The media portal AUF1 describes itself as “alternative, independent television, Kanal 1” (the name is made up of the first few letters). If you look at what’s going on under “news” on the online platform, you’ll hear a lot about “the corona lie”, about “system media” and the “great reset” – in other words, what conspiracy supporters describe as the infiltration of society by the global financial elite. Accordingly, the study by a green foundation on anti-democratic media is “surveillance” and “censorship project” at the same time. The “corona pandemic hoax” can be proven, for example, using PCR tests that make healthy people without symptoms believe that they are sick. And in the Ukraine war, “left-wing ideologues” want to “burn others up” – these “ideologues” are therefore those “loudmouths and loudmouths” who up to now “generally disparaged our ancestors, who fought for their country, as ‘murderers'” and ” cheered for softened, metrosexual cotton-wool men and transvestites” instead.
The online platform, which originated in Upper Austria, is managed by right-wing corona denier Stefan Magnet. Magnet is the owner of a right-wing advertising agency that has already received orders from the state government in Linz, and he has been associated with neo-Nazi circles. That Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (DÖW) calls him a “relevant head of the extreme right”. Magnet now wants to expand in Germany with AUF1, which is distributed via YouTube and Telegram as well as the local broadcaster RTV. Like AUF1, RTV cooperates with Info-Direkt, a Russia-friendly “magazine for patriots” close to the FPÖ.
Criteria such as journalistic due diligence or objectivity are hardly enforceable in internet-based media
So soon there will be a permanent editorial office in Berlin, which in turn will be headed by Martin Müller-Mertens. He was previously TV boss of the right-wing extremist magazine “Compact”. In an interview that Magnet shows with Müller-Mertens, it is announced that the “focus of reporting is increasingly shifting to Germany” and that they want to give a voice to those who are “cut away” by the established media. But that’s just the beginning, “we still have big plans,” says Magnet. There is more and more resistance to the “Corona dictatorship,” adds Müller-Mertens, and they want to provide these people with “free” information.
Cameras from AUF1, the the time “as a joint project of the extreme right and the lateral thinker scene“, can be seen again and again in Berlin. A propaganda mobile for corona deniers, incorrectly called “vaccination bus”, is mainly on the road in northern Germany. Media experts suspect that the financing for the project – after the ban on the Moscow propaganda station RT, the comparable had distributed program content – could also come from Russian sources.
In Austria, the media authority Komm Austria examined the programs of AUF1.at and RTV. When asked by the authorities, it is said that AUF1 is not formally a TV station, even if it calls itself that, but an “on-demand service”, so there is no legal recourse. As is well known, criteria such as journalistic duty of care or objectivity are hardly enforceable in Internet-based media.