Milei and political degradation

                           Milei and political degradation
Atilio Boron: The exponential increase in so-called social networks has favoured the emergence of deeply "antisocial" behaviour. Their objective is to manipulate public opinion

These are communication devices that promote individualism, isolation and, based on the ease with which anonymity can be used, create the conditions for the proliferation of fake news and virulent messages of hate, in most cases politically. motivated.

Various studies indicate that at the beginning of 2024 there were 5,037 million internet users around the world. Facebook was at the top of the list with 3,049 million, followed by YouTube with 2,491, while WhatsApp and Instagram had 2,000 million, TikTok 1,362 and WeChat, WhatsApp's Chinese competitor, 1,336. The X network, formerly Twitter, was much lower in the ranking due to the loss of users resulting from its acquisition by tycoon Elon Musk.

According to some estimates, the total number of users listed above would be equivalent to 62.3% of the planet's population, but this conclusion must be seriously challenged if one takes into account that many individual users usually register with several profiles on the same network and if In addition, the large number of "troll farms" that spuriously multiply the number of users are taken into account. These have acquired extraordinary importance in recent times and there are millions of them around the world, each of which manages tens of thousands of profiles of people who do not exist in reality. Its objective is to manipulate public opinion, or influence certain very specific targets within it identified by algorithms as sectors very prone to favourable reception of certain types of messages.

For example, homophobic, racist, supremacist, sexist, xenophobic users, but also others open to receiving radical messages, from the left or the right. The list would be endless and the increasingly specific and socially restricted targeting process has metastasized throughout the globe.

Because of this, troll farms are a huge factory for the automated production and dissemination of fake news, hate messages, attacks on public figures and exaltation of others, and the installation of an agenda invariably manipulated by dominant groups. The objective is to tilt public opinion in the desired direction, creating distracting controversies, demonizing certain political or social leaders, including their organizations, and seeking to influence the population on the eve of an electoral process. The data that arise from the analysis of different countries confirms the effectiveness of these devices.                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                     The anonymity and almost total impunity that is inherent to this type of activities, which seriously calls into question the functioning of democratic regimes, facilitated the rise to the surface of the discourses of the extreme right, in some cases openly Neo-Nazi, which in The past circulated in the deepest subsoil's of our societies, but without appearing publicly for fear of social sanction. Today that has ended and proposals or vituperation's once judged as "antisocial", "immoral", "fascist" or "Nazi" circulate widely on social networks. All this unfortunate perversion of communication is favoured by the proven rapid trivialization of fake news or hate messages, something that occurred much more slowly in the "Gutenberg galaxy", the phase prior to the advent of the "digital age." With an aggravating factor: a study carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has revealed that fake news is more believed than true news, and that it travels faster on the Internet.

The reverse of this dangerous reality is also disturbing because the credibility enjoyed by traditional media has declined dramatically in recent decades. Measurements carried out through surveys indicate that in 2023 only 33% of Argentines trusted the media, a figure equal to that of Japan and even a little higher than the 31% in Great Britain. And in the US this figure improved, but a little: 39%. Conclusion: fake news circulates in inverse proportion to the credibility of traditional media, and their credibility is clearly declining, especially in the West.

Speech by the Argentine president at the Liberty Foundation, on April 24.

Rude show

One of the most worrying consequences of these phenomena that the digital age has brought us has been the naturalization of hate speech and the acceptance of cruelty as a normal form of social interaction. This is clearly perceived in a case of exceptional significance, due to the position held by the person who engages in such conduct: President Javier Milei. Indeed, this character has used and abused offensive and rude expressions, typical of a "dirty mouth" to insult and disqualify his critics. The vulgarity that he has exhibited in numerous official events, and before foreign dignitaries - such as José María Aznar and the current president of Uruguay Luis Lacalle Pou - in his recent intervention at the dinner of the Libertarian Foundation, a 'lobby' sponsored and financed by money Americans, speaks of the extremes to which the degradation of politics can reach in the hands of leaders who owe their ephemeral primacy to social networks.

On that occasion Milei once again forgot that he is the president of the Argentines, an forgetfulness that is unfortunately now a constant, and he starred in a pathetic stand-up full of rudeness, bad taste jokes and defamatory imitations of public figures. All this lamentable spectacle, which shames us before the world, is combined with the sadistic pleasure that he expresses when he refers to the cuts in "social expenses" caused by his "chainsaw", in a behaviour that speaks of a pathological insensitivity relative to the consequences of their actions that generate poverty, hunger and death.

How to explain such cruelty? Answer: Milei does not live in this world, but like every prophet, fueled by insatiable fanaticism, he lives in his perverse microcosm armored with seven sheets of steel and where the suffering and cries of pain that his decisions as president cause do not penetrate. to millions of Argentines. His followers, who for now are many on social networks, would seem to conform to a sharp observation by the Spanish essayist Basilio Baltasar when he said that "the model citizen of the globe sphere - the one who has mostly supported Milei until now - is a gullible and naive, helpless and rewarded with baits and placebos, hypnotic and addictive. The citizen of the globe sphere was once a human being and now he is a doll. "Poor bastard."

Let us trust that this involution is not irreversible and that what Engels stated when he attributed to work the decisive role in the transformation of the ape into man, will not be denied by the globe that returns men and women to their simian origins. It is to be hoped that the doll, beaten and impoverished by the ruthless logic of the markets, will sooner rather than later recover its humanity and its will to build a better world.

Milei's case is an unprecedented loss that in other times would have been nothing more than an extravagant curiosity on television panels. But if he arrived at the Casa Rosada it is because the thin stratum of Argentine super millionaires and the largest national and foreign companies, in addition to the US Government, detected in his character, more than in his person, the skilful demagogue of the extreme right. , a pure-blooded fascist and  McCarthyism, whose brutal gestures and fiery words would capture the will of an electorate impoverished by the last governments and would immensely favour their interests.

When the sale, auction or free delivery of the country and its riches has been consolidated, it will be these stupefied and uncomfortable applauders at the aforementioned dinner who will be in charge of pointing out the exit door and dismissing the Anarcho-Capitalist troglodyte without further contemplation. Even by force.