DISINFORMATION

The specter of fascism in the EU and vaccine skepticism. Disinformation actors return to tried and tested tactics

Infosecurity.sk provides an overview of disinformation trends that have been on the rise in the last two weeks:

• The call by the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs for European leaders not to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow was used by the disinformation scene to further glorify the USSR. There were also highly manipulative accusations that the West is rewriting history and establishing totalitarianism as in 1939. The fascist European Union (EU) is said to be primarily responsible for this.
• The death of Pope Francis also fit into some of these narratives. Disinformation actors selected aspects of his life that suited their agenda. For some, he was a peacemaker who stood up to the "barking" NATO, while for others, he was a supporter of the international globalist elite that rules the world.
• Thanks to a government-backed investigation into the management and administration of resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination narratives are also back in circulation. Some of these are legitimized by the prime minister, Fico, who continues to question the safety of vaccines.

Red Square is calling

We are only a few days away from Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. Narratives about WW2 are becoming increasingly prevalent. At the beginning of the monitoring period, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs stirred up the disinformation waters when she called on European leaders not to attend the celebrations in Red Square. She gave a perfectly understandable reason for this, namely that Russia is waging an aggressive war on European soil.

As expected, this statement was met with criticism, particularly from Robert Fico, who had already confirmed his participation in November 2024. Immediately after the celebrations of the liberation of Bratislava by the Red Army, which we reported on in our previous report, the Slovak PM published a post in which he called Kallas' statement blackmail. He compared the situation to 1939. In the post, he also sent a message to the high representative that he would go to Moscow to pay tribute to the soldiers of the Red Army and that he was not in favor of continuing the "senseless war" in Ukraine. It is questionable whether Fico will communicate this to the Russian side, which started the war with its aggression, or whether he will continue with the fable of a bloodthirsty West.

Ľuboš Blaha has also taken his Russophile fantasies to the next level. In his post on Telegram, the MEP and deputy chairman of SMER-SD once again returned to accusations that the West (or, let's freely insert the EU, NATO, the US, the opposition, the media, or sunshine activists) is trying to rewrite history. He claims that calling on politicians not to go to the capital of the current aggressor to celebrate the victory over fascism could be seen as "open support for fascism". In his post, he talks about "Russian liberators", forgetting about other nations in the Red Army. He fabricates claims that if "an order came from Berlin today to put Russians in cattle cars, those who are organizing anti-government protests today would be the first to send Russians to their deaths." So what is Blaha doing? He deflects any criticism of Russian aggression as attempts at historical revisionism. He adds labeling and creates enemies in society. He equates German Nazi history with the legacy of the West. Is this worthy of a MEP?

Kaja Kallas was also attacked by Pavol Slota from the DOMOV - National Party, who is known for combining the incompatible in his disinformation messages. In addition to calling her an "unelected Brussels fascist," he said that the senior EU official is "dark proof that in 1945, the axis of evil was defeated on the battlefield, but its pernicious and deadly ideologies were not eradicated." In Ukraine, there was supposed to be a "resurgence of Nazism and fascism, and the sick, pernicious ideology of Banderism has now begun to spread like a poisonous fog in Slovakia and the EU." Although the post is toxic and dangerous in its rhetoric, it offers valuable insight into how some disinformers operate — they are quick to label anything they dislike as fascist. The only question that remains is whether they are consciously following this model of Soviet propaganda or not.

Part of the disinformation scene also exploited the death of Pope Francis for its own purposes. Everyone picked and chose from the pope's life what suited their pre-established narrative. For Ľuboš Blaha, he was a pope of peace who said in 2022 that Russian aggression could have been provoked by NATO's barking. Blaha naturally failed to mention that the pope condemned Russian aggression and the cruelty of Russian soldiers.

Eduard Chmelár, the former advisor to the Prime Minister Fico, on the other hand, took issue with reports that appeared immediately after the pope's death, claiming that Pope Francis had paid for three military drones for Ukraine out of his own pocket in 2023. It is a fact that this information is unconfirmed, but Chmelár immediately labeled it a lie without any evidence. Chmelár described the media's coverage of this report as "the most disgusting misuse of Pope Francis' legacy, a malicious attempt to discredit his passionate and significant peace efforts." We leave it to the reader to decide whether Chmelár misused the Pope's message to take a jab at the mainstream media, which he has been fighting against for a long time.

Last but not least, Miroslav Heredoš also spoke out, accusing the pope in his post of calling for "vaccination with a dubious genetic mRNA vaccine." The topic of vaccines has been popular in recent weeks, and we will discuss it further below in this article. It is no coincidence that Heredoš linked this topic to the narrative that the pope was supposed to have signed up to global moral decline or be a "supporter of the international 'operation' of the elites, namely migration to Europe, whose globalist goal is to devastate the European population." This can probably be considered as the standard repertoire of someone who ran for the far-right Republika party in the past and gained popularity by spreading hoaxes about pandemic totalitarianism.

The European Union's totalitarian dictatorship

After weeks of the EU being public enemy number one on the disinformation scene, we took a look at the "Brussels bogeyman" using the Gerulata Juno analytical tool. We used it to analyze the most popular posts on Slovak Facebook that contained the keywords "EU," "European Union," or "Brussels." We excluded posts that did not contain problematic narratives from the list. We then evaluated the posts based on the total number of interactions (the sum of all reactions, comments, and shares).

The post with the highest number of interactions belongs to Robert Fico. We have already mentioned the PM's post above in connection with the wave of outrage on the pro-Russian side of the information environment caused by Kaja Kallas' statement on the May Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. In addition to strong rhetoric about sovereignty and flattering words about the historical legacy of the USSR, Fico did not shy away from verbal attacks on the EU, which the high representative naturally represents. After comparing the present to the totalitarian year of 1939, the PM continued with his usual manipulative narratives about the evil EU, which he claims suffers from a democratic deficit, and fairy tales about the presidential elections in Romania. This time, he added the French elections to the mix – Fico probably does not like the outcome of the corruption case involving Marine Le Pen, who was banned from running for office by a court after embezzling European funds. No wonder, since she is, among other things, a distant comrade-in-arms for the SMER-SD chairman on the front where the potential of Russian influence and hybrid warfare is deliberately underestimated. Needless to say, there were also references to the West, which is allegedly orchestrating Maidan-style protests in Georgia and Serbia. And we probably don't need to explain why these statements are problematic coming from the Slovak prime minister.

In the second post, published by Milan Mazurek, the MEP from the far-right Republika movement returns to his favorite narrative about the filth and decline of Brussels. This time, he refers to an article published in Politico. The article does indeed describe the challenges facing the Belgian capital, from rubbish and drugs to violence. However, the main problem is that there is no one to solve this situation. Nine months after the elections, Brussels still has no government. So what is the problem with Mazurek's post? The MEP has cherry-picked issues from the article that fit his narrative – but he does not link garbage, the poor financial situation, and violence to administrative paralysis, but rather to the presence of progressivism and liberalism. These, he claims, are a recipe for disaster. Why, you ask? Mazurek offers a (grossly) simplistic but misleading answer: the decadence of the West and the controlled influx of illegal migrants. This is supposedly the "true face of modern multicultural Europe." Not only does the MEP wrongly portray the municipal situation as an EU problem, but he also offers his audience the article as confirmation that liberals are admitting their failure. It is questionable how many of his fans will actually find the article, open it, and realize that Mazurek is taking things out of context. We are pessimistic in our response.

The third post was published by Ľuboš Hrica. He is a well-known figure on the Slovak disinformation scene (a so-called disinfluencer), who has long been appealing to his audience primarily with pro-Russian narratives. In his amateurishly filmed video, Hrica followed the example of the Slovak PM in responding to Kaja Kallas' comments. According to Hrica, she was appointed EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs because of her hatred of Russia. The disinformer continued with a vastly simplified history lesson about World War II, during which he labeled Kallas' Estonian family as Nazis. Hrica did not shy away from attacking the EU, which he claims is trying to push a narrative that forgets Germany's Nazi past and claims that Europe was liberated solely by the US. It is difficult to determine how Hrica arrived at this conviction, which he continues to spread manipulatively among his audience (the video had 145,000 views at the time of writing). However, one could guess that criticism of Russia, if you have an irrational fondness for it, is difficult to accept. This can result in hallucinations about the European Parliament, which is supposedly "dictating under the guise of democracy what the leader of a sovereign country can or cannot do."

The next post was published by Judita Laššáková. After a long stint in the Slovak disinformation ecosystem, she made it onto the SMER-SD list of candidates for the European Parliament in 2024 and now proudly represents Slovak interests in Brussels. That is, if Slovakia's interests were to be closer ties with Russia and eventually leaving the EU. In her video, Laššáková defends herself against recent claims that she openly talks about the possibility of Slovakia's withdrawal from the EU in her lectures. A short excerpt from Laššáková's lecture was also published by MEP Ľudovít Ódor (Progressive Slovakia). In it, she says that "if we want to leave, we must first understand how the European Union works in order to be able to negotiate what we want when we leave." According to available evidence, the MEP explains the principles of how the Union works as a prerequisite for us to be able to negotiate the country's withdrawal from the European community. Laššáková chose a fairly predictable tactic in her defense, accusing the media and the opposition of manipulation and deliberately editing the video. She also called them fascists. Apparently, it's enough that they lie. Paradoxically, this is coming from someone who quite openly collaborates with neo-Nazi Daniel Bombic. She thanked Eduard Chmelár, another pro-Kremlin but less successful politician, for his public expression of support. In other words, she cast herself as a victim who has long faced unjust oppression by the mainstream. At least, that is how the MEP chooses to describe the falsehoods she has been spouting for several years as a self-appointed fighter against pandemic tyranny.

The last post in the series was published by Marek Géci. The former tennis player and current member of the far-right Republika party presents his audience with a Russian medicine called Afotid, which, "according to available information, can cure cancer in all stages." The problem is that there is very little information available, and it comes exclusively from Russian or dubious sources. However, this has not prevented Géci from playing on the hopes and fears of his fans. According to the unsuccessful politician, the EU could prevent lives from being saved, as it is questionable whether it will allow such a drug onto our market. After the experience with the Sputnik V vaccine, about which there was more information, we would guess that Brussels will put a stop to this unknown drug (if it actually exists). And that's a good thing. But not for everyone – just look at the comments below the post, which talk about a fascist EU and the conspiratorial interests of chemotherapy pharmaceutical companies. Did the post serve its purpose?

Vaccines and assassination attempt. Any conspiracy theories?

On the domestic scene, Slovakia has lived up to its reputation as a gold mine of conspiracy theories. The focus has returned to vaccines, but also to the assassination attempt on the PM that took place almost a year ago. PM Fico is once again at the forefront of the gradually revitalized anti-vax rhetoric.

What is particularly tragic is that Fico is taking up these problematic narratives mainly from Peter Kotlár, who is now the government's representative for reviewing the process of resource management during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Kotlár is a sports doctor and orthopedist, not an epidemiologist. On the contrary, he has a reputation as someone who has made a name for himself during the pandemic as one of the leading figures in the conspiracy scene. In recent weeks, he has been terrorizing the Slovak public with press conferences at which he presents the chaotic results of his investigation and calls for an end to vaccination. These results are based on dubious sources and inconsistent research.

Fico is continuously adding legitimacy to the alarmist reports of this self-proclaimed epidemiologist. He talks about the need to inform the public about the serious conclusions of expert reports and calls for the creation of commissions for further investigation. He does not shy away from directly questioning the safety of vaccines. Let us recall that anti-vaccine rhetoric was key to Fico's political revitalization during the pandemic. The uncertainty of the pandemic situation offered him a second chance, so to speak, this time in the role of disinformer and conspirator, which he continues to play to this day, either out of conviction or pragmatism (hard to say).

This report on the disinformation scene would not be complete without mentioning the leader of the far-right Republika party. Milan Uhrík, accompanied by his party colleague Mazurek, appeared in a video calling for the rejection of the WHO pandemic treaty. The reason? The so-called corona-terror and anti-pandemic measures, which have probably saved thousands of lives. Paradoxically, and quite amusingly, both MEPs accuse Robert Fico's current government of concealing its position on the new WHO treaty. At least in front of the cameras, they are communicating their fears of further persecution to their audience. Yes, that is how they continue to refer to checks on whether the population is complying with anti-pandemic measures. And the conclusion? According to MEPs, there has been enough of the "pandemic and the games of globalist corporations." That's great, but it doesn't bring anything constructive to the table.

The same is true of György Gyimesi, who returned to the topic of the assassination attempt on PM Robert Fico in his post. The attack took place on May 15, 2024, and part of the political disinformation scene is still trying to capitalize on it. The member of the Hungarian Alliance-Szövetség party focused specifically on a video of the assassin being interrogated, which was leaked to the public shortly after the attempt. The video was probably leaked by a member of the police force. Gyimesi does not accept criticism from the media and the opposition, who condemn the leak and are calling for an investigation. According to Gyimesi, it is only thanks to a "brave police officer that we learned the identity of the assassin and the reasons for the shooting. It is only thanks to him that the progressive media finds it more difficult to manipulate public opinion in connection with the assassination and that aggressive opposition politicians are being absolved of responsibility."

Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok (Hlas-SD) also returned to stirring up passions, trying to calm the public immediately after the assassination attempt with warnings of civil war. He chose equally high-quality rhetoric befitting a minister in his recent video, in which he talks about the assassin being fanaticized by the opposition and hateful media. In doing so, he returned to a narrative he has been working with for a long time — that hate speech was spread in the streets (during protests) and through progressive media. With words such as "hatred, lies, manipulation," he tries to label the so-called frustrated opposition, but instead reveals his own daily modus operandi.

Project Infosecurity.sk organized by Adapt Institute, which is supported by the Prague office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, continuously monitors the activities of both Slovak and foreign disinformation actors, but focuses mainly on the former. The project activities are built upon daily monitoring of emerging disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories in the online information space. This approach allows the analysts to identify disinformation posts and narratives that resonated with the public the most, as well as to find out where they originated, and how they spread and evolved on social media. The report takes the form of a bi-weekly summary of arising trends in the spread of malicious information content online. Based on that, Infosecurity.sk can inform the public about emerging and current trends in the field of disinformation, manipulation, and propaganda.