Did Taylor Swift say she supports the Croatian HDZ party because the SDP party used her image to call for protests? No, that's not true: A video circulating on social media allegedly shows the popular American singer and songwriter making the claim. It originally appeared on March 1, 2024, on the political satirical night show "State of the Nation" on RTL Croatia television. The host of the show, Zoran Šprajc, presented it as Taylor Swift's possible response to the theft of her identity by opposition parties led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The claim reappeared on TikTok as a video (archived here), published after the television premiere. In the video, Taylor Swift is heard saying:
Finding out that SDP used my image for their political meeting really hits hard. It's ironic how the party that claims to stand for equality and fairness would stand to be appropriating a billionaire like me. That's why, going forward, Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has my full support.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Mar 26 13:27:09 2024 UTC)
The largest opposition party in Croatia, the SDP, did indeed call on citizens through their social media to participate in anti-government demonstrations (archived here) that took place on February 17, 2024, with a photoshopped image of Taylor Swift (archived here) wearing a sweater with the inscription "Shake HDZ Off" (archived here). It is associated with Taylor Swift's song Shake It Off, which played in the background of SDP's call (archived here) on TikTok, sped up, compared to the original version. The altered photo of Taylor Swift was captioned, "St. Mark's Square on Saturday at 11 a.m. Enough! Straight to the elections!" referring to a square in Zagreb, where the protest of the opposition parties demanding elections was held.
This is a segment from the TV show "State of the Nation" (archived here), where the claim involving Taylor Swift was first shown before it spread on TikTok. Unlike the excerpt shown in the TikTok video, here the host, Zoran Šprajc (archived here), previously discussed undercover bots from Vietnam supporting the leading party HDZ and stated that the video of Taylor Swift allegedly supporting HDZ was created using artificial intelligence. Translated from Croatian into English by Lead Stories staff, he said:
Even opposition leaders are not immune to the propaganda goods brought by bots, trolls, and artificial intelligence that distort reality just enough not to be reality but strongly resemble reality. Or Taylor Swift! The opposition used this montage to attract citizens to that protest at Mark's Square. But this is a true picture of our opposition. So, they steal Taylor Swift's identity, but HDZ does that, too. I mean, steals. Identities. But then those poor souls in the opposition do it so clumsily that you can see they can't do anything right. Come on, John Doe, take a photo of Taylor Swift, edit it a bit so it doesn't look exactly like Taylor Swift, because we shouldn't do that, speed up the song, modulate the voice so she can't sue us, and it will be crazy. Ahahaha, how innovative we are in following the trends of digital tricks! Now, we'll see Taylor Swift's reaction to this opposition manipulation. Our graphic designer, who is not a genius from Silicon Valley and costs us less than a Nepalese delivering food here, took only about an hour to get Taylor Swift's reaction to such identity theft.
After the segment, Šprajc concluded (as translated): "When the opposition approaches the job so carelessly and sloppily, even Taylor Swift can turn towards HDZ."
Right before Croatia's early parliamentary elections, scheduled for April 17, 2024, the largest opposition party, SDP, was hoping for the Taylor Swift effect (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Taylor Swift allegedly taking a political stance can be found here, here, and here.
