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In Hungary it has been affectionately dubbed “rolling dollars”, now it is Slovakia that is experiencing the same interference during its parliamentary election campaign. US Ambassador Gautam Rana has admitted to injecting millions of dollars to parties involved in silencing social media pages of national conservative politicians, reported the Slovakian news portal Hlavné Správy.
“I finally know who arranged for me to lose Facebook!”, wrote Ľuboš Blaha, a center-right opposition politician in telegram. He quoted Gautam Rana, US Ambassador to Slovakia, who has revealed that under the auspices of fighting what he called “Russian disinformation”, the Biden administration is actively financing the silencing of certain voices in Slovakia.
“We have provided $5 million to the Slovak Ministry of Defense. It will go towards countering Russian influence. Last year, we were able to cooperate between the Slovak government and the US government in bringing information to Facebook, where Facebook decided that MP Lubos Blaha should not be given a platform because he was such a notorious spreader of lies and misinformation,” said the Ambassador in an interview for the George Soros media empire linked newspaper SME.
Photo: Facebook US Embassy Slovakia
Blaha, and outspoken MP for the largest opposition party SMER Social Democracy, was outraged as Facebook had recently removed his personal page.
“This is an incredible scandal!” Blaha said in a video message. The ambassador also openly admits that the U.S. sends millions of dollars to restrict Slovak citizens on social media and to liquidate the opposition.
You can call this Maidan, you can call this a hybrid war against Slovakia!”
Blaha stated.
The Slovak MP also pointed out that the move will most likely benefit the radical left-wing party Progressive Slovakia, that in polls is currently standing on the second place with some 18 percent. Parliamentary elections are taking place in Slovakia on Sunday, 30th September.
The removal of a number of Eurosceptic or conservative Facebook portals, among them the Hungarian minority’s Ma7.sk newsportal’s page, has been linked to a media monitoring firm called Gerulata. The firm is headed by Michal Trnka, son of Miroslav Trnka, the billionaire businessman bankrolling Progressive Slovakia. Gerulata has also received a 500.000 EUR grant signed off by the Slovak President Zuzana Caputová, former member of Progressive Slovakia.
The entire affair will be very familiar to those following the scandal concerning US donations to the Hungarian opposition and media prior to the parliamentary elections in April 2022 in Hungary. It has been revealed that a Democrat-linked U.S. group called Action for Democracy had bankrolled the campaign of left-wing prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki-Zay. The U.S. financial aid for the Hungarian left came under the pretext of strengthening democracy, in Slovakia they are calling it a “fight against Russian disinformation”.
The US Ambassador is surveying Slovakia from above. Facebook US Embassy Slovakia
The move could further undermine the Biden administration’s reputation in the region, where the Democrat-lead White House has already been unmasked as being behind undermining democratic conservative forces, as well as using U.S. social media giants to silence dissent against some of its policies.
Featured Image: Facebook US Embassy Slovakia