The witch hunt of the environment of Vox

Barcelona“A man is worth what his word is worth,” tweeted Javier Ortega Smith in a jab at his former party colleagues that has accumulated over 940,000 views. It is the hangover from Santiago Abascal’s decision not to participate in Jordi Wild’s round of interviews. The Vox circle has tried to counter this and other criticisms by spreading the word that Wild had hired leftist fact-checkers to call Abascal’s words into question. Some extremist followers have even circulated names and photos of the potential fact-checkers, pointing, for example, to Carles Tamayo and Rocío Vidal (known as la Gata de Schrödinger). It was not them. The electoral narrative does not have to be reasonable, it only has to convince potential voters.

The campaign on X is not driven so much by the candidates as by their armies. On the other side of the parliamentary spectrum, a WhatsApp channel with more than 29,000 followers is dedicated to spreading "missions" for convinced followers of Podemos to carry out on social media. Two recent cases: the hashtags #PazCasaTrabajo29N, with the party's slogan, and #PSOEyFrenteAmplioVetan, which denounces that the PSOE and the Broad Front want to veto Irene Montero from the main general election debate. The strategy—which has worked—consists of spreading the hashtag through the WhatsApp channel and demanding that as many tweets as possible be made starting at a specific time. "Everyone post," orders the channel. A classic of the old Twitter that seems to never die. It is nothing irregular. Especially if, as it seems in this case, there are no bots involved. It is indeed surprising that parties are betting on this after the peak of trending topics from over a decade ago, but it is well known that in a campaign no opportunity should be wasted, and some journalists still pay attention to them.