A German politician has been filmed taking large sums of cash from a Kremlin-supporting broadcaster, Czech intelligence has claimed.
Petr Bystron, who is standing for Alternative for Germany (AfD) at European parliamentary elections in June, allegedly received €20,000 (£17,000) in cash from the manager of a Russian propaganda network while sitting in a parked car, recordings indicate.
Mr Bystron, who also sits on the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, has previously denied allegations of taking Russian money as a “defamation campaign”.
The Security Information Service (BIS), the Czech Republic’s domestic intelligence agency, now says Mr Bystron met with Artem Marchevsky, who allegedly managed a Kremlin-backed propaganda front called Voice of Europe, at least three times in the past six months.
AfD, fucking russian stooges.
Of course fucking of course, I wasn’t askin’ I was tellin’
Some user at a .ml community the other day was mocking the idea that Russia was trying to destabilize Europe, comparing someone else’s depiction of Russia as if it was an EU4 country. This is another piece of evidence that Russia has been financing far right politicians, parties and think tanks in several countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Despite being on .ml, there’s a real issue with Tankies here. They hate the USA which…like fair enough, not exactly a paragon of virtue them. But then they go waaaay the other way and think China and Russia are utopian meritocracies, it’s fucking bizarre.
There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals. A lot of them had a genuine, valid concern with a capitalist society that was screwing them over, turned that into an identity, and ended up in echo chambers where that fallacy wouldn’t be called out. It’s difficult to get them out of there because they feel like they have to defend their identity and their social group, so in the rare cases where they meet someone who does understand and share their valid anti-capitalist positions but is capable of reasonably calling out their campist bullshit, they immediately jump to think it’s just “another lib” and refuse to engage.
There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals.
Which is why I’m very proud of the World News community not to let the justifiable Israel hate go overboard into Hamas support. Most, if not all, of us appear to be smarter than that and know that the Palestinian people are who need to be supported.
Yeah, the Hamas support is weird. Hamas isn’t a popular front or anything, they’re also fucking over the Palestinian people. They took power and stopped holding elections many years ago.
The people I want to succeed are the Israeli and Palestinian people seeking to build a positive peace and a constructive cohabitation. That’s the anti Zionism I was sold on. And yes the first step is for Israel to stop massacring civilians.
And yes the first step is for Israel to stop massacring civilians.
That sounds like the second step to me. As long as conservatives hold power in Israel, the horror will never stop.
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I’m not sure what you mean. I usually see casualty numbers provided by third parties. The UN OHCA does a lot of it.
He was spouting propaganda, trying to blur the arguments.
They are relying entirely on numbers provided by Hamas. There is no independent third party counting casualties in the strip.
Okay, so where should casualty figures come from?
Conflating the Gaza Ministry of Health with Hamas is a very common propaganda tactic. The truth is that they operate under the de-facto government of Gaza, which is Hamas, but they don’t work for them as in pushing their agenda. Your statement of the numbers being “provided by Hamas” is entirely false tho.
The numbers they provided in the past passed verification by third party investigations (Examples: 2014 war comparison with B’Tselem and analysis of the current war’s numbers by The Lancet) and are considered to be reliable. During an active war, independent verification is pretty much impossible tho.
That tracks. Though I’d say it’s often less “refuse to engage” and more “refuse to engage in good faith”. They definitely engage enough to yell things with fingers in their ears.
From their basements in Utah.
Turns out Russia sucks pretty bad at real war but they’ve been excelling at these shadow ops for quite some time. The fact that they’ve bought so many plants in the US government is a sign of the success they’ve had.
There is a strong argument that Brexit was the result of Russian influence.
If this could be proven, I would hope the punishments would be extreme. Brexit (and the conservatism that caused it) has practically ruined Britain.
It basically “was” proven through exposes through Cambridge Analytica, Arron Banks, and their ties to Russian benefactors. There are also strong ties of Russian influence to notable political influencers like Nigel Farage, alongside those that provided funds to the Conservative party.
I don’t think it’s really possible to get more proof outside of Vladimir Putin literally stating on the record that he was involved.
What can be done to bring criminal charges?
They had a serious investigation going, but that was during Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister (BoJo = the Trump-impersonator with the silly hair), so it was pretty handicapped and when the investigation stopped, well:
Johnson’s government refused to release the report to the public before the general election in December 2019.
By June 2020, the report had still not been released, and the Intelligence and Security Committee had not been convened, the longest gap since the committee’s creation in 1994.
(from Wikipedia)
- The Guardian: Russia report reveals UK government failed to investigate Kremlin interference
- Wikipedia: Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report
- The report itself: https://web.archive.org/web/20210114193823/https://docs.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=aW5kZXBlbmRlbnQuZ292LnVrfGlzY3xneDo1Y2RhMGEyN2Y3NjM0OWFl
Britain returning on legal grounds wasn’t on my bingo card xD
Putin is not Russia
He is their dictator. When people say the name of a country they generally refer to their government. For example: Iran is violently misogynistic. The Iranian women who riot against the government’s misogyny are not, I’ve met multiple militantly feminist Iranians in fact. But people understand what I mean when I say that Iran is misogynistic.
I think it’s easy to read between lines that I mean the Russian government, currently led by Putin, rather than personally accusing all Russians of being assholes.
Putin would disagree with ypu
Yes, he would. Kinda the whole point of 2020 carnaval on tree stumps.
And Hitler was not Nazi Germany? Believe it or not, but Putin is not the sole doer of all of Russia. There are a lot of people directly and indirectly involved in all of this shit and even more so are complicit by inaction. Many Germans knew what the Nazis did to the Jews and “traitors”, but they still kept their mouth shut, ratted out their friends and neighbors, or had positions directly involved with the Nazis, so that they themselves could continue living a comfy life while others suffered and died by their own country. No, Putin is not Russia. But Russia still has a collective responsibility, and with that guilt, painting all of their hands in blood. And this type of debt will not be forgotten until a certain price has been paid.
Can we finally ban this anti-democratic, Russian-psyops-spreading POS of a political Party? I fucking hate the AFD with a burning passion you can’t imagine. Everyone who votes for these fuckers just need to fucking cope that the war is over. Democratic Germany best Germany! Get rekt fascist keks.
Democratic Germany best Germany!
While I agree on the AfD sentiment, we’re not exactly living in a democracy. When money/corporations have way more influence on politics than voters, that’s not even remotely resembling democracy.
A flawed democracy is still a democracy - and Germany is widely regarded, despite some corruption, as one of the best-functioning democracies in the world (5th best according to the Democracy Matrix - which is admittedly from a German university - and 12th best according to the Economist’s Democracy Index). There are no serious scholars doubting this.
Democracy assessments / studies / rankings are heavily flawed. They tend to look at freedom of speech, corruption & integrity of elections, while completely disregarding “legal” corruption such as lobbying, and how much influence money has on the legal process. Which is exactly what I criticized. Germany is not a democracy. It has freedom of speech, and low corruption, and relatively fair elections. However, there is a severe imbalance towards lobbyists and big corporations in the legislation.
Democracy Matrix doesn’t disregard “legal corruption”:
Neither does the Democracy Index, which has “political participation” as a criteria.
You can’t just make up your own definitions. Democracy is a well-defined term. There being an imbalance just like in every society doesn’t make a country not a democracy. That’s not how this works.
Democracy Matrix doesn’t disregard “legal corruption”:
Then the index is just plain biased.
I live in Germany and I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears that the power balance is heavily tilted in favor of corporations. You may be one of those who either benefit from the system, or tell themselves a fairy tale of “things are not that bad”. I don’t need to wait for people starving on the streets to know that this is the direction our system is going at the moment.
Germany is fucked up, but since we’re still exploiting the third world and our economy is booming, even those who get cheated out of their livelihoods do not starve yet (for the most part).
But there are already some people in a really bad place here because the government isn’t doing the very minimum of it’s fucking duty to protect the weakest, and instead giving tax cuts to the richest and the corporations.
So don’t give me bullshit about Germany being a “good democracy”. The only thing poor people still have left here, is that they are still allowed to call out those stealing their livelihood without being imprisoned for it. Not that it would do them any good.
I agree with the sentiment, but objectively democracy is a terrible form of government. We just haven’t come up with anything better, and the other options are even worse.
The problem with democracy is that to really work it requires an informed electorate, and a lot of the information the electorate get is propaganda. But like you say, I don’t have a better alternative to offer.
Pretty much this. The average voter is by all objective measures not qualified to decide on political matters, its just that not having every mouthbreather have a voice has always led to autocracy in every single attempt made.
Let’s genetically engineer Renaissance style perfect humanist dictators.
So, you agree it is the best option to go for, then
If you want to argue semantics, sure
Funny isn’t it…all the time our right wing assholes talk about foreign traitors but in the end it’s always them. I bet their Nazi grandfathers are rotating in their graves at lightspeed 😂
But Erich Honecker is laughing.
They know the most about how bribery works, and just assume everyone else is as corrupt as they are themselves.
So, in Germany, does anything happen to this Russia war enabler? Or is it like America where someone just screams “both sides” and “but his tan suit” and all courts and laws get disabled?
My guess is if this blows up enough and the far right can’t simply deny that it happened any more they will distance themselves a bit, perhaps throw him out.
Its just lip service though, the party is in large parts propped up by russia, and the members are all either corrupt shitstains doing the same as the guy who got caught or brainwashed idiots who themselves are the best argument against democracy and equal voices for everyone.
The same playbook as your Republicans
We call them “exceptions” here, they’ll kick him out and say everyone else of the AfD is not like that. People will believe it and keep voting for them even harder because now. It’s a shit show.
Well, his party is trying to make people forget he’s in there for fear of losing votes. Given that this party is the “presentable” face of the hard right I hope he gets as much media attention as possible.
Not sure anything is going to happen to him personally but he’s a politician and this is corruption so probably not.
My logic says yes but mostly it’s gonna be PR issues. But reality says there won’t be any other consequences because politicians don’t like to oust other politicians and courts don’t wanna get involved with separation of power issues.
So no but yes but no.
Darn.
Thanks for the info. (Not sarcasm)
Sure, Germany’s conservatives take payments from Putin just like U.S. conservatives, but how many handjobs have they given in a theater full of kids? They need to step up their conservative game.
Pedophilia has a long and storied tradition in German politics. It’s just part of their culture.
From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, with the authorization and financial support of the Berlin Senate, Kentler placed neglected youth as foster children in the homes of single pedophile fathers with the ostensible purpose of resocializing them, while explicitly encouraging sexual contact between them.
Jesus fucking christ. What a horrible day to be able to read…
What the actual fuck???
I thought that sounded like a Behind the Bastards episode (The School that Raped Everybody), but that looks to be a different German child rape scandal about the Odenwald school.
Yeah, I got this from TrueAnon, although I couldn’t tell you the episode off-hand.
Are you seriously saying that the guy who was in contact with a Russian propaganda outlet was involving with Russia?
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!
That’s what the news is about…
The thing is, it was already known they were in contact and the politician in question claimed he did nothing sketchy. So he’s not only corrupt, or a traitor to our country, or (most likely) both, he also already publicly lied about it and there is supposedly evidence he actually accepted money. This makes things much worse for him.
His party also already claimed it’s a smear campaign, so if there really is evidence, they’ll look pretty stupid as well (although this really isn’t news).
But this isn’t about a new case, it’s literally about the same thing. Your initial comment simply does not make sense.
oh look, it’s
another CONSERVATIVE TRAITOR
The AfD isnt conservative. They are facist to neo nazi.
Bernd Höcke is best friends with nazis and is allowed to be called a facist
Potato potato
Oh no no no! There is a huge difference between facism and national socialism!! I am german i know a thing or too! National socialism is based in extermination, facism isnt!
National socialism is a misnomer. The Nazis were not socialistic at all, in fact socialists were one of the first groups to be detained and/or executed as political enemies. They were pretty much just fascists with some nationalistic ideas.
The idiologie is called national socialism because their party was the Nationalsozialistische Arbeiter Partei NSDAP. Nazi is just short for Nationalsozialist (in english national socialist)
Ofc just because their name had socialist in the name doesnt mean they were socialists! Dont try to explain the nazis and what they did to a german.
You on the otherhand, seem to not grasp the difference between, nationalism, facism and national socialism. So here for you the difference: Nationalism: the belief of once nation/culture to be above and better than everyone else
Facism: same as nationalism just way more militaristic and beliefing in “the weak shall make way for the strong for they rule the world”
National socialism: all other cultures and nations should be eradicated. Belief and loyalty is the strong leader and nothing else
Every idiologie can be added with antisemitism anti christianism or any other hatret against religion
Alter, komm mal von deinem hohen Ross runter. Du bist nicht der einzige Deutsche hier und Deutscher zu sein macht dich nicht zu einer Koryphäe in Sachen politischer Ideologien nur weil du in der Schule eine 1 in Geschichte geschrieben hast. Schau mal lieber die Definitionen von Faschismus und Nationalismus nach bevor du hier deine Mentalgymnastik ablässt, denn das, was du geschrieben hast ist nicht richtig.
Nationalsozialisten waren einfach nur Faschisten mit der Idee von Großdeutschland (einer ultranationalistischen Idee, kongruent mit faschistischer Ideologie). Mit Sozialismus hatte die ganze Sache rein gar nix zu tun und zwar nicht im Geringsten.
Oh. I suppose my US bias is showing as the conservatives are basically nazis here.
Your conservatives are faar from being nazis! Facists, yes. But not nazis! Stop crying wolf. There are defenetly nazis out there that need to be stoped!
Here’s an example of some of the things going on here. Conservatives may not consider themselves nazis. But nazis sure do seem think they have a lot in common with conservatives.
Funny how an american thinks us europeans dont get your news here haha
It’s happening all over the world.
It’s crazy how little it takes to buy these fucks off. Like setup and GoFundMe and just bring out the bribes into the open at this point
This is AfD, our resident fascist clown party. At least we have a coalition based democracy, so it’s unlikely that they take over the less fascist “center”-right party.
The CxU (among others) is working on making those clowns a viable coalition partner by taking them seriously and talking to them on TV. Maybe that’s not their intention, but it will be the result if it continues.
Definitely. Who ever trusts conservatives to stick to their word about not doing a coalition with fascists?
Financing your friends and bankrupting your enemies is a strategy western nations perfected during the Cold War and employed to brutal effect in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR.
But its not a trick that’s unique to western intelligence. Chinese officially had effectively bought out Hong Kong long before it transitioned into Beijing’s control. Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, and the better part of the African eastern seaboard are undergoing a similar conversion as Chinese exports ramp up.
Russia’s economic influence over Ukraine was a big part of what triggered the civil war in 2014 and the Crimea takeover that same year. The Russian government has succeeded in quelling revolts in Chechnya with investment dollars in a way they never managed with military forces. They’ve got friends in Italy, Greece, and France as well as Germany, thanks in no small part with the open purse of Russian lobbyists and intelligence groups.
The whole BRICS coalition is about coordinating financial flow through these high population third-world states operating slightly outside the western periphery. Its been happening since 2008, when the western operated international financial system faulted. Every country with the means and the leadership has been building up parallel institutions, in order to buffer themselves against the next big Wall Street / London financial crash.
Yep. Push and pull.
Saber rattling from the outside, paid-off politicians on the inside. In the short term, pushes policies towards groveling before Russian aggression, in the long term, establishes precedence and shifts the general accepted attitude to dealing with their pressure.
This isn’t a uniquely German problem >.>
yes, but it’s important to know all details about each case, including nationality
Yep, and here in Fascistelli-d’Italia-land we’ve won the competition for the “most smartest” one I’m afraid:
Do you receive national treasures? I want to ship one. It’s not very old, just 71 years, but it is most expensive national treasure.
I’m willing to ship it with Gelendzik Palace, just take it, please.
Before Ukraine Russia funded right-wingers because they were anti-EU. Some of them were quite open about it. I don’t think anything has changed. Money just takes a longer route and people keep quiet about it.
So BIS/Czechia need to release the video to the public, not just claim they have it.
I hope there will be plenty more information on these nazis coming out before the elections.
How surprising… not. Here in hungary also the state party (fidesz) and their puppet party “mi hazánk” is controlled by putin
Don’t know what can 20k euro achieve. Russia must be lacking of money.
This may have been one of a series of payments. This is only one that leeked.
Very likely this. Transfers above a certain threshold are automatically looked into to prevent money laundering, so getting a big bunch of cash at once is less convenient than getting several, smaller payments.
You think this is going through the bank?
I would think so, yeah. Purchases of over 10,000€ are automatically put under investigation, so a larger bribe would be tedious to launder. I’m not a money laundering expert tho, so I don’t know how they do it. That’s just how I would prefer to be bribed, I guess lol
In this case it was €20k in cash. Other ways is 'after dinner" speaking fees.
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Small enough to not get noticed, too little to cover their lifestyle for long, yet too convenient to not take :)
The big paydays usually happen through companies the politician and his ilk are in the board of, which just score very lucrative contracts or orders time after time. Or the politician is hired as a consultant for such companies, collecting fabulous kickbacks. Or the promise of early retirement into “window-looking jobs,” employment where they have a title, high income and zero responsibilities.
If your blackmailing someone forcing them to take cash from you can them be used to blackmail the person further. They can press on them more, because they are now collaborators and won’t get any symphony from the public or a jury.
To be fair, I doubt the public would give them a symphony either way. Seems like it’d be expensive and require a lot of training.
European thinking politicians consider €20.000 a “large sums of cash”?
That’s cute.
A common theme in politics around the world is that you can buy politicians for a shockingly low amount of money. In the UK we’ve had politicians paid off for similar amounts, or politicians bought for £100k for basically their entire career.
100,000 usd, pound, or euro would be enough to buy my loyalty for a long while. So I guess I get it.
My number is probably higher tbh. I mean I suppose it depends on the source of money, if it was russia they would have to add half a dozen more zeros.
It’s not a large sum at all. That’s one of the most shameful facts of all these corrupt shitheads. They sell their countries out for such a pittance.
You should see how many American politicians are just as corrupt for less money, I was surprised when I saw Devin Nunes was only making $15K from one of the bribery schemes that was supporting him while he was in Congress. I guess it all comes down to knowing your worth to the scumbags you work for. 🤷♂️
This is actually a sign of rampant corruption. Bribery is a tight market, and with a lot of politicians willing to accept bribes the cost drops significantly. It’s one of the few areas where capitalism behaves as believed.
Devin Nunes was only making $15K from one of the bribery schemes that was supporting him
“One of the bribery schemes”…
If they’re selling out to one faction, there’s nothing stopping them from taking bribes from a bunch of other sources as well.
I doubt there are exclusivity contracts in place.
That’s honestly the most disgusting part of it to me. The amount of money they make doing it is barely enough to insulate them from the effects of living in a worse country
If they got $250k to redirect $1m in funding to a company, I wouldn’t like it but I would understand why someone without morals would sell out like that
But it’s more like $100k over a decade at the cost of billions to the country. Half the time, they’re basically just funding their next campaign… they’re burning our society, and they don’t even come out ahead
Just greedy short sighted fools who are willing to abase themselves to scum, or they are sociopathic monsters who don’t care about anything but whatever they want.
You’d be surprised how little money it takes to influence a US politician
I’ve had the “pleasure” of rubbing elbows with a few of the people currently engaged in
briberypolitical donations. I hear the going rate is about $10k and a nice meal.Aren’t their salary is roughly 6 figure? Why bother risking your career for the amount you make in 2 week?
For 100k, that’s understandable. But 10k and a nice meal? I mean , I’m low class but you can’t even buy me for a day with that amount.
Depends on the job, but I think more like 5 figures. Still enough to live comfortably, but of course not enough for these greedy fucks. The reason so many are millionaires is not their salaries.
I think that’s psychological. Irrational.
It’s some kind of not absent, but inverted moral principle. Where if someone buys you, you get bought. Even if it’s a small sum. Like as if between being for sale and not being for sale the former were morally preferable.
Maybe also some perverted understanding of valuing every dime.
That’s the thing. Campaigns are super expensive AND the politician doesn’t get to keep the money, so if you can find a politician who takes cash payment it’s way cheaper than “legitimate” political spending.
It’s in a twisted way a major reason mega corps like the massive expense of lobbying and PACs. Bribes are cheap and anybody can do it, but pulling together millions for PACs and campaigns is something smaller companies and individuals can’t do.
Its rarely just €20.000
You’re often seeing the tip of the iceberg, with significantly more money changing hands under the table or being paid out with in-kind services like friendly media coverage or consulting services or loans.
