Santiago de Chile: Spreading fake news, creating fears among the people and disqualifying the contrary are strategies used today by the extreme right in Chile during the campaign with a view to the presidential elections, Prensa Latina publishes.
Next Sunday the candidate of the extreme right for the Palacio de La Moneda, José Antonio Kast, and the standard-bearer of the left-wing I Approve Dignity coalition, Gabriel Boric, will measure at the polls.
Asked by Prensa Latina on the subject, the analyst and director of the newspaper El Siglo, Hugo Guzmán, explained that this phenomenon has occurred not only in Chile, but also in other Latin American countries such as Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.
“Here in Chile the extreme right uses lies, half truths, media terrorism, distorting communications and the alteration of reality to impose a message that has an effect on sectors of society,” he said.
Guzmán referred in particular to Kast’s attacks on Boric when in radio and television debates he tried to tarnish the image of his contender.
The conservative candidate took advantage of most of his interventions to try to disqualify his rival, accused him of having changed his initial positions on various issues, of sexual abuse and even publicly summoned him to take a drug test.
“I believe that José Antonio Kast crossed a line that I don’t know if he was aware. This is rightly entering the mud, it is a dirty campaign”, the sociologist, analyst and director of the research agency, market studies and surveys Tú Influyes, Axel Callís, declared.
Several experts regretted that these meetings prior to the elections dedicate more time to personal attacks among the candidates, than to explain the government programs.
“The far-right not only uses fake news with enough precision in electoral times, but in general when it sees that there is a rise in transforming forces,” said Pedro Santander, journalist and PhD in linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.
Speaking to Radio Universidad de Chile, Santander added that all this is accompanied by the creation of new digital media dedicated to the development of these contents.
For senator and journalist Alejandro Guillier, “Kast is mainly focused on accentuating people’s fears through fake news.”
“He accuses someone and then relativizes it and apologizes, but that is already on the network and all those people come next to install the issue,” he explained.
The former president of the College of Journalists denounced that the standard-bearer of the extreme right went to the United States to coordinate the second round of the elections and see how they were going to face it, because his campaign is not directed from Chile, but from abroad.