One of the dangers of democracies is called misinformation. Propaganda, hoaxes and foreign interference in elections are the order of the day. There are countries and organizations that are experts in this. One is Russia. Another is Milei’s environment. This has been demonstrated in the last few hours when, in the midst of the diplomatic conflict with Spain, an army of accounts supporting the president of Argentina has become a global trending topic, that is, the most talked about, the “Pedro keeps an eye on your wife” campaign. .
The operation of this campaign has been as follows. After Milei’s words at the Vox event, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announced the call for consultations of the Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires. From that moment on, activity on the other side of the Atlantic increased to generate nearly 500,000 tweets.
Milei himself reposted some. The first thing she did after returning to her country was to fuel the action, stating in an interview that she is not going to apologize to the Spanish Government and that “the woman has a lot of cases for influence peddling.” A textbook hoax, although not for everyone.
The messages in Argentina emerged from well-known verified accounts that fully support Milei, such as @GordonDan or @Mr_Jones_k. It was a deliberate and coordinated action with the sole objective of responding in X to the diplomatic action of the Spanish Government. No State is capable of facing this digital avalanche spread by thousands and thousands of trolls at the same time. The message reached more than 50 million people, surpassing the current population of Argentina.
Milei has not even cared about spreading photomontages against Pedro Sánchez, Begoña Gómez or the Spanish Government from her official account. Her profile contains everything, including messages in bad taste unimaginable in a European head of state.
Social networks are an important disinformation machinery that cannot be fought with conventional weapons. In these campaigns, a good number of votes are also at stake. It is no coincidence that Milei meets with Elon Musk or that she is planning a trip to Silicon Valley to meet the leaders of large technology companies. Rallies matter less and less and elections are also being fought in the digital sphere.
In a few weeks Milei will return to Madrid and, probably, the Argentine digital army will return to the fray. It is impossible to stop it, you just have to be prepared.
