In the presidential debate of the Archi (Association of Broadcasters of Chile) we saw how the candidate of the extreme right, José Antonio Kast, questioned his competitor from Approved Dignity, Gabriel Boric, about an alleged harassment (what called abuse and then retracted), an accusation that has been denied on several occasions and even by the alleged victim with a letter accusing Kast of misuse (distortion), and that in the debate of the National Television Association (Anatel ) Kast reiterated that it is good that the "abuse" has been clarified (not a sexist comment, as the alleged aforementioned said), to later, in another passage, say "how many more things we did not know about you and that can come out". With these types of statements, which are various and varied, Kast and his campaign team intend to raise doubts about Boric's integrity and character, by turning around the idea of a "misdemeanor/crime" even if unfounded, and transferring the electoral dispute from the government options (program and ideas) to the personal level, to erode it and end up destroying it individually and politically.
This type of action clearly falls into what is called “dirty propaganda”, the one that uses false news (fake news), but it goes a little further. Etymologically, the word propaganda (propagate) comes from the Latin verb propagāre, which means "to perpetuate, increase, extend" a message through a set of procedures, methods and techniques, with the purpose of increasing support or rejection of a certain position. or candidate beyond its rational/systemic pros or cons. This word took its name from the sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith of 1622, created by Pope Gregory XV and his successor, Urban VIII, as the central and supreme organ for the propagation of the faith, with the double mission of working for the union with the Orthodox and Protestant Churches and promote and organize the mission among non-Christians.
The adjective dirty is attached to this Latin propagāre because it is broadcast by a generally unknown source, distributed and amplified by various means, in whose content its veracity does not matter but that it is credible, as Joseph Goebbels said, and with the final purpose of pursuing the erosion/"extinction" of the adversary. To achieve this goal, private life (intimate if possible) is generally delved into with legal and/or illegal/amoral means, until obtaining fragments of reality (data) that can be used to assemble a pernicious imaginary construct (false story). , but highly destructive, since dirty propaganda (with its slander and/or insults) is based on credible lines that are stripped of rationality, context and interpretation (for example, when Kast insinuated, in the Anatel debate, decontextualizing the discussions of science and of the moment, that Izkia Siches caused the total closure in the pandemic with the effect of bankrupting all businesses). Thus, more than discovering the hidden (informing), dirty campaigns build a fictitious reality (misinform) based on perceptions and appearances until, with the redundancy and complicity of those who amplify it, they transform it into irrefutable proof, into definitive data. . This type of propaganda is associated with psychological warfare (actions aimed at directing behaviors in search of social control, in this case the vote).
In 1925, for example, Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), used the big lie of an international plot by Judaism and communism, a lie so grandiose and shocking that no one would believe that one could have shamelessness and the immorality of distorting an alleged truth/fact so infamous. Kast has not been left behind in using this big lie when referring to the Communist Party (a party that, like it or not, has historically worked responsibly within the democratic framework, and was even accused of being reformist in more than one period) and to Gabriel Boric and the Broad Front. He has said: “The Broad Front and the Communist Party do not respect anyone. They can't resist someone telling them things to their faces... The Communist Party officially breaks the law and calls on its militants to join me and fight me. This is not just hate speech, it is rightfully an explicit call for violence… Boric is a candidate protected and controlled by the Communist Party.” And then their bots (a program that performs repetitive, predefined, and automated tasks) repeat the story through different formats: for example, Anonymous@YourAnon Fenix, “Terrorist Financing in Chile, International Terrorist Organizations, linking Ultra-Left Candidate Gabriel Boric, Daniel Jadue and the PC. The route of illicit money entering Chile. Report is attached in the thread" and Max@ChileUnidoAvanz replies "Very serious, Boric's candidacy should be intervened now! What happens with the @gobiernodeChile that is letting this happen? (we improved the wording a bit).
In the Anatel debate, Kast once again used the big lie by accusing the PC of “valuing violence as a political method”, of canceling the Lollapalooza 2022 festival due to ideology and handling Boric's candidacy, among many others . Hannah Arendt, in her essay The Lie in Politics, revealed that "lies are often much more credible, more attractive to reason than reality, because whoever lies has the great advantage of knowing in advance what his audience wants." or expect to hear." If the superficial or fragmentary is not enough to build the derogatory message, the dirty propaganda teams do not hesitate to deepen the montage by falsifying, manipulating and inventing data, documents and situations until they fit perfectly into the designed slander. As Boric himself expressed it: “Today anonymous accounts on networks and WSP took the 2nd step of the operation that Kast started last night (referring to the interpellation he made to 'show his medical record and take a drug test'), disseminating a false medical record that was denied by the institution. Not everything goes to win an election. I ask that we never be like them." It was precisely the Imet Clinic in Punta Arenas itself that denied the false document released, which alluded to the fact that the opposition presidential candidate was admitted to the medical facility a few years ago (whether due to the false assumption of drug use or the of metal disease). Gabriel Boric also assured that he "has no problem" in making his health history transparent in the face of the continuity of insinuations from the far-right candidate and his spokesmen.
This type of resources is used especially when the candidate to win has a sufficient advantage, impossible to reduce with positive rational strategies (ideas and programs) and/or empathic camouflage that denatures the true essence of the candidate (for example, Kast and the issue of women, democracy or social commitment, issues that are not very sympathetic to him), but that he doesn't get the same, for example, when he said in the Anatel debate that he would change the Political Committee of La Moneda for a Committee of Security, distorting politics towards a militaristic conception. Many artists have been angry with Kast for this impersonation and using them without consent (Eduardo Gatti, Los Charros de Lumaco, Fundación Violeta Parra). Faced with this picture and in a scenario of a progressive Chile verified in the Constitutional Convention or in the 700,000 more votes that the opposition obtained in the parliamentary election, there is only room for "destruction" to stop what is supposedly unstoppable, call it Boric, Convention or the claims of the original ethnic groups (for example, classifying the dilemma of the Mapuche people in the terrorism of La Araucanía).
Dirty campaigns not only challenge what is ethical and legal, but on many occasions they also add economic and political alliances of refractory or openly hostile sectors (truck drivers or businessmen like Juan Sutil or Andrónico Luksic, even the Piñera government itself through statements and acts such as that of the Seremi de Salud that issues a fine against Boric days before the election) to the candidacy that is demoted. The Medical College (Colmed) and its former president and current campaign manager for Gabriel Boric, Izkia Siches, had to come out to deny a publication by the far-right electronic newspaper El Líbero and shared by the deputy RN Tomás Fuentes (tweeted: "Is this Is it the new policy, probity and change promoted by Gabriel Boric?"), about "millions of irregularities" that allegedly occurred within the union during Izkia's period as president. However, Colmed explained that it was the national board of directors headed by Dr. Siches (she took office on 07/01/2017, succeeding the current Minister of Health, Enrique Paris), which, by improving internal control systems, discovered that the administrator of the Valparaíso Regional Council was defrauding the institution, at least since 2014, so it was decided to contract the external audit to KPMG to elucidate the magnitude.
These strategies operate in the shadows of the conspiracy, usually with algorithms in artificial intelligence and networks; they are nourished by hidden funds (although in general they are relatively cheap campaigns), when not criminal, and they are executed by mercenaries and unscrupulous professionals who receive a good reward for it. In the United States, during Donald Trump's first campaign, the dirty work was done by the Russian intelligence services, where from St. Petersburg different accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posed as left-wing, feminist, LGBT+ or anti-racist activists, to trying to get these groups to become disenchanted with Clinton and not participate in the elections (Mueller Report). Russian propaganda against Hillary Clinton worked due to its rapid viralization and because it added to the distrust that the candidate, part of the “establishment”, already generated among a part of her potential voters.
When you're so bad at math that you can't even figure out how to calculate your grade to see how bad you're failing<3
— Hannah🌻 Wed May 08 15:21:40 +0000 2019
These maneuvers cannot always be directly attributed to the candidate who benefits from the damage caused by the message, although the right in Chile and the world have little shame in this regard. Despite the fact that there are no doubts about who is handling the strings and interests in this dark framework, basically it is a question of cynically avoiding any relationship that compromises or reveals the intellectual authorship of the wrongdoing to avoid the “boomerang” effect. ” that would victimize the victim and transfer the discomfort to the cause. Jair Bolsonaro, for example, benefited enormously from a fake news campaign on the networks financed by a group of businessmen. According to an investigation published by the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, several companies contracted the massive sending of millions of messages and false news against the candidate of the Workers' Party (PT), Fernando Haddad, in the key week of the presidential elections. A few days before, one of Bolsonaro's sons announced the lie on Twitter that the codes for the Brazilian ballot boxes had been sent to Venezuela (Brasilezuela?), a fact that the TSE quickly denied (but doubts remained). One day after the elections and before the second round, another of Bolsonaro's sons posted a video on Twitter where Haddad announced his desire to see Lula in the presidency. The video, recorded when Haddad was not yet a candidate, was edited to give the sensation of having been produced just after the first round, delegitimizing any option or real desire to lead the country.
El Líbero (several companies and right-wing representatives participate), together with another right-wing electronic media outlet, Nuevo Poder, accused Boric of carrying out a forum/montage, “Housing, a social right”, where the main speaker was Doris González, then president of Ukamau (social movement for housing), to favor the sale to the State of a piece of land bought more than 30 years ago in the area by her father, Luis Boric, and two friends (2004 there was a change in the use of the soil there) for the construction of houses. When the case came to light, the media branded him the "Caval Magallanico", however, the Comptroller authorized the sale after all the investigation and Boric Sr. reiterated that "my son has never had anything to do with this, despite that they have tried to involve him”. Again the false information was around despite the denials.
These same smear and misinformation techniques were used in Spain to demobilize progressive voters. For example, the slogan "don't count on me, #yonovoto" was directed against the left-wing candidates Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), and Pablo Iglesias, general secretary of Podemos. The campaign was not only through the networks, posters and pigeons with the same slogans also appeared in various cities, especially in working-class neighborhoods where left-wing parties usually win. The evidence of this pointed to the right-wing Popular Party (PP) and not only because its candidate, Pablo Casado, was the biggest beneficiary of this campaign that sought to prevent the left from voting, but they did the same against other political groups. right, in order to concentrate the vote. The coincidences between this campaign and those created on social networks by the Russian plot and the Cambridge Analytica company (which were so effective with Brexit, Trump's victory or the 2010 Trinidad and Tobago elections) are enormous.
Mercurio plays the same game of manipulation when trying to subtract support, for example, the headline "DC figures express their annoyance with Narváez and call Boric's meeting with former candidate a 'tactical error'" (the few and insignificant figures) or Kast himself when he reiterates that different figures from the DC and the former Concertación support him. It is reiterated when Senator Ena von Baer says, in the electoral zone, that the Constitutional Convention wants to change the national symbols (this has not been in any discussion) or the UDI deputy Sergio Bobadilla publishes on his social networks that "it would be good if they gave the names of the scandalous constituents of the hotel, because it is circulating on social networks that Loncon was bathing without clothes in the pool and there is no way to deny it", which turned out to be false information and the parliamentarian had to delete the tweet. When repeated so often it is a campaign. Thus and in its continuity, the president of the UDI and elected senator, Javier Macaya (UDI), accused Izkia Siches of "owing a scholarship" that it does not owe. Siches responded by saying that “once again fear and lies now by Mr. Macaya. I have never breached my mandatory care period. I work 22 hours in Infectious Diseases at the San Juan de Dios Hospital and now I am on vacation after my postnatal. May hope win over fear."
Since the return to democracy, a dirtier campaign had not been seen, riddled with lies, slander and insults – they have even said that Simón Boric, Gabriel's brother, is a partner of Izkia or that his son is his, Other things not true. It is clear that this pandemic of false information is not only anchored in an authoritarian attitude (lack of democratic standards) and the belief in the possibility of losing power (dirty attacks have been persistent against anything that implies change), but that It also opens a discussion about the professional and ethical limits and the legal sanctions that this type of distortion must contemplate. It is clear that we must seek a global regulatory response based on the universal principles and values that uphold representative democracy and human rights, since what is at stake is democracy and governability itself.
In this perspective, the journalists who are on the front line, due to the professional responsibility to which they owe themselves, cannot lend themselves to this propaganda montage of false news and "dirty information warfare" (let alone amplify them, as We have seen it on various political TV and radio programs, such as the query by a journalist from Radio Bío Bío at the end of the Anatel debate who, when asked, insinuates that, to date, Boric either did not take the drug test or it was done with the knowledge of his COVID). The professional work of the press is to always be suspicious of power, contrast (Fact-checkers) the information and deny it if it turns out to be false, something that has been well relativized with the candidate of capital and the extreme right.
The greater participation of citizens in public decision-making that we have seen since the mobilizations of 10/18/2019 is, without a doubt, a success for the quality of democracy. This exercise, yes, requires transparent and quality information (as objective and plural as possible). It is here where the dirty propaganda and false news by Kast and his team threaten the ability to distinguish what is real from what is invented, in addition to jibarizing and redirecting the conflict to personal issues, being a manipulation that must be questioned for the good of the country, of citizenship and of democratic governance itself. As the icing on the cake and given Kast's performance in the Anatel debate, his followers/bots have plagued the networks with the message that Boric had the questions, based on the fact that when Kast asks him about the drug test, Boric told him. had prepared and shows it to him, leaving him speechless for long television seconds.
