Hate and disinformation in Ceuta

BarcelonaThe images this Thursday of young Ceutans waving Spanish flags while blocking the distribution of humanitarian aid carried out by the Red Cross and while assaulting an immigrant camp on Benítez beach and setting fire to their (few) belongings are not a coincidence. They are the product, on the one hand, of erratic crisis management by the Spanish government and, on the other, of the manipulation and hate speech with which the far-right has flooded social media since July 30. Language, in these cases, is everything. PP deputy for Ceuta Javier Celay called for calm yesterday, saying that "the scenes of violence position the invaders who entered irregularly as victims, when the victims are the Ceutans." That is, violence is not bad in itself, but because in this case it benefits "the invaders." Clearly, qualifying immigrants as "invaders" has a very clear political connotation, it dehumanizes them and turns them into enemies, that is, into people who endanger Spain's existence. Hence, the young Ceutans in the images probably do not see themselves as racist and xenophobic, but as saviors of the homeland.

Curiously, the use of social networks and instant messaging has played a key role in the entire crisis. At first, it served to spread the false idea that one could enter Ceuta by swimming without the risk of expulsion, according to a Supreme Court ruling, and then it served to disseminate hate speech towards the different. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, explained this Friday the following: "Between July 27 and August 10, about 40% of the conversation on the X network about this topic was in English, and it sought to impose a narrative of security collapse and the denunciation of a civilizational threat. Elon Musk's posts about Ceuta achieved a reach of 724 million in 11 days." Albares also provided details on how Russia has taken advantage of the crisis to spread disinformation and divide Europeans.

This reality does not remove even a gram of responsibility from the Spanish government for the disastrous management of the migratory crisis at the beginning, humanitarian afterwards, and social and political now. But we also cannot ignore who the actors are who pull the strings of social networks and what geopolitical interests are behind them. And there is no doubt that the global far-right, which acts in a coordinated manner, has a common objective, which is to put an end to the European Union and the values and model of coexistence that it represents. Right now, the EU is in the crosshairs of both Russia, which is wary of its model of freedoms, and the United States, which prefers to negotiate with the different countries one by one to impose its will. Nor can it be hidden, no matter how much the Spanish government tries, that Washington is now one of Morocco's main partners, and that this country uses Ceuta and Melilla to blackmail Spain and the EU.