We live in the age of communication. Social media and traditional media tools shower us with tens of thousands of new pieces of information consisting of photos, articles and videos every day. There are undoubtedly some lies in this bombardment of raw information. There is no doubt that we can be influenced and manipulated by these lies.
If we, as ordinary people, are the clear target of this bombardment, and if our perceptions can be manipulated so easily, it is clear that dictators and would-be dictators are also using this weakness for their own ends.
Putin’s troll army amplifies the lies
Need an example? Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself the source of the disinformation. He cites denazification as the reason for his invasion of Ukraine, arguing that it is a “special operation”. It’s not an invasion, and according to him, Ukraine is bombing its own territory. The state-sponsored propaganda machine and Putin’s army of trolls on social media also reinforce these lies with hundreds of different lies.
An example from a democratic country: you will surely remember former US President Donald Trump’s funny and simple slang. Yes, he spoke simply and at a level that any American could understand, but he lied quite often. And so much so that, according to research by the Washington Post, he himself spread 30,573 pieces of false information in four years. This attitude led to the storming of the US Congress and damaged the country’s image.
I’m sure it’s been a very difficult four years for intellectual Americans. But there were also leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who got on very well with him. Because anti-democratic regimes fed by disinformation often see each other as friends.
According to Erdogan, Europeans live in poverty
Speaking of Erdogan: his disinformation machine is no less than that of Putin. He tells the lie to the Turkish people struggling with the economic crisis that Europeans live in poverty. According to Erdogan, people in Germany and France are looking for food in lines and the peoples of Europe are struggling with inflation that has increased by 600%-700%. Erdogan controls more than 90 percent of the Turkish press. In addition to this huge propaganda machine, the ruling party has a large army of trolls. The leader of the main opposition party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, said in a report that 300,000 disinformation tweets were tweeted about him in six months and that those who did so are being paid by Erdoğan.
The mechanism Erdogan put in place to discredit his critics allows him to label opposition groups as terrorists. In just four years, 1.5 million people were investigated on suspicion of terrorism. Imagine 1.5 million terrorists living in a country of 80 million people. Incredible!
Almost half of Turks believe NATO and the US are responsible for the war
Regimes that spread fake news and disinformation achieve great success by spending small amounts of money. They achieve successes that they could not achieve with state power. In countries like Turkey, where the press is not free, they can achieve dazzling victories. For example, in Turkey there are anti-Western former diplomats, soldiers, journalists and academics who are known to be supported by Russia. This “government-sanctioned” organized group, which has been waging propaganda on TV and social media since the beginning of the Ukrainian occupation, has achieved unprecedented success around the world. According to research by a well-known survey company (Metropol) in recent weeks, 48 percent of Turks consider the USA and NATO to be responsible for the Russia-Ukraine war (Russia only 33.7 percent).
It is possible to further extend this list. On this basis, the fight must continue against anti-democratic leaders who are the main source of fake news and manipulation and “those who benefit most from it”. Social media tools should develop different methods to combat troll armies manipulation. Businesses should strive to direct ordinary people looking for the right information to the right sources.
This text appears as part of the joint project “Voices of Exile” by the Tagesspiegel and the Körber Foundation. Since 2016, the Tagesspiegel has regularly published texts by exile journalists under the title #now we write. The Körber Foundation runs programs that strengthen the journalistic, artistic and political activities of exiles in Germany. These include cooperation with the news platforms “Amal, Berlin!” and “Amal, Hamburg!” From 15th to 16th The Exile Media Forum, the largest specialist conference in Germany on exile journalism, will take place in Hamburg on 1 May 2022.
