A video (here, here, and here) showing a man pulling down the US flag from a street post in New York is being widely shared online with the claim that it shows Muslims tearing down the American flag after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral elections (here, here, and here). We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: 2025 video of a man removing the US flag in New York after Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor.
Fact: The video, which dates back to November 2023, shows a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York City. It has no connection to Mamdani’s 2025 election win. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search on the internet using a few key frames from the viral video and found several X posts (here and here) from 11 and 12 November 2023 that contained videos similar to the viral video.
One of these videos is an uncropped version of the viral video. This makes it clear that the video was not filmed after Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York City in November 2025. Furthermore, through a reverse image search, we found news reports on this incident (here, here, and here) from November 2023.
According to reports from The Times of India and Fox Business, the video shows a pro-Palestinian protester throwing down the flags of the United Nations and the US. This incident happened during a pro-Palestinian demonstration held in New York City on 11 November 2023 in commemoration of Veterans Day. He was reportedly arrested for this act.
The mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani took place on 4 November 2025, nearly two years after the footage was recorded, indicating that the video is being reshared to mislead.
To sum up, the video of a man removing the US flag in New York is unrelated to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory. It shows a pro-Palestine protest from 2023.
