Anti-immigrant hate speech as propaganda. A comparison between Donald Trump and Santiago Abascal on Twitter

Abstract

There are many studies about hate speech and propaganda during Nazi Germany and other dictatorships at the beginning of the 20th century. Even so, a few years ago, the renaissance of these thoughts in the mainstream media seemed impossible. Nowadays, in 2019, Donald Trump is the President of the United States (U.S.), and it is frequent to find messages against immigrants, women, and mass media in his official Twitter account. In fact, the principal idea of his presidential campaign was to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico in order to limit immigration. President Trump’s administration, however, is not an exception. In Spain, a political party called Vox is bringing back ideas from Francisco Franco, who ruled a dictatorship in Spain for 40 years. Santiago Abascal, the leader, is spreading messages against immigrants, women, and media similar to Trump’s, and making their social media accounts ideal channels to study and compare. The objective of this chapter is to analyze both politicians, Trump and Abascal, and the hate speech that circulates through analysis of their official Twitter accounts. Specifically, we focus on the messages related to immigrants, the scapegoats of these new political leaders. The methodology is based on a structured content analysis from January 1 to October 31, 2019.