If you’re getting a little bit of deja-vu seeing this article you’re not crazy.
Frankly, the reason it feels like we’ve been here before is because we have. Like two years ago we here at VICE wrote this exact same fucking article in which we debunk this looney tunes conspiracy that Justin Trudeau was sired by not Pierre Trudeau but by communist hero/dictator Fidel Castro.
Videos by VICE
The first time came in late 2016, when this theory was all the rage among the far-right conspiratorial types after Canada’s PM praised El Jefe after his death. The idiotic theory was even pushed by pretty big outlets and figures like Ezra Levant and his hype machine, the Rebel—so, in response to this, my esteemed colleague Drew Brown investigated the rumours and found them to be super stupid and fake. But, nooooooooooo, that wasn’t good enough for some people who had to keep pushing this goddamn conspiracy. It just kept going and going and going and new “evidence” was presented and everything is so dumb.
The latest “break” among the smooth brained theorists came when they all unanimously decided to believe a fake report that Fidel Castro’s eldest son Fidelito, who died on February 1, left a suicide note that indicated Trudeau’s Papi was Fidel.
In this particular instance the hoax can seemingly be traced back to the site Your News Wire (a site well known for fake news stories) and was penned by a writer who goes as Baxter Dmitry—other recent hits by Dimitry include “Bill Gates Outlines 2018 Plan To Depopulate The Planet,” “Multiple Witnesses Say Valentine’s Day Shooting Was ‘False Flag’,” and “Chihuahua Serial Killer On The Loose In South Carolina.”
The story, entitled “Cuba Claims Justin Trudeau Is Fidel Castro’s Son,” was published on February 10 and outlines a tale that a suicide note which was found next to Fidel Castro’s son in which he states that Castro’s son complained that his father repeatedly and unfairly compared him to Justin Trudeau and then states, “but what was I to do? I am Cuban. My brother is Canadian.”
The Your News Wire story claims that a Cuban news site Cubadebate originally published the article but does not link to any and VICE could not find any story relating to this suicide note which is not surprising because, again, it is fake. The conspiracy was of course then amplified by 4Chan trolls, far-right blogs, and the worst people on Twitter who all took this as fact and worked to further the theory. The theorists went deep, like trying to approximate Margaret Trudeau’s menstrual cycle deep, and it is all very, very stupid.
If you ever needed any more evidence that the internet has melted our brains and there is no return from this current hell world, the Associated Press—THE ASSOCIATED PRESS!!!—took it upon themselves to write a goddamn debunker entitled “No, Fidel Castro is not Canada PM Trudeau’s father” around this conspiracy. Thanks AP!
OK, so I guess I should list some evidence on why this is all bupkis and again, we’ve already done this, but here goes nothing. This is the big one, Justin Trudeau was born on December 25, 1971, a solid five years before Pierre and Margaret famously became the first western leaders to visit Cuba. Also, the Canadian government denied it and Cuba never claimed it but, you know what, I have a feeling that doesn’t matter to these theorists—they’re just going to keep going and when a website called something like fActChezkers.biz claims they’ve found a message in a bottle which washed up in Ireland proving this to be true we will all do this song and dance all once more.
What I’m really trying to say is: check back here in 2020 or so when we have to write this goddamn article again.
I am so tired.
Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.
