Did actor Vin Diesel pull his $1 million annual donation to Boy Scouts of America while being quoted as saying, "It's no longer the organization I know and love"? No, that's not true: A representative of The Boy Scouts of America organization told Lead Stories this claim is "patently false." This fake quote came from a post on the Facebook account of America's Last Line of Defense, a satirical network of entertainment websites and social media accounts that publish fictional content.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on May 9, 2024. The caption opened:
He won't be the last big donor to pull funding.
'The Boy Scouts saved my life,' Diesel said, 'I might not be the man I am today without them. I can't support their new ideals.'
Neither can we, Vin.
The post displays a side-by-side image of Vin Diesel and a Boy Scout saluting a flag. Below these images, there is white text that reads:
Eagle Scout Vin Diesel Pulls $1 Million Annual Donation to the Scouts: 'It's No longer the Organization I Know and Love'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu May 30 16:34:53 2024 UTC)
The author of the post continued in the comment section:
This is one of those rare situations for us, patriots. There's so much tater angst toward the Boy Scouts (who aren't even rebranding for another year), that we're able to introduce new players like Vin here to see if they catch on. Imagine our surprise when it worked with Sylvester Stallone and Mark Wahlberg.
It just gets sillier and sillier, patriots. Day after day. God Bless America.
Under Categories on the About page of the America's Last Line of Defense (ALLOD) Facebook account, it reads:
Satire/Parody · Entertainment website
Lead Stories reached out to the Boys Scouts of America organization for a statement confirming or denying this claim's validity. In a May 30, 2024, email, Scott Armstrong, the director of national media relations & government affairs at Scouting America, responded, writing:
This claim is patently false. It has no grounding in factual information.
Armstrong addressed the controversy mentioned in the article and surrounding the claim in this post:
Additionally, the Scouting America program has not changed any ideals, only the name to reflect what we have been for many years. There are currently 176,000 girls and young women in Scouting among the over 1 million youth we serve.
The Boy Scouts of America organization is officially changing its name to Scouting America in February 2025 to be more inclusive to scouts and scout leaders who are not just heterosexual or assigned male at birth, a May 7, 2024, National Public Radio article reported. LGBTQ youth have been allowed to join since 2013, LGBTQ scout leaders have been allowed to join since 2015, and Girl Scouts have been allowed to join since 2019.
Lead Stories previously found a similar claim involving Elon Musk to be false.
Lead Stories also reached out to representatives for Vin Diesel, and a representative replied by email on May 30, 2024, writing, "it's a non-story ... you can say a representative said it's not true."
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Vin Diesel can be found here.
ALLOD
The 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.
