Hard to be more explicit. China and Russia have used the Covid-19 pandemic to propagate and spread fake news in Italy. The Italian Parliament’s intelligence committee published a report on “infodemic” on Tuesday. Yet another “virus” that hit Italy deeply during the health crisis. In traditional media and social networks, the propaganda from Beijing and Moscow has enjoyed free-range like never before.
The bipartisan committee report is based on information from Italian intelligence. The response is unanimous. China and Russia have managed to “clearly ride the wave of disinformation, trying somehow to exploit the emergency for their own interests,” says the report.
In the past three months, Russia and China have transformed Italy into a decisive battleground for Europe’s geopolitical hegemony. Putin and Xi sent tons of aid and dozens of doctors to Italy. The United States has sent many more.
However, aid from Russia and China did not come alone. It arrived in the country together with a massive and unprecedented propaganda campaign, both on official and party channels and on social media. The campaign has had its results. According to a recent poll, 73% of Italians believe that liberal democracies have failed the Covid-19 test. In a few short months, democracy has gone out of fashion.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia has played a leading role in the spread of disinformation in Italy, explains the intelligence committee. It is no mystery that Moscow has a consolidated presence in the country’s political and media system. Today, however, the crisis has made Russian interference stronger and more effective.
Copasir, the Italian Parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence services, denounces the disinformation campaigns of the Kremlin government agencies. Sputnik, needless to say, is in the first place. “Since the beginning of the European emergency, Sputnik has been among the most active media: the Moscow all-news channel has disseminated ‘questionable’ content through its international channels, with some news that has entered the ranking of the EuObserver for most read Russian fake news,” writes Enrico Borghi, Parliamentarian of the Democratic Party (Pd) and author of the report.
Silver medal for Russia Today, another of Putin’s favorite media. The committee describes ‘the relaunching activity – by recently created social users – of news from newspapers linked to Russia (Sputnik and Russia Today) with explicit references to Italy.’ The goal, explains the report, is to increase confusion and panic by amplifying ‘public order problems that occurred in supermarkets’ but also with ‘explicit references to migratory phenomena.’
“The coronavirus represented the perfect stage that some autocratic regimes waited to show a supposed – and unproven – greater efficiency and capacity, compared to western democracies,” said the chairman of the Northern League party’s committee Raffaele Volpi. Russia and China played on the same field, but with different strategies. Moscow has gained ground by delegitimizing and attacking the Italian and European responses to the virus. As the report explains, Russian disinformation campaigns “focus mainly on conspiracy theories to exploit the virus for their own purposes.” The goal, he continues, “is to create distrust in Western governments, in their health systems, and in the scientific sector.”
Beijing has taken a different approach. In official media and on social networks they praised the Chinese government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis incessantly. They also praised the love of Italians for the Chinese Communist Party. Even at the cost of making everything up. “Exemplary in this regard the diffusion of the video ‘Thanks, China!’ relaunched on Twitter by the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Minister Hua Chunying – account @SpokespersonCHN -, video actually the result of manipulation),” writes the Copasir.
In both cases the only goal is to show that democracies do not win. They aim to demonstrate authoritarian regimes win over the virus. However, this too is a lie, says Borghi. “Excluding Italy – there are also South Korea and Germany to demonstrate that democracies are better than autocracies when they organize themselves because they guarantee better health results and less decreases in freedoms.”
