We know about how he made Ukraine’s far right stronger and stronger until 2014, but there’s less talk about how he has done the same everywhere in the countries that used to be under Soviet rule. And then, around 2014, he started seriously expanding the same to the west, as well.
Because Germany has made a big effort picturing Soviet Union as a hero country that saved Germany from Nazis, anything that would be somehow against the Russia has been traditionally seen as pro-Nazi.
So, it’s extremely difficult to talk in Germany about how the Russia is doing evil things. In Germany the Russia has had exceptionally free hands to operate. And they’ve used the opportunity. AfD is an offshoot of Kremlin.
I totally agree Russia adds a lot of fuel to this fire, but it’s not like they started it or are the only one tending it. Far-right everywhere uses the narrative of ‘your country is changing and it’s all because of immigrants’, but don’t forget they are exploiting an underlying fear that was already there.
I know. They’d exist anyway, but the scale is because of the Russia. They firstly give a lot of funding, secondly they do a lot of work to shape the discussions in the Internet. They put some “opinion” into the wild, then let local people do the talking. They only need to bootstrap the discussion, after which it will continue on its own weight without much need for further influence by the troll factory.
What’s your reason to believe this? Russia must have supported the opposition to gain some control, but the AfD was made popular by constant media attention, like this poll is published.
In comparison to other parties there were constant reminders that the AfD exists. Die Linke and BSW don’t receive the same attention and other right wing parties like NPD or Republikaner didn’t.
The media is controlled by the German elite. They are either ridiculously incompetent or they chose to make AfD popular.
Online news outlets notice that AfD stories get a lot of clicks, so they publish a lot more of them. Buying clicks is child’s play for anyone, let alone Russia.
In social media it’s even easier. They publish their own propaganda, then buy interactions with the posts so it gets inserted into people’s feeds.
There you go, media presence. All you need is money.
There is an Oligopoly of the media in Germany. There is no need to always obey the market. We don’t finance NGOs in Russia, watch Russia closing them and then leave our media defenceless.
But, if we are playing that, then at 2 % of the intensity required. There’s a LOT we could do.
One thing I keep saying is that where Russians can still obtain EU visas, they should have to fill a short questionnaire about current events in the Russia and its war against Ukraine.
Something, where they’d have to know the basics of who has attacked whom and when, and also what has been happening at the front in the last 4 weeks.
In order to know which correct answers to learn by heart. they would quickly develop a network of delivering that information to everyone who needs it for applying a visa. That network could be used for getting reliable information about the situation in the Russia without the information having been tainted by Kremlin.
For most of the people applying for visas, that would be just “so, this is what they want to hear, so this is what I will tell them. I know it’s not reality, but I don’t care. That’s the correct words for them and I’ll get to visit something else than this shithole.”
But here and there, some people would figure out how much the Russian TV has been lying to them. And at the same time, the same sources of information that exist for visa applicants could be used by anyone who wants reliable information. That would sow the seed of a revolution.
That would be super useful for spreading awareness in the Russia! And basically from Kremlin’s playbook.
Kremlin fund both fringe left and right. Kremlin pays lip service to the far left by invoking the anti Western imperialist sentiment. When I used to watch RT before it got banned, they always invite anti-colonial/anti-imperialist commentators. While the narratives are true, it is obvious that it is bait and switch from Kremlin to paint the West bad while downplaying Russia’s own wrongdoings. I mean, there are many leftists who disappointingly refuse to call out the Russian invasion of Ukraine or directly call Putin a dictator, from Jill Stein of US Green Party to Sarah Wagenknecht of BSW in Germany. That is very telling. But even some on the left who are probably not in Putin’s pocket, they become useful idiots for blaming Ukraine and NATO for supposed expansion which triggered the invasion of Ukraine. The current Irish president, as charming as he is, he expressed the sentiment that it was somehow NATO’s fault for Russia’s invasion.
As for the far right’s relationship with Kremlin, the money trail is much clearer but Putin and his regime pay lip service as well to the right. Putin gave more cultural influence to the church in Russia by championing traditional family values and demonizing child-free ideas. This cultural lip service (as well as under the table cash) endeared him to the rest of the far right across the globe.
Putin is betting on both fringe far left and far right to cause as much disinformation campaign in the West as possible. He doesn’t care which side wins so long as the West is destabilised. But IMO the reason that the far left is not really getting much traction is because the collapse of communism is still within living memory and fresh in many people’s minds. It collapsed like only 30 years ago? Boomers, Gen X and older millenials remember the communist regimes. In their minds, why vote for those assholes again? The far right, in the meanwhile, is gaining ground because people who lived under fascism are pretty much dead at this point. No one alive to talk about the fascist atrocities and those who never lived under it are enamoured and manipulated.
The far right, in the meanwhile, is gaining ground because people who lived under fascism are pretty much dead at this point.
I hope that it is like that but I believe that we are on a way to fascism that is pushed by Western elites and not Russia.
The planned loss of online privacy and the lockdown of android phones make me believe that the shift to far right parties is just a piece in a bigger puzzle.
The Russia started actively supporting neo-nazistic organizations in ex-USSR countries around year 2005. That was documented back and there were news articles about that. For example in Ukraine that caused the prevalence of a nazi problem to increase steadily year after all the way until 2014 when that development got cut and the prevalence started decreasing.
Back then, 20 years ago, when there was more media attention about it, it was done only in ex-USSR countries, but it would be weird if the same concept hadn’t been extended to EU countries as well. Why wouldn’t it have been? It has worked extremely well for Putin in the original area, and there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t work for him the same way within EU countries as well.
It’s very largely Putin.
We know about how he made Ukraine’s far right stronger and stronger until 2014, but there’s less talk about how he has done the same everywhere in the countries that used to be under Soviet rule. And then, around 2014, he started seriously expanding the same to the west, as well.
Because Germany has made a big effort picturing Soviet Union as a hero country that saved Germany from Nazis, anything that would be somehow against the Russia has been traditionally seen as pro-Nazi. So, it’s extremely difficult to talk in Germany about how the Russia is doing evil things. In Germany the Russia has had exceptionally free hands to operate. And they’ve used the opportunity. AfD is an offshoot of Kremlin.
isnt russia largely funding AFD, and promoting thier propaganda too.
Yes. People voting for them are very pro-russia any a lot from east germany
I totally agree Russia adds a lot of fuel to this fire, but it’s not like they started it or are the only one tending it. Far-right everywhere uses the narrative of ‘your country is changing and it’s all because of immigrants’, but don’t forget they are exploiting an underlying fear that was already there.
I know. They’d exist anyway, but the scale is because of the Russia. They firstly give a lot of funding, secondly they do a lot of work to shape the discussions in the Internet. They put some “opinion” into the wild, then let local people do the talking. They only need to bootstrap the discussion, after which it will continue on its own weight without much need for further influence by the troll factory.
What’s your reason to believe this? Russia must have supported the opposition to gain some control, but the AfD was made popular by constant media attention, like this poll is published.
In comparison to other parties there were constant reminders that the AfD exists. Die Linke and BSW don’t receive the same attention and other right wing parties like NPD or Republikaner didn’t.
The media is controlled by the German elite. They are either ridiculously incompetent or they chose to make AfD popular.
Online news outlets notice that AfD stories get a lot of clicks, so they publish a lot more of them. Buying clicks is child’s play for anyone, let alone Russia.
In social media it’s even easier. They publish their own propaganda, then buy interactions with the posts so it gets inserted into people’s feeds.
There you go, media presence. All you need is money.
There is an Oligopoly of the media in Germany. There is no need to always obey the market. We don’t finance NGOs in Russia, watch Russia closing them and then leave our media defenceless.
We also play that game, just more elegantly.
At least we should.
But, if we are playing that, then at 2 % of the intensity required. There’s a LOT we could do.
One thing I keep saying is that where Russians can still obtain EU visas, they should have to fill a short questionnaire about current events in the Russia and its war against Ukraine.
Something, where they’d have to know the basics of who has attacked whom and when, and also what has been happening at the front in the last 4 weeks.
In order to know which correct answers to learn by heart. they would quickly develop a network of delivering that information to everyone who needs it for applying a visa. That network could be used for getting reliable information about the situation in the Russia without the information having been tainted by Kremlin.
For most of the people applying for visas, that would be just “so, this is what they want to hear, so this is what I will tell them. I know it’s not reality, but I don’t care. That’s the correct words for them and I’ll get to visit something else than this shithole.”
But here and there, some people would figure out how much the Russian TV has been lying to them. And at the same time, the same sources of information that exist for visa applicants could be used by anyone who wants reliable information. That would sow the seed of a revolution.
That would be super useful for spreading awareness in the Russia! And basically from Kremlin’s playbook.
That’s brilliant.
What are the biggest lies that the Russians are fed?
Kremlin fund both fringe left and right. Kremlin pays lip service to the far left by invoking the anti Western imperialist sentiment. When I used to watch RT before it got banned, they always invite anti-colonial/anti-imperialist commentators. While the narratives are true, it is obvious that it is bait and switch from Kremlin to paint the West bad while downplaying Russia’s own wrongdoings. I mean, there are many leftists who disappointingly refuse to call out the Russian invasion of Ukraine or directly call Putin a dictator, from Jill Stein of US Green Party to Sarah Wagenknecht of BSW in Germany. That is very telling. But even some on the left who are probably not in Putin’s pocket, they become useful idiots for blaming Ukraine and NATO for supposed expansion which triggered the invasion of Ukraine. The current Irish president, as charming as he is, he expressed the sentiment that it was somehow NATO’s fault for Russia’s invasion.
As for the far right’s relationship with Kremlin, the money trail is much clearer but Putin and his regime pay lip service as well to the right. Putin gave more cultural influence to the church in Russia by championing traditional family values and demonizing child-free ideas. This cultural lip service (as well as under the table cash) endeared him to the rest of the far right across the globe.
Putin is betting on both fringe far left and far right to cause as much disinformation campaign in the West as possible. He doesn’t care which side wins so long as the West is destabilised. But IMO the reason that the far left is not really getting much traction is because the collapse of communism is still within living memory and fresh in many people’s minds. It collapsed like only 30 years ago? Boomers, Gen X and older millenials remember the communist regimes. In their minds, why vote for those assholes again? The far right, in the meanwhile, is gaining ground because people who lived under fascism are pretty much dead at this point. No one alive to talk about the fascist atrocities and those who never lived under it are enamoured and manipulated.
I hope that it is like that but I believe that we are on a way to fascism that is pushed by Western elites and not Russia.
The planned loss of online privacy and the lockdown of android phones make me believe that the shift to far right parties is just a piece in a bigger puzzle.
The Russia started actively supporting neo-nazistic organizations in ex-USSR countries around year 2005. That was documented back and there were news articles about that. For example in Ukraine that caused the prevalence of a nazi problem to increase steadily year after all the way until 2014 when that development got cut and the prevalence started decreasing.
Back then, 20 years ago, when there was more media attention about it, it was done only in ex-USSR countries, but it would be weird if the same concept hadn’t been extended to EU countries as well. Why wouldn’t it have been? It has worked extremely well for Putin in the original area, and there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t work for him the same way within EU countries as well.