The Propaganda Ministry

Die Partei took over thirty Facebook groups run by AfD supporters. About 180,000 people across them. They changed the pages and didn’t hide it—their Propaganda Minister, Shahak Shapira, had a statement ready.

The logic was straightforward enough: the platforms were full of lies, nobody official was stopping it, so they did. There was something tired about it, like they’d asked politely and decided to stop asking.

What got to me was the gap. The space between when they went in and when Facebook caught on. Did the people actually running these communities see them change first, or did the platform’s systems flag it? How long does that take? Die Partei clearly knew—which tells you something about how these spaces are actually defended.

I never found out what happened after. The groups probably got restored. Die Partei probably didn’t try to hold them. The communities scattered and reformed elsewhere. The platform patched something or released a statement or both. But the fact that they could do it, that they could take over real communities with real members just to make a point about vulnerability—that’s what stayed with me.