Contrafactum as Phantasmic Warfare: Digital Reappropriation in Spanish Right-Wing Influencer Culture

In digital politics, ideological battles increasingly unfold through cultural reappropriation. This study examines contrafactum—rewriting lyrics to existing melodies—as a phantasmic weapon in Spanish right-wing digital spaces. Expanding on Butler’s (2025) concept of the phantasm, I argue that phantasmic warfare mobilizes cultural anxieties, embedding reactionary narratives within pop culture. While memetic warfare (Giesea, 2015) has shaped right-wing digital hegemony, phantasmic warfare emphasizes affective investments in national identity, gender, and social change—often through irony, humor, and the uncanny. Figures like Meconios and Infovlogger use musical retextualization to spread reactionary messages in viral formats. Historically linked to religious and protest music, contrafactum now serves as ideological shorthand in algorithm-driven platforms, repurposing songs to reinforce nationalist and anti-progressive rhetoric. Retextualized Aladdin songs, for instance, reframe migration through an orientalist lens, turning Disney’s sanitized Orientalism into a narrative of threat. This strategy of plausible deniability allows reactionary actors to dismiss critique as satire. Through discourse analysis, this study explores how digital remix culture weaponizes pop culture—whether mainstream hits or Game of Thrones—to reinforce nationalist and antigender rhetoric. Digital contrafactum, cloaked in humor and familiarity, functions as a rhetorical Trojan horse, shaping the ideological playlist of the future.