No, the Green Party didn't promote an 'interracial breeding program'

What is the claim?

A screenshot of a purported Mail Online news article has been circulating on social media with the claim that it shows Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales between 2012 and 2016, advocating that "every child born on British soil in the future should be of a mixed heritage." The title of the article in the screenshot reads, "The Green's policy to end racism? End whiteness by having state run interracial breeding programs". It was supposedly published on April 7, 2015. The viral screenshot also showed Benett pledging to dismantle the armed forces and leave NATO.

Several users shared the screenshot on X and Facebook, making the same claim. One user on Facebook wrote, "Green Party: the self-declared enemies of our race and nation." Archived versions of such posts can be accessed here and here. 

Screenshots of the viral posts. (Source:X/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the Mail Online didn't publish any article on an interracial breeding program by the Green Party. A fabricated screenshot was shared as a real news report. 

How did we find the truth?

We first checked the Mail Online website to see if such an article had ever been published. We couldn't find the viral article or any article about a breeding program by the Green Party. 

The purported article has been dated April 7, 2015. We checked Wayback Machine and found no such article archived on that date. 

However, we found a similar article in the Wayback Machine archived on April 7, 2015, that matches the format of the viral one. The author's name, the dateline, and the featured image are the same for both articles. We could deduce that the headline and main body have been altered to create a fake screenshot of the article. The original article was titled "Government should pay EVERYONE £72-a-week, says Green’s Bennett but she admits £280billion plan would take years to happen". It was published on April 7, 2015, at 1.46 p.m. and updated at 3.39 p.m. on the same date. 

We also noticed that six paragraphs are visible in the viral screenshot. We compared these paragraphs with those in the original article and found that the context has been altered while the sentences start with the same words. Below, we have added an image comparison showing the similarities between the original article and the fake screenshot.

A comparison between the fake article and the original article. (Source: Facebook/Daily Mail/Modified by Logically Facts)

What was in the original article?

The original article reported that Bennett said that "every adult in Britain would be paid £72 a week under a commitment in the Green manifesto, but the party leader admitted that her pledges could take decades to implement." The report added the then-Green Party leader had stated that another pledge was to dismantle the armed forces and repurpose weapons factories to build wind turbines. However, there was no mention of any "interracial breeding program," as seen in the viral and fabricated screenshot. 

The verdict

There is no evidence that Mail Online published an article about an interracial breeding program by the Green Party. A news report from 2015 was altered to create the fake screenshot.

Follow Logically Facts' coverage and fact-checking of the U.K. General Election here.