PolitiFact – Video of Missouri lawmakers using flamethrowers ignites false book burning claims

A recent video of two Republican lawmakers in Missouri is catching fire on social media.

The video claims to show state Sens. Bill Eigel and Nick Schroer using flamethrowers to burn books. In the video, Schroer and Eigel, who is running for Missouri governor in 2024, aim flamethrowers at a burning pile as an audience behind them watches.

Text on a Sept. 18 Instagram video of this fiery event reads, “WTF?! Elected Republican officials in MO participate in book burning.”

This video has been widely shared across social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok and X, formerly Twitter.

The Instagram posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Screengrabs from Instagram

But this video isn’t a scene from Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”

Eigel and Schroer have responded to the viral video on X, formerly Twitter, saying that they didn’t burn any books. The flamethrowers were used to ignite a bonfire fueled by empty cardboard boxes, they said.

Eigel also shared footage from a different angle, which shows the stack of cardboard boxes before they’re burned.

The lawmakers demonstrated the flamethrowers before they were auctioned off at Freedom Fest, a Sept. 15 fundraiser organized by the St. Charles County Republican Central Committee, said committee member and event organizer Debbie McFarland. About 200 people attended the event at Sugar Creek Winery in Defiance, Missouri, about 40 miles west of St. Louis.

McFarland confirmed that no books were burned, only cardboard boxes.

James Murphy, Schroer’s spokesperson, told PolitiFact that “the allegations suggesting that Sen. Schroer is a modern-day book-burner are false.”

Although Eigel said he wasn’t burning books in this video, he promised to do so if elected governor. In a Sept. 18 X post, Eigel said he would burn the “woke” books brought into Missouri schools “on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Conservative lawmakers in several states, including Missouri, have been pushing to restrict certain books from schools and libraries. Missouri enacted a law last year that banned books with sexually explicit content from school libraries, which led to the removal of almost 300 books across the state.

We rate the claim that a video shows Missouri state senators using flamethrowers to burn books False.

RELATED: Ron DeSantis said that not ‘a single book’ was banned in Florida. Districts have removed dozens.