One of the dangers of democracies is called misinformation. Propaganda, falsehoods and foreign interference in elections are our daily bread. There are countries and organizations that are experts in this. One is Russia. Another is the environment of Milei. This has been proven in the last few hours when, in the middle of a diplomatic conflict with Spain, an army of accounts supporting the president of Argentina has turned into a global trending topic, that is to say, the most talked about, the campaign “Pedro, watch the your wife”.
The operation of this campaign was as follows. After Milei’s words at the Vox event, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announced the call for consultations by the Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires. From that moment on, the activity on the other side of the Atlantic increased to generate nearly 500,000 tweets.
Milei himself retweeted a few. The first thing he did after returning to his country was to fuel the action, stating in an interview that he will not apologize to the Spanish Government and that “the woman has a lot of causes for influence peddling”. A great manual, although not for everyone.
The messages in Argentina came from well-known verified accounts that unabashedly support Milei, such as @GordonDano@Mr_Jones_k. It was a deliberate and coordinated action with the sole objective of giving X a response to the diplomatic action of the Spanish Government. No State is capable of dealing with this digital avalanche spread by thousands and thousands of trolls at the same time. The message reached more than 50 million people, which exceeds the current population of Argentina.
Milei has also not minded spreading photo montages against Pedro Sánchez, Begoña Gómez or the Spanish Government from his official account. His profile contains everything, even messages in bad taste unimaginable in a European head of state.
Social media is a major disinformation machine that cannot be fought with conventional weapons. In these campaigns there is also a good amount of votes at stake. It is no coincidence that Milei is meeting with Elon Musk or that she is planning a trip to Silicon Valley to meet the leaders of big tech companies. Meetings matter less and less and elections are also held in the digital sphere.
In a few weeks Milei will return to Madrid and, probably, the Argentinian digital army will return to the charge. It is impossible to stop it, you just need to be prepared.
