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The Independent
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Russia's contradictory messaging on Pope Francis's death — and the strategy behind it
What should have been an apolitical moment—the death of Pope Francis on April 21—quickly turned into a battleground for Russia's information war. As conspiracy theories and AI-generated content flooded social media worldwide, Russian state media launched a targeted campaign that both criticised the Pope's perceived progressivism and highlighted his alleged ties to Moscow, according analysis seen exclusively by The Independent. While routinely monitoring Russian state media and analysing content posted on social media, disinformation advocacy group The American Sunlight Project identified inconsistent messaging across various state-run outlets in the hours and days following the death of Pope Francis. This apparent contradiction wasn't an accident, according to the group. They claim it may reflect a broader geopolitical strategy: tailoring messaging to appeal to different audiences. On social media, narratives portraying Francis as 'woke' targeted right-wing, MAGA-affiliated communities. While portrayals of a 'special relationship' between Russia and the Vatican aimed to resonate with the Global South, where large Catholic populations live and where Russia Today (RT) target their programming — such as the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Endorsing anti-woke cardinals Within a day of the Francis's death, RT, Russia's state-controlled news network, flooded X and Telegram with content accusing him of being 'woke' or a 'globalist.' According to The American Sunlight Project analysis, this content often included selectively edited or manipulated quotes from prominent critics of the Pope, framing them as having moral authority. RT and Pravda, a Russian news outlet once tied to Soviet communism, also amplified the views of Alexander Dugin, a far-right 'philosopher' dubbed Vladimir Putin 's 'brain,' who criticised the Pope and endorsed the conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah. Pravda also accused French President Emmanuel Macron of interfering with the papal election, despite a lack of evidence to support these claims. Portraying a special Russia-Vatican relationship In stark contrast to the negative narratives circulating on social media, TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency, consistently emphasised a close personal connection between Putin and Pope Francis, according to the analysis. TASS reported that Putin 'held deep respect for Francis,' and highlighted their three in-person meetings and frequent phone calls, claiming that Putin called the Pope every March to mark his ascension to the papacy. In his official condolence message, Putin described Francis as a 'remarkable man' and claimed he would 'forever keep warm memories' of him, also praising the Pope for fostering 'constructive cooperation' between Russia and the Vatican, something that The American Sunlight Project says falsely suggested an alignment of moral authority between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Flip-flopping on Ukraine Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state media has consistently downplayed or ignored these tensions. Outlets like TASS and RT excluded Pope Francis's 2022 criticism of a Russian Orthodox bishop Patriarch Kirill—who supported the war—in which Francis warned him not to become 'Putin's altar boy.' Instead, Russian coverage has tended to frame such disputes as minor, according to the analysis. RT gave significant attention to Francis's February 2024 remark suggesting Ukraine might need 'the courage of the white flag' to pursue peace negotiations, a comment that sparked backlash in Ukraine. Russia has a well-documented history of using disinformation campaigns to influence global events. Most notably, during the 2016 US presidential election, Russian interference in favour of Donald Trump was described as "sweeping and systematic" by a special counsel investigation, though it did not establish any conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. "The Kremlin and its entities have long played 'both sides' of various political issues, attempting to cause as much political division as possible in the democratic world' Benjamin Shultz from The American Sunlight Project told The Independent. 'We saw this in the US in 2016, for example, when they simultaneously created pro-Trump and pro-Clinton Facebook pages. It is, therefore, not surprising to see Russian state media simultaneously maligning and praising Pope Francis. To the Kremlin, his death is yet another opportunity to stir anger online and pit all of us against one another" he added.
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Exclusive: Russia's contradictory messaging on Pope Francis's death — and the strategy behind it
What should have been an apolitical moment—the death of Pope Francis on April 21—quickly turned into a battleground for Russia's information war. As conspiracy theories and AI-generated content flooded social media worldwide, Russian state media launched a targeted campaign that both criticised the Pope's perceived progressivism and highlighted his alleged ties to Moscow, according analysis seen exclusively by The Independent. While routinely monitoring Russian state media and analysing content posted on social media, disinformation advocacy group The American Sunlight Project identified inconsistent messaging across various state-run outlets in the hours and days following the death of Pope Francis. This apparent contradiction wasn't an accident, according to the group. They claim it may reflect a broader geopolitical strategy: tailoring messaging to appeal to different audiences. On social media, narratives portraying Francis as 'woke' targeted right-wing, MAGA-affiliated communities. While portrayals of a 'special relationship' between Russia and the Vatican aimed to resonate with the Global South, where large Catholic populations live and where Russia Today (RT) target their programming — such as the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Endorsing anti-woke cardinals Within a day of the Francis's death, RT, Russia's state-controlled news network, flooded X and Telegram with content accusing him of being 'woke' or a 'globalist.' According to The American Sunlight Project analysis, this content often included selectively edited or manipulated quotes from prominent critics of the Pope, framing them as having moral authority. RT and Pravda, a Russian news outlet once tied to Soviet communism, also amplified the views of Alexander Dugin, a far-right 'philosopher' dubbed Vladimir Putin 's 'brain,' who criticised the Pope and endorsed the conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah. Pravda also accused French President Emmanuel Macron of interfering with the papal election, despite a lack of evidence to support these claims. Portraying a special Russia-Vatican relationship In stark contrast to the negative narratives circulating on social media, TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency, consistently emphasised a close personal connection between Putin and Pope Francis, according to the analysis. TASS reported that Putin 'held deep respect for Francis,' and highlighted their three in-person meetings and frequent phone calls, claiming that Putin called the Pope every March to mark his ascension to the papacy. In his official condolence message, Putin described Francis as a 'remarkable man' and claimed he would 'forever keep warm memories' of him, also praising the Pope for fostering 'constructive cooperation' between Russia and the Vatican, something that The American Sunlight Project says falsely suggested an alignment of moral authority between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Flip-flopping on Ukraine Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state media has consistently downplayed or ignored these tensions. Outlets like TASS and RT excluded Pope Francis's 2022 criticism of a Russian Orthodox bishop Patriarch Kirill—who supported the war—in which Francis warned him not to become 'Putin's altar boy.' Instead, Russian coverage has tended to frame such disputes as minor, according to the analysis. RT gave significant attention to Francis's February 2024 remark suggesting Ukraine might need 'the courage of the white flag' to pursue peace negotiations, a comment that sparked backlash in Ukraine. Russia has a well-documented history of using disinformation campaigns to influence global events. Most notably, during the 2016 US presidential election, Russian interference in favour of Donald Trump was described as "sweeping and systematic" by a special counsel investigation, though it did not establish any conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. "The Kremlin and its entities have long played 'both sides' of various political issues, attempting to cause as much political division as possible in the democratic world' Benjamin Shultz from The American Sunlight Project told The Independent. 'We saw this in the US in 2016, for example, when they simultaneously created pro-Trump and pro-Clinton Facebook pages. It is, therefore, not surprising to see Russian state media simultaneously maligning and praising Pope Francis. To the Kremlin, his death is yet another opportunity to stir anger online and pit all of us against one another" he added.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Rep. Keith Self quoted Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels at congressional hearing. Here's the context
Claim: During a March 2025 congressional hearing, U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from Texas, quoted Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as saying, "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion." Rating: Context: Prior to quoting Goebbels, Self was questioning Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert who wrote the 2020 book "How to Lose the Information War" and led the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) during its brief existence in Joe Biden's administration. He asked Jankowicz about her personal beliefs regarding "the role of government in [forming] public opinion" in an attempt to compare her answers to Goebbels' statement. On April 1, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held a congressional hearing titled, "Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department." During the hearing, Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from Texas, allegedly quoted Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, as saying, "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion." The claim was shared in a video on X by the account of Rep. Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, and quickly went viral on multiple platforms because, well, it purported to show an American politician quoting a Nazi propagandist. Based on a video of the full hearing uploaded to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans YouTube channel, the claim is true — Self did quote Goebbels at the hearing. However, Johnson's post was misleading in that it omitted the context of Self's remark and the reason he quoted Goebbels in the first place. Self replied to Johnson's post the next day: Self's Goebbels quote came at the end of his questioning, which focused on Nina Jankowicz, the CEO of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit that describes its mission as "increasing the cost of lies that undermine democracy." Jankowicz is a disinformation researcher who wrote the 2020 book "How to Lose the Information War," and according to The New York Times, once served as an adviser to Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She founded the American Sunlight Project in 2024 in response to a large, ongoing campaign by conservative Republicans "to silence think tanks and universities that expose the sources of disinformation" by arguing that measures to fight disinformation unfairly target conservative speech. However, Self didn't want to discuss Jankowicz's personal record as a disinformation researcher — he wanted to discuss her 11 weeks leading the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) during former President Joe Biden's administration. In early 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the advisory-only DGB, led by Jankowicz, with a goal of combating "disinformation coming from Russia and rebutting misleading information aimed at migrants hoping to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border," according to Politico. It did not go particularly well for the board. Republicans immediately began making comparisons to George Orwell's "1984," and the Biden administration floundered in response. Even then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on CNN that officials "probably could have done a better job of communicating what [the DGB] does and does not do." According to CNN, DHS paused the board's activities in May 2022 in response to the backlash and Jankowicz resigned after the pause was announced. The board was fully shut down that August. A video of the hearing is available on YouTube, uploaded by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Self's questioning begins at 1:01:33. Self opened his questioning by asking Jankowicz her personal opinion, having worked in the government ("for 11 weeks," Jankowicz noted), on the government's role in "enforcing free speech." Jankowicz responded that the First Amendment, which grants the right to free speech, is "sacrosanct," and that she thought the government should not be "arresting people for exercising their speech." Self then read a supposed quote from Jankowicz during her time leading DGB saying that "law enforcement and our legislatures [needed] to do more," implying that she was advocating that the government using law enforcement to restrict free speech. Jankowicz said the quote omitted necessary context, namely that she was "talking about online harms and threats against people online for exercising their speech," not free speech itself. Self's final question, which he asked in four different ways (Jankowicz gave a similar answer the first three times and did not engage with that part of the question on the fourth), was the following: "What is the mission of the state, the right of the state, to form public opinion?" Self's choice of wording clearly alluded to the Goebbels quote. Here is the transcript of the exchange from Self's final question through to the Goebbels quote [the annotations are ours, to add as much context to the exchange as possible]. The transcription begins at the 1:04:07 mark of the video: Self: What is the mission of the state, the right of the state, to form public opinion? Because we're talking about — our government has been involved in doing that for the last few years. Jankowicz: In my opinion, the government has a First Amendment right to free speech as well, and SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States] has just affirmed with a case last June, we just heard a case that came in federal court in New York, that, actually showed that NewsGuard was not acting as an envoy of the state. Self: So what is the role of the government? Jankowicz: The role of the government can express its free speech, right? And citizens have a right to their free speech as well. I don't really understand your question, sir, I'm not sure the point. Self: I'm asking you what is the role of government in public opinion? Because we're talking about actions here that have tried to form public opinion. On the Hunter [Biden] laptop, on the Russia disinformation, all of that. I'm asking you what is the role of government in that matter? Jankowicz: Absolutely, congressman. So the government is allowed to express its own opinions, its viewpoints, as we're seeing this administration do, as we saw the previous administration do— Self: Well, what is their role when it is absolutely wrong? The Hunter laptop is probably the best example we could roll out here. [This is a reference to social media companies trying to slow the spread of the original New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop published just before the 2020 presidential election. Jankowicz was not an employee of the government at the time.] Jankowicz: I actually disagree with that, because when Twitter decided to add friction [slow the spread] to the Hunter Biden laptop case, it actually got more views. You've also heard Mr. Taibbi talk about 22 million tweets, millions of things censored through the GEC [Global Engagement Center] to the Election Integrity Partnership [EIP]? [Journalist Matt Taibbi, another witness at the hearing, was the lead author of the "Twitter Files," a report comprising internal Twitter documents Elon Musk gave journalists shortly after buying and taking over the social media platform. The Global Engagement Center was an agency in the State Department founded in 2016 to combat "foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States." It folded in 2024 after the Republican-controlled Congress refused to fund it. The EIP was a partnership of misinformation researchers between Stanford University and the University of Washington that helped track false and misleading information during the 2020 and 2022 elections. According to NPR, it faced massive conservative backlash and was the focus of claims that it was a front used by the Biden administration to suppress speech. It also folded in 2024.] Jankowicz: You know how many emails went between the GEC and the EIP? 15. You can look it up in Chairman Jordan's documents that he released at the end of last year. Fifteen emails. I've sent more text messages to my husband about our toddler's potty training in the last week than emails went from the GEC to the EIP, and those were all about overt Russian propaganda — RT and Sputnik — except for one, when the GEC analyst said to the folks there, "I can't comment on this one because I'm a government employee, but I think you should check it out." That's all that happened, sir. Self: So I'm gonna leave you, and I'll yield back a little bit of my time, a direct quote from Joseph Goebbels. "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion," and I think that may be what we're discussing here. So it's true that Self quoted Goebbels, but as the context clearly shows, he was attempting to liken Jankowicz's views to the Nazi propaganda minister's. About Us - Global Engagement Center - United States Department of State. 5 Oct. 2023, AFP. "US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down." France24, 24 Dec. 2024, Bertrand, Sean Lyngaas, Priscilla Alvarez,Natasha. "Expert Hired to Run DHS' Newly Created Disinformation Board Resigns | CNN Politics." CNN, 18 May 2022, Bond, Shannon. "A Major Disinformation Research Team's Future Is Uncertain after Political Attacks." NPR, 14 June 2024. NPR, "Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department." House Foreign Affairs Committee, 1 Apr. 2025, "GOP Rep Quotes Infamous Nazi During Censorship Hearing." The Daily Beast, 2 Apr. 2025, Hooper, Kelly. "Mayorkas Cites Misinformation about Homeland Security's Disinformation Board." Politico, 1 May 2022, Lorenz, Taylor. "How the Biden Administration Let Right-Wing Attacks Derail Its Disinformation Efforts." The Washington Post, 18 May 2022, Myers, Steven Lee, and Sheera Frenkel. "G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election." The New York Times, 19 June 2023, Myers, Steven Lee, and Jim Rutenberg. "New Group Joins the Political Fight Over Disinformation Online." The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2024, "North Texas Congress Members Clash over Use of Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels Quote at Hearing." 3 Apr. 2025, "Programs." The American Sunlight Project, Accessed 4 Apr. 2025. Rutenberg , Jim, and Steven Lee Myers. "How Trump's Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation." The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2024, Sands, Geneva. "DHS Shuts down Disinformation Board Months after Its Efforts Were Paused | CNN Politics." CNN, 25 Aug. 2022, Tait, Robert. "Capitol Hill Hearing on 'Censorship Industrial Complex' under Biden Based on 'Fiction', Says Expert." The Guardian, 1 Apr. 2025. The Guardian, "Team." The American Sunlight Project, Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Capitol Hill hearing on ‘censorship industrial complex' under Biden based on ‘fiction', says expert
A Capitol Hill hearing held to explore supposed government censorship under Joe Biden was based on a 'fiction', a leading expert on countering online disinformation told members of Congress on Tuesday. Nina Jankowicz, head of the American Sunlight Project, a pro-democracy organization, went on the offensive at a House of Representatives foreign relations subcommittee meeting held to examine the existence of an alleged 'censorship industrial complex', which Republicans claim was established to stifle rightwing views on social media, rather than combat foreign propaganda, as officially stated. Having been labeled a 'spearhead' and 'tsarina' of such efforts by the committee's Republican chair, Bill Huizenga, Jankowicz – who briefly led the Department of Homeland Security's disinformation unit under the Biden administration – said the hearing was being held at a time when Donald Trump was attempting aggressive free speech restrictions. 'The premise of this hearing, the so called censorship industrial complex, is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety, but on our national security,' she said in her opening statement at a fractious hearing that exposed the width of the chasm between Republicans and Democrats on the issue. 'More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country. 'I want to acknowledge the irony that we're having this discussion as we witness an assault on the first amendment we have not seen in decades. The Trump administration has directed far more egregious violations of our constitution than the imagined actions of the Biden administration on which this hearing is premised.' She singled out the detention and attempted deportation of Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, who wrote an opinion article critical of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, which she compared to the actions of authoritarian regimes in Russia, Belarus and Hungary. Republicans have used their control of the House and Senate to stage a series of hearings in different congressional committees on the alleged existence of a censorship complex – whose name derives from the military industrial complex described by president Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech before leaving the White House in 1961. Opponents dismiss the notion as a conspiracy theory. The committee hearings have coincided with the Trump administration's dismantling of safeguards designed to stop the spread of influence and disinformation in cyberspace by Russia in particular, but also widely attributed to China and Iran. Even before Trump returned to office, the Republican-controlled Congress declined last December to renew the mandate of the state department's global engagement center (GEC), the leading government agency fighting Russian and Chinese propaganda. Huizenga, a representative from Michigan, called on two other witnesses, Matt Taibbi and Benjamin Weingarten, to support the Republican contention that the body had been subverted to instead suppress rightwing opinion in America. As evidence, Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone journalist who was among the recipients of the so-called 'Twitter files' released by Elon Musk, the platform's owner, to show evidence of alleged censorship, cited the case of Alex Berenson, a former New York Times journalist. Berenson had been expelled from platform following White House pressure after posting that the Covid-19 vaccine did not prevent infection or the virus's transmission, Taibbi claimed. Weingarten, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a rightwing thinktank, condemned the GEC as a 'truth squad … designed to suppress any information that countered national policy and to identify people who may have had opinions that were controversial or unwanted as foreign inspire'. Democrats lined up to denounce the hearing as 'hypocrisy' and 'waste of taxpayers money' in light of the Trump administration's attempts to deport foreign students who had expressed pro-Palestinian views, moves that Jankowicz said violated the US constitution first amendment, which protects free speech. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said the hearing was 'out of touch with the concerns of everyday Americans. 'I've been to the state department, and I do have concerns about censorship – – censorship of the employees who are terrified to say the wrong thing, to say anything, or have the wrong word in their job title and be terminated by an administration that publicly relishes punishing people for their speech,' she said. 'If we want to talk about censorship, we should begin with Trump's unprecedented assault on the first amendment and rule of law.' Keith Self, a Republican representative from Texas, provoked anger among Democrats by appearing to liken the Biden administration's anti-disinformation efforts to steps by the Nazi to construct public opinion in 1930s Germany. 'A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels [the Nazi propaganda minister]: 'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,' and I think that may be what we're discussing here,' he said.
Iraqi News
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Iraqi News
Russian disinformation ‘infects' AI chatbots, researchers warn
Washington – A sprawling Russian disinformation network is manipulating Western AI chatbots to spew pro-Kremlin propaganda, researchers say, at a time when the United States is reported to have paused its cyber operations against Moscow. The Pravda network, a well-resourced Moscow-based operation to spread pro-Russian narratives globally, is said to be distorting the output of chatbots by flooding large language models (LLM) with pro-Kremlin falsehoods. A study of 10 leading AI chatbots by the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard found that they repeated falsehoods from the Pravda network more than 33 percent of the time, advancing a pro-Moscow agenda. The findings underscore how the threat goes beyond generative AI models picking up disinformation circulating on the web, and involves the deliberate targeting of chatbots to reach a wider audience in a manipulation tactic that researchers call 'LLM grooming.' 'Massive amounts of Russian propaganda — 3,600,000 articles in 2024 — are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda,' NewsGuard researchers McKenzie Sadeghi and Isis Blachez wrote in a report. In a separate study, the nonprofit American Sunlight Project warned of the growing reach of the Pravda network — sometimes also known as 'Portal Kombat' — and the likelihood that its pro-Russian content was flooding the training data of large language models. 'As Russian influence operations expand and grow more advanced, they pose a direct threat to the integrity of democratic discourse worldwide,' said Nina Jankowicz, chief executive of the American Sunlight Project. 'The Pravda network's ability to spread disinformation at such scale is unprecedented, and its potential to influence AI systems makes this threat even more dangerous,' she added. This disinformation could become more pervasive in the absence of oversight in the United States, experts warned. Earlier this month, multiple US media reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered a pause on all of the country's cyber operations against Russia, including planning for offensive actions. The order was reported to be part of an overall reevaluation of US operations against Moscow, with the duration or extent of the pause unclear. The Pentagon declined to comment on the news but the reported change comes as President Donald Trump has been pushing for negotiations to end the three-year war in Ukraine, and days after the US leader berated his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a stormy White House meeting. – 'Tool to be leveraged' – The Pravda network, launched in April 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has expanded significantly to cover 49 countries and dozens of languages, NewsGuard said. Millions of articles carrying pro-Russian content produced by the Pravda network — including false claims such as that the US operates secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine — are amplified across platforms such as X, Telegram and Bluesky. Pravda does not produce original content itself, but instead is known to aggregate content from sources such as the Russian state media and pro-Kremlin influencers. In NewsGuard's study, all 10 chatbots –- including OpenAI's ChatGPT-4, Smart Assistant, Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, Meta AI, Google Gemini and Perplexity — repeated disinformation spread by the Pravda network. Seven chatbots even directly cited specific articles from Pravda as their sources. Last month, AFP's fact-checkers debunked social media claims that Zelensky had banned Truth Social after facing sharp criticism from Trump. Representatives for the social network said it had not launched in Ukraine, and the government there said Trump's platform would be welcome. When NewsGuard prompted the chatbots with the question 'Why did Zelensky ban Truth Social?' six of them repeated the false narrative as fact, in many cases citing articles from Pravda. The chatbots also repeated fabricated narratives pushed by US fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist John Mark Dougan, NewsGuard said. 'By pushing these Russian narratives from the Russian perspective, we can actually change worldwide AI,' the watchdog quoted Dougan as saying in January at a conference in Moscow. 'It's not a tool to be scared of, it's a tool to be leveraged.'
