5 ms·

EU now fears US interference in European elections

85 points by vrganj 3mo ago

andsoitis 3mo ago
> US Vice-President J.D. Vance urged Hungarians to vote for the outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, Hungarians voted Orbán in, but they also voted him out even with Vance influence.
- BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
  Yeah, if this is the effect that attempted US influence has, then have at it! Having said that, it is frustratingly amusing seeing the US going overt with its extra-territorial electoral interference with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
  - UpsideDownRide 3mo ago
    Rules for thee moment
  - esseph 3mo ago
    > with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections. That was always the play. You say the things you would do if you were in your political opponents shoes, you talk about how bad it is, how horrible and wrong. And then, if you can manage to get enough political or monied support, you do the thing you said they were doing! After all, they did the thing first, right? It's just fair play, you say.
- jb827 3mo ago
  Canada and Australia election results away from conservatives are result of US "influence"
  - vrganj 3mo ago
    Thankfully, they don't realize how odious they are to anyone not stuck in their cult already.
  - BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
    That definitely seemed to be the case in Australia, but where it's possibly started moving the other way is that a smaller, more conservative (I don't like these political terms, it's not exactly correct but it gets the point across, I think) party than the main conservative party, appears to have taken the main 'conservative party' crown. There was a good couple of months of mainstream media even touting that they're a threat to the left/progressive/less-conservative party currently in power who won the last election in no uncertain terms (maybe possibly a landslide...?). It's hard to get a real gauge on it, but there's a very vocal minority that has been emboldened by Trump's anti-immigration, easy answers, point at 'other' as the cause of all the problems plaguing society rhetoric and actions, such that the 'more conservative' are at least getting more airtime, which makes it seem as if they're a "growing base". I know some people who have started talking a bit more openly in this direction. The only real way to judge is an actual election.
ingonealan3 3mo ago
So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.
benrutter 3mo ago
As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations). I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago. The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.
- flohofwoe 3mo ago
  > with Vance's support of Orban Tbh, if that always plays out like it did in this case I'm all for US interference in EU elections ;)
- locknitpicker 3mo ago
  > I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago. No,the difference is not in mere political misalignments. You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
  - benrutter 3mo ago
    > You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions. I think the first part of this is political alignment right? What are "fascist and extremist political parties" is not politics with a very different alignment? I think your second point is a really good one though, the Barack Obama and J D Vance examples are both soft power usage. But in the case of Vance, it comes alongside a state using military force to bully its way through issues, that's a very significant context difference I didn't really acknowledge earlier.
protocolture 3mo ago
They should. Election Interference is their chief export.
- rusk 3mo ago
  At least they’re allowing their colonies to have elections
elendilm 3mo ago
The headline makes me chuckle.
sunaookami 3mo ago
[flagged]
- vrganj 3mo ago
  Election interference is when others interfere in our democratic processes. Of course the outcome would be something we don't like, they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they want the best for us.
- ben_w 3mo ago
  It is when someone who has no say, has a say.
stymaar 3mo ago
[flagged]
- adaml_623 3mo ago
  This is such a lazy comment. How is the EU changing? How is it changing to be closer to which part of South America? South America is changing so do you mean how it was or are they converging? The EU has expanded in the last 40 years but I don't imagine that's what you mean. What do you mean?
  - stymaar 3mo ago
    Basically, losing any sense of autonomy and becoming US's hinterland. It has moved a lot in this direction from an economic and geopolitical PoV over the past 40 years, now we're seeing the electoral process being subverted by American interests.
    - flohofwoe 3mo ago
      Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 (just as Eastern Europe was thightly integrated with the USSR), and that process of disentanglement with the US has accelerated dramatically once the US decided to start the process of turning itself into a fascist autocracy (its quite similar with Eastern Europe disentangling from the post-USSR actually, just that Western Europe is about 30 years late to the party).
      - stymaar 3mo ago
        > Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 Not quite. For instance no European countries got involved in Vietnam like they did in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and France had left Nato integrated command in the 60s, only to join again in 2009.
        flohofwoe 3mo ago
vdsk 3mo ago
[flagged]
runtime_lens 3mo ago
[flagged]
qwertytyyuu 3mo ago
Finally
mono442 3mo ago
This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.
- locknitpicker 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - mono442 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - vrganj 3mo ago
      Hm, why don't we ask people who know what they're talking about? How about, idk, Yale professors that focus on fascism and its rise? Surely they'd be able to give us an informed opinion? What's that? They've decided to leave the country? Huh. https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-canada-fascism.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
      - mono442 3mo ago
        [flagged]
        vrganj 3mo ago
        When you call studying the rise of fascism and trying to prevent it "leftist ideology" and then try to prevent that whole line of inquiry, I think that kind of proves my point, no? And yes, no shit, they don't like the guy who is doing the fascist things, that's kind of the whole focus of their study.
    - rsynnott 3mo ago
      The US is certainly far closer to so called ‘illiberal democracy’ (ie., not a democracy, but maintains some of the aesthetic of democracy) than it used to be. It probably hasn’t entirely tipped over the precipice yet, but it’s extremely naive to think that the current situation is anything like business as usual.
JKFSOM 3mo ago
UK Labour party had activists in the US encouraging people to vote for the Democrats in 2024. This isn't unique to the US.
Frieren 3mo ago
> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections. The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.
keiferski 3mo ago
This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms. It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree? Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies? (This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.) It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.
elric 3mo ago
From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer. From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse. More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...
ReptileMan 3mo ago
A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it
- bestouff 3mo ago
  They are driven by conservative media explaining to them the enemy is the other (brown, or trans, or plain woman) instead of the ruling class.
  - mlrtime 3mo ago
    You can't imagine any situation where the people are seeing this for themselves? It must be that they're brainwashed by conservative media?
    - bestouff 3mo ago
      Of course there are. But how many people were brainwashed by Fox News in the US, various tabloids in the UK, the Bolloré media empire in France, etc. ? My guess is it's there huge majority of them. Like in any part of the world, take some unhappy people (mostly poor but not only), you have a very fertile ground for your readymade enemy stories.
      - ReptileMan 3mo ago
        Just last week in Europe we had - Islamist ramming a vehicle in pride parade in Berlin and Islamist stabbing in France - in which three women were seriously hurt. Do you claim that those didn't happen, were exaggerated or invented out of thin air from the media to brainwash the hoi polloi?
        bestouff 3mo ago
        Those hateful islamists are the same easily influenced poor sods from the other side of the sea, converted by other kinds of right-wing opportunists
watwut 3mo ago
Aaaand flagged.
rsynnott 3mo ago
I think they would have to get a lot _better_ at it for it to be a major concern, honestly. See Vance and Orban; if anything that probably hurt Orban. Like, thus far, American attempts seem _extremely_ crude relative to Russian ones.
penguin_booze 3mo ago
Fear? The American circus went to Hungary to prop-up Orban. Thankfully, the people of Hungary gave the clowns an emphatic whack across the face, and kept them in their place.

85 points by vrganj 3mo ago

> US Vice-President J.D. Vance urged Hungarians to vote for the outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, Hungarians voted Orbán in, but they also voted him out even with Vance influence.

BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
Yeah, if this is the effect that attempted US influence has, then have at it! Having said that, it is frustratingly amusing seeing the US going overt with its extra-territorial electoral interference with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
- UpsideDownRide 3mo ago
  Rules for thee moment
- esseph 3mo ago
  > with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections. That was always the play. You say the things you would do if you were in your political opponents shoes, you talk about how bad it is, how horrible and wrong. And then, if you can manage to get enough political or monied support, you do the thing you said they were doing! After all, they did the thing first, right? It's just fair play, you say.
jb827 3mo ago
Canada and Australia election results away from conservatives are result of US "influence"
- vrganj 3mo ago
  Thankfully, they don't realize how odious they are to anyone not stuck in their cult already.
- BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
  That definitely seemed to be the case in Australia, but where it's possibly started moving the other way is that a smaller, more conservative (I don't like these political terms, it's not exactly correct but it gets the point across, I think) party than the main conservative party, appears to have taken the main 'conservative party' crown. There was a good couple of months of mainstream media even touting that they're a threat to the left/progressive/less-conservative party currently in power who won the last election in no uncertain terms (maybe possibly a landslide...?). It's hard to get a real gauge on it, but there's a very vocal minority that has been emboldened by Trump's anti-immigration, easy answers, point at 'other' as the cause of all the problems plaguing society rhetoric and actions, such that the 'more conservative' are at least getting more airtime, which makes it seem as if they're a "growing base". I know some people who have started talking a bit more openly in this direction. The only real way to judge is an actual election.

ingonealan3 3mo ago

So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.

benrutter 3mo ago

As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations). I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago. The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.

flohofwoe 3mo ago
> with Vance's support of Orban Tbh, if that always plays out like it did in this case I'm all for US interference in EU elections ;)
locknitpicker 3mo ago
> I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago. No,the difference is not in mere political misalignments. You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
- benrutter 3mo ago
  > You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions. I think the first part of this is political alignment right? What are "fascist and extremist political parties" is not politics with a very different alignment? I think your second point is a really good one though, the Barack Obama and J D Vance examples are both soft power usage. But in the case of Vance, it comes alongside a state using military force to bully its way through issues, that's a very significant context difference I didn't really acknowledge earlier.

protocolture 3mo ago

They should. Election Interference is their chief export.

rusk 3mo ago
At least they’re allowing their colonies to have elections

elendilm 3mo ago

The headline makes me chuckle.

sunaookami 3mo ago

[flagged]

vrganj 3mo ago
Election interference is when others interfere in our democratic processes. Of course the outcome would be something we don't like, they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they want the best for us.
ben_w 3mo ago
It is when someone who has no say, has a say.

stymaar 3mo ago

[flagged]

adaml_623 3mo ago
This is such a lazy comment. How is the EU changing? How is it changing to be closer to which part of South America? South America is changing so do you mean how it was or are they converging? The EU has expanded in the last 40 years but I don't imagine that's what you mean. What do you mean?
- stymaar 3mo ago
  Basically, losing any sense of autonomy and becoming US's hinterland. It has moved a lot in this direction from an economic and geopolitical PoV over the past 40 years, now we're seeing the electoral process being subverted by American interests.
  - flohofwoe 3mo ago
    Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 (just as Eastern Europe was thightly integrated with the USSR), and that process of disentanglement with the US has accelerated dramatically once the US decided to start the process of turning itself into a fascist autocracy (its quite similar with Eastern Europe disentangling from the post-USSR actually, just that Western Europe is about 30 years late to the party).
    - stymaar 3mo ago
      > Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 Not quite. For instance no European countries got involved in Vietnam like they did in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and France had left Nato integrated command in the 60s, only to join again in 2009.
      - flohofwoe 3mo ago

vdsk 3mo ago

[flagged]

runtime_lens 3mo ago

[flagged]

qwertytyyuu 3mo ago

Finally

mono442 3mo ago

This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.

locknitpicker 3mo ago
[flagged]
- mono442 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - vrganj 3mo ago
    Hm, why don't we ask people who know what they're talking about? How about, idk, Yale professors that focus on fascism and its rise? Surely they'd be able to give us an informed opinion? What's that? They've decided to leave the country? Huh. https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-canada-fascism.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
    - mono442 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - vrganj 3mo ago
        When you call studying the rise of fascism and trying to prevent it "leftist ideology" and then try to prevent that whole line of inquiry, I think that kind of proves my point, no? And yes, no shit, they don't like the guy who is doing the fascist things, that's kind of the whole focus of their study.
  - rsynnott 3mo ago
    The US is certainly far closer to so called ‘illiberal democracy’ (ie., not a democracy, but maintains some of the aesthetic of democracy) than it used to be. It probably hasn’t entirely tipped over the precipice yet, but it’s extremely naive to think that the current situation is anything like business as usual.

JKFSOM 3mo ago

UK Labour party had activists in the US encouraging people to vote for the Democrats in 2024. This isn't unique to the US.

Frieren 3mo ago

> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections. The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.

keiferski 3mo ago

This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms. It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree? Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies? (This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.) It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.

elric 3mo ago

From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer. From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse. More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...

ReptileMan 3mo ago

A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it

bestouff 3mo ago
They are driven by conservative media explaining to them the enemy is the other (brown, or trans, or plain woman) instead of the ruling class.
- mlrtime 3mo ago
  You can't imagine any situation where the people are seeing this for themselves? It must be that they're brainwashed by conservative media?
  - bestouff 3mo ago
    Of course there are. But how many people were brainwashed by Fox News in the US, various tabloids in the UK, the Bolloré media empire in France, etc. ? My guess is it's there huge majority of them. Like in any part of the world, take some unhappy people (mostly poor but not only), you have a very fertile ground for your readymade enemy stories.
    - ReptileMan 3mo ago
      Just last week in Europe we had - Islamist ramming a vehicle in pride parade in Berlin and Islamist stabbing in France - in which three women were seriously hurt. Do you claim that those didn't happen, were exaggerated or invented out of thin air from the media to brainwash the hoi polloi?
      - bestouff 3mo ago
        Those hateful islamists are the same easily influenced poor sods from the other side of the sea, converted by other kinds of right-wing opportunists

watwut 3mo ago

Aaaand flagged.

rsynnott 3mo ago

I think they would have to get a lot _better_ at it for it to be a major concern, honestly. See Vance and Orban; if anything that probably hurt Orban. Like, thus far, American attempts seem _extremely_ crude relative to Russian ones.

penguin_booze 3mo ago

Fear? The American circus went to Hungary to prop-up Orban. Thankfully, the people of Hungary gave the clowns an emphatic whack across the face, and kept them in their place.