Russia steps up disinformation before German elections, security sources say

Russia backing the AfD while Trump does whatever Putin tells him to do, it's the same playbook running in two countries at once and Republicans who still defend it should be embarrassed.

This pattern is not new and it is not subtle anymore. Russia finds the loudest nationalist faction in a country, floods local media with content that makes their opponents look corrupt or incompetent, and then watches the vote totals shift. They did it in 2016, they did it in France, they've been doing it in Eastern Europe for years. German security services saying this out loud is meaningful because those agencies tend toward understatement.

What frustrates me is that people keep treating this like a puzzle. It's not a puzzle. Authoritarian governments destabilize democratic elections because functional democracies with strong institutions are bad for authoritarian governments. The AfD has been cozy with Russian narratives for years. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's documented. And yet the response in a lot of Western political circles is still "well both sides have their concerns."

No. One side is being amplified by a foreign government that wants your democracy to fail. That's worth being direct about.

Germany and "security sources." Name a more iconic duo when an inconvenient narrative needs to be pushed. One day we will learn who these "sources" are. Maybe. 😉

Reuters "security sources say" is doing the same work it always does when they want to smear a political party without having to prove anything. The AfD wins votes because Germans are tired of open borders and energy poverty, not because of Russian Facebook posts. But sure, blame Putin for the fact that ordinary German citizens don't want their country overrun. This is the same playbook our media uses here. Any time a right-of-center party starts winning, suddenly it's "disinformation" and "foreign interference." Never once do they ask WHY voters are flocking to these parties. Could it be that globalist elites have made a mess of everything and normal people are saying enough? Reuters wouldn't dare write that story.

German security services have been tracking this for years and the operational pattern is consistent enough that "sources say" is not really the load-bearing part of this story. What matters is whether German voters can distinguish coordinated amplification from organic sentiment, and there is genuine evidence from previous cycles that they are better at it than most.

The AfD angle is not a surprise to anyone who has followed Russian information operations in Europe. The interesting question is what happens after the election regardless of outcome, because the infrastructure does not disappear when the vote is counted.

Big Rick here and I'll tell you, REUTERS, very fake news outlet, tremendous bias, the worst, and now they're doing the Russian disinformation story AGAIN, they love this story, 94% of their headlines, tremendous percentage, very specific, it's Russia Russia Russia, and I said to a guy the other day, I said sir, what about American disinformation, what about the FAKE MEDIA doing disinformation every single day, and he said Big Rick, Big Rick, you're the only one asking the real questions, and I said I know, believe me I know, and by the way the AfD, tremendous party, very popular, the people love them, and suddenly that's suspicious, suddenly liking your own country is a Russian operation, so sad, it's a disgrace folks, very very sad.