#NachDenkSeiten now a Russian propaganda outlet

 

 

 

 

Germans who want to know the official Kremlin position on current events no longer have to turn to Russian state-controlled media outlets such as Sputnik News or RT Deutsch.  They just have to log onto to "the critical Web site" NachDenkSeiten.  Over the past year, the influential Web site has regurgitated every piece of misinformation and conspiracy theory published in the Russia-controlled media, often just linking to articles or videos on the propaganda channels RT Deutsch or Sputnik News. It is ironic that the publisher of NachDenkSeiten - Albrecht Müller - is constantly attacking the mainstream media in Germany and western Europe for its reporting on Russia and Ukraine; Müller is fond of using the Nazi word Gleichschaltung (roughly "coordination") to describe Western media:

Wenn ich zum Beispiel des Abends im Heute Journal Claus Kleber über den Ukraine-Konflikt moderieren höre und sehe, wenn ich eine halbe Stunde später den Tagesthemen-Moderator Thomas Roth verfolge, dann kann ich Gleichschaltung am lebenden Objekt studieren: Der Russe ist das böse, der Westen ist das gute. Das Schema liegt fest. Und nicht nur bei diesen öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern, sondern auch beim Gros der anderen Medien. Was nicht in dieses Schema passt, wird weggelassen. So zum Beispiel Informationen über das Engagement der USA in der Ukraine mit 5 Milliarden $ und mit Militär und die Promotion des jetzigen Ministerpräsidenten durch die USA. Das Böse in Moskau wird mit Hähme überzogen. Nicht berichtet wurde und wird vieles, was darauf hindeutet, dass die neue Konfrontation zwischen Ost und West von westlicher Seite angetrieben worden ist.

But Müller refuses to criticize Vladimir Putin's real Gleichschaltung of the media in Russia, the elimination of all newspapers, blogs, television stations, social media that dare to criticize the government, the murders of Anna Politkovskaya, Ilyas Shurpayev,Yury Shebalkin,Konstantin Borovko,Leonid Etkind and many others who dared to practice investigative journalism in  Putin's Russia - none of that interests Albrecht Müller. 

Müller has consistently celebrated Putin's illegal Anschluss of Crimea by military force, calling it a "reunification" (Wiedervereinigung), but has he has not written one word about the Gleichschaltung of the media in Crimea under Russia's control:

The Kremlin has seized control of the peninsula's media, taking Ukrainian TV channels off the air and replacing them with state-backed Russian ones. In August, Crimea's authorities raided the independent Chernomorska broadcaster, impounding its equipment and computers, and sealing off its building. Elsewhere, journalists have been pressured to toe the Kremlin's line. According to Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper, the Ukraine-based Center for Investigative Journalism recorded 85 incidents of harassment and censorship against reporters in Crimea during March 2014 alone.

Human Rights Watch has reported that the peninsula's pro-Russian paramilitary groups are implicated in the disappearance of a number of pro-Ukrainian activists. In March, Andriy Shekun and Anatoly Kovalksy were abducted from a train station in Simferopol, Crimea's capital, and held for 11 days in detention where they were beaten and shot at with low-velocity handguns (designed to cause trauma but not kill). Mr. Shekun was subjected to electric shocks on two occasions, according to the rights group.

But none of this will ever appear on "the critical Web site" NachDenkSeiten.  Instead, it is the Western media that deserves scorn for daring to report on human rights violations in Russia (see Albrecht Müller's defense of Russia's persecution of gays and lesbians).  

Fundamentally, Albrecht Müller despises Western liberal society, much preferring authoritarian countries such as Russia, China and Cuba.  Concerning his hero, Vladimir Putin, Albrecht Müller recently told a reporter that "we should be happy that we have Vladimir Putin."

Ich bin der Meinung, dass wir großes Interesse an einer Stabilität Russlands haben.Wenn ich verantwortungsbewußter deutscher Politiker wäre, dann würde ich so handeln und sagen: wir können eigentlich froh sein, dass wir Putin haben. Jemanden, der das zusammenhält, auch wenn es manchen westlichen Interessenten nicht passt.

Oh yes, "Stabilität Russlands"  - how many writers, politicians, artists, minority activists have been imprisoned, exiled, even murdered to achieve this "stability"?

Comments

[koogleschreiber]

Ich muß das auf Deutsch schreiben: Das mit der Gleichschaltung ist nicht ganz so weit hergeholt, auch wenn der Begriff selbst eher unpassend ist. Beispiel: Wenn deutsche Politiker Interviews geben, so müssen diese vor Veröffentlichung zur Prüfung vorgelegt werden, damit die Politiker das, was sie gesagt haben, zensieren können. Die Medien dürfen dann nur das veröffentlichen, was die Zensur überstanden hat. Durch dieses Prozedere ist (besonders in Berlin) eine eigene Liga von Hofberichterstattern entstanden, die darin geübt sind, nur Fragen zu stellen, die den Politikern genehm sind. Unbequemen Journalisten werden keine Interwiews gegeben.

Die öffentlich-rechtlichen Medien Rundfunk und Fernsehen werden politisch kontrolliert, nach Proporz, das heißt praktisch, von der Regierung.

Politische Aktivisten haben keine Plattform bei den deutschen Mainstream Medien. Die Inhalte, die sie diskutieren, reflektieren auch kaum die populistische Agenda der Regierungsparteien CDU/CSU und SPD.

Websites wie Nachdenkseiten können natürlich im Einzelfall kurios, grotesk bis hirnverbrannt erscheinen, in ihrer Masse dokumentieren sie aber das Mißtrauen nicht nur vieler, sondern von immer mehr Menschen gegenüber allem, was aus Berlin zu vernehmen ist.

Wir haben eine übermächtige CDU/CSU als einzig verbliebene Volkspartei, die diesen Namen auch verdient. Dann haben wir ihren Juniorpartner SPD als Kanzlerwahlverein. Die Opposition aus Grünen und Linken ist angesichts der Mehrheitsverhältnisse völlig machtlos und eigentlich nicht mehr als 'lipstick on a pig'. Das wurde ihr zuletzt im NSA-Untersuchungsausschuß deutlich vor Augen geführt, wo CDU/CSU und SPD der Opposition klar ihre parlamentarischen Rechte auf direkte Akteneinsicht verweigert wurden.

Der Ministerpräsident von Schleswig-Holstein, Torsten Albig, hat nun in aller Öffentlichkeit klar ausgesprochen, was seit Jahren offensichtlich ist: Die SPD kann getrost auf einen eigenen Kanzlerkandidaten verzichten. Der wäre erstens sowieso chancenlos und zweitens stimmen die Bundestagsabgeordneten der SPD sowieso für Merkel.

http://www.shz.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/politik/reaktionen-auf-torsten-albigs-zweifel-am-spd-sieg-id10297131.html

Das sind beste Voraussetzungen für Fundamentalopposition, ob nun rechte oder linke.

[David]

@koogleschreiber - I can't follow you here. Okay, I am not able to watch German television, but I do watch some of the talk shows such as Sandra Maischberger and Anne Will on the Mediathek. There are almost always guests who represent different perspectives - Sahra Wagenknecht seems to be a permanent fixture on the talkshows. I've watched some shows about the Ukraine crisis that included (Putin Versteherin) Gabriele Krone-Schmalz and representatives from RT Deutsch. I don't see anything close to "Gleichschaltung" in German television. All of these guests represent positions contrary official policy in Berlin.

Different story in Russia. See Ann Applebaum's piece in today's Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/helping-russias-sidelined-and-exiled-journalists-tell-their-stories/2015/07/24/6a63d142-3200-11e5-97ae-30a30cca95d7_story.html?hpid=z4

Excerpt:"Despite the auspicious beginnings, almost all of the Russian media have since come under direct or indirect control of the Kremlin. Most of the witty writers either learned to conform or left the country. Some stayed but were forcibly silenced. Anna Politkovskaya, one of Albats’s journalism school classmates, was murdered in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment building."

[Zyme]

Koogleschreiber's assessment hits the nail on its head.

German Gleichschaltung surely isn't violent like its Russian counterpart. That is not to say it is less efficient. Being more subtle, it makes the people fall asleep whereas Russian opposition might feel angered at its treatment and allow it to become a problem for the government in a moment of weakness.

In the end both methods represent the fundamental difference between Western societies like Britain and the US on the one hand and those like Germany or Russia on the other, where people do not approve of political disunity and prefer a structured and authoritarian approach bringing order into politics.

[David]

@zyme- I guess you don't see Germany as a "Western society", which would come as a shock to Angela Merkel and the citizens who voted for her.

I don't think it's fair to blame the passivity of Germans on the media. At this point in time people are content with their situation and not looking for major change (Verweile doch....) Problem is, the world is rapidly changing around them.

[hardy]

my comment is located here

http://hinterwaldwelt.blogspot.de/2015/07/moebius-am-sonntag_26.html

very unpleased with login stuff, why can't log in just with my google blog account, sigh

[Qixiot]

OMG ...

reminds me a bit on a situation in southern france almost 3 decades ago, where i took part in a discussion with some very old "maquisades" organized by french antifaschists, where another german declared that refugees (labeled as "asylanten" by CDU politians those days) were held in concentrationcamp lookalikes.

i stood up then and asked the maquisades if they took arms against adolf being "communists" or "antifaschists" ... or simply being "nationalists", defending their family and hometown.

i'll give their answer at the end of my comment ;-)

please, dear german writers, where the hell are you living? not in my country, you must live on another planet.

why merkel wins elections? just because she has given the germans the _impression_ that she's the best socialdemocrat ever being chancelor ... she moved her party as far to the "left", that there's suddenly place for a party like the AFD ...

she didn't move germany to the right ... ask all the stupid whining folks complaining that the whole land has felt in the hands of feminists, genderists, lefty folk that now rule a left/green land.

where the hell are you living with your stupid accusations of a "gleichschaltung"? ever read a book about the NS state? doesn't seem so - don't be as hysterical as you are. you're part of the free-est germany that's ever has been in history. stop whining and complaining that the land isn't (yet) reigned by communism.

well, there's also kinda almost sexual connection between the mainstream media and her, i know and i totally disagree with her european policy as you do, but she is damned right on her russia policy which is well balanced until she lost her onfidence in mr putin being a man you can trust (i think, it was her speak at adelaide, she made that clear).

"gleichschaltung"? where are the dead journalists? complaing that interviews are revied by politicians is _childish_, using words like "zensur" also. ever asked wikipedia, what "zensur" stands for? big words outspoken by mices!

KOMMT MAL AUF DEN TEPPICH!

i admit that germany has a never really lost connection to NS-traditions, i call that the "gedankenautobahn" and yes, it is a very subtile one to undertand, why elvis had to sing "muss i denn zum städele hinaus" and the beatles also sang in german, it was made to keep the "negermusik" out of the rassistic folk ... and if you look at freital, with the leftbehind of a communist system, that never had it's "68" to emancipate them from their binds to the government and their ideology ... look in the mirror: your "arguments" are the other side of that same coin: hysterical.

i was raised in the so called "bonner republic" and i don't give a damn on your whinings. i had folks like FJS, filbinger and the likes .. but i also watched for decades one young generation after the other being completely politically indifferent ... but having a big mouth on the only party in this land offering alternatives, the green party ... just to promote the SED/PDS/linke and don't understanding the green project.

you're whinings are soooo "german", almost a bit over the top, hysterical and completely out of the window.

oki, i tell the rest of my "maquis" story. you know the answer. they didn't fight adolf understanding themselves as "commnunists". the told the round, that they did this as _nationalists_ (shock for the antifaschist communists in the room, that wasn't the motto for the evenig) and they where, as i was, shocked by the alliance of the PFC (partie communiste francais) and mr. le pens FN who fought those days together agsinst the maastricht treaties.

idiots! one as the other ... then and now ... because your "querfront" indifference nowadays is just a reflection of the naivity which whom you're looking at polically cleary definied words like "gleichschaltung" or "zensur"

i told those maquisades that they would be befriened with my grandfather, active member of a christian party (CSJ, "vitus heller bewegung") who fought in 1933 against the saarland coming back to the reich and lost that with 9% other voters, almost communists. he then went to a real concentration camp for some time which is well told in "milieus & widerstand" by gerhard paul.

yep, there was also a catholic "widerstand" against hitler, and yep, there's also a tradition of fighting for freedom in party like the CDU.

take your ideological smeered glasses of and balance your words right before accusing _yourself_ - it's your damned land, so fight for it's freedom instead of complaining your faith like little children.

the evening ended them maquisades coming around all tables in the room to my place, taking me in their arms - not the stupido antifaschistas - and we stayed there long embracing each other, having bitter tears in our eyes on the stupidity of young folks who don't understand their history and what they're losing in playing kiddiegames.

sorry for the rant.

[Qixiot]

the link to the "almost sexual connection" missing here in my comment

http://ondemand-mp3.dradio.de/file/dradio/2015/07/18/dlf_20150718_1706_8ec1589d.mp3

[T.K.]

hi actually i found "nachdenkseiten" randomly. Its my hobby to deface Kreml Propaganda so this one is very intresting for me because it is not just another site who shares just RT or Sputnik. I can say as German that the language that is used is a Russian Propaganda technic developed by Joseph Goebbels. For example: it is allways induced that Germany is "externally controlled". If you search for "nachdenkseiten fremdgesteuert" you will find nearlly every article on this site. Mass using of some special Words in allways the same constellation is one of the easiest ways of subliminal influencing. But still the site is very close to what germans are accept as "mainstream" media it should be very easy for them to give readers a kremlin brainwash. The first reference point for that is the kremlin propaganda entry lie the Nato would be the Agressor and the USA want war with russia and so on.. most german people would believe that because the USA are not trustworthy but if you would really try to look closer you see that there is absolutly no agression potential for Russia. What should do 30.000 Nato soldiers against 600.000? and russia has stationated rockets with the possiblty to equip with nukes in Kalinigrad. But russia want neither War. Not for now they only need the Propaganda to supress their own population.

[David]

@T.K.

Thanks, do you have any statistics on how popular these pro-Russian sites are in Germany?

I think I read that the actual readers or RT Deutsch is quite low.

[T.K.]

It depends. The Problem is the news from RT deutsch and Sputnik are getting shared trough their supporter network in germany (https://criticusnixalsverdruss.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/propagramm3.jpg here is a Propagramm its a little bit old but you can see how much supporter sharing russian propaganda in germany) People who are thinking that their news are "indipendent" or "alternative" to the mainstream easly get caught from such sites. The Spearhead of Russian Propaganda in Germany was for a long time "Anonymous Deutschland"a facebook site with a lot of bot likes.. even if they are sharing rt deutsch they also have different sources but with the same Propaganda(like for example "DerWaechter" it just sounds like "Der Stürmer"
what a coincidence..) and of course Compact.. so its not just one source of Propaganda so people in germany really believe that could be real news because of the structur it is imitating the way of mainstream news in germany are working and creating a different version of reality for the reader. This is only possible trough conecting all right oriented groups in Europe and of course russia is supporting the AfD in germany. In the same way they are supported for example PiS in Poland. To destabilise Europe has to be their long time goal so its pretty easy for russia to wait till all right groups are strong enough to turn the EU into a Russia dominated Eurasien Union.

[T.K.]

The Intresting thing is after the self destruction of Anonymous Deutschland trough selling fright firearms against immigrants online and their banning from facebook a new "Anonymous Deutschland" site was created. But this time no AfD Man behind it . Left oriented activists created a fake and they where sharing RT deutsch shortly after this they where getting a lot of Bot Likes. I think the kreml propaganda works only passive. That fits into the things we allready know like the "Troll Institute" in St. Petersburg where People writing fake comments under for example Spiegel or focus critical news about russia and so on. Also they will use these trolls to get the rights under heat. If i look at classical right conspiracy theory blogs like "alles schall und rauch" there are also a lot of comments. So the Kreml is copying modern social Media marketing strategies and combining it with classic NS Propaganda Brainwashing. The Results are devastating even some of my friends (who are all more left or anarchistic) believe in the kreml bullshit because of it anti USA. But all what the kreml is doing is: We done something evil, but the USA are more evil and we are only evil because of USA..bla bla bla..

[David]

Wow, that's an amazing chart! Danke vielmals!

[T.K.]

Thanks goes to RT-Russian Truth ( https://criticusnixalsverdruss.wordpress.com/ ).