Kremlin view among lateral thinkers
Corona deniers defend Putin’s war
By Sebastian Schneider
03/14/2022 10:32 am
For two years, “lateral thinkers” have been spreading false Covid reports online, now Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war is being shared in the Telegram channels. The Russian media laid the foundation for this support for Putin even during the pandemic.
The corona pandemic is far from over, the incidence in Germany is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, corona deniers are discovering the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine as an issue. in one Analysis paper makes the Amadeu Antonio Foundation several examples of how right-wing extremists and above all corona deniers support the “information war” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and partially take over the Kremlin propaganda. For example, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is described as a criminal in a Telegram channel.
There are different narratives that are used equally by right-wingers and corona deniers. According to the analysis, some also see in the Russian war of aggression what they suspected behind the corona pandemic: a Jewish world conspiracy. The conspiracy ideologist Bodo Schiffmann is said to have speculated, for example, that the war is now replacing the corona pandemic in concealing an alleged “Great Reset”. The “Great Reset” is about a supposed secret reorganization of the world, usually associated with anti-Semitic clichés.
Foundation was created in pandemic
Now it was also Schiffmann who has gathered corona deniers in his Telegram channel for the past year and a half. A few days ago he streamed the program of the Russian state broadcaster RT DE there, as the expert on conspiracy stories, Joseph Holnburger, determined by the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMas). In the past few days, RT DE’s Telegram channel has gained a lot of subscribers as a result. He is now blocked. Other pro-Russian channels have also expanded their reach.
A short study by the German government shows that corona deniers in German-speaking countries are apparently susceptible to Russian propaganda Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). She examined 50 Facebook groups that have already attracted attention in the past two years for denying the pandemic. From the beginning of the Russian troop deployment on the Ukrainian border in November 2021 until shortly after the invasion, the researchers examined over 225,000 posts. Although only a little more than three percent of the posts were about Ukraine, when Russia’s war of aggression was discussed, the Russian state broadcaster RT DE was the most shared medium.
This is not without reason: In the past two years, Russian media in particular have repeatedly proved their worth in these circles with false information about health issues, migration, the media and democratic institutions, write the ISD researchers. All of this has meant that such corona denier groups are now particularly open to the Kremlin-friendly propaganda and its arguments.
The affinity to Russian state media is also reflected in the ten largest Telegram channels in Germany. In a CeMas analysis writes expert Jan Rathje that the majority of the channels have recently expressed themselves pro-Russian. In terms of content, the channels primarily apologize for Putin’s actions and adopt the Kremlin’s arguments. So dive there too claim that has been refuted several times on, US laboratories would develop bioweapons in Ukraine.
No agreement among corona deniers
Nevertheless, there is by no means unity even among corona deniers. According to Rathje, an expert on conspiracy ideologies, not all of the ten Telegram channels with the widest reach have positioned themselves in line with Kremlin propaganda. One who deviates from this is the controversial journalist Boris Reitschuster. This is no surprise for Rathje. Reitschuster was a correspondent in Moscow for six years around the turn of the millennium and himself wrote books critical of Putin. But his views apparently cost him some of his 300,000 followers: “Within the comments on his own channel, but also from other conspiracy ideological channels, he was and is sometimes openly attacked,” Rathje observes.
The analysis by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation also recognizes other perspectives on Putin’s war in Ukraine among corona deniers. So it arouses mistrust that Corona is no longer a topic in the headlines. One narrative in conspiracy circles is that war is trying to distract from the pandemic. The right-wing extremist “Compact-Magazine” wrote, for example, that an alleged “corona narrative” was about to collapse and that a new one was therefore being built: namely that of a third world war, the paper says.
The EU has meanwhile made attempts to withdraw influence from Russian state media. It has been banned from being distributed in the EU since the beginning of March. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wants to go one step further. Speaking to the European Parliament last week, he announced that he would propose a new mechanism “that will allow us to sanction these malicious disinformation actors.” Borrell left it open how this mechanism might look like. He also did not say when punitive measures could come. Perpetrators of misinformation could be punished, for example, with their assets in the EU being frozen or with being banned from entering the EU.