A German politician has been filmed taking large sums of cash from a Kremlin-supporting broadcaster, Czech intelligence has claimed.

Petr Bystron, who is standing for Alternative for Germany (AfD) at European parliamentary elections in June, allegedly received €20,000 (£17,000) in cash from the manager of a Russian propaganda network while sitting in a parked car, recordings indicate.

Mr Bystron, who also sits on the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, has previously denied allegations of taking Russian money as a “defamation campaign”.

The Security Information Service (BIS), the Czech Republic’s domestic intelligence agency, now says Mr Bystron met with Artem Marchevsky, who allegedly managed a Kremlin-backed propaganda front called Voice of Europe, at least three times in the past six months.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Some user at a .ml community the other day was mocking the idea that Russia was trying to destabilize Europe, comparing someone else’s depiction of Russia as if it was an EU4 country. This is another piece of evidence that Russia has been financing far right politicians, parties and think tanks in several countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

    • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Despite being on .ml, there’s a real issue with Tankies here. They hate the USA which…like fair enough, not exactly a paragon of virtue them. But then they go waaaay the other way and think China and Russia are utopian meritocracies, it’s fucking bizarre.

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals. A lot of them had a genuine, valid concern with a capitalist society that was screwing them over, turned that into an identity, and ended up in echo chambers where that fallacy wouldn’t be called out. It’s difficult to get them out of there because they feel like they have to defend their identity and their social group, so in the rare cases where they meet someone who does understand and share their valid anti-capitalist positions but is capable of reasonably calling out their campist bullshit, they immediately jump to think it’s just “another lib” and refuse to engage.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals.

          Which is why I’m very proud of the World News community not to let the justifiable Israel hate go overboard into Hamas support. Most, if not all, of us appear to be smarter than that and know that the Palestinian people are who need to be supported.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yeah, the Hamas support is weird. Hamas isn’t a popular front or anything, they’re also fucking over the Palestinian people. They took power and stopped holding elections many years ago.

            The people I want to succeed are the Israeli and Palestinian people seeking to build a positive peace and a constructive cohabitation. That’s the anti Zionism I was sold on. And yes the first step is for Israel to stop massacring civilians.

            • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              And yes the first step is for Israel to stop massacring civilians.

              That sounds like the second step to me. As long as conservatives hold power in Israel, the horror will never stop.

              • DdCno1@kbin.social
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                7 months ago

                They are relying entirely on numbers provided by Hamas. There is no independent third party counting casualties in the strip.

                • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  7 months ago

                  Conflating the Gaza Ministry of Health with Hamas is a very common propaganda tactic. The truth is that they operate under the de-facto government of Gaza, which is Hamas, but they don’t work for them as in pushing their agenda. Your statement of the numbers being “provided by Hamas” is entirely false tho.

                  The numbers they provided in the past passed verification by third party investigations (Examples: 2014 war comparison with B’Tselem and analysis of the current war’s numbers by The Lancet) and are considered to be reliable. During an active war, independent verification is pretty much impossible tho.

                  • DdCno1@kbin.social
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                    7 months ago

                    It’s fine to admit that we simply don’t know until the war is over. Only then can a true count be possible, without terrorists interfering.

        • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          That tracks. Though I’d say it’s often less “refuse to engage” and more “refuse to engage in good faith”. They definitely engage enough to yell things with fingers in their ears.

    • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Turns out Russia sucks pretty bad at real war but they’ve been excelling at these shadow ops for quite some time. The fact that they’ve bought so many plants in the US government is a sign of the success they’ve had.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      There is a strong argument that Brexit was the result of Russian influence.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        He is their dictator. When people say the name of a country they generally refer to their government. For example: Iran is violently misogynistic. The Iranian women who riot against the government’s misogyny are not, I’ve met multiple militantly feminist Iranians in fact. But people understand what I mean when I say that Iran is misogynistic.

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        I think it’s easy to read between lines that I mean the Russian government, currently led by Putin, rather than personally accusing all Russians of being assholes.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Yes, he would. Kinda the whole point of 2020 carnaval on tree stumps.

      • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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        7 months ago

        And Hitler was not Nazi Germany? Believe it or not, but Putin is not the sole doer of all of Russia. There are a lot of people directly and indirectly involved in all of this shit and even more so are complicit by inaction. Many Germans knew what the Nazis did to the Jews and “traitors”, but they still kept their mouth shut, ratted out their friends and neighbors, or had positions directly involved with the Nazis, so that they themselves could continue living a comfy life while others suffered and died by their own country. No, Putin is not Russia. But Russia still has a collective responsibility, and with that guilt, painting all of their hands in blood. And this type of debt will not be forgotten until a certain price has been paid.