SOFIA -- He's a fringe politician and social media influencer in Bulgaria who claims he's on a crusade to save the nation. Georgi Georgiev Gotti recently posted on Facebook that the European Commission wants to "give cancer" to his compatriots.
How?
EU bureaucrats will allow food producers to add powdered insects to a list of foods, the combination of which, according to Gotti, will create carcinogens.
With no science to back his bogus claim, the Facebook post has gone viral, shared more than 1,000 times and generating hundreds of reactions, many of them seething.
As the disinformation spread, the rumor mutated, with some social media posters adding further nefarious EU intentions to force people to consume insects. They claimed powdered insects would be added to many foods, including bread, but it would all be shrouded in secrecy, with no labeling required.
While it is hard to prove the rumors are part of an orchestrated Kremlin campaign, social media posts on the topic spiked after one of Russia's most powerful media figures, Dmitry Kiselyov, mentioned it on his popular show on state TV in late January. Russia regularly spreads disinformation in Europe, with the aim of sowing mistrust and doubt of EU institutions.
Milena Yakimova, a sociology professor at Sofia University who also monitors Russian propaganda efforts in Bulgaria, said this latest disinformation campaign aims, in part, to "show us that Europe is foreign to us."
The current campaign appears to be largely...
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