More than a week has passed since Ferran Torres scored the extra-time goal that gave Spain its second World Cup, but – at least for Argentina’s president – the tournament is not over.
Javier Milei has claimed that a coordinated “anti-Argentina campaign” was behind criticism of the country’s team, accusations of racism among its fans and conspiracy theories alleging that Lionel Messi’s side was secretly being favoured by Fifa.
Now, the far-right president has taken the narrative a step further, alleging that the supposed campaign was financed by the US Democratic party and the governments of Brazil and Mexico.
“It was the work of progressive minds who do not want the ideas of freedom to succeed,” claimed the self-styled libertarian in an interview with a local radio station on Sunday.
He went on to claim that the “government of Brazil”, led by the leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had allegedly provided the largest share of the funding.
Analysts in Argentina said Milei had embraced the narrative as a distraction from his plummeting popularity, while others argued that the “real anti-Argentina campaign” was the one the president was waging “with his chainsaw” austerity plan.
Yet the narrative has gained traction, even reaching people who do not support Milei. Pablo Torres, a ۵۲-year-old bookseller from Buenos Aires who “never voted for him and never would”, said there had been a social media “bombardment” against the country that left him feeling “outrage” and “disgust”.
He said some of the accusations of racism had come from “great colonial powers that enslaved people, trafficked enslaved people and decimated populations”, adding: “They denied the existence of the black population in Argentina, and ignored our idiosyncrasies and our history … We are a welcoming home for all nations.”
During the tournament, incidents involving racist behaviour by some Argentine supporters drew widespread attention. Hours before the final, the US actor Samuel L Jackson posted an Instagram story that said: “Dear black people, please do not cheer or root for Argentina to win the Fifa World Cup. Argentina has historically been one of, if not the most, racist countries in the world.”
The post prompted reactions even from human rights organisations such as Amnesty International Argentina, which acknowledged racism in the country but criticised “reducing the country to a stereotype”.
Milei, meanwhile, posted that the criticism could be attributed to Argentina’s opposition, which had “validated the woke movement that is now accusing us of being racist”. Over the weekend, he also decided to blame Brazil – while on Brazilian soil.
On Saturday, the Argentinian president attended the launch of the presidential campaign of the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro and Lula’s main challenger in October’s presidential election.
In his speech, as well as calling Lula a “thief” and a “prisoner” – prompting a strong reaction from the Brazilian government – Milei said: “If you examine the data from the recent anti-Argentina campaign, the place from which the most attacks came was Brazil.” He reinforced the claim on Sunday, this time adding Mexico and the US Democratic party.
The digital anthropologist Mercedes Máspero analysed more than ۲m posts on social media and wrote that she had found “some undeniable patterns” of orchestration such as the repeated use of variations of “disgusting human beings” in different languages. Even so, it was “a tough call” to describe it as a coordinated campaign “because the narrative is incredibly widespread”, she wrote.
Natalia Aruguete, a researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council who specialises in social media and political agendas, said she had seen “no evidence of a large-scale coordinated operation”, despite the existence of “a hostile, widespread and transnational conversation centred on Argentina”.
“Brazil had a significant presence [in those messages],” she added, “particularly in the conversation about racism, but … Milei’s accusation of alleged Brazilian involvement was not backed up by any public evidence.”
Some critics said that the last time the idea of such a campaign was propagated by the state was during the brutal ۱۹۷۶–۸۳ dictatorship, whose crimes Milei has repeatedly downplayed. During the ۱۹۷۸ World Cup, hosted by Argentina, the military junta claimed that criticism of the regime’s human rights violations was part of an “anti-Argentina campaign”.
Aruguete said Milei had turned a “diverse online conversation” into a political conflict that fits his narrative of a “culture war” against the left, at a time when his administration is facing “internal deterioration”: inflation appears to be under control, but rising unemployment and corruption scandals have driven the president’s popularity to its lowest point since taking office.
The narrative that suggests Argentinians are all victims of a supposedly orchestrated campaign by leftwing foreign governments “allows Milei to shift the focus of the debate away from his own governance issues and on to an external adversary”, said Aruguete.
