamallah. There were Maseratis and Mercedes and a brand-new shopping mall. There is a booming upper middle class."[22]
Tompson toldJewish Insider that he considers himself to be apublic relations expert rather than a journalist.[12]
Tompson is also associated with the MEGA ("Make Europe Great Again") pro-Trump group.[4] He has met with Matthew Tyrmand,[23] an American conservative commentator and former member of the far-right activist groupProject Veritas,[24] as well as alt-right commentator and conspiracy theoristJack Posobiec.[23]
Visegrád 24's Twitter account was brought up by Polish right-wing conservative politicians before it became popular.[10] According to the report by OKO Press, Visegrád 24 has close relations with the Polish foreign administration.[4]
Polish DeputyForeign MinisterSzymon Szynkowski vel Sęk said in 2021 that Visegrád 24 is not the official account of the Visegrád Group or the Polish Presidency of the Visegrád Group, but that the Polish administration appreciates the work it does to inform the activities of the Visegrád Group. Polish diplomats and the English account of the Polish Prime Minister's Office have frequently mentioned and tagged the Visegrád 24 account in their posts, especially during the 2020–2021 Polish Presidency of the Visegrád Group. Visegrád 24 was popular with Polish right-wing politicians even before it established its position and became popular with the Ukrainian war. Hungarian ambassadorEduard Habsburg also tagged Visegrád 24 in his publications in 2021. Most often Visegrád 24 was tagged in his publications byBeata Daszyńska-Muzyczka, head of thePolish State National Development Bank, at a time when the bank was establishing the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund. Daszyńska-Muzyczka is the chairman of the fund's supervisory board, a member of the Polish Foreign Affairs Research Unit and a board member of the State of Poland Foundation. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied any connection to Visegrád 24.[4]
Stefan Tompson, one of the founders and administrators of Visegrád 24, said in September 2022 that Visegrád 24 had been operating without any funding, but that it was going to look for investors to function properly as a news service.[10]
On 31 October 2022, theChancellery of the Polish Prime Minister awarded 1.4 millionzłoty (€300K) to the leisure and health promotion foundation Actionlife for a project called Visegrád 24. The decision was signed by Prime MinisterMateusz Morawiecki. The Polish news serviceWirtualna Polska asked the Chancellery for more information about the Visegrád 24 project, to which the Chancellery replied that the aim is to establish an English-language website dealing with the culture, history and politics of East Central Europe and Three Seas Initiative regions, as well as countering Russian disinformation. The purpose of the Visegrád 24 project financed by the Prime Minister's Office was therefore the same as what the Visegrád 24 news service announced it was doing. However, a representative of the Actionlife Foundation replied to Wirtualna Polska that the grant had been cancelled and refused to answer whether the funds were intended to be used to develop the existing Visegrád 24 service. Stefan Tompson did not answer Wirtualna Polska's question whether the Polish state had become a financier of Visegrád 24.[10][25]
Matthew Tyrmand, a conservative commentator...