Gerald Fleischmann — the spokesperson for two former Austrian leaders — warns that democracy is at risk from online influencers covertly spreading disinformation.
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00:00Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's spokesperson Gerald Fleischmann has published
00:06a book that came out on 1 February called The Codes of Extremists.
00:12Fleischmann warns that European democracy is at risk from influencers covertly spreading
00:17misinformation and that extremism is dangerous for Europe's stability.
00:22Because of the decline of traditional media, which is also operated by these radical groups,
00:29this common public is being lost.
00:32Keyword, these famous echo chambers, filter bubbles.
00:36The young people are losing themselves, so to speak, in a world outside traditional media.
00:42Many no longer consume traditional media at all.
00:46And there are two things that are important.
00:49First, it is important to note that all social media platforms either come from America,
00:56or from Russia, or from Asia, like China, and not a single one from Europe.
01:05The people, the mass of the population, are referred to in these secret services as sleepwalkers.
01:12And these sleepwalkers are supposed to be trained to consume false information with constant false information,
01:22so that in the end the entire society no longer knows what is actually right, what is wrong.
01:32This is the goal of foreign powers.
01:35In this case, one has to say openly, on the one hand, Russia,
01:39on the other hand, radical currents from the Arab world.
01:44And the goal, in short, is to influence a new generation, younger people,
01:52and above all, the destabilization of Western democracy.