I am not an expert on Bolivian politics. I am, however, human, which is more than can be said about the Twitter accounts commenting on the Bolivian coup:
Other not-even-trying-to-be-subtle examples of establishing the “Morales is a fraud” frame include anime accounts that suddenly became very concerned about Bolivian politics and this Google Ngram graph:
Dozens of low-follower twitter accounts all started tweeting the same thing over the past two days and yet if you look for any of these accounts now you will find that they have been deleted:
In fact nothing shows up if you search “Friends from everywhere, in Bolivia there was NO COUP” either. Now its just people sharing the same photos and videos of how obviously fake these tweets are. Alan R MacLeod, a reporter for FAIR who reports on disinformation noticed noticed that a Spanish-language hashtag about Bolivia was trending in strange palces:
Another tweet making the rounds is this one, showing a ridiculously biased title for the Wikipedia entry for the coup:
That title has, as of this writing, since been changed to “Evo Morales government resignation.” However, things get more interesting when you dive into the talk page. User “Ascarboro97” who has no history of editing Wikipedia at all writes:
I am the person who moved to “2019 Bolivian transition to democracy” That being said, I understand it’s far-fetched, and I apologize for its lack of neutrality. I simply did not want it to be called a “coup”. Personally, my family is from Bolivia, and I have been closely following the situation there over the past few weeks. As some of you may know, the current set of protests in Bolivia began because Evo Morales manipulated the results of the 2019 election to make it look like he won by a wide margin. This greatly angered many people, who saw it as anti-democratic, leading to the protests. The military and police did not overthow the government. They simply sided with the protesters, leading to the resignation of Evo Morales. Needless to say, this is a victory for the protestors, who have grown tired of Evo’s authoritarian tendencies, so calling the situation a coup is insulting to them, especially since that is the term Evo has tried to use to discredit them. However, I also agree that moving the article to the “transition to democracy” is also problematic, as we haven’t had time to see how the situation plays out. I therefore think “Evo Morales resignation” is a good compromise. Once again, I apologize for my lack of neutrality. I admit that I know very little about editing Wikipedia. —Ascarboro97 (talk) 04:06, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
For whatever its worth, the line “My family is from Bolivia” followed by descriptions of Morales as an authoritarian come up a lot when, for example, that family owned some mining interests:
Maybe I’m being a bit glib, but these last two examples feel eerily similar to Joanna Haussmann, the comedian who took to YouTube to denounce Nicolás Maduro when the Trump Administration was trying to install Juan Guaidó. Haussmann, came off as a concerned citizen- just a normal person caring for her country. She rarely mentions that she is the daughter of Ricardo Haussmann who has held multiple positions including former IMF-World Bank Chair of Development Committee and a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela before Hugo Chavez took power in 1999.
The Guaidó apologia was so rampant last spring that Means TV even ran a video parodying the Brooklyn-agecent Venezuelan expats:
Propaganda isn’t new. Even this internet-based version of it is at least seven years old. Back in 2012 I wrote about the IDF’s use of social media to frame how global audiences viewed Palestinians:
IDF’s tweets and blog posts are a running tally of rockets and resources. Hamas rocket attacks are crucial for justifying military action and painting the enemy as an unfeeling terrorist. Too many rockets and the IDF seems ineffectual. Too few rockets, and people start questioning your occupation. The result is somewhat contradictory and paradoxical: the IDF’s anti-missile defense strategy (aka Iron Dome) is described as extremely effective but is never depicted as impervious
This is of course par for the course today in Bolivia. While videos of cops cutting out the indigenous flag from their uniforms are easy to find, they are also careful to show that pro-Morales crowds are both cowardly, small in number, but also dangerous.
I’ll add to this as more comes out.