diff --git a/Parser/pegen_errors.c b/Parser/pegen_errors.c
index d692d6b0c86446..b5e7b12b93c089 100644
--- a/Parser/pegen_errors.c
+++ b/Parser/pegen_errors.c
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ _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);