Soros-sponsored report says Q movement promoted anti-democratic ideas in Bavarian elections
The name of this report is The Battle for Bavaria: Online information in the 2018 Bavarian State Election. It was generated by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and is referenced either explicitly or implicitely in 3 hit pieces on Q group published in the last two weeks:
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German neofascists used Qanon to expand their reach (no author)
https://boingboing.net/2019/02/24/afd-and-qanon.html Feb. 24
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How fringe groups are using QAnon to amplify their wild messages by Kelly Weill
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages Feb. 20
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Stop the online conspiracy theorists before they break democracy
by Julia Ebner
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/18/online-conspiracy-theorists-democracy
All three articles refer to the influence of Q in recent German elections. It seems that some Germananons have been promoting the populist AfD party, which supports nationalism. No surprise, then, that the report is funded by the Open Society Foundation.
The report purports to explain how Bavaria has become so "extreme" (i.e., resistant to) the recent flood of immigrants into Germany. The authors need a villain to blame it on. Enter Q group.
In a nutshell, the report says the recent elections were influenced by "malign" social media campaigns. ISD "investigated" and generated this Soros-sponsored report. Cutting right to the chase, the term "QAnon" turns up twenty five times in this 54-report. Always in the context of pushing a "far-right" and potentially violent agenda. Salient passages:
We came across new international far-right networks that are active in Germany, promoting the far-rightโs political and cultural agenda and attacking the AfDโs political opponents. The US-based conspiracy network QAnon has emboldened a German version, linking violent and anti-democratic conspiracy theories across the Atlantic.
The German Discord group QDeutschland,which is part of the international conspiracy theory community QAnon, spread disinformation on social media and image boards linking the global conspiracy theory to the German context, and discouraged users from voting.
Videos promoting the (populist, conservative) AfD "did not contain direct calls for violence or support for violence, but the comment sections below such videos hosted explicit examples of hate speech and even contained threats of physical harm." [I guess nobody explained shitposting to these researchers.]
These efforts are increasingly endorsing political parties and non-state groups that share an aim to promote populist right-wing and far-right world views.'
Well, we can't have that, can we? So the authors ultimately recommend government action: legislation on a raft of issues relating to disinformation, hate speech and extremist content. Good old-fashioned censorship.
[The report is not without its uses. Readers can, e.g., learn to say "Due to you faggot I'm voting AfD" in German. Aside from that, it's the usual propaganda masquarading as research (no Methods or Results sections; just lots of Conclusions and Recommendations).
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