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 the Hanover police confirmed on Thursday, state security is investigating the matter. The public prosecutor’s office is also examining the case.
The posters include Lower Saxony’s deputy prime minister and Volkswagen supervisory board member Julia Willie Hamburg (Greens) 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.”
Imprint copied from original page
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 response to a written request, the initiator or initiators emphasized: “The campaign is not directed against the Greens.” However, Lower Saxony lacks an immediate program for the traffic turnaround.
In terms of content, the 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 goals described were “hopefully green demands” – “if that should not be the case, a correction would be helpful in order to be able to better classify the politics of the Greens”. (dpa)
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Source: Tagesspiegel
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