Anne Applebaum: The America Europe needs right now is missing (WaPo) {Russian election interference}
By Anne Applebaum | The Washington Post
· January 12, 2018
No one has yet nailed down who really runs them or funds them, although Czech journalists have spent years trying. That hasn’t stopped the 30-odd “pro-Russian” websites in the Czech Republic from churning out a daily diet of conspiracy theory, slander, invented scandals about nonexistent Muslim migrants and attacks on the United States, NATO and the European Union — as well as praise for Russia and for the pro-Russian Czech president, Milos Zeman.
It doesn’t sound like much, but in a small country with a tiny advertising market and weak “mainstream” media, these websites have come to be a real force. A solid quarter of the Czech public not only reads and believes the pro- Russian “alternative” sites but also has come to rely on them as its main source of news. Over time, the constant drip-drip of false stories and scurrilous claims has helped shape public debate in this central European country, once a pillar of transatlantic solidarity — so much so that support for NATO has dropped below 50 percent, and support for the E.U. is even lower.
Their invented stories — of the main opposition candidate’s (nonexistent) links to the secret police; of secret U.S. funding for anti-Zeman protesters — also form the backdrop to the Czech presidential election, the first round of which will begin Friday. Although nothing can be excluded - the last Czech presidential election was partly swung by a false, last-minute claim that Zeman’s opponent had Nazi links — no sensations are expected, and analysts may well conclude that there was “no Russian intervention” in the election, just as they concluded that there was “no Russian intervention” in the German election in September.
But that’s partly because Czech politics, like German politics, are already shaped by Russian intervention in myriad ways. From the conspiratorial press with its secret sources of funding to the more open links between the Czech president’s office and Lukoil, a Russian company, the entire landscape has been deformed. Sensational leaks or hacked material aren’t necessary when a part of the public is already hooked on Russian-inspired disinformation and a part of the state is already linked to Russia through financial ties.
This form of permanent, low-level distortion is the real topic of the dense, 200-page report titled “Putin’s Assymetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe,” issued this week by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As it happens, there isn’t a section on the Czech Republic, but there are chapters on France, Germany and Britain, as well as Hungary, Bulgaria, the Baltic states and more. Most of the material is not new — the footnotes lead to published material or open hearings — but the cumulative effect is striking.
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more: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2018/01/12/anne-applebaum-the-america-europe-needs-right-now-is-missing/
Milos Zeman was just re-elected.
