TV airs conspiracy claiming Putin directs EU tractor protests

Pilingui, a tractor and an iPad: the theory now airing on television

Does anyone really claim in a studio that Vladimir Pilingui directs European farmers' tractor blockades from the Kremlin using an iPad? Yes. And not as a remote hypothesis, but as part of a narrative broadcast with complete seriousness. The scene is already circulating as a meme: the Russian president, controller in hand, coordinating a supposed "yellow tractor operation" while half of Europe takes to the roads over diesel prices, the CAP, and margins. The problem isn't the absurdity. It's that this absurdity has slipped into the same format that served for years to sell rigor.

The mechanism is always the same: an external enemy that explains everything. First it was the bicho, then climate change, then the war, and now the tractor. Some summarize the sequence with sarcasm: from Franco-modin to Pilingui-modin. The underlying suspicion isn't that Pilingui has money to finance protests across half the EU while sustaining a three-year-old war, but that the narrative needs a single culprit to avoid discussing what actually depends on Brussels and Madrid.

What does television say about Pilingui and the tractor protests?

The thesis that triggered laughter on social media argues that the Kremlin directs European agricultural mobilizations. The detail of the iPad and drones in the presidential office turns the accusation into farce. Television conspiracy theorists, summarized the tweet that started the conversation, with that tone between mockery and resignation of someone who has seen it all.

From there, the diagnosis repeats: it’s not an error, it’s a function. Lies are repeated until they stick, and viewers end up accepting the frame without realizing it. The most cited comparison is that of trained parrots. Another current calls it directly unifying enemies: if hate has a clear recipient, you don’t have to explain why the countryside sinks while another link in the chain keeps the margins.

The precedent no one wants to repeat

The most repeated argument explaining why this doesn’t fly anymore has a date: pandemic management. For months, a narrative was accepted that later collapsed under its own weight, with rules changing depending on the geography of the bar or terrace. That left a concrete legacy: a growing part of the population stopped getting information from television. Not out of ideological conviction, but simple mental hygiene. Those who drop out of that circuit, they say, don’t come back.

The result is an audience that no longer bothers to discuss content, only to point out patterns. When the same presenter who demanded rigor now swallows the Russian tractor theory, the reaction isn’t indignation. It’s fatigue.

The data debunking the Kremlin theory

The strongest objection circulating isn’t sarracena, it’s arithmetic. Russia has been at war for three years and under Western sanctions. Simultaneously sustaining a military front and an agrarian agitation network across half of Europe would require financial capacity that the official narrative itself denies when speaking of a ruined Russian economy. The two pieces don’t fit: either Russia is bankrupt or it finances tractor protests in Spain, France, and Germany. Pick one.

There is a more uncomfortable reading than the conspiracy one. According to a circulating analysis, the EU banned European farmers from exporting to Russia for a decade, a receptive market of considerable size. At the same time, quotas are peine for imports from third countries. The result is a sector suffocated by taxes and regulations, closed off from a commercial outlet, and facing competition at home. If anyone is pushing the countryside into Moscow’s arms, this line argues, it isn’t a spy: it’s European trade policy itself.

From Franco to Puigdemont: the enemy of the day

The list of historical culprits could fill a bingo card. Franco, Hitler, Bill Gates, washing machine chips, the Three Wise Men, and, of course, Puigdemont. The recurring joke is that the former Catalan president doesn’t live in Brussels nor is he an MEP: he actually resides in Moscow and is a member of the Duma. Everything that doesn’t add up is resolved with the same template.

McCarthyism has changed signs. What once served to point out communists now serves to point out Russians, and those applying it consider themselves pogre. It’s the most repeated conclusion: we’ve returned to the fifties, just with the enemy map inverted. Meanwhile, the farmer risking their livelihood still doesn’t appear in the narrative except as a background character.

What happens to the audience that no longer watches television?

The side effect of all this isn’t that people believe the theory. It’s that they stop watching. Fewer and fewer viewers get information from television, and those who leave don’t return to check if the next headline was true. Television has ceased to be the arbiter of truth to become just another actor in the spectacle, one whose script is assumed before they even open their mouth.

The final irony is that the Russian tractor theory, designed to mobilize, achieved the opposite: it gave half of Spain another reason to turn off the set. The day there is something serious to report, the messenger will no longer be in the room.