Revelations about a Russian-led “troll army” supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany, made by Der Spiegel magazine.
Organized support
According to the publication, the private research institute Trollrensics, on behalf of the Social Democrats of the Netherlands, carried out an assessment of the activities of “troll armies” in Europe and concluded that there was organised support for the AfD in the run-up to the recent European elections.
Specifically, “a small group of users with at least 5,000 accounts on the X platform alone promoted the AfD with a large number of social media posts.” The Trollrensics Institute also found that the fledgling BSW was also supported, albeit on a more limited scale.
The network appears to have operated simultaneously in France, mainly in favour of Eric Zemur’s Reconquête party, but also in Italy, albeit on a smaller scale. “We will now hand over the data collected in the investigation to the security services,” said Dutch Social Democrat MP Thies Roiten.
Source: AMPE