PARIS (AP) — France says it has been the goal of a Russian on-line destabilization marketing campaign that used automated social-media accounts to whip up controversy and confusion about spray-painted Stars of David that appeared on Paris streets and fed alarm about surging antisemitism in France in the course of the Israel-Hamas warfare.
The 250 or so rapidly erased blue stars at the moment are the topic of French police investigations searching for to find out whether or not the graffiti have been antisemitic, as Paris’ police chief and others initially suspected, and in the event that they have been organized from outdoors France.
The celebrities’ stenciling on partitions in Paris and its suburbs final month rapidly fomented debate and alarm on social media and considerations concerning the security of France’s Jewish neighborhood, the biggest in Europe.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering their newest and deadliest warfare, French authorities have counted greater than 1,150 antisemitic acts. That’s practically thrice greater than all acts in opposition to French Jews in 2022, the Inside Ministry says.
In an announcement Thursday night, France’s Overseas Ministry pointed a finger of blame at Russia, saying a Russian community of bots whipped up controversy concerning the stars with 1000’s of posts on X, the platform beforehand referred to as Twitter. Bots are automated accounts programmed to imitate human customers by producing messages or following customers on social media, usually for nefarious or malicious functions.
“This new operation of Russian digital interference in opposition to France testifies to the persistence of an opportunistic and irresponsible technique aimed toward exploiting worldwide crises to sow confusion and create tensions within the public debate in France and in Europe,” the assertion stated.
It stated the bots have been affiliated with a Russian community — Current Dependable Information, additionally recognized as Doppelgänger.
The Russian exercise was detected by Viginum, a French state digital watchdog arrange in 2021 after hackers focused Emmanuel Macron ‘s profitable marketing campaign for the French presidency in 2017. The core mission of Viginum is to detect and analyze overseas digital efforts to affect on-line public debate in France.
Viginum decided {that a} community of 1,095 bots affiliated with RRN revealed 2,589 posts on X in underneath two weeks, “contributing to the controversy surrounding the stenciled Stars of David,” the French Overseas Ministry stated.
Viginum additionally discovered that the RRN community appeared to have been knowledgeable concerning the graffiti earlier than different posters on X, the ministry stated. It stated RRN bots first posted concerning the stars on the night of Oct. 28 — 48 hours earlier than different images of the celebs began to look on X.
The European Union has recognized RRN as a digital data manipulation marketing campaign that has additionally disseminated propaganda in assist of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In addition to utilizing faux accounts on social media, RRN has additionally employed faux net pages that mimic media retailers and authorities web sites, and “is a part of a broader hybrid marketing campaign by Russia in opposition to the EU and the member states,” the Council of the EU stated in a July announcement of sanctions in opposition to Russian people and entities deemed chargeable for the marketing campaign.
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AP journalists John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.