The video went viral on X. Screams can be heard and, in the background, Red Cross volunteers move away silently to avoid trouble. Those who shout are three: “The Red Mafia, it’s good that you walk around when everything is clean. What do you do with the Spanish people’s money instead of helping them? ” Kiss my ass ! » they shout. This is just one of many verbal attacks of which there is evidence, but the harassment against the NGO is reaching a limit that has set off all the alarms in the institution. Every day they record more than 70,000 hate messages – according to the organization’s own data – and this number is growing every day.
The concern of those responsible is maximum. In fact, the fear of an attack is located in the environment. “There have already been incidents at the La Palma volcano. The volunteers were spat on, they were shaken… the red line is very thin and it can go further from there.” At the NGO’s headquarters in Madrid, a crisis cabinet has been created to seek the best strategy to put an end to these abuses, and it is hoped to be able to announce concrete measures in the coming days.
On social networks like X, insults and hoaxes are the order of the day. Also in far-right Telegram or WhatsApp groups. You don’t need to do a lot of research to find out who is behind this.
In the aforementioned video, for example, one of those screaming is – as users were able to identify – the exalted woman who, with her arm raised, during confinement, he asked to be able to attend mass in the Valley of the Fallen. Another could be a member of the far-right organizations FACTA and National Democracy, from whom the prosecution is asking for 4 years in prison for an alleged crime of attack.
Networks
Marcelino Madrigal, security and social media expert, explains that “behind this type of campaigns there are usually a small number of accounts, which are the ones that launch the campaign. Then, automated bots and their followers do the rest until the post goes viral. These accounts are the same ones that usually drive all far-right campaigns; The Red Cross is exactly the coin they want to collect now. »
According to the study carried out by Madrigal, the campaign began on November 3 and most of the messages are on the Telegram account of MEP Alvise Pérez (this channel alone adds more than the 56 others analyzed). Among the topics discussed are all the hoaxes that have been circulating these days: destruction of medicines, abandonment of the people concerned, money that the institution spends on personnel… Among the most cited words are “help”, “people” or “money”. , but others like “moors”, “shit”, “pateras” or “illegals” are also repeated.
Widespread hoaxes are easy to dismantle, but as Madrigal points out, “they spread faster than the truth.” For example, these stories say that the Red Cross was not present in zone 0, while on the 30th it deployed 49 teams of volunteers, welcomed 584 people and gave food to more than 6,260 neighbors. It is also not true that 92% of the money received in subsidies (514 million) is intended for personnel costs. The entity’s (audited) data shows that the amount allocated to salaries is 29% (330 million euros). The only thing that has a semblance of truth is that they destroy the medicines they receive: all the institutions do this, either because they are expired or because they are useless because we cannot does not know what conservation conditions they present.
“The problem,” adds Madrigal, “is not so much the hoaxes, since they are dismantled in a few hours, but the people who spread them. This is where we must act if we want to put an end to these types of attacks.” These, as well as more transparency on the part of institutions, are their two proposals to stop the dissemination of this content.
The origin and why
“The campaign against the Red Cross has a specific start date, and it is the photo of a volunteer hugging a Senegalese immigrant who is crying inconsolably on the beach of Tarajal, after crossing the border from Ceuta. Until then, nothing had happened; But from that moment on, the NGO became the center of a campaign to denigrate the far right,” explains journalist Miquel Ramos.
The image was taken on May 18, 2021. The young volunteer in the photo was Luna Reyes, 20, whom the immigrant (Abdoú) hugged as soon as she saw him arrive. “It was at that moment,” explains this expert on far-right movements, “that messages began to circulate accusing the Red Cross of only serving immigrants and neglecting Spaniards. Then they added other elements.
“While everyone celebrated the photo as reflecting the best of the human condition, the far right launched an attack, first against her, then against the Red Cross. Since then, the discredit campaign has continued, and was particularly virulent during the explosion of the La Palma volcano in September 2021. Since then, the net has been constant, and always linked to the xenophobic and anti-migrant discourse of the extreme RIGHT.
Do these messages which come back and repeat themselves from bot farms and which are aimed at a very specific audience find an echo? “Without a doubt, X is the most visible, but the important thing is that the campaign is also carried out in WhatsApp or Telegram groups. Ultimately, by seeing them so many times, many people who do not have a very specific political position, who are not interested in these issues or who are non-judgmental, expose themselves to them several times a year. day. And that’s when you discover that a friend or acquaintance you didn’t expect uses these same arguments in a conversation. “It’s very harmful.”
And of course, there is one more element. Dozens of far-right groups traveled to “ground zero” to collaborate in the cleanup efforts. Delegitimizing the Red Cross is also a way of promoting its work and presenting oneself as a protagonist. Attacking the NGO is their way of making people believe that their help was more useful and if, by doing so, they get someone to stop donating to them and give them their money, so much the better.
