Is the Fachas Journal defined as troll or as something broader?

Trolleamos El Diario Vasco, there is no doubt. However, what we do is not a trollar, a trollar that is classically understood. We did not come to discuss it, but to turn its message around and, in passing, to provoke a bit of laughter. Using irony and criticism, we wanted to put in place an agent who presented himself as neutral to the citizenry.

How does El Diario Faco distinguish from other parody profiles existing on Twitter?

It is an initiative that was born to give wood to one of the most powerful factual powers in a territory, and that is a great responsibility. We do a job, and that is work. For this, the organization is very important.

What was the source of inspiration?

We humbly say that we haven't met any other agent like ours before we created ourselves. At least no one who behaves like this with a media. In a year we have been guessing our way. We set ourselves small goals, but working to achieve them. We later realized that the question of La Retaguardia existed to criticize the newspaper La Vanguardia – and we are now cyber-friends – but it is very different. And after us, it's been a small phenomenon, a lot of things have emerged to make the message of the media of power clear. We are very pleased with this, especially with El Chorreo Español and Diario de Patta [parody the contents of El Correo and Diario de Navarra, respectively]. Since Franco's time, the media has been used as it wished, becoming neutral, while defending the interests of the 1% of the population. It is enough for the remaining 99% to be stuck in our strife.

What is the purpose of El Diario Fachas? Make DV disappear, promote criticity among your readers, “reform” that newspaper in some way?

Make the influence of the Diario Vasco in Gipuzkoa minimal.

The campaigns questioning the public image of El Diario Vasco have already existed: In the 1990s, for example, it was not difficult to see stickers that said “Diario Vasco: little truth, a lot of lies” in some environments. What new possibilities do social networks offer to launch such campaigns?

Social networks allow us to continue the initiative. Feed the message every day. Reading your newspaper every day and showing your positions, underlining the words you choose, identifying and making visible all the issues that come into our heads without saying so. And of course, to identify the news they don't bring out. Social media also allows us to reach a very broad audience.

Do you think you have already managed to convince other audiences beyond the people who could be against the Diario Vasco?

Yes, many people in the area have told us that thanks to our initiative it has stopped reading Diario Vasco, or that it is now realizing how the money is being put into its readers. That is very satisfactory. And so we have to keep peeling the onion for layers.

As a journalist, I have a doubt that one thing is to analyze what publishes any medium and extract contradictions, but why only with one medium (and so many)? Why go against the Diario Vasco and not question other media?

The Diario Vasco in Gipuzkoa is a symbol. Symbol of power, status quo, Franco, manipulation, capitalism, patriarchy, hypocrisy, historical manipulation, etc. And because we dream of a better world, symbols have to be identified and shot down.

In addition, the Basque Journal had a great influence on our society. The only truth I had was yours and it was really necessary for it to be over. Today it still has a lot of strength to mark the agenda and we will soon focus on it. We cannot be so conditioned by an extremely right-wing newspaper.

Is it not paradoxical that the credibility of a media should be called into question from an initiative such as El Diario Fachas? That is, they work from anonymity and fueling the appearance of conspiracy; in the newspaper you have said on more than one occasion that they have a “topo”, for example. Does this underground work against the initiative? People may say that Diario Vasco may not be credible, but you may not...

For a media, credibility is the most precious thing it can have. That's what made us mad. How could this newspaper have such an uncritical reading of so many lies and half-truths? How easily he manipulated the general thinking of this society! And he's still doing it, but it's getting harder and harder. So we decided to attack their credibility first.

We do not believe that our anonymity detracts from our credibility. Words no, actions give credibility to each other, and our community sees well the altruistic work that we do. We do everything in our free time, with our humble resources, but with a lot of love.

And do not forget that what the Basque Journal represents is the most powerful people in Gipuzkoa. We must maintain the security measures. We are calling into question the symbol of power on this earth and we are not so innocent.

“Behind that is the people of Bildu,” a friend told me not long ago. What would you answer?

There are a lot of people behind, each of them his father and his mother's. You would be surprised by the number of people who make private contributions, readings, posters and information. What ideas do we share with Bildu? Of course. But above all we are against what the Diario Vasco symbolizes.

To whom are the messages of El Diario Facha addressed: to those who buy daily, to those who read in the bar, to those who are not very fond, to those who do not have opposing positions? In other words, does the proposed work have a specific segment of the public in the newspaper?

The initial idea was to question the credibility of the journal, and to do so we turned to its readers directly. We have now settled a little, many people have stopped reading the Basque Journal and are following us. It's our community, and we want them a lot. It is these people who speak, who are ants, who explain to others what the Basque Journal does, and it is our duty to give arguments every day, reasons, to help turn that message that goes directly to thousands of kitchens using social networks.

We're talking a lot about your work on the net, but readers may not know. Would you tell any of the actions you've done?

One of our best trolleys has been: We sent opinion articles to the Diario Vasco, some giving firewood to Bildu and others to Bildu. We saw that only those who gave him wood were published, but we realized late, that is, we couldn't prove it. So we came up with writing an article saying that door-to-door waste collection was nothing more than a filth. We knew they were going to publish, and with the first letter of each sentence, we wrote DIARIOFACO. In addition, as a signatory of the article, we named ourselves a nun who stole children during Franco. We laughed a lot.

Thanks to the Internet, an initiative that seeks to stumble upon what is in power, in this case media power, can achieve greater diffusion, but does it also have limits? Have you realised that your form of communication has led to enmity among some citizens?

The network has its own limitations, but it's a free and free space. The first objective is to reach young people to provoke a generational cut among those who read the newspaper. With stickers we've stumbled a lot, we've pulled out thousands and they've spread all over Gipuzkoa.

In addition, we conducted a summer campaign – we asked people to make humour banners at the people’s festivities – with the intention of presenting us, because with the name we use, we say many things to people. In some towns we put posters on the street and renewed them every week, for example in Oñati – by the way, aupa Oñati! –.

Enmity? Well, to those who have seen their interests in jeopardy, our initiative has not made them much graceful. What is going to be done!

What role does humor play in your way of communicating? We have seen messages of different kinds: from those who have very explicit political content to those who have a lot of irony. “Trolles yes, fight too”? What is the criterion for using one or another type of message at any time?

Humor helps a lot to spread the message: imagine if we seriously denounce the manipulations of the Diario Vasco. We would not have a quarter of the influence we have. Jokes help present serious things as a game, and so we get to a wider audience.

The Gipuzkoan policy is not a subject that aroused great passions, although, of course, many decisions that condition the life of citizens are made in the institutions of this area. In this sense, is making counterapropaganda more difficult for El Diario Fachas? Would it be easier, for example, if it were more identifiable policy areas for all readers?

Our criticisms also serve to make pedagogy. For example, the issue of the Zubieta incinerator. We have had to suffer a terrible manipulation in Gipuzkoa of the wandering Porlanist lobby represented by the Diario Vasco. And they took us a tremendous goal, putting most of the citizens against any initiative that they thought they would recycle. That's terrible. Today we have a social function, and as they continue in the fight with the subject, we leverage their news to help open our eyes to a kind of people who might be against door to door, saying: “hey, why are you door-to-door versus door? Because Diario Vasco says it's dirty? Don’t you realize they want to build the incinerator?”

There is a motto to neutralize trolls, “do not feed”, that is, do not answer those who have responded to it. Has it been complied with in your case? I recently saw the newspaper's deputy director responding to a tweet from El Diario Facha: Does it mean accepting the interlocution, assuming your presence and feeling compelled to counter-argue?

That of not feeding the troll is OK if the trolla is isolated, if nobody hears it and has no effect. But it's never been our case. People were waiting for an initiative like ours, we saw it from the very beginning, and then we became thousands of fans. And then it's hard to decide what to do. Do we answer them? No? But well, yes, they come in with us and we are very happy about that ;-)

More information:

Report on the political troll: The anonymous stars of public opinion.

Interview with members of the Sabino Arana account: "It is clear that I do not believe too much in political honesty"