Argentina’s far-right vice-presidential candidate faces backlash from K-pop fans

Argentina’s far-right vice-presidential candidate Victoria Villarruel has long courted criticism for defending the torturers of the 1976-83 dictatorship and pledging to repeal the legalization of abortion.

Now, however, she has come under fire from an unexpected quarter: fans of the the K-pop supergroup BTS.

“We repudiate the statements of hatred and xenophobia towards the image of BTS uttered by candidate Victoria Villarruel,” tweeted the BTS in Argentina account.

BTS followers in Argentina have been enraged by a string of recently rediscovered 2020 tweets by Villarruel, including one in which she suggested the band’s name sounded like “a sexually transmitted disease”.

The seven-member South Korean band is a worldwide music phenomenon and one of the few groups since the Beatles to place four No 1 albums in the US in under two years.

Villarruel’s only reaction on Wednesday was a post lamenting the “avalanche of notifications for funny conversations typical of Twitter from a thousand years ago”.

The Argentinian politician Juan Grabois, who lost his centre-left alliance’s nomination to Sergio Massa in the August primaries, responded to the exchange with a warning:

“You mess with BTS, you mess with me,” Grabois posted. “You don’t f_ck with K-pop.”

Villarruel has played a prominent role in the presidential campaign of her running mate, the eccentric populist Javier Milei, who topped the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round, but was beaten into second place by the centrist finance minister Massa.

Massa, 51, and Milei, 53, will now face off in a second round on 19 November.

Villarruel has often used social media to stir up culture war rows over everything from reproductive rights to short men.

But she reserves particular venom for posts on human rights and Indigenous rights issues.

She has repeatedly criticised human rights organizations, suggesting that a Milei government would cut off their government funding, and has frequently attacked the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo campaign group, founded by relatives of victims of the dictatorship.

Villarruel has also criticised the use of LGBTQ+ and Indigenous community flags in classrooms, saying that such “indoctrination and effacing of our national identity” would end if she and Milei were elected.