cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/europe@feddit.org/t/318601
If a social media account is spreading Russian disinformation - does sharing content from the account give it legitimacy?
No, says Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Minister for Civil Defence. But at the authority the minister is responsible for, the answer sounds different.
— In any case, you spread something that a foreign power might intend to spread to make us worried, says Mikael Östlund, press officer at the authority.
It was a year ago that Carl-Oskar Bohlin shared a tweet from the American influencer Lauren Southern, known for her far-right advocacy. The original video warned of how AI is used in influence operations, something the minister forwarded to his around 45,000 followers. "The ability and height of the impact operations risk increasing avalanche-like with disruptive technology shifts," wrote Carl-Oskar Bohlin on X.
Now, an American indictment against two Russian government employees shows that the production company Tenet media, where Lauren Southern is employed, must have been secretly financed by the Russian news agency RT. A total of just over SEK 100 million is said to have been transferred from the Russian state employees to the American company. In turn, influencers would push specific issues—such as questioning support for Ukraine—to their millions of followers. On YouTube alone, the videos have received more than 16 million views.
In light of the American indictment, Carl-Oskar Bohlin has been criticized for not checking his sources better. But the Minister of Civil Defense lets the tweet stay on X.
"For the simple reason that it is difficult to misunderstand." writes Bohlin to DN.
"One should of course refrain from spreading harmful narratives from foreign powers. However, it is a somewhat strange indictment that my warning about deepfakes and doctored videos would in itself constitute Russian disinformation. With such a threshold, it will be difficult to talk about or warn about the phenomenon at all," continues the minister.
Carl-Oskar Bohlin is responsible for the agency for psychological defence, MPF. Countering misdirection and misinformation, including rumor spreading and propaganda, is one of the agency's main missions.
In case you wonder, mr. Bohlin is from the conservative party (Moderaterna).
What the heck is going on in Sweden? For the last few years, most of the news coming out of it seems pretty weird.
how long have you got?
tr;dr: we sowed 30 years ago, and we are currently reaping.
Conservatism and neoliberalism destroy yet another country for profit! Almost like there's a pattern...
Both the left and right wing (except the most radical right) parties in Sweden propagated mass immigration which is now such an enormous burden to deal with.
Yes, because of the non-existant integration. It started with Ebo-lagen in the 90's that allowed immigrants to settle where they wanted, leading to aforementioned issues.
Yeah they were so big on immigration that now a substantial part of the population doesnt speak swedish because they dont have enough money/teachers to teach them proper swedish. A lot of people speak miljonsvenska(kind of a mixed language between swedish, english, turkish, arabic, etc) or just speak their own language. This creates dense pockets of crimes. In stockholm for example you can live a few metro stops from rinkeby, a place where theres a lot of crime, but you dont notice it because it doesnt leak out. Of course everyone is starting to notice how bad it is because sometimes it spills out.
They elected a right-of-centre minority government which depends on the local neo-Nazi party (the “Sweden Democrats”) for votes and so panders to them. They’re halfway into their term, and polling suggests that it’ll be a 1-term government, with a left-of-centre coalition almost certainly taking over in 2026.
Sweden has slowly been going insane right wing (and the rest of Scandinavia too, but more slowly). They failed to treat the Nazis in their society seriously and have allowed racism and conspiracy theories about immigrants and such to fester.
The right is in this for the long haul, too. When Anders Breivik (aka Fjotolf Hansen) blew up a bunch of people, who did he target? He targeted a camp full of future political leaders. He wanted to kill the next generation.
Every modern society has Nazis in it but you can't have a modern, advanced, peaceful society if they get any power. You have to fight them and their bullshit wherever they appear.