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Swedish minister responsible for the agency countering misinformation retweets Russian propaganda channel - stands by it (www.dn.se)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/[email protected]/t/318601

If a social media account is spreading Russian disinformation - does sharing content from the account give it legitimacy?

No, says Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Minister for Civil Defence. But at the authority the minister is responsible for, the answer sounds different.

— In any case, you spread something that a foreign power might intend to spread to make us worried, says Mikael Östlund, press officer at the authority.

It was a year ago that Carl-Oskar Bohlin shared a tweet from the American influencer Lauren Southern, known for her far-right advocacy. The original video warned of how AI is used in influence operations, something the minister forwarded to his around 45,000 followers. "The ability and height of the impact operations risk increasing avalanche-like with disruptive technology shifts," wrote Carl-Oskar Bohlin on X.

Now, an American indictment against two Russian government employees shows that the production company Tenet media, where Lauren Southern is employed, must have been secretly financed by the Russian news agency RT. A total of just over SEK 100 million is said to have been transferred from the Russian state employees to the American company. In turn, influencers would push specific issues—such as questioning support for Ukraine—to their millions of followers. On YouTube alone, the videos have received more than 16 million views.

In light of the American indictment, Carl-Oskar Bohlin has been criticized for not checking his sources better. But the Minister of Civil Defense lets the tweet stay on X.

"For the simple reason that it is difficult to misunderstand." writes Bohlin to DN.

"One should of course refrain from spreading harmful narratives from foreign powers. However, it is a somewhat strange indictment that my warning about deepfakes and doctored videos would in itself constitute Russian disinformation. With such a threshold, it will be difficult to talk about or warn about the phenomenon at all," continues the minister.

Carl-Oskar Bohlin is responsible for the agency for psychological defence, MPF. Countering misdirection and misinformation, including rumor spreading and propaganda, is one of the agency's main missions.

In case you wonder, mr. Bohlin is from the conservative party (Moderaterna).

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

how long have you got?

in the 90s, we started privatising a shitload of institutions which has started coming back to bite us now, most notably when the govt said "we will build a nuclear power plant" and the now private energy authority Vattenfall said "no".
we fucked our schools up completely by having municipalities foot the bills for local schools, which of course means that schools are now worse in poorer communities. also we structured it so each child is worth a set amount of tax money to the school and opened the door to privately funded schools, meaning tax kronor are now disappearing into foreign-owned private schools such as Engelska Skolan. Literacy and math proficiency levels have been falling for 15 years as a result.
we seem to have made it our national sport to add layers of bureaucracy to jobs, with one study finding that swedish doctors spend more than 70% of their time doing paperwork. the system is leaking money as a result.
our system of "expertmyndigheter", governmental organizations of non-elected experts on particular subjects meant to advise the elected, seem to be increasingly ignored in favor of populism.
during the big European migrant wave of the 10s, we failed to come up with a coherent integration plan and people instead moved to where others from their region already lived, leading to insulated communities that the press has called "parallel societies" because they have no need to integrate.
these neighborhoods have been affected by all of the above, which have made them poorer, less literate, and detached from the society around them, which has in turn made them into prime recruitment material for criminal gangs. children as young as 9 have been arrested for drug running, and 13-year-olds have been caught looking to do hits advertised through social media.
our current right-wing government wants to be seen as "tough on crime", and so as violent crime has spiked, so has arrests. this means our prison population has skyrocketed, and the prisons are also recruiting grounds for gangs.
children, of course, go to "special youth homes" (SIS) or "closed youth care" (SVU) instead of prison, but it turns out those places were badly run even before this whole mess and are not only led by unqualified personnel, but are also used for recruiting by gangs.

tr;dr: we sowed 30 years ago, and we are currently reaping.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Conservatism and neoliberalism destroy yet another country for profit! Almost like there's a pattern...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Both the left and right wing (except the most radical right) parties in Sweden propagated mass immigration which is now such an enormous burden to deal with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, because of the non-existant integration. It started with Ebo-lagen in the 90's that allowed immigrants to settle where they wanted, leading to aforementioned issues.

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