On a Sunday morning, a young man with his face covered stabbed an 11-year-old boy multiple times while the child was playing soccer in Mocejón (Toledo). The 20-year-old young man, who was staying in the town with relatives, confessed to the crime to the Guardia Civil on Monday when he was arrested. The investigation into the incident has been kept under wraps, with only minimal information being released. Speculations about the appearance of the killer, such as being short, blonde, and fair-skinned, began circulating on social media, although many of these were not based on information from the investigation but were merely conjectures.
Amidst the unverified information, Alvise Pérez, the leader of Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF), shared the news of the crime on his Telegram channel, linking it with a separate incident in Madrid and adding a racist element to it. However, the Madrid case did not involve unaccompanied foreign minors, but rather youths were involved in a fight between youth gangs. Alvise’s racist remarks did not stop there, as he also circulated a video on Telegram showing a group of black individuals with backpacks with a misleading caption. While the origin and timing of the video are uncertain, it was shared with Alvise’s nearly 700,000 subscribers, fueling fear and xenophobia.
Alvise also shared a quote attributed to the residents of Mocejón, claiming that the arrival of 50 Africans in the town had led to an increase in crimes like rape and robbery, as well as the murder of the 11-year-old boy. He also highlighted the presence of a mosque in Mocejón, accompanied by a graph showing the nationalities of migrants living in the town. However, he failed to provide the source of the data and misrepresented the actual percentage of foreign-born residents in Mocejón, which is only 8.5% according to official records.
The spokesperson for the family of the murdered boy, Asell Sánchez, who is a cousin of the child’s mother and a former journalist, emphasized that the family did not want to blame anyone for the crime and dismissed the insinuations made by Alvise regarding the group of migrants staying at the hotel. Despite his efforts to curb the xenophobic narrative, Sánchez faced backlash on social media for his past visits to Africa and his work with African children. He was even accused of being involved in the murder, with some attributing sinister motives to his actions.
The Government Delegate in Castilla-La Mancha, Milagros Tolón, condemned the spread of hatred by individuals who exploited the tragic death of an 11-year-old to push their xenophobic agenda online. The rise of extremist content on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has been attributed to the algorithms that favor sensationalist and misleading posts. Influential users like Elon Musk, who now owns X, have further intensified the dissemination of such content, leading to a proliferation of hate speech and misinformation on the platform.
