State elections: A separate "industry" for fake videos: How Russia is trying to manipulate the elections in Germany
Russian disinformation is targeting local German politicians ahead of the elections. The goal: to destroy citizens' trust in the rule of law and liberal media.
Brussels, Berlin. Leonie Bronkalla has her work cut out for her these days. The landscape ecologist from Dessau wants to enter the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament for the Greens. The election will take place on September 6. However, for Bronkalla, the election campaign has taken on a dimension beyond flyers, Instagram, and citizen conversations.
Videos are circulating online that spread false information about Bronkalla. Other local and state politicians from the Greens, SPD, and Left Party in Saxony-Anhalt are also affected. The format is always the same: photos of the mentioned politicians are displayed, while they are accused of partly absurd crimes. To create the appearance of seriousness, the clips, which are hardly a minute long, are provided with the logos of established German media.
"This is now part of the election campaign," Bronkalla tells the Handelsblatt. "Just like you go poster-hunting, you now also have to correct fake videos." When the disinformation campaigns became known, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) spoke of "inadmissible foreign influence and information manipulation." Experts agree that their origin: Russia.
Translated by urgent.news. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
