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Last week, Stephan Prottschka, member of the Parliament for the extreme right alternative for Germany, took Facebook And Telegram Share a sensationalist article. The country’s green party, he said, conspired the Ukrainian government to recruit migrants to organize terrorist attacks-and blame its party.
As expected, the post rapped the supporters of Mr. Protschka. “People wake up,” replied one of them on Facebook. “It’s a criminal.”
The article was in fact part of a torrent of Russian disinformation which flooded the greatest economic and diplomatic power in Europe before its federal elections on February 23.
As voting, Russian influence campaigns have propagated wild affirmations on sexual, financial and criminal scandals involving German politicians, playing on social and political tensions that have divided the country, according to researchers who follow the disinformation and foreign influence operations.
The affirmations appeared in false media and in videos that have been modified by artificial intelligence. They were distributed by an army of Bot accounts on social media platforms like X, Facebook, Telegram and, in a new development, Bluesky.
The objective, according to researchers and the national intelligence agency of Germany, is to undermine confidence in traditional parties and media and to strengthen the extreme right of Germany, led by the alternative for the ‘Germany, known as AFD.
Aiming the same target is the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. His public support for the alternative for Germany on X, the social media network he owns, has aligned himself with the strategic objective of Russia to destabilize Western democracies and support for Ukraine.
“We are now dealing with a double front,” said Sasha Havlicek, director general of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a non -profit research organization that published Thursday a report On the Russian disinformation campaign on X.
“Between Musk’s Over and the Kremlin secret operations,” she said, “it clearly emerges from the content that there is a mutual strengthening there.”
Targeting Germany
The election of Germany has become the last battlefield of Russia’s influence campaigns. The Kremlin hopes that the result of the competition, called before the date scheduled after the collapse of the Central-Left Coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, could erode support in Europe for Ukraine, where Russian invaders were embroidered the country’s defenses after Three years of war.
Mr. Musk, for his part, seems to have done much to restrict Russian robots promoting AFD on his platform. Instead, he told his audience for 217 million people on X that the party was the last hope of the country.
In January, Mr. Musk interviewed the main party candidate, Alice Weidel, for 75 minutes on X, the same platform he gave to Donald J. Trump during his candidacy last August. Addressing the party conference by Video Link last month, he said he had the support of the Trump administration.
The propagandists of Russia praised the convergence and sought to exploit it. According to CEMA, an organization following German online extremism was widespread on X was widespread by bot accounts operated by an operation of Russian influence known as Doppelgänger. X did not answer a question about Russian activity.
False New Maven
In Germany, Russia uses tactics it has perfected in France, Moldova, Georgia, the United States and other countries that have recently held elections, according to disinformation researchers, notably from the Institute of strategic dialogue, CEMA and the registered future, an intelligence company on threats based in Massachusetts.
A key actor is a former Florida sheriff deputy, John Mark Dougan, who received political asylum and possibly citizenship in Moscow. Having previously built a network of more than 160 websites of false news that prompted Kremlin propaganda in the United States, Great Britain and France, he has now turned his attention to Germany.
Nine days after the announcement of the Snap elections on November 12, Mr. Dougan began to record dozens of fake German new sites, according to a report By Newsguard, a company that follows online, and correct disinformation, a non -profit press organization in Germany.
In February, the number had increased to 102 – some pretending to be the national media, others as local media in Berlin, Hamburg and other cities.
On January 30, one of the sites downloaded a video saying that the vice-chancellor Robert Habeck plotted with Ukraine to fly 50 paintings from an art gallery in Berlin. Another said that Friedrich Merz, the chief of the Christian Democratic Union and the first driver of the Chancellor, was a “person of interest” in a 20 -year -old murder case.
“The network shows its agility,” said Clement Brienns, analyst with a recorded future, who has also published a report Russian disinformation in Germany on Thursday.
Mr. Dougan, reached in Moscow, refused to answer questions about his role, but criticized the current German government as a puppet of the United States. “All their leaders must be replaced,” he said.
“ Deepfakes of ordinary people ”
Not all fake videos have eminent politicians. Another tactic that has grown is to modify videos that have ordinary people.
In January, Natalie Finch, nurse in mental health, Make a promotional video on Instagram For the college of Great Britain where she works, the University of Bradford. Two weeks later, the video reappeared on Bluesky, except that this time, it did not speak nursing care but the mental health of candidates for the German Christian Democratic Union.
The new version was a false, using an artificial intelligence tool to recreate its voice by reading a different script on the same video, sporting the university logo. “The video started with me presenting me, presenting the university and then, very transparent, I must say, became a video on the German government,” she said in an interview.
The false was one of the many identified by the Clemson University media center. Others included an audio manipulated by presidents of several American universities and a video made of a British policeman saying that he had transmitted warnings of terrorist attacks in Germany.
“These are some of the clearest examples of deep fees used for the disinformation I have seen,” said Darren L. Linvill, director of the center who informed Ms. Finch of the manipulated video. “And what is convincing about them is that some of them are only deep buttocks of ordinary people.”
What Russia’s campaign will have on the outcome of the elections remains uncertain. The researchers say that the efforts have not so far changed the preferences of the voters, but the enormous volume of disinformation has certainly infiltrated public discourse, carefully suitable for aggravating existing social grievances.
“The Russians are studying the newspapers, the printed media, the television in their target countries very complex,” said Brian Liston, analyst at Recreded Future. “They probably know more about the policy of a country than the country knows its own policy in many cases.”
The national intelligence agency of Germany said that the quantity and sophistication of disinformation had exceeded all that it had seen before.
“The danger of disinformation campaigns is that they influence voters in their voting decision,” the Constitution protection office said in a statement in Times. “There is also a risk that the election itself is delegitimized and thus thrown by the public.”
There are signs that the campaign intensifies. The 48 accounts traced in Russia on X during the last month have collectively received 2.5 million views, according to the study of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. During January, the number of commitments – tastes or actions – tripled.
Russian efforts benefit significantly when politicians or eminent influencers online, such as Mr. Protschka of the alternative for Germany, share false affirmations, which researchers call for “whitening of disinformation”.
Mr. Musk, who currently plays a disproportionate role in the Trump administration, could be the greatest influence. He described the chancellor as a “idiot” and the German president “an anti -democratic tyrant”. Germany, he wrote In an opinion article for a big newspaper in December, “vacillating on the verge of economic and cultural collapse”.
Mr. Musk also amplified the supporters of the alternative for Germany by sharing their articles on X. Some of these influencers were marginalized or even prohibited on the platform before Mr. Musk took over and did not reintegrated. Many, like Naomi Seibt, 24 -year -old vaccine and skeptical of climate change, now publish content in English to attract his attention.
Mr. Musk also amplified Russian propaganda. In October 2023, he common A meme created as part of a campaign of influence led by Social Design Agency, an Internet company in Moscow which was sanctioned by the United States. The internal corporate documents of the social design agency seen by the CEMA show that the Russians consider it a victory when their equipment is shared by public figures.
“This is the first German election where the Kremlin and a powerful figure of the new American administration are trying to influence the process and support the same far -right party,” said Julia Smirnova, analyst among CEMA.
“When figures like Musk share the Russian propaganda accounts,” said Smirnova, “they finally normalize them, increase their scope and cause more damage than a network of inauthentic accounts.”
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