Alberto Rubio
“Democracy is not free” but “no one will fight for it unless we Europeans do it ourselves”, said Res Publica / Civic Resilience Center director Giedrius Sakalauskas during a webinar organised by Editored, the network of European and Latin American publishers to which the Prestomedia group and The Diplomat belong.
The Lithuanian journalist explained that the Civic Resilience Center began its fight against the disinformation propagated by the Kremlin in the wake of the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, and since then has followed a model it called ‘elves against trolls’. During this time, this group of volunteers has dedicated its efforts to countering fake news and propaganda spread by the Kremlin through social media and its affiliated media outlets.
Asked about the group’s funding, Giedrius Sakalauskas said that none of the volunteers are paid for the work they do, but qualified that funding for their activities is very important. “There is no need for a mass movement, but a group of people determined” to confront the threat, which in Lithuania’s case comes mainly from “a handful of local useful idiots”, he said. The Res Publica director was optimistic about the future: “I know we will win, although I don’t know the exact day”.
In the conversation with the editors of some 20 European and American media, which can be viewed in full here, Sakalauskas called for the support and unity of the European Union in this fight for which, he said, “it is also necessary to invest in the education of the younger generation”.
