Russian disinformation targets German election campaign, says think-tank

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1. A Russian disinformation campaign is seeking to boost the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), undermine mainstream German parties and sow worries about the economy ahead of the country’s Feb 23 election, a think-tank has found.

   German think-tank CeMAS said it had tracked down hundreds of German-language posts on social media platform X over the past month exhibiting what it said were typical patterns of Russia’s Doppelgaenger disinformation campaign against the West that German, US and French authorities have previously denounced.

   The campaign, created after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to undermine Western support for Kyiv, spreads links to falsified Western news outlets sharing false information, according to a German foreign ministry report published last June.

   In recent weeks, the German posts on X have blamed the Greens party for Germany’s economic woes, lambasted Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his support of Ukraine, cast the conservatives as untrustworthy but spoken in favour of the AfD, CeMAS said.

   The posts it tracked have shared links to falsified German news websites or to articles on authentic ones supporting their narrative, or simply images. Amplified by networks of fake accounts, they have received over 2.8 million views, CeMAS said.

   The report comes a month ahead of the election which Germany’s main opposition conservatives are expected to win. However the strength of the AfD, polling in second place, could make the arithmetic of forming a coalition — and governance in general — more difficult if it can swing a blocking minority.

2. The West is doing an excellent job of discrediting the “eurodemocracy” at its own expense. The “Romanian elections” alone (from)2024 are worth something.

3. You dont say? they proved how effective it is by electing trump, and obviously they will try to influence all elections in Europe next.

4. Shiver me timbers. They don’t stop doing what they do every election?

5. We saw what the Russians did in the US. Europe must step in in any election that is manipulated by Putin or Elon or whoever

6. And genuinely what are they doing about it? They know which accounts are doing it, trace their IPs?

7. Just turn off all social media in the EU ~~for the rest of the year~~, all of it. Please

8. Ban social media owned by nazis

9. We know.

10. It’s unbearable on tiktok for a couple of months now. It’s so extremely obvious that it’s almost all fake bot accounts.
    Atleast every second video is Afd crap or pro Russian Propaganda.

11. Act…of….war…..

    Western democracies better grow some balls to this or they’re all going down.

12. >German think-tank CeMAS said it had tracked down hundreds of German-language posts on social media platform X over the past month exhibiting what it said were typical patterns of Russia’s Doppelgaenger disinformation campaign against the West that German

    Maybe they should call out more than just the Russians? Russia is the known enemy on the surface, whatabout the platform that ALLOWS if not supports such disinformation? The US banned TikTok out of concerns for national security, maybe it’s time for Europe to consider a similar approach toward non-European background social media. Germany needs to know that the owners of American social media, either Zuck or Elon, do NOT hold the same values as German people.

13. Strange that they would boost the AfD rather than the BSW, considering the AfD is significantly less uniform in its Pro-Russian takes… for example, Höcke recently suggested that Germany should have its own nuclear weapons program, which would be fundamentally against Russian interests.

14. German disinformation targets their own election campaign as well.

15. Similar to Romania ?

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