PARIS (AP) — Photos of blood-red hands on a Holocaust memorial. Caskets at the Eiffel Tower. A fake French military recruitment drive calling for soldiers in Ukraine, and major French news sites improbably registered in an obscure Pacific territory, population 15,000.
All are part of disinformation campaigns orchestrated out of Russia and targeting France, according to French officials and cybersecurity experts in Europe and the United States. France’s legislative elections and the Paris Olympics sent them into overdrive.
More than a dozen reports issued in the past year point to an intensifying effort from Russia to undermine France, particularly the upcoming Games, and President Emmanuel Macron, who is one of Ukraine’s most vocal supporters in Europe.
This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an Associated Press series covering threats to democracy in Europe.
Well, it didn’t seem to work for the election.
It’s probably gonna work in the US.
We don’t host the Olympics in an election year until 2028. We have plenty of time to prepare. Plus, fascists famously suck at using the Olympics for propaganda. Hitler’s 1936 Berlin games was supposed to be a showcase of German superiority and then Jesse Owens dominated the marquee event.
BONUS FUN FACT: Until the 1936 Olympics, somehow no one had realized that Haiti and Liechtenstein had the same flag. So, Liechtenstein added a crown to theirs and then made that their new national flag.
I would think someone would have been super into flags by then and would have pointed that out. That is a fun fact.
Nobody on the Olympic committee was that into flags, at least.
I guess they all look the same after a while.
Here is the original flag. I can see how it happened.