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Right-wingers faked a "One Piece" revolution in Mexico

Mexico’s Failed Color Revolution

Over the weekend, international media and various social feeds lit up with news that “Gen Z” was marching to Mexico City’s Palacio Nacional to protest corruption in the country. The demonstration turned violent, as the mob tried to tear down a barricade in front of the building and attempted to force their way into the federal offices inside. About 100 police officers were reportedly injured and 20 people were arrested. And all of this happened as the crowd waved the Straw Hat pirate flag from One Piece.

We’ve been tracking the use of the One Piece flag in protest movements for the last year or so. It started popping up in 2023 in anti-Israel protests in Europe, but became a huge symbol in Indonesia earlier this year as “Gen Z protests” erupted across South Asia. The flag then popped up the Philippines, Nepal, Madagascar, Peru, and even at ICE protests here in the US.

The flag’s importance in Asian anti-corruption movements led the Indonesian government to label the flag a symbol of treason. And it was flown by young protesters in Nepal as they literally overthrew their government and elected a new one via Discord a few months ago. It has, for all intents and purposes, become the Guy Fawkes mask of Gen Z. Especially in the Global South, where One Piece is more popular than it is in the US. Which is why the flag made the perfect cover for the completely astroturfed demonstration in Mexico this weekend.

(Photo by Cristian Leyva/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Let’s start with what’s been reported about what happened in Mexico. NBC News reported “thousands” came out to demonstrate. According to aerial photos shared by Mexican reporter Omar García, the supposedly massive crowd could barely fill the Zócalo, the main square in front of the palace. He estimates there were about 12,000 people in the square at its peak. A decent size, but far from the massive crowds we’ve seen from similar populist Gen Z uprisings this year.

According to Íñigo Arredondo Vera, a Mexican reporter I’ve worked with in the past, two weeks ago, Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan, a city in the southwest of the country, was killed during a Día de Muertos celebration. Manzo was affectionately known as “El Del Sombrero,” or “the guy with the hat,” and his death shocked the country. The most charitable interpretation of why the One Piece straw hat flag was used in this weekend’s protests, aside from just its international popularity, is that it was a reference to Manzo. But that doesn’t quite gel with what we saw from the actual crowd.

The protesters were photographed wearing swastika T-shirts and spray-painted “PUTA JUDIA,” or “Jewish whore” on the doors of the Palacio Nacional. Mexico’s current president, socialist Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is Jewish. While we’re mentioning Sheinbaum, she’s quickly become one of the most popular Latin America leaders at the moment, according to polls from Americas Society and Council of the Americas, and her social welfare programs have been very successful.

So not only were protesters not really the liberal and left-leaning type we typically see waving the One Piece flag, they were also decidedly not super Gen Z looking, based on the amount of middle-aged people interviewed at the march. Also in the crowd was former Mexican President and right-wing businessman Vicente Fox Quesada. Who was, obviously, wearing a One Piece shirt. A user on X photoshopped Quesada into one of the Celestial Dragons, the aristocratic and authoritarian nobility from One Piece.

(x.com/Vientisms)

Most of the chatter in English about this weekend’s protest was accusations that the CIA or some other shadowy US agency was behind them. But according to research conducted by Mexican journalists, it’s far more likely this whole thing was concocted by right-wing Mexican business leaders. (Who may be working with the US, sure, but let’s stick with what we can prove before going full tin foil hat lol.)

According to Carlos Augusto Jiménez Zarate, a data engineer and researcher, the main hashtag used for organizing the protest, #MarchaNacional, had a million interactions on X “with a clear pattern.” Fifty percent of those interactions were from foreign accounts, with the remaining 50% being split between international right-wing activists and Mexican accounts associated with the “red de Salinas Pliego,” or the Salinas Pliego network. Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a libertarian businessman who controls a handful of Mexican telecommunications firms and has been linked to coordinated digital campaigns in the past.

InfodemiaMx, a misinformation research agency started by Mexico’s state broadcaster, has a fascinating ticking clock of how these protests spread across the web. On October 3rd, Azteca Noticias, which is owned by Salinas Pliego, published a story claiming that Mexican youth were joining the global Gen Z anti-corruption movement. The story was immediately picked up by a typically apolitical influencer — who we have since learned was actually on the payroll of Mexico’s biggest right-wing party. And Salinas Pliego then shared posts from that influencer, himself. The news of this “youth movement” was then the basis for a podcast hosted by the mayor of Cuauhtémoc, an “ultra-right” girlboss named Alessandra Rojo de la Vega. From there almost 200 TikTok accounts and around 400 Facebook communities immediately started promoting the event. InfodemiaMx found that over 50 of those TikTok accounts were created this month and nearly 30 of those Facebook pages were run by users based outside of Mexico. And, in case, you needed more convincing this whole thing was bullshit, right-wing MAGA accounts were talking about the protest in English days before it actually happened. Oh, and the protest was a big hit with Russian state TV, who have conveniently ignored every other One Piece protest this year.

We’ve known for years that online-first protest movements are malleable and easy to hijack, distract, or co-opt. These movements have only become more decentralized in the 2020s. And right-wing figures around the world have gotten better and better at aping the language and the aesthetics of actual populist uprisings, but there’s also missing center. Always something that doesn’t quite pass the sniff test. And the best way to stay one step ahead is to, well, apparently, watch anime.

A Good Post

(x.com/onionweigher)

There’s More New AI Content Online Now Than Human

Well, it officially happened, folks. Over 50% of the content on the web is now being written by or with the help of AI, according to a new study from SEO research firm Graphite. The only bright side here being that the rate of AI-generated articles popping up online appears to have stabilized last year. Not slowed down, mind you.

A similar phenomenon, however, is happening on music streaming platforms. Nearly a third of all new music being added to streaming services right now is completely AI-generated, according to a press release from streaming service Deezer. Worth pointing out that Deezer is reporting this because they have mandatory tags for AI-generated content on their library and want people to know.

Both of these horrifying tidbits come courtesy of the @AISafetyMemes X account, which is definitely worth a follow.

Oh, and in case you’re still wondering how bad the AI bubble is, Peter Thiel just offloaded all of his Nvidia shares. Investor Michael Burry, famous from the movie The Big Short, is warning that there’s an AI bubble, as well.

Speaking of AI…

Vine Is Back (Again)

There won’t be any AI-generated content allowed on Jack Dorsey’s new Vine reboot. Dorsey is calling it diVine (dumb) and it now contains an archive of old Vine content. You can check out a feed here of what people are posting.

This is not the first attempt at bringing back Vine. In 2018, Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann launched an app called Byte, which was renamed Clash, and then finally renamed again Huddles. I didn’t know about that last name change. In 2023, Huddles announced it was being discontinued and “joining a larger Creator family,” but never explained what that meant lol.

As confusing as Byte’s lifecycle was, it’s a good example of how far the world has moved on from Vine. Like Myspace and Tumblr, there are plenty of people online who claim they would love to bring Vine back, but, so far, no attempt has worked. TikTok — and its American knockoffs Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts — have trained a generation of internet users that short-form video must be algorithmically delivered to them and chock full of filters, viral challenges, and trending audio. And it’s especially hard to imagine young people flocking to an app called “diVine.”

A Bluesky User Was Subpoenaed

Bluesky user @theanarchistturtle shared a screenshot of an email they received from Bluesky’s moderation team informing them that they were getting subpoenaed by a grand jury over one of their posts and that Bluesky would be “partially” complying. They claim that information about their alt account is also being requested by law enforcement.

In the replies to @theanarchistturtle there is some good advice that anyone in this situation should remember: “Websites get this kind of court order all the time,” Bluesky user @rahaeli wrote. “(Facebook doesn't even require a court-issued subpoena, sigh.) The Feds are only allowed to ask a website for metadata about an account or a post unless a lot of other conditions have been met that likely haven't been met here.”

Spongebob Big Guy Pants OK

(x.com/bobbyonmain)

“Spongebob big guy pants ok” is the hot new meme right now. It comes from an Ice Spice song written for the new Spongebob Movie. And it’s, huh, literally just the words to that song. People are really excited about it!