‘Gordo Dan’: Milei's troll commander-in-chief

After the approval of the sweeping 'Ley de Bases' mega-reform bill, President Javier Milei’s government went into a stage of purification: any official who was not convinced by the libertarian project was to leave.

For what is to come, Argentina's President needs loyal officials, those willing to carry out the reforms he considers important, and for that he set in motion a briefing process which goes from his own call to toe the party line to harassment on social networks by militant trolls. The main leader of that harassing influencer group is Daniel Parisini, otherwise known on the X social network as @GordoDan_ (Fat Dan). 

The most well-known cases used by Parisini to lecture the Cabinet were the dismissals of former Agriculture secretary Fernando Vilella and former Sports undersecretary Julio Garro. The former dipped when, in March this year, social network users found that Vilella had “liked" one of Martín Lousteau’s posts on X, the President’s arch opponent. “Starting tomorrow you’re no longer part of this government”, he said. And the day his dismissal was finalised, he warned him: “Empty your desk now, I’m on my way."

The latter, Garro, was dismissed for saying that the captain of the National Football Team, Lionel Messi, had to apologise for xenophobic chants against France after winning the Copa América. “Well, you already know how this works, right?”, posted Parisini on X. That very day, Garro was dismissed. It is clear that “el Gordo Dan” had the mission to terrorise them and communicate to both officials that their days in the government were numbered.

Yet Parisini was not satisfied with his initial comment to Garro, but sent a message for the rest of the Cabinet: “A reminder to third- and fourth-line officials: if you don’t understand the ideology that put you were you’re sitting which, by the bye, is the President’s ideology (your boss), then be grateful for your luck, enjoy your position while it lasts and shut your trap”.

Parisini was born in the capital of Santiago del Estero, where his mother, a lawyer, lives, and he studied medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, where his father, a BBVA employee, lives. He was not always a libertarian, or right-wing. In the middle of his quest for an ideology during his teens, the time came for him to vote for the first time at 19 years old and Kirchnerism did not appeal to him. It was 2011 and the choices were Cristina Kirchner, Hermes Binner, Ricardo Alfonsín, Eduardo Duhalde, Alberto Rodríguez Saá, Jorge Altamira and Elisa “Lilita” Carrió. Who did he vote for? Binner. 

“El Gordo Dan” decided to take his verbal excesses and political incorrectness to the world of streaming channels and in July this year he launched the libertarian channel Carajo (Damn it) with the funding of businessman Augusto Marini, owner of the Cale group, an investment holding with railway and farming operations, among other sectors, and which also owns streaming channel Blender, with a more progressive line.

Daniel Parisini is looking for Carajo to become a regional and even global Spanish-speaking reference for right-wing parties and activists. This local phenomenon does not have similar cases in any Latin American country. There are only lonely streamers making their own content, but they are not grouped like they are in Argentina. The phenomenon happens all over this country with such streamers as Luzu, Olga, Eva TV and Blender itself.

“Gordo Dan’s” interest in expanding was reflected in his stream on Monday July 22 when his fellow panellist Pablo Pazos, a.k.a. “el Gordo Pablo” (Fat Pablo), said he did not like summer because it is too hot and he gave the following example: “When you get on the bus, there’s a smell of Peruvian wafting through the air”. Parisini then stopped him and said: “Hold on, I’ve got to monetise this crap we make every day”. There were two truths about that comment: the first one about the quest for monetisation and the second one about the frequency of the programme. In 2023, his show called “La Misa (The Mass)” was done once a week, and now, doing it every day requires a much bigger pre-production work.

However, that lack of experience does not prevent advertisers from coming closer. They already received calls from potential sponsors interested in advertising on Carajo with the secret intention of having a degree of closeness to the government. To Augusto Marini, Parisini’s partner, it is also an edge because his companies include Motora, a railway company whose clients include the State.

In his streaming programme, “el Gordo Dan” is not as wild as in his social networks. His show, “La Misa”, is a chat among right-wing friends where political incorrectness abounds and jokes for a milennial and centennial audience come up at every turn. It is a kind of “678” but from the other end of the ideological spectrum.

The fixed panellists of the show are Pablo Pazos (37), known as “el Gordo Pablo” and on X as @MenemAbrazo, and Francisco Pirovano (25), a.k.a. “Piro” whose handle on X is @PiroAbrazo. Then there are changing figures such as “El Ruso” or Mariano Pérez, the owner of streaming channel Break Point, who, for example, did not join Carajo because he makes more money with his own streaming. The “Gordo Dan’s” fellows have less audience. A guest of “La Misa” has also been Juan Pablo Carreira, known as “Juan Doe”, whose X handle is @jdoedoe101101. Carreira is also the founder of portal La Derecha Diario and has been appointed Government Digital Communicator.

In this universe, “el Gordo Dan” is the top leader of Milei’s government policies and his main defender on social networks. In an interview with Alejandro Fantino he said: “If the main government officials do not toe the line with the President’s historical narrative, I think it’s not working. Much of the secret of Kirchnerites, who ruled for nearly two decades, was that they knew how to align and put together structures all over”. Parisini’s task, ahead of his troop of trolls, is precisely to align officials. Or to warn them they are to be dismissed.