The Assassination Attempt Against Robert Fico Proves That Fake News Can Radicalize People

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico survived an assassination attempt against him earlier this week after being shot several times at point-blank range by a political extremist who was angry about him suspending armed aid to Ukraine. Fico’s return to office last fall came in spite of American meddling that sought to scare folks away from voting for this conservative-nationalist firebrand, after which he promptly recalibrated his country’s policy towards Ukraine and formed a peace coalition with Hungary.

While some are suspicious that the “lone wolf” who shot him might not have been acting on his own due to Fico making very powerful enemies across the world during his latest term, this incident at the very least proves that fake news can radicalize people into committing heinous crimes. After all, the shooter convinced himself that this was a legitimate form of protest against what he thought was his country’s “pro-Russian fascist dictator”, the perception of which was entirely shaped by fake news.

The Interior Minister warned shortly after the attack that “What was unleashed, the hatred that was sown, has today become a storm. We are standing on the brink of civil war. This assassination attempt against the prime minister is confirmation of that. I want to appeal to the public, to journalists and to all politicians to stop spreading hatred.” It was precisely due to this hatred that was sown since the last election that the shooter became radicalized to the point of trying to take matters into his own hands.

Former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev tweeted that Fico “was not a pro-Russian [leader]…just a pragmatist and not a Russophobe”, yet Western media reporting about the assassination attempt against him continued falsely claiming otherwise. The UK’s Sky News arguably attempted to justify the attack against him by implying the shooter was radicalized by his policies, not fake news, which suggested that this was a legitimate form of protest.

No Western media outlet, “NGO”, or “activist” will take responsibility for radicalizing the Slovak opposition, and they’re all now gaslighting that their prior reports about Fico’s policies were “fair and balanced”, but the reality is that they knew what they were doing all along. What they did to Fico was exactly what they’ve been doing to Trump for years already, namely pushing the most extreme fearmongering claims about his policies in the hopes that they’ll radicalize someone into shooting him.

When a leader is repeatedly defamed as a “traitorous pro-Russian dictator with innocent Ukrainian blood on their hands”, psychologically at-risk members of society will inevitably be influenced by this, including to the point of wanting to kill them in order “to save the country” and “bring about justice”. Basically, Western opinionmakers manipulate deranged individuals into doing their dastardly bidding, which rarely succeeds but always has a high political impact whenever someone finally falls for it.  

Fico is their enemy due to his pragmatic stance towards the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine so no one in the West will call for censorship of legacy and social media after what just happened, but they’d surely do so if one of their own warmongers was targeted by a political extremist. “The cure would be worse than the disease” in that case, but the point is that their double standards are on full display for the whole world to see, which discredits their claims of innocence and having no role in what happened.