Trump regime and TikTok interfere in Polish presidential election
The “Make America Great Again” roadshow arrived in Europe this week with events in two nations where American conservatives see prime opportunities for a new transatlantic political culture — one molded by President Donald Trump’s right-wing populism and imbued with grand “clash of civilizations” rhetoric.
The Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — opened its week of European events on Tuesday in Jasionka, Poland, where Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was among the speakers, urging Poles to vote for right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki in this weekend’s runoff election.
Noem eschewed the diplomatic norm of non-alignment in elections in allied nations, as have other administration officials including Vice President JD Vance. “You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values,” she told attendees in Jasionka.
“We need you to elect the right leader,” Noem said, dismissing Nawrocki’s rival — liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski — as “an absolute train wreck of a leader.”
“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity that you have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country,” Noem said.
CPAC’s next stop will be in Budapest, Hungary, on Thursday, hosted by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban — a totem of the European anti-establishment right wing who has long enjoyed cozy relations with Trump. [Continue reading…]
With days to go before Poland’s presidential election runoff on June 1, Global Witness finds that TikTok’s algorithm is feeding new, politically balanced users twice as much far-right and nationalist right content as centrist and left-wing content
The investigation reveals a pronounced skew in the content promoting the two presidential candidates. TikTok showed our test accounts five times more content supporting nationalist right candidate Karol Nawrocki as centrist candidate Rafal Trzaskowski.
This is despite the fact that at time of testing, the centrist candidate’s official TikTok account was more popular than his opponent’s with 12,000 more followers and nearly 1 million more likes.
In the first round of the election, Trzaskowski came top with 31.3% of the vote while Nawrocki received 29.5%.
Our findings come just two weeks after a Global Witness investigation in Romania found TikTok’s algorithm was serving nearly three times as much far-right content as all other political content, and similar tests around previous elections in Germany and Romania suggesting TikTok’s algorithm pushes users towards far-right content.
TikTok is currently under investigation by the European Commission for its handling of election risks, with particular reference to the annulled Romania election in late 2024. [Continue reading…]