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German politician ‘filmed taking Russian money’ (www.telegraph.co.uk)

submitted 2 months ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/world@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 100 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 1 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 1 points 2 months ago

Democracy Matrix doesn't disregard "legal corruption":

https://www.democracymatrix.com/fileadmin/_processed_/a/0/csm_RegulationIntermediate_Equality_1f52ae705f.png

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.

[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] oce@jlai.lu 6 points 2 months ago

Let's genetically engineer Renaissance style perfect humanist dictators.

[-] derpgon@programming.dev 12 points 2 months ago

So, you agree it is the best option to go for, then

[-] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago

If you want to argue semantics, sure

this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024

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