diff --git a/Parser/pegen_errors.c b/Parser/pegen_errors.c
index 0639a4e42436be..1c61524d60a1af 100644
--- a/Parser/pegen_errors.c
+++ b/Parser/pegen_errors.c
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ _PyPegen_raise_tokenizer_init_error(PyObject *filename)
 
     tuple = PyTuple_Pack(2, errstr, tmp);
     Py_DECREF(tmp);
-    if (!value) {
+    if (!tuple) {
         goto error;
     }
     PyErr_SetObject(PyExc_SyntaxError, tuple);