A video published on Facebook (FB) and TikTok claims 16th-century French astrologer Nostradamus foresaw the election of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos. It is not true.
Gaining traction this week, an FB page first published the video on Nov. 3 and its TikTok counterpart the following day. Its caption on TikTok read: “TOTOO KAYA ANG HULA NI NOSTRADAMUS? (Is Nostradamus’ prophecy true?) #2023 #PREDICTION.”
In the 56-second reel, a narrator enumerated a few supposed predictions of Nostradamus for 2023. To lend credibility to the claim, the narrator mentioned that Nostradamus correctly prophesied Marcos’ presidency in 2022.
It is not true. Nostradamus lived and died centuries before the president was born. The Marcos name never came up in his collective work of divination.
A keyword search in the English-translated 1947 book “The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus” yielded no result of the astrologer mentioning the name of Marcos in any of his prophetic verses.
A similar false claim was debunked by Fact Check Philippines on the day of the election in May this year.
The video continues to circulate as Marcos embarked on various diplomatic trips throughout Southeast Asia, joining the 40th and 41st Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
FB page JVPH Ulat (created on Oct. 24, 2020) and its TikTok counterpart with the same name published the short video, collectively garnering over 10,000 interactions and 600,000 views.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
