This is not a text about Simon Levy. It is about Sergio Sarmiento, Mario di Constanzo, Laura Zapata, Enrique Krauze, Chumel Torres, Martín Moreno, Beatriz Pagés, Javier Lozano, Carlos Alazraki, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Pedro Ferriz, Azucena Uresti, Lilly Téllez, Carlos Loret, Elena Chávez, Federico Döring and many others who use people like Simón Levy to design fantastic stories that some believe because they fit what they want to believe.
The best way to explain it is with Massive Caller. Her predictions were the ridicule of millions of Mexicans, but Xóchitl Gálvez said that when she came out to declare herself the winner (oh, the most embarrassing moment) it was because the PRIAN leaders showed her the Massive Caller exit poll. After public ridicule, the owner of Massive Caller apologized for spreading lies, but months later the PAN hired him to help with its relaunch. What was the name of the play or, rather, what is the name of this theater where the actors, stagehands, set designers and a part of the audience precisely design the fantasy they have decided to believe?
As is easy to understand, a large majority of those who approach those who design these stagings do not have front row tickets. And then they don’t understand that the works are fantastic and designed by consensus. But not because they are fantastic or designer, they are innocent. Behind the fantasy “It is a danger for Mexico,” for example, hid a sophisticated conspiracy in which businessmen, intellectuals, media owners, academics, journalists, opinion leaders, Vicente Fox and the supposed plural arbitrators (such as Luis Carlos Ugalde) participated, who played a role in the 2006 electoral fraud to impose a President. It is not minor. They grew the fantasy to the point that millions believed it and then not only did they impose the spurious Felipe Calderón, but they distributed the Nation’s resources. An example? Yes, the 400 billion pesos in taxes that those at the top stopped paying for participating in the deception of those at the bottom.
Those who do not have front row tickets cannot immediately find out that behind each fantasy designed on a desk there is a specific, specific interest. The “López wants to be re-elected” lie was just one part of a sophisticated campaign that had the objective of revoking the mandate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (although later – don’t worry, I know a good part of the story – when they carefully reviewed their numbers, they realized that they couldn’t overthrow him at the polls).
There were many businessmen willing to pay for the campaign; There were henchmen to operate it (intellectuals, academics, journalists). They lacked the main thing: who would believe them. And the latter has been, for some years, the bucket of cold water for most projects. There are many ideas for new fantasies; ideas that come from many fronts. But since the “feat” of 2006 is difficult to repeat and has been almost completely socialized (the magician’s trick was discovered, I would say), now there is no one to pay.
The last great attempt to unite around a fantastic idea was led by Claudio X. González. Someone had warned me, some time ago, that businessmen and politicians saw no harm in him leading a new effort to contain the left. Initiatives such as Sí X México, Va X México and others enhanced the “X” of Claudio “X” and you can see it as a beautiful coincidence, if you want. I don’t think it is. A majority exorcised the brewing deception, but it was well constructed. Claudio’s profile went a long way, if López Obrador does not dismantle it. He was any Corina Machado: son of a dethroned businessman, financed by the de facto powers and by Washington, posing as a “citizen concerned about democracy.” The same.
It must be remembered that Corina, like Claudio, defines herself as liberal, in favor of the decriminalization of abortion and drugs and even flirts with equal marriage. Claudio calls himself “leftist.” They are parallel stories, but here the discredit was brought forward and in her case, the discredit never mattered to her sponsors, accustomed to allying themselves with the right-wing scum of the world. But notice how Claudio and Corina chant together about “narco-dictatorships.” They are conjoined. Our character could have been the Nobel Peace Prize: Wouldn’t he have excited Ernesto Zedillo or Enrique Peña, for whom he worked, or Krauze, Aguilar Camín, Carlos Salinas, Calderón or the newspaper Reform? Damn, that’s why they hate López Obrador, because he derailed him and the others. Now our Claudio is not a prize for anything. He is just “the toxic junior.”
After failing with the story of AMLO’s re-election, they then focused on the dictatorship. And since the dictatorship did not arrive, greater drama had to be added, a catchy prefix: narco. Narcodictatorship. In 2023-2024 they could not translate that speech into votes although they invested millions in networks; However, at the end of 2024 something changed: Donald Trump arrived and they took up the idea again. The “narco-dictatorship” thing is a very Washington speech. That’s what they’re up to. That is where Simón Levy, with alleged ties to the State Department, became important to them. Skilled, he built stories and “blacklists.” Journalists, intellectuals, academics and the media found their new Massive Caller: a lie that united them, another lie that they could sell.
This Sunday, November 2, the terrible, condemnable and very regrettable murder of Carlos Manzo, Mayor of Uruapan, allowed the narrative designers to promote the issue of drug dictatorship, which, furthermore, is incongruous in itself and is better understood on a day like this. No one can explain why, if President Claudia Sheinbaum is the head of a dictatorship at the service of drug traffickers, she cannot control those who commit high-impact murders, like that of Manzo, that affect the Government so much. No one can explain how those who supposedly manipulate drug traffickers (because they are a narco-dictatorship) shoot themselves in the foot, killing people who are so public.
Anyone could say what a crappy narco-dictatorship, which does not control drug traffickers and is not a dictatorship, in the strict sense, because it holds elections and, in fact, wants more public consultations than those allowed by the governments of the immediate past. Anyone can say that something does not add up to the argument of the narco-dictatorship because the person who started the war on drugs was a spurious President, that is, he came to power through electoral fraud; and his drug war operator, Genaro García Luna, is sentenced to life in prison in the United States because he was, simply, a drug trafficker.
Anyone can simply connect the dots and say: stealing elections, launching a war and putting a drug trafficker in the police is for dictators; or rather: it belongs to narco-dictators. And anyone can also wonder if whoever accuses us of a narco-dictatorship does not hide the fact that, in reality, we come from a true narco-dictatorship and that narco-dictatorship is the one they want to return to. Because that’s what they want to return to. They say it openly: they want to go back to what they had in the past and what there was, anyone can decide, was a kind of narco-dictatorship.
So, that anyone has hit the nail on the head. Now you can understand that there are those who push the narrative that the Massive Caller polls and the drug dictatorship are real, although there are also those who believe it because they want to believe it. There are many Simón Levys who are used or allow themselves to be used to support fantastic stories, in a theater where actors, stagehands, set designers and a part of the audience participate. And with that infrastructure in place, with curtains and stagecraft, anything can be said or anything can be sold as truth because truth and reality no longer matter.
And Di Constanzo can say for years that the Government is bankrupt without proving it; o Azucena can say that AMLO took away the program she hosted in Millennium although everyone knows that an agreement was reached; o Elena Chávez can say that there is a “king of cash“although he never provides a single piece of evidence, and publish a second book with more accusations and less evidence. And one can talk about “black lists” and narco-dictatorships, about dangers for Mexico and about fanciful polls where the PRIAN wins, although fewer and fewer people believe them.
Because fewer and fewer people believe them and they are spiraling towards the abyss. And ask the ex-PR members if not, or ask the PRI members if not, or ask the PAN members if not, or the media, or the intellectuals if not. Or, even better: ask Simón or Claudio. They have very, very fresh references.