By Javier Surasky
Author’s note: This is the hardest text I have had to write for this blog, not because of its analytical density or the research process behind it, but because having to write about this hurts me deeply.
.png "Map of Argentina connected to social media, with viral content, online anger and symbols of digital polarization.")
The 2026 World Cup formally ended when Spain defeated Argentina and won the title, but it continued on a different playing field: social media, where Argentina was presented as the most racist country in the world, a society of Nazi descendants, and a nation that deserved to be humiliated through references to the Malvinas Islands.
Both true
and false statements circulated, attributed to figures from sports and
entertainment, in many cases accompanied by material that had been cropped and manipulated with artificial intelligence to sustain positions of hatred. This
phenomenon cannot be reduced to individual excesses; rather, I understand it as
an expression of the way public discourse is produced, circulated, and
validated in the digital age.
Social
platforms operate through a “see-react” logic, with no reflection between the
two moments: the second occurs as an immediate reflex of the first, a process
to which generative AI adds the capacity to create images that confirm a
prejudice and intensify the “drive” to react.
The result
is as simple as it is pathetic: a piece of content provokes a reaction; the
reaction drives its mass distribution; and distribution replaces verification.
When
celebrities are brought into that circuit, everything is amplified, and if they
later retract what they said or shared, by then they have already lost control
over their initial message.
As a
result, it is not only a matter of who said what, because who shared it, who
believed it because the image looked real, and who circulated a post aligned
with their prior position also matters, and matters a lot.
This brings
up an uncomfortable question: Who benefits from the message?
Two digital paths for the spread of post-World Cup anti-Argentine hatred
The attacks
against Argentina had two main extra-soccer axes: the supposed character of the
country as racist and the attempt to humiliate Argentina’s claim over the
Malvinas, an issue deeply rooted in the hearts of Argentines.
It is no
coincidence that both axes share the same structure: they begin with real
historical facts, simplify them as much as possible, and turn them into the
essence of an Argentine national being, presented as a single and contemptible
archetype.
Let us see:
Argentina has a history of racism and of constructing a white identity; it
received Nazi criminals after World War II; and it maintains a sovereignty
dispute with the United Kingdom over the Malvinas, South Georgia, and South
Sandwich Islands. But the narrative turns all of that into the claim that all
Argentines today are racist, descendants of Nazis, or responsible for the 1982
Malvinas War, where they were defeated by the British army. In doing so, it
converts historical processes, whether near or distant in time, into a
hereditary identity, assigning degrading characteristics to the entire
population. The leap from there to xenophobia is very short.
Racism and Samuel L. Jackson as the paradigm of the useful idiot
Samuel L.
Jackson’s repost is an important piece of what happened: the actor shared on
Instagram an original post by SEC Black Alumni Network, a network and community
of Black alumni from universities belonging to the Southeastern Conference in
the United States, which asked Black people not to support Argentina’s national
team, claiming that the country had historically been “one of the most racist
countries in the world, if not the most racist.”
The post
compared Black people who sympathized with the Argentine team to Stephen, the
character played by Jackson in Django Unchained, who represented an
enslaved Black man who collaborates with the racial regime that subjugates
other Black people (Jaureguy, 2026; La Nación, 2026a). An AI-generated image of
that character wearing an Argentina jersey accompanied the post (Operation Sports,
2026), giving AI an argumentative function: it transformed the accusation into
a visual representation that produced an emotionally effective association
between Argentina, slavery, and racial betrayal (Qu et al., 2023).
Jackson’s
claim is far too crude: saying that Argentina has a history of racism,
invisibilization, and whitening is defensible, but saying that it is “the most
racist country in the world” would require an intellectual effort that clearly
exceeds the capacities, and the communicative intent, of that figure. By
addressing “Black people” as if they constituted a homogeneous political
subject, he seeks to impose a racial obligation of behavior that ends up
denying the autonomy and plurality of the very people he claims to defend.
For my
part, I am not trying to deny Argentina’s history of racial discrimination.
Quite the opposite: once critical judgment is brought into play, it is easy to
see that the predominantly white appearance of the national team has historical
roots and is not a neutral demographic fact.
According
to the “Vértiz Census” of 1778, which identified the colonial categories of
white, Indigenous, mestizo, mulatto, and Black, mulatto and Black people made
up around 28% of the population of Buenos Aires (Johnson & Socolow, 1980).
By 1810, the year of the May Revolution, which institutionally began the
independence process of what was then the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata,
that proportion was already almost one-third of the population of Buenos Aires,
most of them registered as enslaved.
Outside
Buenos Aires, that same census placed 64% of Tucumán’s population, 59% of
Catamarca’s, 54% of Santiago del Estero’s, 46% of Salta’s, and 44% of Córdoba’s
within colonial categories associated with Black, mulatto, and zambo people,
showing that these populations were part of society and, in some regions, even
represented the majority of inhabitants (Delgado, 2004, p. 166).
This
changes the question from “Why did Argentina never have a Black population?” to
“How did the Black population come to be represented as nonexistent?”
Without
carrying out a detailed analysis, we know today that the wars of independence
contributed to that transformation: enslaved people, freed people, and
Afro-descendants were incorporated into military forces and used as “cannon
fodder.” Their participation in the armies was not a decision they made under
conditions of freedom; it could be imposed by “their owners,” ordered by the
authorities, or encouraged through promises of emancipation.
Added to
this was the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, which affected a deeply unequal
society in which people with resources could leave the areas of contagion and
the popular sectors could not, with even references to the exercise of police
power to ensure that they did not do so and increase the risk of contagion in
the areas where the wealthier population lived.
This was
joined by a political process of state promotion of European immigration.
Article 25 of the Argentine Constitution, still in force, orders the federal
government to encourage European immigration, the highest expression of a
nation-building project that associated Europe with civilization, science, and
modernity. The mass arrival of white Europeans, especially from Spain and
Italy, helped modify demographic proportions.
That
political project was accompanied by a narrative of Argentina as a white
nation, which reduced Blackness to a folkloric role from the colonial past. The
“invisibilization” of Black people in Argentine history was deliberate and
continues, although with less intensity, to this day.
Goebel
(2026) warns that statistical invisibilization does not explain the entire
recorded decrease in the Black population and argues that these processes may
have been linked to a demographic decline associated with adverse structural
conditions.
The latest
National Census, conducted in 2022, recorded 302,936 people who identified as
Afro-descendant or as having Black or African ancestors, equivalent to 0.7% of
the population in private households (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y
Censos [INDEC], 2024). But after centuries of invisibilization and denial, it
is very possible that self-identification reflects ignorance and denial among
those living in Argentina today regarding their roots, or that some form of
“shame” still persists.
A
predominantly white Argentina is the result of intentional historical and
political processes. A purely white Argentine national team expresses historical processes of coloniality similar to those of the colonialism visible
in the French national team, among other European teams.
Another
racialized criticism was the absence of Black players on Argentina’s national
team, and I want to be very clear about this: the racial composition of a
national team is not an expression of social integration, and the presence of
Black players or children of migrants on European national teams has more
symbolic than real value.
Lamine
Yamal was born in Spain and is the son of a Moroccan father and an
Equatoguinean mother. His participation in the Spanish national team challenges
ethnically closed conceptions of nationality, but his success conceals the way
children of Moroccan migrants are treated in Spain and the stereotypes assigned
to them.
France
presents a similar paradox: its national teams have long included Black players
such as Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé, and N’Golo Kanté, descendants of
African and Caribbean populations, reflecting the diversity of French society
as well as its colonial past. But they only show that an exceptional athlete
can become a national symbol while other members of his community face labor
discrimination, residential segregation, or questioning of their belonging.
National
teams carry fragments of history: migration, slavery, whitening, and their
jerseys offer clues and raise questions.
Social
media produces an Argentina, a Spain, and a France that do not exist, and it
lets a beautiful opportunity pass by: the opportunity to talk about what is
usually left unsaid, because hateful or idolizing imaginaries are given
priority.
It is Malvinas, not Falkland, and they are Argentine
After
Argentine players displayed the flag “Las Malvinas son argentinas” after
defeating England in the semifinals, British journalist Piers Morgan posted on
X: “Classless morons. I hope Spain thrash them as badly in the final as we
thrashed them in the Falklands War” (Morgan, 2026, as cited in La Nación,
2026b).
The use of
the Malvinas question as an instrument of humiliation shows with full cruelty
how a colonial inversion is produced between the powerful European “us” and the
subordinated and colonized “you.”
The
Malvinas have been on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories (colonies,
basically) since the list was first drawn up in 1946, and they produced the
only war between countries of the Western bloc during the Cold War. That war
was driven by a genocidal dictatorship ruling Argentina, which sent 18-year-old
boys to fight, poorly armed, poorly fed, and wearing sneakers. I recommend
watching the film Los chicos de la guerra to understand more.
We can
debate how Argentina treats its veterans, the political use of the cause, the
responsibilities of the genocidal leaders and senior military commanders in the
war, and Argentina’s foreign policy on the Malvinas. But we cannot deny that
there is a colonial question there, and blood shed by young Argentines whom the
people recognize far more than almost all of their leaders do.
When a flag
with the phrase “Las Malvinas son argentinas” is presented as an illegitimate
provocation, we see the ideological inversion we are talking about: the problem
is the flag itself, not what it communicates, and the power relationship behind
it remains untouched. The occupying power becomes the victim, and the society
making the claim becomes the aggressor. A sad spectacle.
As the
aggressor, Argentina appears as the expression of a violent and backward
society, updating the colonial narrative. This places all of Latin America
under observation, the same Latin America that, on social media, has denied
that Argentina is Latin America, reactivating and perpetuating the meaning of a
politics that expresses coloniality and updating the narrative that “Argentines
came from the boats.” That, in turn, updates the history of invisibilizing
Blackness and diversity for which the country is, at the same time, accused of
being racist. An interesting and Machiavellian discursive-political twist.
The responsibility of sharing and “liking”: Rosalía and the perfect confession
The Rosalía
episode was different, but it offers an even more precise representation of how
platforms usually work.
The singer
shared on TikTok a video posted by Mia Khalifa mocking Argentina. After
receiving strong criticism from her Argentine followers, she deleted the post
and explained: “I hit share because ‘La perla’ was playing” — one of Rosalía’s
songs — “I didn’t even read what it said. My bad. Sorry” (Prieto, 2026).
The
explanation, precisely because it seems sincere, is significant and
demonstrates the reflex-reaction circuit mentioned above: hearing her song was
enough of a stimulus to share, an action stronger than “liking” because it
amplifies the content’s reach to new audiences.
Reacting to
posts without reading them is not an isolated act by Rosalía, but a widespread
practice on social media that anyone who participates in those spaces can
easily observe: on them, users do not need to know, much less understand, a
piece of content in order to intervene in its circulation.
The
retraction creates its own set of problems: the original content had already
circulated attached to a public figure, and the apology came later and in a
defensive context. In cases like that of a singer who will soon arrive in
Argentina to perform concerts, doubt remains as to whether it is genuine, or to
what extent it is mixed with commercial interests, given that in the country,
immediately after her first post, calls began for people to return tickets to
her concerts (El País, 2026).
The point
is not to claim that a correction has no value, but to recognize the structural
asymmetry between the correction and the original post: the former enters the
emotional chain that drives the controversy, while the latter becomes part of a
“hate” process that has already acquired autonomy.
Rosalía’s
phrase “I didn’t read it” explains the problem more precisely than any theory
about algorithmic manipulation, and the answer, I believe, requires adding to
responsibility a second equally relevant component: rethinking digital
literacy, which is taking for granted a central element that reality disproves,
namely the reading of a message before its dissemination or reaction.
The hidden question
At the
start of this blog, we said that one question in need of an answer is who
benefits from this hate, or, to put it more clearly, who finds an advantage in
presenting Argentina through a single, homogeneous, and degraded identity.
The first
answer emerges almost naturally: those who need to hide historical power
relations and bet on creating smokescreens in the form of moral condemnation
against the subordinated country.
Our first
candidates as beneficiaries, then, are the old and new empires, whether or not
they receive that name.
Anti-Argentine
hatred can also benefit national-fascist projects, the very projects that
progressivism protests against in international arenas: by being unable to
distinguish the political action of governments from the societies they govern,
it creates a unity between the two that is not always real. This helps weaken
those inside a country who resist policies of social injustice and violations
of human rights or of the rights of vulnerable groups, turning international
progressive action against those who defend social ideas within the country.
This is Machiavelli reloaded.
Reactionary
nationalisms also benefit when they use external grievance to justify
xenophobia, persecution of foreigners, digital harassment, or the silencing of
dissent, in one direction or another depending on whether we are speaking about
Argentina or the rest of the world, in a game where extremisms create their own
conditions for intensification: “I hate you,” “I hate you more,” “no, I hate
you more.”
And, as
always, those who always benefit also benefit here — this is not a typo: the
big internet and AI technology companies. Fulay and Roy (2026) and Falkenberg
et al. (2024) have shown that hostility directed against out-groups and toxic
language are directly related to interaction on social media, and I would add
that this implies greater use of AI through the facilitation of false content
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO],
2026).
Platforms
do not need to politically endorse the message; they only need to let it
circulate in the name of digital democracy: the algorithm takes care of the
rest by distributing the content.
Conclusions
A post
without sources becomes a historical diagnosis; an AI-generated image becomes
an argument; a celebrity shares without reading and attempts a retraction that
is no longer fully possible; thousands of people respond with new
generalizations, conspiracy theories, or harassment campaigns; thousands more
complete its meaning through reactions, comments, and new posts.
AI did not
invent racism, xenophobia, or nationalism, nor are social media platforms the
origin of the desire to humiliate the adversary or create conspiracy theories.
But both tools, placed within reach of a mass public, change the scale, speed,
and costs of those practices.
The
technological problem is born from the way people organize their attention and
manage their responsibility, along with other elements such as the use of
anonymity, the tendency to believe what one sees, and so on. That is why a
democratic society needs people willing to interrupt chains of hate as much as
it needs systems for detecting synthetic content.
We have
identified some beneficiaries of this process, but who loses? When hate takes
over discourse, all of us who believe in human rights, democracy, diversity,
and dialogue.
Samuel L.
Jackson, Piers Morgan, and Rosalía represent different presences within the
same ecosystem: the first amplified a message of hate; the second used
humiliation in a sensitive situation and shifted the focus away from the claim;
and the third acted in an absolutely irresponsible way.
Although
differences in intent matter, these episodes show that the reach of a social
media account is not necessarily proportional to the care with which it is
used. I believe it is time to assign special responsibilities to people and entities whose social media accounts exceed a certain threshold, because their
capacity to cause harm is immense: whoever redistributes a piece of content
contributes their audience, reputation, and capacity to legitimize what has
been posted.
Sometimes,
the most important political gesture on social media is not yet pressing the
share button.
References
Delgado, F. (2004). Población negra y afromestiza en el
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El País. (2026, July 22). Rosalía pide perdón tras la
tormenta digital en Argentina por compartir un vídeo de la victoria de España. El
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inglés: “Espero que España los aplaste tan mal como los aplastamos en
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