2023-10-27 04:23:04
From Sunday to now, the Argentine political board does not stop shaking with unprecedented vertigo. The Javier Milei-Mauricio Macri-Patricia Bullrich alliance, which was staged with more urgency than argument, activates during these hours speculations on and off, support and rejection, players entering and leaving the field. What surely no one anticipated is the emergence of a particular actor, who yesterday took a stance without half measures: the Taylor Swift fandom. The Argentine Swifties came out to speak out: “he represents a danger, mainly for women and diversities. We are not going to vote for him,” they dedicated to the far-right candidate. They thus join the fans of the popular Korean K-Pop band BTS – the armys – who a few days ago came out to speak out once morest Victoria Villarruel for her “hateful and xenophobic sayings” from a few years ago ( once morest the ” pink Korean”, for example).
What appears as a colorful fact acquires dimension if we consider the exceptional mass phenomenon that the American singer-songwriter represents today, who put more than 3 million people in the virtual queue to buy tickets for her 3 concerts in River (on the 9th , November 10 and 11), sold out in a matter of hours. An adhesion that mobilizes identity ties so particular as to make a joke? of the day: attention libertarians, the swifties mobilize more than Barrionuevo.
The matter escalated to the point that it became a news story published in The Guardian: “Fans of BTS and Taylor Swift once morest Javier Milei and his running mate,” the English newspaper headlined.
Swiftie militancy
“A few days before Taylor Swift’s first recital in Argentina, as a fandom we find ourselves in the need to talk regarding the upcoming Argentine elections and the future of the country. As Taylor said: we have the need to be on the right side of history” , says the “statement from the Argentine swiftie community”, which in a few hours spread from the “Swifties Contra LLA” account, #SwiftiesAgainstLLA.
“One of the candidates, Javier Milei, leader of a party wrongly called liberal, is actually a representative of the anti-democratic right that is coming to take away all our acquired rights.” Why does this have to call us as a fandom? Because Milei is Trump, and because we cannot not fight following having heard and seen Taylor fight so that the right does not win in his country,” they also express. They quote the figure they admire to conclude: “we have the need to to be on the right side of history.
They refer to the documentary Miss Americana (Netflix), which shows the moment when Swift decided to assume a public political voice once morest Donald Trump and the anti-rights senator from Tennessee (where the artist is from) Marsha Blackburn, with a speech in defense of diversities and the conquest of rights. “Now I like Taylor Swift 25% less,” Trump then responded.
From saying to fact
“It started off as something funny, but it ended up provoking interesting debates among Taylor’s followers. Maybe there are people who didn’t think regarding it that way, I didn’t think regarding it myself, but what she rejects regarding Trump is exactly what she proposes.” Milei here. If Taylor were Argentine, she would be anti-libertarian!”, Marie, a proud declared Swiftie, realizes.
“Taylor’s fans are very devoted to the ideals and values that she transmits, it is not something secondary to her music. And well, I understand that this is a way of militarizing those ideals from our place,” reflects Belén. “If Milei says that women who have abortions must be persecuted, if he is in favor of the sale of weapons, of organs, if he says that the gender gap and climate change do not exist… And well, he is in the opposite side of our values,” he says. She believes the step taken is “natural”: if the referent “goes out to say”, to establish a political position, those who identify with her have to do the same.
A similar process occurred in Chile: there the Swifties openly campaigned in favor of Gabriel Boric, a declared fan of the singer, who fought for the presidency once morest a more extreme right-wing exemplar, José Antonio Kast. Which, oh coincidence, he was on Javier Milei’s international guest list last Sunday. Finally, he did not become part of a team that included Vox representatives from Spain, senators from Lacalle Pou and Eduardo Bolsonaro.
take it on stage
Given the special strategy of closeness of the mega star with her followers, the followers’ bet at this time is that the singer mentions the topic during her concerts, as she has done in her country. “We are already sharing it on the networks, and she doesn’t seem crazy to us at all. She has had many gestures that take the voice of her fans in her shows,” they enthused.
The matter also moved, literally, to River’s door. Many fans have been camping there for months waiting for the concert. The networks amplified support for the Swiftie message, but also, of course, libertarian rejections, and even threats. On the Swiftie side, the field is marked: “If they touch one, they touch us all.”
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