Iglesias spoke a few days ago at an event called: “Political communication and social networks in the post-truth era”, organized by the Líber Seregni Foundation, at the El Galpón theater.
In this framework, he highlighted the Uruguayan left as proportionally “the one with the most social and electoral support in the world.” He remarked that the fact that a leftist force maintains the level of electoral support through the decades puts it in a position that no European left could imitate.
He assured that the Broad Front has social material to go much further than the left has gone in many countries due to the electoral reference and its unequivocal electoral strength, and that it will soon govern the country again.
Social networks
On the other hand, he said that the overwhelmingly conservative dominance of the big media is joined by a type of communication in social networks that has broken a promise, because 15 or 20 years ago it was thought that social networks were going to democratize information and that the ability of anonymous citizens to interact through this means with political leaders was going to mean an unprecedented democratic opening.
He added that, however, the reality today is that social networks have become very interesting spaces for political dispute but, at the same time, “into spaces of garbage, very toxic, where ‘fake news’ operates. with notable impunity and condition the activity of the big media.”
He pointed out that in WhatsApp the news no longer operate as information devices, but as ideological confirmation devices. “News does not work because it tells something, news works because it confirms something, confirms an ideological intuition regardless of whether it is true or false.”
weapons of ideological combat
The political scientist pointed out that the global left has not always understood the importance of having “weapons for ideological combat adapted to current times.”
On the other hand, “the rights have given great importance to the instruments of ideological combat: to education, to the media, to entertainment and political information.”
“We are moving towards societies where the redefinition of that playing field represents a threat to democracy, in the terms that we have known it, if there is no response in terms of the defense of ideology,” he said.
He also stated that “not a single space should be left without disputing the right; all spaces must be disputed, even sports, all of them, not one space without ideological combat”, although he recommended “getting out of the logic of partisan confrontation”.
