I actually wonder if the anti-nuclear sentiment in the EU might have been partly Russia's doing, we know how much they like to influence other countries' public opinion. Getting Germany to turn off its nuclear reactors to rely more heavily on Russian gas before an invasion of Ukraine would make a lot of tactical sense.
The anti-nuclear sentiment isn't universal in the EU, France is strongly in favor of nuclear power, for example.
Germany is one of the more vocal opponents to nuclear power. Reliance on Russian gas started in the 70s, as part of the Ostpolitik. It was a deliberate decision during the cold war under the theory that trade partners don't wage wars.
The anti-nuclear stance started in the 70s as well (although a bit later) as part of the peace movement (building nukes is comparably easy when you have all the tech around as a byproduct of civilian use. See IAEA) and went in full force after Chernobyl blew up (in some parts of Germany wild mushrooms and boar are still contaminated today). It took until 2000 to bear fruits though because the Green party ("anti-nuclear" is their reason d'être) first came to federal power in 1998.
The peace movement leaned left and there has been some Russian influence in left circles but it seems unlikely that 1970's Russia ran a "abolish nuclear so you buy more gas" campaign. If there has been any anti-nuclear campaign on their part it was aiming to keep nuclear weapons out of West Germany (none of the above surfaced in East Germany).
The 2010/2011 detour in German politics (delaying the nuclear turn down by 14 years, then mostly re-reversing the decision after Fukushima) is just a minor side note in that (net effect: it delayed the exit by ~5 years).
I think that's veering deep into conspiracy theory territory. I know it's been normalized in the past few year but Russia isn't actually to blame for everything wrong in every country. Do they take advantage of the anti nuclear sentiment since they sell gas? Yes. But is there some massive russian psyops campaign to push that narrative? No. Russian intelligence services can't be incompetent as what happened in the UK seems to indicate and yet also be super sneaky all powerful, election/narrative/social media controlling masterminds at the same time.
They jumped on electronic warfare as a new type of weapon.
It costs practically nothing to get a huge effect if successful.
If I was a country with limited resources compared to the US , electronic warfare is getting massive funding because of the bang for the buck. There is no conspiracy theory, just common sense.
why is it that even in the face of evidence, people still give Russia so much benefit of the doubt? Putin has been playing chess since the early 2000s and is it so far fetched to think creating a dependence on its energy resources is definitely in his playbook at achieving its goal of attaining power and influence in the region?
I mean my god, have you not been paying attention to the migrant crisis, the funneling of Rosneft incentives to far-right political parties in Western Europe? It's all just a conspiracy to suggest these are successfully weakening the EU?
What? I'm not saying russia didn't pay off far right parties or whatever. The comment i was replying to was talking about anti nuclear sentiment. Changing public opinion to that extant would require a much much more involved process than just bribing a few officials.
It's not giving russia the benefit of the doubt, I'm just very doubtful that russian intelligence services are so competent while being much less well funded and having a lot less material reach than their american counterparts. Yet, it would be ludicrous to just assume that even the CIA could have the means to manipulate the public opinion so much that you'd get such a widespread anti nuclear sentiment in big country like germany, right? All of that without getting detected.
As of October 2019, around 15,000 Facebook pages with a majority US audience were being run out of Kosovo and Macedonia, known bad actors during the 2016 election.
Collectively, those troll-farm pages—which the report treats as a single page for comparison purposes—reached 140 million US users monthly and 360 million global users weekly. Walmart’s page reached the second-largest US audience at 100 million.
The troll farm pages also combined to form:
- the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times larger than the next largest—reaching 75 million US users monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
- the largest African-American page on Facebook, three times larger than the next largest—reaching 30 million US users monthly, 85% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
- the second-largest Native American page on Facebook, reaching 400,000 users monthly, 90% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
- the fifth-largest women’s page on Facebook, reaching 60 million US users monthly, 90% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
Anti-nuclear sentiment long preceded social media and has far more to do with visceral images coming from traditional media sources around events like Cherynobyl, 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, etc.
It makes no sense to blame anti-nuclear sentiment on Russia. The evidence just isn't there, they happen to heavily benefit from it but the anti-nuclear sentiment but are not the primary cause.
Didn't most of those kosovar/macedonian operated fake news farms turn out to be just random private citizens from those countries taking advantage of the situation instead of a massive Russian-run operation? If russia actually ran tons of pages and controlled the narrative we would've known by now using the same tools used to unmask the balkan troll farms. I'm sure some were intelligence operations but do we have proof that those really had any big influence on public discourse?
Unless you are saying that russia could do the same in the future, which I agree is possible but we would still ultimately end up knowning about it. The anti nuclear movement in europe is pretty grassroots and the fact is that we don't have any proof of substantial russian influence on that subject even if everyone is much more on the lookout (as your links indicate)
What are the odds that enough of them would spontaneously self organize in an unexpectedly coordinated attack, randomly located within the same region, in a long term persistent manner... just for fun?
Here in Germany many small independent journalists were able to discover the industrial figures regularly interacting/receiving gifts, trips, stock certificates from Rosneft executives and oligarchs who are essentially actors for Russian government.
but still people seem genuinely shocked and continue to fall back on their myopic cold war view of the geopolitical european landscape by their mainstream media (without any suspicion or question of the narrative) it seems largely the result of being separated by the Atlantic ocean and a bulk of European countries that the average American cannot name.
Already I can see people from Poland and EU countries furiously downvoting and flagging my comments as "Russian Propaganda"
None of this is a surprise to us here in Germany, our relationship with Russia might be shocking to someone sitting in front of FOX or ABC news.
Even more shocking might be how the German elite and the working class view the Ukraine situation. To them, Ukraine was a source of worry due to its cheap labor wages and proximity to Russia would create a competing industrial center.
Even more outrageous might be how many in Germany are actually in favor of Russia's actions to take Ukraine away from EU/NATO.
It's funny to me how people still think EU can last like this.
> Even more shocking might be how the German elite and the working class view the Ukraine situation. To them, Ukraine was a source of worry due to its cheap labor wages and proximity to Russia would create a competing industrial center.
> Even more outrageous might be how many in Germany are actually in favor of Russia's actions to take Ukraine away from EU/NATO.
Both of those are very strong claims. What are your sources?
Hey, i too am a german and can confirm, that ur comment about our politic view is completly wrong. Even former kanzlerin Angela Merkel said, that we need to stoo putin now. So please stop activly missinforming people
Still loads of Europeans dont trust the US. 3 months ago Russia wasn't that bad and I'd expect most Europeans would be as happy to trade with Russia as the USA.
