Putin and the Daily Stormer Are Going To Hack The German Elections

[maz]

I am not sure whether or not Prime Minister Merkel is going to lose the election, but Der Speigel are trying to blame the usual suspects in advance just in case.

Alt-right memes, Russian bots, Kremlin controlled internet propaganda and retarded leftists is starting to look a helluva lot like like the 2016 US elections!

Right-Wing Activists Take Aim at German Election

Ahead of Germany's general election, an international alliance of extremist online activists is busy inciting on the internet. They're spreading hate, fake news and Kremlin propaganda in an effort to help the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany. By Konstantin von Hammerstein, Roman Höfner and Marcel Rosenbach

Sarah Rambatz became a target early last week. In the internet, right-wing agitators declared open season on the young woman from Hamburg. "What do we do with brainwashed traitors?" asked a user on KrautChan, a web platform popular among right-wing online activists. "Simply getting rid of her isn't acceptable in a civilized society. Or is it?"

The national spokesperson for the youth organization of the Left Party was hoping to become a member of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, but now her political career lies in ruins. She had asked on Facebook for "anti-German film recommendations." More specifically, she wrote: "Basically anything where Germans die." After the post went public, her campaign ended. She is no longer seeking a seat.

The screen shot of her tasteless Facebook post spread with lightning speed across social networks and a wave of hatred broke over the young woman, who was attacked with lines like: "This whore deserves to be screwed to death and dismembered." On Wednesday, Rambatz told the Hamburg's Morgenpost newspaper she was at wit's end. "For several days, I have been in close contact with the police and other government security officials," she told the paper. "My family and I are getting death threats."

But what may seem like a spontaneous wave of online outrage is actually being controlled by right-wing activists seeking to manipulate the German federal election. Rambatz's ill-advised post was just the moment they were waiting for. Since Tuesday of last week, it has been repeatedly posted in chatrooms belonging to the right-wing extremist activist group Reconquista Germanica, with notes like, "This photo should absolutely be spread further."

The group organizes itself along strict military lines and, in addition to its YouTube channel with 33,000 subscribers, it has recently found another home: the chat app Discord. In this command center for anonymous disinformation, the self-proclaimed "officers," "privates" and "recruits" get their "daily orders." In this way, they tried in this way to spread the hashtag #verraeterduell (traitor debate) on Twitter during the Sept. 3 televised debate between Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democratic challenger Martin Schulz. Their own firepower, the members boast, is so powerful that they even managed to get a "patriotic video" to become one of the most-clicked videos on YouTube in Germany.

'Blitzkrieg Against the Old Parties!'

In the chatrooms of Reconquista Germanica, a "czar emperor" bloviates about "slaughtering" members of the Green Party and of storming DER SPIEGEL's editorial offices with a hundred men. Many people on the boards write that they have finally found a "forum for like-minded people" and that the "stasis of the patriotic movement" has been overcome. Now, they argue, they can go on the offensive: "Blitzkrieg against the old parties!"

Disinformation and Hateful Memes

Instead, right-wing extremist online activists are trying to influence the vote. They are conducting a hybrid war, with disinformation, fake news, hateful memes and bots, automated accounts that spread their message across the internet. Their aim is clear: to "ensure the strongest possible showing for the AfD in the Bundestag," reads the declaration from Reconquista Germania which, on this point at least, is speaking for a number of right-wing groups.

They are connected through an informal network that also includes contacts abroad. They maintain ties with other European nationalists and leaders in America's extremist "alt-right" movement. Moscow influences may also be at play given that right-wing extremists' channels also disseminate unfiltered Russian state propaganda.

During the U.S. election, Russian channels maintained contact to the racists of the "alt-right." It appears that an international alliance of right-wing radicalism is at work, a global network of nationalists, racists, xenophobes and homophobes.

Simon Hegelich, an associate professor for political data science at the Bavarian School of Policy in Munich, is a specialist in disinformation and its dissemination. Last year, the researcher presented a study about social bots in Berlin. One notable listener was Chancellor Merkel, who has since adopted "bot" into her vocabulary and warns of the dangers posed by these automated accounts.[/size]

These are only some snippets so I recommend that you go read the whole article to grasp the totality of the stupidity!

[maz]

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