If there are two extraordinary episodes in the scenario of fake news spread by social media bots run by communications consultancies, they are Cambridge Analytica y Birnbaum & Finkelstein. Almost everything is known about the first. That Facebook "sold" to Cambridge Analytica - for academic purposes - detailed information on 50 million of its users without their permission and in violation of the social network's usage policies.
"Using an app designed to answer a questionnaire about the personality and political interests of respondents and their friends, we built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons," recalls Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge employee who uncovered the scandal.
Donald Trump contracted in 2016 for more than 6.2 million dollars the services of this consultancy firm, which was dedicated to spreading millions of personalised messages with false information about its opponents (Obama, Hillary Clinton...) to an audience willing to believe them. Cambridge knew their predisposition to receive personalised stimuli according to their emotional and political state. No one doubts that this campaign was decisive in the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. But little is known about the demonisation of financier Georges Soros orchestrated worldwide by the Birnbaum & Finkelstein tandem on behalf of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
As Hannes Grassegger reports in Buzzfeednews, the team of the famous Hungarian-born investor and benefactor, was suddenly surprised by an avalanche of fake news, all negative, concerning him and his professional activity. A perverse character, drug trafficker, extremist, Nazi conspirator, Jew, who helped the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to fill Europe with Islamist refugees. He's been called names for supporting the Democratic Party in the United States and criticising the UK's Brexit. One only has to take a look at the web to see this avalanche of insults in many languages, including Spanish.
George Eli Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein, Jewish like Soros himself, worked secretly since 2008 for Viktor Orban's campaign. Their election victory proved the success of their strategy.
The late Finkelstein had developed a method that has become a practical guide to modern populism. His premise is that every election is decided before it begins. "Most voters know who they will vote for, what they support and what they oppose. It is very difficult to convince them otherwise. It is much easier to demoralise people than to motivate them. And the best way to win is to demoralise your opponents' supporters. That is what Trump did to great effect against Hillary Clinton, and what he meant when, after the election, he thanked black Americans for not voting.
You don't have to go far to see that the method has expanded. Voters are motivated by simple issues and consultants are motivated to polarise with fear on those simple issues. "And the one who does not strike first will be the victim, the defeated one. So anything that exaggerates or lies about the opponent in order to destroy them is valid. His advice to client candidates is not to talk about themselves, but to focus their campaign on destroying their opponents. Flood, through social media and other platforms, streams of false or suspicious news about the opponent to be defeated.
If it is not Soros because he embodies liberalism or dangerous foreign capital, it will be the fear of the Islamisation of Europe by refugees, of immigrants who steal jobs, of the law on gender violence that crushes men, of the agreements with pro-independence supporters that break Spain.....
Inmaculada G. Mardones
Editor of Geotermia Online. Previously, head of section at EL PAÍS and director of communications at the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.