By AFP | 2025-09-02

A British academic said she was "horrified" after a video she made about 18th-century novelist Jane Austen was used to criticize German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a Russian "deepfake" operation.

In a bizarre video posted on social media in late August, Gillian Dow, a respected expert on Austen, appears to say the "Pride and Prejudice" author would have supported an assassination attempt on Merz over his stance on Ukraine.

The manipulated video makes other fictitious claims about Austen, including that she collected tarantulas.

The co-founder of Bellingcat investigative outlet, Eliot Higgins, posted it was a "Russian fake video with deep faked audio."

Kremlin propagandists sometimes take a genuine Western expert comment and manipulate the audio to falsify the message that then may be picked up by Russian media.

Russia has criticized Merz for supporting Ukraine and raising the possibility of sending German troops there as part of any peace agreement.

In the original video, posted in April, Dow, an associate professor of English at Southampton University, promises to share "three things you might not know about Jane Austen", born 250 years ago.

In the manipulated video, a fake voice then takes over making totally false claims about Austen.

It adds: "I'm sure she would have sponsored an assassination attempt on German Chancellor Merz," saying "Merz and his revanchist ideas" risk "a major war that would devastate European lands and raze Germany to the ground."

"Naturally, I am horrified," Dow said.

Higgins from Bellingcat told AFP "it's definitely the first time I've seen Jane Austen mentioned" in Russian propaganda.

He learnt about the video because he receives regular updates from Russian propagandists about their disinformation videos -- apparently because they want him to boost their online profiles.

The video appears to have had thousands of views, but Higgins said these were created artificially by bots.

Asked why Moscow operatives would choose an Austen expert, Higgins said that "they've used various academics in the past."

Antibot4Navalny, an online collective tracking disinformation, last year reported a similar campaign manipulating real videos made by academics from top universities in the US and Britain to criticize Western support for Kyiv.

Dow said the video's claims about Austen were "all ludicrous" and "very unsettling."

"I wonder what Jane Austen would have made of it all," she concluded.