Thousands of dead in the Bonaire parking lot. Military friends who tell you on WhatsApp what the mainstream media is hiding. And criminal conspiracies in broad daylight. The DANA tragedy has become fertile ground for influencers and far-right communicators align their solidarity with hoaxes, lies, spectacle and even raffles on TikTok to decide which town they send aid to. These agitators accumulate hours and hours of content that mixes altruism with lies and political messages that point in two directions: achieving notoriety, instilling more fear and implying that the youtubers They are helping those affected more and better than the military, NGOs or authorities in general.
The slogan “only the people save the people” became popular when hundreds of volunteers went on foot to the most affected areas of the province of Valencia to help the victims. It was the moment when far-right organizations such as Revuelta, Núcleo Nacional or Democracia Nacional launched aid shipments mixed with hoaxes and political slogans. Along with them, a multitude of people have come to the Valencian Community. influencers ultras, communicators and politicians, supporting the strategy and, among other things, openly stating that the authorities prevent the arrival of aid.
Rubén Gisbert has become one of the visible faces of the spectacularization of Valencian tragedy. After being youtuber, of leading a ‘Democratic Junta of Spain’ that advocates a refoundation of democracy and also of appearing with a megaphone in the November 2023 demonstrations, the last communicative facet of this lawyer is that of reporter and collaborator of HorizonIker Jiménez’s program on Cuatro. His image getting mud stained to make a more dramatic connection with the program has become the icon of the audiovisual barrage that has been saturating social networks for days.
This thirty-something lawyer is part of Iker Jiménez’s ecosystem, which for days has combined the massive dissemination of hoaxes with participation in equally massive aid shipments. Regarding the first, the historic presenter stood out for having stated that a flooded parking lot in Bonaire housed, without a doubt, “many” corpses. Others, like the far-right YouTuber David Santos, even claimed that the authorities had already removed 86 bodies.
Accounts with tens of thousands of followers insisted on this falsehood and remained silent or deleted their messages when the authorities stated that the divers had not found a single body in the facility. Gisbert even uploaded a video stating on the verge of tears that those corpses were real. Some alluded to unknown sources and others directly to “military friends” that they claimed to have.
MEP Luis ‘Alvise’ Pérez was also one of the first to take action by sending aid and spreading hoaxes. The last one, from the hand of the ultra agitator and Se Acabó La Fiesta candidate Vito Quiles, is the one that has had the most dissemination on social networks in the last two weeks: that the local authorities were throwing the clothes that thousands of People have donated to those affected by the tragedy. The reality, explained the Alfafar council, was that they were getting rid of clothing damaged by humidity.
The spread of hoaxes and messages has gone hand in hand with massive aid collections and money collections in such a way that any questioning of this misinformation crashes against the patina of altruism that covers the authors. The message that emerges from this amalgam of lies, aid trucks and videos in format selfie vertical is always the same: the influencer It helps more and better than the Army, the Civil Guard or the Generalitat.
Ángel Gaitán is influencercollaborator of Iker Jiménez and businessman in the mechanical and automotive sector. In the last week, he claims to have raised more than a million euros for those affected and, he says, he has encountered a problem: the donations were being made to his company and they were not donations as such, but supposed purchases of products that were have translated into benefits for that company. And now, he says, he is “a little scared by the situation” for having to answer to the Treasury. “They are going to fry me with taxes,” he said.
It is about the same influencer that, a few days ago, asked to your TikTok followers to choose the Valencian town to which the next aid package that he had managed to put together should go. Also the same one that was recorded with a person who was providing help in the midst of the tragedy, while highlighting that, despite being a gypsy, he was not “stealing.” A influencer of the right that, like so many others, truffles its communications to thousands of people with another message: the authorities, NGOs, the Red Cross and Cáritas manage the aid that arrives in an irresponsible or even criminal manner.
At the moment the signs of fraud are not against the Red Cross or Cáritas, but against some aid collection websites. This Friday the Government announced the blocking of “Ayuda Valencia”, one of these donation portals, due to suspicions of the existence of fraudulent donations in cryptocurrencies.
The consensus of all the authorities is to explain that all help is welcome, but also to ask for order and that the instructions given be followed. Also about what to donate, where to donate it and how to donate it, because not all places need clothes or food, but other things. All public messages affect the damage that hoaxes and messages of this type of influencers They do not only in the ability to distribute aid, but also among a population already under the effects of a tangible tragedy.
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