In the protests against the amnesty law we have seen and heard very crazy things. As if the most delirious memes had become flesh and lived among us. We start listening one of the videos that have gone viral these days, in which a woman talks about the “plandemic”, the “climate scam” or the “control of the population by the Masonic elites”. “The only thing missing is Soros for bingo,” said José Luis Sastre ironically. “And mind control by chips!” Jaime García Cantero joked. The Freemasons fulfill, in the Hispanic framework, the same place as the Illuminati in the American framework. And in fact what we are seeing was already told by Andre Marantz in “Antisocial: the extreme right and freedom”, as Jaime, who forms, together with Nuño Domínguez, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Day by day.
“The world is becoming an absolute meme. And we would be very happy if it weren’t as serious as it is,” explains Jaime. “It is impossible to add more hoaxes and fakes in one sentence than what this lady just did.” It all has to do with the way we inform ourselves today, through social networks. And very crazy things are happening. “The meme comes first,” reflects Nuño Domínguez, “then you have to look for the information behind it, if there is any. It’s an inverse exercise.” And its effects on language can be hilarious: people use expressions (the latest “how are the machines” or “the palm tree has fallen”) without knowing where they come from (here and here, respectively). The ministers also recommend the Fundéu’s response to the question of whether to write “puto defend España” or “putodefender España” (the second is more correct, within the rudeness).
“There is a part of the extreme right in the entire world that is using memes as a code of conduct, but Spain always has something a little different. And I am very interested in this part of the Freemasons (…) that we had not known for a long time nothing of them and now suddenly they play a role in this story again. We talk about the words but let’s also think about the images. This thing about the inflatable dolls from last night in Ferraz is a meme in itself. It’s unbeatable,” he says James. “And it’s interesting, when you ask people who carry certain flags: what is that double-headed eagle? And they don’t know how to answer.” Perhaps if they knew it they would be disappointed, because that eagle is a symbol, among others, of the House of Habsburg and it could perfectly be carried by the independentists because it was the house they defended against the Bourbons in the war of succession in the 18th century. , as Álex Grijelmo explains today in the newspaper El País.
Other symbols, such as the Pepe the frog that is used in the Trump campaign although its author insists on distancing himself, become a symbol of the opposite of what they began to represent. This is also the case of the motto “I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees” carried by a protester in Madrid, although it is popularly attributed to someone as far removed from the postulates of the right as Che Guevara. Anything goes.
Fortunately, one of the hoaxes that has done the most damage in other countries, the one that distrusts science and vaccines, does not catch on in Spain, something for which we can congratulate ourselves. This is demonstrated by data such as the vaccination of babies against bronchiolitis, with a new messenger RNA vaccine that we have talked about in other programs. In Castilla y León, for example, 81% of babies have received this new vaccine this year.
In these demonstrations we have also seen, along with Santiago Abascal, Tucker Carlson, the American television presenter whom the Fox News network, which is not exactly known for its moderation, dismissed as an extremist. We draw a profile of the character through three audios that represent him well and that include his defense of Vladimir Putin (“does he eat dogs?”) or testicular tanning therapies to avoid “the collapse of testosterone.” A topic that, for whatever reason, does not usually appear in the traditional media (perhaps because not only does it have no scientific basis but it can be dangerous).
In addition, Nuño Domínguez reviews three important scientific news of the week: the seismic swarm in Iceland, which could end in a major eruption, the plague caused by the descendants of Pablo Escobar’s hippos in the Magdalena River in Colombia, and a hopeful therapy new genetics against hypercholesterolemia.