Since The office after all, Brian Baumgartner—who played the baseless, “Kevin Malone”—has made a second career as one of the top earners on Cameo, a website that allows celebrities to leave personal messages for fans. A 2021 report said Baumgartner made more than a million dollars from Cameo videos alone.
However, it appears that, in some cases, Baumgartner’s friendly online videos have inadvertently contributed to a powerful exhumation campaign aimed at toppling the current president of Moldova. A new report from Wired says that Baumgartner was one of the celebrities who recently made a cameo video criticizing President Maia Sandu. “We Hollywood stars support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you Sandu,” said the actors. That video was then linked to what has been described as a “wave of unprecedented sophistication and violence” directed at the small eastern European nation.
For evidence of this development, Wired grabbed a web archived report from DFLab, a research group affiliated with the Atlantic Council, that documented the video. Wired also cited a previous report from NPR that noted the negative trend of celebrities being unwittingly implicated in online propaganda campaigns.
The reason Moldova may be subject to disinformation is that it is currently in the middle of a contested presidential election. Sandu, the current president, is seeking re-election against his rival, Alexandr Stoianoglo, who was appointed to a position described as “friendly to Russia.” The country was also preparing for a referendum on whether to join the European Union or not. On Monday, early returns showed that Moldovans had supported the referendum by a very small margin. Russia has always wanted to keep the nations on its border (Moldova is one) from joining Western alliances. Some observers of the war in Ukraine say that Russia was motivated to attack the country because of ongoing negotiations about it joining NATO.
Seeing as Baumgartner is one of the highest paid stars in Cameo, it makes sense that he probably didn’t know what he was getting into. Gizmodo reached out to the actor through AAE Speakers, which aims to represent him at speaking events. We also reached out to Cameo.
Disinformation has become a key weapon that governments use against vulnerable populations. The West has repeatedly accused Russia of using digital propaganda to manipulate liberal democratic politics. That said, it is by no means a practice contained in Russia. Last year, employees of an Israeli psychological warfare contractor were caught on camera boasting that their business was involved in approximately 30 elections around the world. A research report published in 2021 suggested that approximately 81 different countries are involved in spreading disinfection campaigns, including the US.
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