The allegations only emerged on Thursday evening, so calm and logic are required. This isn’t an issue which should be subject to the distortions of culture war.

The details are as follows. On June 11 at 5.39pm, the Reuters news agency posted an article headlined ‘Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes, France says’.

The article was illustrated with an image of the recently elected left wing mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

The report said that the Israeli firm BlackCore, which was suspected of interfering in French local elections in March, was also suspected of “meddling in elections in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo”.

The claims were attributed to the French government’s disinformation detection service Viginum.

Viginum - the Vigilance and Protection Service Against Foreign Digital Interference - is headed by former soldier Marc-Antoine Brillant. He’s tasked with fighting foreign destabilisation operations targeting France.

Last month, Reuters reported that French authorities suspected BlackCore was behind an online smear campaign targeting three mayoral candidates from what it called “the hard-left, pro-Palestine France Unbowed party in the local elections”.

On Thursday, Reuters said, a press conference was held by the French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, and Viginum chief Brillant.

Brillant said that “technical work had led them to BlackCore”. Viginum then presented a report on BlackCore’s alleged actions globally.

Brillant claimed: “This modus operandi was not limited to........

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