Did Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg and Sylvester Stallone all resign from the Screen Actors Guild to create a new "no-woke" union focused on traditional values? No, that's not true: Washington's representative told Lead Stories the claim is "not true." It appeared on a social media page that clearly identifies itself as an "entertainment website · satire/parody."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on April 26, 2024. It began:
Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, and Sylvester Stallone have all resigned from The Screen Actors Guild to create a new 'no-woke' union focused on traditional values.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu May 2 19:22:30 2024 UTC)
The account posted a message about the purported new studio in the comments:
The new non-woke studio will feature acting legends like Scott Baio, Gina Carano, and the guy who played Hercules. James Woods was made an honorary member on day one. Having these three added to the roster gives the new collective a certain credibility it definitely lacked before.
Good luck to these American heroes.
The Facebook page that posted the article is "America -- Love It Or Leave It," a satire website. The account intro states, "A subsidiary of the America's Last Line of Defense network of trollery. Nothing on this page is real," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu May 2 19:25:16 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories contacted Washington's representative, Alan Nierob (archived here), who told Lead Stories via email on May 2, 2024, that the claim was "not true."
Had three of Hollywood's biggest stars actually left the Screen Actors Guild to form their own "no-woke" unions, it would have been a major news story. Lead Stories did a keyword search on Google, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
Lead Stories reached out to Wahlberg and Stallone's representatives and will update the story when a response is received.
Origins of the claim
ALLOD
This site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of satire websites run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. He runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Every site in the network has an About page that reads (in part):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites that omit the satire disclaimer and other hints the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi"), who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages in order to profit from the ad revenue.
When fact checkers point this out to the people liking and sharing these copycat stories, some of them get mad at the fact checkers instead of directing their anger at the foreign spammers or the liberal satire writers. Others send a polite "thank you" note, which is much appreciated.
