On August 18, German media reported a press conference of the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV) Thomas Haldenwang, in which he warned that citizens’ protests against the war in Ukraine, rising prices, inflation and Covid measures would be infiltrated by right-wing extremists and conspiracy believers. He thus placed all people and their legitimate protests against existential economic hardship under general suspicion of being controlled. Above all, “Russian actors” wanted to use false information to deliberately turn society against trust in the state, government and democracy and to instrumentalize the people’s discontent, reports the likes of Handelsblatt. (https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/ukraine-krieg-sorge-um-innere-sicherheit-verfassungsschutz-warnt-vor-russischen-falschinformationen-zu-gasknappheit/28604664.html )
The BfV is a subordinate agency of the Ministry of the Interior and is similar to a domestic intelligence service. The Interior Ministry had already issued the document “FAQ—Disinformation in the Context of the Russian War of Aggression against Ukraine” in May 2022, which is supposed to specify exactly what thought and speech taboos there should be on the subject. (https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/topthemen/DE/topthema-desinformation/faq-download.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4 )
The following elements play the main role:
• There were no atrocities committed by Ukraine against civilians in Donbass
