After the terrorist attack at Berlin's Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade, Kremlin-aligned FIMI actors quickly incorporated the incident into broader narratives about migration, state failure, and elite responsibility. The attack became another vehicle for reinforcing long-standing anti-migration and anti-establishment messaging targeting German audiences. Key topics:
Redirecting The Blame: From State Negligence To A Security Crisis
Escalating Internal Tensions: Constructing The Narrative Of Elite Complicity
Executive Summary
In response to the terrorist attack at Berlin's Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade, the Kremlin employed one of its most effective FIMI tactics: exploiting existing divisions within German society to deepen domestic polarization. By embedding these narratives into existing controversies over migration, security, and LGBTQ+ rights, FIMI actors integrated pro-Kremlin messaging into ongoing domestic political debates.
Following the attack, Kremlin-aligned actors consistently shifted attention away from the perpetrator and toward Germany's migration policies and, at times, the LGBTQ+ community itself. RT DE argued that progressive forces had ignored the “real” threat of Islamist radicalization, while a widely reposted by FIMI channels text by Jan van Helsing's article “Karma is a bitch” portrayed the attack as the inevitable consequence of multiculturalism. More broadly, the attack was framed as evidence of Germany's systemic decline. Deutschland Kurier presented it as another outcome of liberal migration policies, while FIMI channel Videodump claimed that Germany was living with “thousands of Islamists among us,” explicitly describing the situation as a “failure of the state.”
The campaign then escalated from portraying institutional incompetence to alleging deliberate political complicity. RT DE suggested that the suspect's death had “conveniently prevented him from revealing information that could implicate the authorities” and implied that terrorist attacks could be politically advantageous, allowing politicians and the media to exploit both the victims and public outrage while avoiding investigations that might prove electorally inconvenient. Other FIMI actors reinforced this framing by portraying German political elites as ideologically committed to ignoring Islamist violence, concealing the consequences of migration, and even enabling extremism through state institutions. Nachhall von Helgoland and Node of Time alleged that the Berlin Senate financed an organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, while JournalistenWatch described Germany's migration crisis as the direct consequence of mainstream political decisions, asking: “When will proceedings to ban the CDU/CSU begin?”
Collectively, these narratives depicted Germany's political establishment not simply as incapable of addressing the country's security challenges, but as responsible for creating, exploiting, and concealing them.
Redirecting The Blame: From State Negligence To A Security Crisis
The Berlin CSD attack became the perfect opportunity for the Kremlin to utilize its favorite tactic of leveraging existing societal divisions to intensify domestic polarization.
RT DE argued (1) that progressive forces had spent years warning about right-wing extremism while ignoring the real threat of Islamist radicalization. The article suggested that LGBTQ+ activists and their political allies had become victims of the very migration policies they supported, presenting the attack as the inevitable consequence of liberal ideology.
FIMI channel Informationskanal für die Neue Zeit promoted (2) articles by JournalistenWatch claiming (3) that demonstrations against the far right had become absurd because the actual danger allegedly came from migrants, while Jan van Helsing's article “Karma is a bitch,” distributed across FIMI channels, framed (4) the attack as queer people receiving “karma” for supporting multiculturalism. Informationskanal für die Neue Zeit ridiculed (5) the idea of the “danger of far-right,” describing it as absurd for right-wing extremism to still be presented as “the greatest threat” to LGBTQ+ people after an Islamist attack. It also claimed (6) that the “radical left” was deliberately concealing the real source of violence. FIMI channel Junge Freiheit echoed (7) this argument, stating that liberal narratives “falsely equated conservatives and Islamists,” adding (8):
“Islamic migration and queerness are meant to represent our ‘diversity.’ Yet this loving relationship seems to be very one-sided.”
X posts (9) shared by another channel, Frühwald informiert, argued (10) that the attack had finally exposed the hypocrisy of “Queers for Palestine,” asking “if they have finally woken up.” Across different FIMI channels, liberal migration policies, open borders, and “political correctness” (11) were presented as having made such violence inevitable.
State media and FIMI actors also portrayed the attack as evidence of Germany's broader societal decline. RT DE argued (12) that attacks had become so commonplace that reacting with shock to each new incident would mean living in a “state of permanent shock,” since Germany was filled with “Islamist time bombs.” It also stated that it did not matter if these people “had arrived as asylum seekers, been evacuated by the government, or had already obtained German citizenship.” FIMI channel Politische Nachrichten argued that Germany had become an “anti-example” (13) of the consequences of liberal migration policies. Viel los amplified (14) Austrian journalist Gerald Grosz's claim (15) that the country was witnessing a “perversion of the social system” that allowed violence to continue through a cycle of “rape, pre-trial detention, no deportation, and another rape.” Meine D-News circulated (16) footage of migrants fighting in public and cited journalist Roland Tichy's description of Germany as a “landscape of horror.” FIMI channel Kestner published (17) another video of a violent public confrontation, stating that this had “become the new normal in Europe.” Videodump channel claimed (18) that Germany was living with “thousands of Islamists among us” while describing the situation as a “failure of the state.” Across these narratives, migration was presented as a systemic security crisis that German institutions were no longer capable of managing.
Escalating Internal Tensions: Constructing The Narrative Of Elite Complicity
FIMI channels pushed the narrative of the German state's systemic failure to its extreme, focusing on the responsibility of the elites. Political elites were portrayed not merely as incapable of preventing violence, but as consciously enabling the conditions that made it possible.
RT DE articulated this narrative most comprehensively (19) in an article titled “After the Berlin Attack: The Great Outrage of Hypocrites, Tacticians, and Beneficiaries.” This long-form article implied that the suspect's death “conveniently prevented him from revealing information that could implicate the authorities,” transforming allegations of negligence into suspicions of an intentional cover-up. It also portrayed terrorist attacks as politically useful events, claiming that politicians and media instrumentalized both the victims and the public reaction to advance their own agendas. By emphasizing the timing of the attack shortly before several elections, the article further insinuated that state authorities might have little interest in fully investigating crimes that could prove politically advantageous. This framing was made explicit through claims that “politicians and the media actively instrumentalize the victims, each in their own way,” while the victims themselves were allegedly exploited “for alleged ‘Western values,’ the ‘liberal democratic order,’ or even ‘German culture.’” The article concluded by questioning the state's willingness to solve certain crimes, suggesting that authorities might avoid doing so “perhaps only to conceal their own misconduct, possibly even because they are politically and temporally convenient.”
Similar allegations appeared across other FIMI channels. Studio Telegram claimed (20) that warnings before the attack had been deliberately ignored or suppressed, reinforcing accusations that German authorities knowingly failed to protect the public. JournalistenWatch, reposted by Informationskanal für die Neue Zeit (21), took the argument a step further (22) by portraying Germany's migration crisis as the direct result of decisions made by mainstream political parties. Commenting on CDU/CSU politicians' calls for denaturalization and “remigration,” it asked:
“When will proceedings to ban the CDU/CSU begin?”
Beyond portraying political elites as concealing the truth, FIMI actors increasingly framed state institutions and civil society organizations as active participants in sustaining extremism. Nachhall von Helgoland (23) and Node of Time (24) claimed that the Berlin Senate allocated public funding to the Muslimisches Seelsorge Telefon, repeatedly emphasizing its alleged links to the extremist organization Muslim Brotherhood.
Politische Nachrichten accused (25) the NGO Sea-Watch of cooperating with migrant smugglers, portraying humanitarian rescue operations as “political acts.” Media outlet Apollo News, frequently reposted by FIMI channels (26), (27), further argued (28) that political correctness and the ideological fixation on combating right-wing extremism had made German elites unwilling to acknowledge Islamist violence as the primary security threat. According to this framing, politicians, NGOs, and even churches prioritized ideological commitments over public security, while the state deliberately ignored evidence that contradicted its own progressive agenda. Telegram channel Best of AfD, regularly promoted by InfoDefense-affiliated sources (29), shared (30) a statement by Kristin Brinker, leader of the AfD's Berlin branch, arguing that the government's “political policy of appeasement toward violent Islamists” must come to an end.
Taken together, these narratives transformed the Berlin CSD attack from an act of Islamist violence into evidence of deliberate political negligence or even maliciousness. Across these narratives, politicians, public institutions, NGOs, and civil society organizations were depicted not as actors struggling to address security challenges but as the very forces responsible for creating, enabling, and ultimately concealing the conditions that made such attacks possible.