{"id":751,"date":"2026-07-06T17:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=751"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:45:12","slug":"in-europe-just-reposting-russian-propaganda-can-land-a-blogger-in-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=751","title":{"rendered":"In Europe, Just Reposting Russian Propaganda Can Land a Blogger in Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Traugott Ickeroth<\/em> is not a famous blog. The three people who run the website make around 45,000 euros ($50,000) in a year from reader donations. One of those people also uses the “Traugott Ickerroth” pseudonym to publish tracts about <\/span>interdimensional aliens<\/span> and <\/span>the Illuminati<\/span>. But European governments have decided to make an example of the trio. Last week, the European Union’s supreme court <\/span> that German authorities can prosecute them for reposting clips from RT, a channel funded by the Russian government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more U.K. Might Force Social Platforms To Give Government-Backed Media Special Status<\/a><\/p>\n

After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the European Union passed sanctions making it illegal “for operators to broadcast or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content” from certain Russian propagandists. Traugott Ickeroth<\/em> shared RT videos on three occasions in 2023, prompting police in the German state of Saarland to seize the website and prosecute the bloggers for violating economic sanctions. Case documents that the blog earned <\/span>60,038.65 euros ($68.517,61) from April 2022 through August 2023.<\/p>\n

The Saarbr\u00fccken District Court sent the case up to the European Union’s Curia earlier this year, asking whether authorities could really treat a repost on a free-to-read private blog as a sanctions violation. Now the Curia has answered: The sanctions law “must be interpreted” to include a citizen “who operates a website by broadcasting on it content originating from” sanctioned entities and receives “only income from voluntary contributions from third parties.” The case will go back down to the German courts\u2014who now have a mandate to prosecute bloggers for reposts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Economic sanctions, once an arcane form of trade regulations, are increasingly being used as a form of backdoor censorship. Sanctions procedures do not require governments to show evidence, they give the targets little chance to fight back in court, and they can have devastating effects on individuals’ livelihoods.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Turkish-German filmmaker H\u00fcseyin Do\u011fru was the first European citizen on European soil to be listed as a target for the sanctions on Russia because of his speech. Last year, the authorities <\/span>accused him<\/span> of employing Russian propagandists and sharing “false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord.” Do\u011fru found himself <\/span>unable<\/span> to withdraw more than $600 a month from his own bank account. The German Federal Bank <\/span>declared<\/span> that giving Do\u011fru a job or even a gift would violate the sanctions, which have now been extended to his wife, the British journalist Lizzie Phelan.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. law <\/span>does not allow<\/span> the government to sanction “any postal, telegraphic, telephonic, or other personal communication, which does not involve a transfer of anything of value.” The Ickeroth or Do\u011fru cases, direct prosecution for sharing banned content, could not happen to Americans\u2014in theory. In practice, the U.S. government has been increasingly aggressive (and increasingly creative) in interpreting “a transfer of anything of value” to sanction undesirable voices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more 77-Year-Old Florida Veteran Investigated For Sending an Official a Postcard Saying \u2018You Lack Values\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2021, the Biden administration seized 33 websites on the pretext that they were Iranian propaganda channels, and that hosting them on American servers would therefore violate economic sanctions on Iran. As it turned out, the administration had done <\/span>sloppy detective work<\/span>; some of the websites were run by Islamic figures <\/span>opposed<\/span><\/i> to the Iranian government. But it didn’t matter, because sanctions law allows the administration to act as judge, jury, and executioner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for writing a report criticizing companies that deal with the Israeli government, arguing that she was waging “<\/span>lawfare<\/span>” against American businesses. The U.S. Treasury seized her property and froze Albanese out of the insurance plan provided by her husband, an economist at the World Bank in Washington. In May 2026, a federal judge issued a <\/span>temporary injunction<\/span> against the sanctions on First Amendment grounds. A week later, an appeals court <\/span>reversed<\/span> the decision, allowing the administration to re-sanction Albanese.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former Trump administration official Richard Goldberg even tried to use the sanctions to get Albanese’s <\/span>recent book, When the World Sleeps<\/em>,<\/span>\u00a0taken off the internet. Amazon “should speak with lawyers,” Goldberg <\/span>wrote<\/span> on X, because “there is sanctionable conduct along the value chain.” He added that “sanctions target the money, not the speech.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week’s Curia ruling shows that speech <\/span>can<\/span><\/i> be sanctionable <\/span>without<\/span><\/i> money changing hands, if the government takes a creative enough interpretation of economic activity. The Biden administration already tried to argue that the mere “provision of a platform” for someone to speak was a sanctionable “service,” allowing the Treasury to ban contacts between Americans and specific foreigners. Threatened by a lawsuit, the Treasury <\/span>backed down<\/span>. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try again. <\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The New Transportation Bill Puts Special Interests Above Safety<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European supreme court just ruled that an anonymous conspiracy theory blogger can be charged with a financial crime for sharing three Russian television clips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sanctions"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Europe, Just Reposting Russian Propaganda Can Land a Blogger in Jail - Pioneer Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=751\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Europe, Just Reposting Russian Propaganda Can Land a Blogger in Jail - 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