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Vladimir Putin: His propaganda troops are involved in many debates
Photo: MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
The radicalization of lateral thinkers and opponents of vaccination is becoming increasingly extreme.
And it's not just about the hard, violent core.
The followers - especially in social media - are in a self-accelerating alarm spiral.
The frequently expressed hope that there would be some relaxation over time has not come true for a substantial part of the corona extremists, on the contrary.
One of the reasons for this is intentional propaganda.
Enter Angela Merkel.
The woman who apparently knew everything beforehand, and somehow still led Germany into a deep dependency on Russia.
In June of this year, she explained that she had already warned after the annexation of Crimea that Putin wanted to destroy the EU.
It probably remains Merkel's eternal secret why, knowing this, she has governed Germany into a spectacular, deep, toxic dependence on Putin's gas, oil and coal.
What is more interesting about Merkel's correct statement about Putin, however, is
how
exactly this one wants to destroy the EU.
An essential element of this is propaganda, after all Putin was a KGB agent, and destructive communication has always been a specialty of this house.
There is clear evidence that Putin's propaganda apparatus wants to weaken liberal democracies, for example by strengthening right-wing and far-right forces and also by spreading narratives.
However, there are also clear indications that criticism of vaccination and lateral thinkers are fueled, reinforced and directed in a similar way.
Many Telegram channels, which disseminated lateral thinker content during the pandemic, switched to open support for Putin just in time for the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Right-wing narratives fit both sets of themes.
The easiest way to identify the connection is with Twitter accounts, because they are usually openly visible on the Internet.
In the past few days, the hashtag #Ibereuedievaccination has been spread tens of thousands of times on Twitter and for a long time was number one in the German “trending topics”, i.e. the most discussed topics.
The many obvious lateral thinking accounts that have boasted about not being vaccinated were almost funny.
But they were already telling wondrous stories about why they would regret the vaccination.
Right-wing, pro-Russian and lateral thinker propaganda united in one account
A journalist took a closer look at the hashtag and discovered something very interesting.
The hashtag #Ibereuedievaccination was created by an account that opened in March 2022, has a German flag and a Russian flag with the handshake emoji in its name, and at times had anti-Western conspiracy theories in its "biography" field.
Right wing, pro-Russian and maverick propaganda united in an account created days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Those who unironically tweet #I regretthevaccination are people who often bring with them distortion blindness.
This is what a cognitive distortion that affects how people perceive is called.
That means they have the firm belief that their judgment is unbiased.
In truth, many of them fell for Putin's propaganda.
The mass radicalization beyond reality is intended to weaken democracy, and it works to a certain extent.
According to Putin, weakening the EU strengthens Russia.
And at the same time, the staging of a catastrophic situation in the EU acts as an internal deterrent.
Many people in Russia are convinced that there is violence on the streets in the EU and that parts are even descending into anarchy.
With this message, poverty, corruption, state patronage and general lack of freedom in Russia should appear more attractive to the population.
Turning a strength of liberal democracy into a weakness
One of Putin's destructive strategies is to turn a strength of liberal democracy into a weakness, namely public debate.
These discussions are an essential part of a democracy, they serve, for example, as a corrective between elections.
Due to the combination of editorial and social media, public debates have become extremely powerful, they can create public pressure that politicians have to react to.
But debates can be manipulated, and Putin's propaganda troops have done so in many European countries, including Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Austria.
Paid Russian troll factories, which are actually propaganda works, are tasked with influencing, for example, social media content and comments under editorial media posts.
Manipulating the public works comparatively easily.
First, a topic is identified that allows for emotional, irreconcilable controversy, preferably based on resentment, prejudice, and fear.
That is why Putin's propaganda often reaches the right-wing or right-wing fringes of society, where resentment is particularly strong.
Right-wingers also set the tone in the Corona protests from the start.
Apart from that, Putin's politics between media control, opposition suppression, racism, misogyny and LGBTIQ hostility was already structurally right-wing radical before it became open, imperial fascism at the latest with the attack on Ukraine.
Once the topic has been identified, fears are deliberately stirred up to solidify resentments, because fear and hatred are closely intertwined.
»Fake news« is particularly suitable for this.
One of the best mechanisms for this purpose is the targeted combination of empathy and anger.
This was already the case in the debate about refugees after 2015, where a lot of “fake news” linked a strikingly innocent victim and perpetrators clearly selected for their potential for racist anger.
And it is the same with the lateral thinkers, which is why there is constant talk of poor children (empathy) with the worst vaccine damage that unscrupulous doctors (anger) did to them.
A young vaccinator in Austria has probably killed herself just now because she could no longer withstand this radicalized furor, the mass bullying and the threat from lateral thinkers.
Regulatory failures also played a role.
It needs advocates in the respective country
In order for Putin's propaganda to have a targeted effect in the various areas, it needs advocates in the respective country.
Of course, Gerhard Schröder is at the forefront.
But these advocates are much broader.
It's about multipliers in social media, politicians, especially from the AfD, Left Party and parts of the SPD, as well as people who are as prominent as possible, i.e. people with a wide reach, who are heard in the debate in a country, almost regardless of what they say.
Because it is difficult to hijack a debate with SPIEGEL.de forum comments and tweets by guenter2314235 (7 followers) written under a pseudonym alone.
Putinian propaganda offers narratives of current events that seem seductively easy to retell.
Specifically, this can lead to politicians like Sahra Wagenknecht (Die Linke) and AfD-affiliated Max Otte tweeting almost at the same time and, above all, almost exactly the same wording as they did at the beginning of March this year:
Sahra Wagenknecht wrote: "Putin's main demands for the end of the war are apparently demilitarization & neutrality of #Ukraine.
It would be a serious mistake if dt. & fr.
Government would not support talks to stop escalation & bloodshed on this basis"
Max Otte wrote: »Putin's main demands seem to be strict neutrality and demilitarization of #Ukraine.
It remains an illegitimate war of aggression, but it would be a grave mistake not to conduct negotiations on that basis.”
It doesn't even have to be a cross-front conspiracy, even though it may seem like it, because in fact ideology often looks like some kind of conspiracy from the outside.
And the basis of the pro-Putin ideology is the willingness to ignore reality.
Sahra Wagenknecht recently proved this with another tweet in which she wrote, ignoring all reality, that it was a "crazy war against Russia".
It is no coincidence that Wagenknecht has previously attracted attention with statements that are skeptical about vaccination and fishing for lateral thinkers and is conspicuously celebrated by right-wing, AfD and lateral thinker-related accounts.
The radicalization of lateral thinkers, which goes hand in hand with violent actions, is not only related to mixing with the right-wing scene.
It is also the result of targeted propaganda by a fascist terrorist state that wants to destroy and annihilate not only Ukraine, but also the EU.
Because Putin's Russia is now exactly that.
