At first glance, the posters look deceptively real – and even the website only differs from the real one in details: But the Greens are not behind a campaign on transport policy.
Lower Saxony’s Greens have become the target of a fake campaign. According to a party spokeswoman, fake party posters were put up in Hanover, Osnabrück, Göttingen and Lüneburg. In addition, the homepage of the Greens state association was copied and supplemented with a false press release with alleged plans for transport policy.
The Greens already filed a criminal complaint about the action on Tuesday. As confirmed by the Hanover police, state security is investigating the matter. The public prosecutor’s office is also examining the case.
Among other things, Lower Saxony’s deputy prime minister and Volkswagen supervisory board member Julia Willie Hamburg (Greens) can be seen on the posters with the slogan “VW stands for traffic change”. Another poster, which was still hanging in Hanover on Thursday, shows Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck pointing out Federal Minister of Transport Volker Wissing (FDP). “These are not our contents,” emphasized Greens spokeswoman Heike Köhn. “It is still completely unclear who is behind it,” said Köhn.
Even the outdoor advertiser Ströer, on whose billboards the motifs could be seen, does not know the author. “It is not a regularly booked order,” said a Ströer spokesman. “In such cases, we immediately take care of the removal of such posters.”
Deceptively real
The counterfeiters put a lot of effort into their campaign: In fact, the posters with the design that was also used in the state election campaign a few months ago look deceptively real. The fake website is almost a mirror image of the real Green Page, even the imprint was copied. However, the address is green-nds.de instead of gruene-niedersachsen.de.
In terms of content, the fake campaign presents alleged transport policy goals for Lower Saxony, such as stopping the expansion of motorways or switching the car industry to buses, trains and cargo bikes. This is formally based in part on a paper calling for more climate protection in transport from the Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The fake is now acknowledged on the website. There it was said on Thursday that the traffic targets described were “hopefully green demands” – “if that is not the case, a correction would be helpful in order to be able to better classify the Greens’ policy”.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
