Expanding on the Latinos for Trump thing, lots of white liberals seem to be shocked at the levels of rightwing support from the Latino population. They speculate (wrongly) that it’s due to Cubans in Florida; and while that group does support the right, it’s not because they remember their time in Cuba and hold a grudge against communism.
No, the issue is one that has been around a long time now and has been completely ignored because most people don’t speak Spanish. Almost all mainstream Spanish media, from shows, to news, to social media has been far, far, FAR right for decades now. Like, it makes Fox News look like MSNBC.
And the language barrier is a 2 part issue. Not only are English speaking liberals completely unaware of how bad the propaganda is, but people that are only fluent in Spanish don’t hear any alternatives. All they get is the propaganda, there are no other sources. You tell them about the horrible stuff Trump or the GOP has done and they look at you with a blank face. They don’t hear about it, because it’s never reported for them. And people on Spanish social media tend not to talk about it for the same reason.
The rot is deep. Very deep. Telemundo and Univision have completely fucked the Latino populace by hiding reality from them and pushing pro-billionaire messaging.
No, the issue is one that has been around a long time now and has been completely ignored because most people don’t speak Spanish. Almost all mainstream Spanish media, from shows, to news, to social media has been far, far, FAR right for decades now. Like, it makes Fox News look like MSNBC.
Aside from that, they know they have a captive audience for many of their viewers, who are unable to go fact check them by consulting English-media. This is true for monolingual Spanish speakers, but also for many folks who have learned enough English to get by in their day-to-day lives, but who are not comfortable following or discussing something more complex like politics in English.
Pretty much every time I would watch the news with my mother-in-law, if they had an interview or clip from a politician dub over into Spanish, I’d catch them engaging in some fuckery with their translations. Either they would deliberately omit parts of what was said to make the translated part sound worse, or they would choose key words where they would pick a translation that is related to a more accurate word for the English word spoken, but with a much more negative connotation to it.
They’d also ignore when right-wing conspiracy theories get debunked in English, and just keep on pushing them for months after they’d been discredited with no mention of this fact, as though they were widely held, mainstream beliefs.
Then again, white Americans who don’t interact with either group very much seem to consider all Latino and Black Americans as two monolithic voting blocks, ignoring the reality of the many different cultures, national backgrounds and ethnicities that comprise either group. Lots of white people just think of them as solid, unreachable Democratic voters, for some reason. There are plenty of people in either group who the Democrats can’t reach, because despite agreeing with the rest of a Democrat or Progressive platforms, they hold deeply conservative religious or cultural beliefs on abortion and sexuality. Like, I hear people saying “¡Maricón!” on the daily more often than I heard edgy kids dropping the f-word on the middle school playground back in the day, and nobody bats an eye because rampant homophobia is still a cultural given in a lot of places, unfortunately. If you actually interact with any people of color on a regular basis, it’s probably not as surprising to see how the right can pull in greater numbers of POC by playing to the right themes for those deeply held views and prejudices.
Thank you for providing this insight. My grandparents did not speak English, I can only imagine that they were similarly disinformed by the limited access to media from their native tongue.
Expanding on the Latinos for Trump thing, lots of white liberals seem to be shocked at the levels of rightwing support from the Latino population. They speculate (wrongly) that it’s due to Cubans in Florida; and while that group does support the right, it’s not because they remember their time in Cuba and hold a grudge against communism.
No, the issue is one that has been around a long time now and has been completely ignored because most people don’t speak Spanish. Almost all mainstream Spanish media, from shows, to news, to social media has been far, far, FAR right for decades now. Like, it makes Fox News look like MSNBC.
And the language barrier is a 2 part issue. Not only are English speaking liberals completely unaware of how bad the propaganda is, but people that are only fluent in Spanish don’t hear any alternatives. All they get is the propaganda, there are no other sources. You tell them about the horrible stuff Trump or the GOP has done and they look at you with a blank face. They don’t hear about it, because it’s never reported for them. And people on Spanish social media tend not to talk about it for the same reason.
The rot is deep. Very deep. Telemundo and Univision have completely fucked the Latino populace by hiding reality from them and pushing pro-billionaire messaging.
Aside from that, they know they have a captive audience for many of their viewers, who are unable to go fact check them by consulting English-media. This is true for monolingual Spanish speakers, but also for many folks who have learned enough English to get by in their day-to-day lives, but who are not comfortable following or discussing something more complex like politics in English.
Pretty much every time I would watch the news with my mother-in-law, if they had an interview or clip from a politician dub over into Spanish, I’d catch them engaging in some fuckery with their translations. Either they would deliberately omit parts of what was said to make the translated part sound worse, or they would choose key words where they would pick a translation that is related to a more accurate word for the English word spoken, but with a much more negative connotation to it.
They’d also ignore when right-wing conspiracy theories get debunked in English, and just keep on pushing them for months after they’d been discredited with no mention of this fact, as though they were widely held, mainstream beliefs.
Then again, white Americans who don’t interact with either group very much seem to consider all Latino and Black Americans as two monolithic voting blocks, ignoring the reality of the many different cultures, national backgrounds and ethnicities that comprise either group. Lots of white people just think of them as solid, unreachable Democratic voters, for some reason. There are plenty of people in either group who the Democrats can’t reach, because despite agreeing with the rest of a Democrat or Progressive platforms, they hold deeply conservative religious or cultural beliefs on abortion and sexuality. Like, I hear people saying “¡Maricón!” on the daily more often than I heard edgy kids dropping the f-word on the middle school playground back in the day, and nobody bats an eye because rampant homophobia is still a cultural given in a lot of places, unfortunately. If you actually interact with any people of color on a regular basis, it’s probably not as surprising to see how the right can pull in greater numbers of POC by playing to the right themes for those deeply held views and prejudices.
Thank you for providing this insight. My grandparents did not speak English, I can only imagine that they were similarly disinformed by the limited access to media from their native tongue.