How do you know when someone is lying to you? It’s not enough for someone to be wrong: they have to know that they are wrong. Without direct access to their mental state, it can only be proven using context. When the proverbial toddler denies eating cookies when caught with their hand in a cookie jar and covered in crumbs the context is pretty straightforward. But when it comes to political analysts’ intentions, the context isn’t always as readily available.
Recently a friend of mine had publicly left a ‘like’ on a political video essay posted on Instagram. It was supposedly an exploration of ‘What happens when a country treats the guilty better than the innocent.’ After recognising some misinformation, I started to find its narrative of crime in Europe suspicious. But when I finished the video, I still wasn’t sure about the author’s intentions, or even the message. If I wanted to give my friend an informed heads-up, I’d have to do some digging.
Meet Lina Seiche
The video was posted by Lina Seiche, whose earlier career revolved around cryptocurrency. After moving to Japan from her home country of Germany, she started out as the ‘English-speaking face’ of a blockchain startup. After her online comics became popular, in 2021 Seiche began a company devoted to her Bitcoin-themed character the Little HODLer, named after the crypto investing slogan ‘Hold On for Dear Life.’
In 2022 Seiche met another Bitcoin enthusiast: Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, when she gave him one of her first Little HODLer plushies. Bukele is such a big advocate of Bitcoin that he made it legal tender in 2021. The two met again in 2023, when Seiche gave Bukele another plushie – this time styled after ‘El Presidente’ himself – and in June of 2024 at his inauguration. By July, Seiche had started working for Bukele, both in the private sphere as the Head of Marketing for his coffee company, and in the public sphere developing schoolbooks and renovating classrooms for his administration – which has become the primary focus of her Little HODLer company.
Kings are so back
While Seiche had previously posted a handful of clips where she spoke favourably of Bukele on podcast appearances, her social media presence took a significant turn on 11 November 2025, when she posted a reel titled “The New Age of Kings” – an abridged version of the similarly titled 18-minute YouTube version. Since then, Seiche’s Instagram page has consisted almost entirely of this new content – initially originating in longform videos, though these have since died out.
Seiche’s core message is that as democracy “succumbs to its inherent flaws,” we should install a benevolent ‘modern king’ – elected autocrats who rule as “the ultimate decision-maker.” Her examples include US President Donald Trump, Argentinian President Javier Milei, and (of course) Nayib Bukele, who “best exemplifies” the shift to “monarchy in the modern day.” Seiche paints democratic institutions as stagnating, broken, and fated to plunge nations into chaos. The modern king overcomes these institutions, ruling his nation unchecked to bring order and peace – one that is not destined to decay like democracy.
Seiche explicitly supports Bukele’s ‘kingly’ governance and defends him against critics. “NGOs love to hate CECOT, a prison built to contain the worst kind of evil,” and without which El Salvador would “turn back into an open-air prison,” Seiche wrote in a post of her visit. The reader may be familiar with the mega-prison – constructed to accommodate Bukele’s sweeping gang-crackdown arrests during an ongoing suspension of due process – because of its human rights violations. ‘King’ Trump has notably deported hundreds of migrants to the facility under similar circumstances. Seiche refers to CECOT as the symbol of a paradigm shift (which NGOs despise): a shift that includes Bukele’s use of soldiers to strongarm lawmakers in the National Assembly and open defiance of Supreme Court rulings, per Al Jazeera.
Deceptive techniques
The message is communicated through a number of deceptive techniques. False information and misrepresentations pepper her content. The video that sent me down this path uses a graph from ‘G NEWJ,’ a Facebook page that posts heavy hitters like “Top 20 Countries with the Most Beautiful Women in the World,” and “Countries with the Most Jews.” The graph claims that in 2023 over 12,183 people were arrested in the UK for “online comments,” a number that actually describes certain crimes related to “any form of communication.”
Seiche uses the graph as evidence that the UK persecutes its citizens for talking about crime – a claim that the graph would not support even if it were accurate. The video also misrepresents one German legal case as ‘a woman going to jail longer than a convicted rapist for insulting him,’ leaving out the crucial facts (present in the article she cites) that the man was underage at the time of his sentencing, and that the woman privately sent him threatening messages. These two pieces of misinformation and misrepresentation are also contextualised on the Know Rogan Experience, which is how I recognised them: the first on episode #59, and both on episode #45 in an interview with Elon Musk – and we will return to that interview later.
Many posts don’t actually mention Bukele, El Salvador, or the concept of ‘kings.’ Because of this they have a broader appeal and reach a much wider audience, serving as engagement bait. Seiche also uses them to support her thesis without explicitly referring to it, and the video I stumbled on is one such Trojan Horse. It portrays European nations as decaying into Anarcho-Tyranny at the hands of the broken democratic institutions, supporting her premise that democracies are falling into chaos. Later, Seiche says that she’s already spoken about the difficulty of finding “capable leaders” who can lead the charge of radically reforming those institutions. The reference originally slipped my radar, but after becoming familiar with her portfolio it became clear that Seiche was referring to her kings: the ‘strong men who will create good times’ through radical measures (illustrated by footage of CECOT), accomplished after consolidating power.
A more sinister smuggling technique is bamboozling viewers with statements that directly contradict her message. In one video, Seiche says that everyone agrees that people losing faith in democratic institutions is a problem, implying that she supports them. Seiche also likes to portray her videos as merely explorations of political phenomena. When asked in a podcast interview with Matt Gaetz to make her argument for why “we need more kings and fewer betas,” Seiche says:
I think it’s less about us needing it but it’s more […] I think he’s the product of the chaos that has become of, like, many systems in the broader West today.
In another video (which seeks to remove stigma from the term ‘authoritarian’ by characterising it as constantly misused) she claims that she does not endorse Trump or Milei – she’s just trying to understand why they’re ‘wrongfully’ called authoritarians. This self-characterisation as a political analyst concerned with the state of democracy falls apart in light of her open endorsement of Bukele, and her use of all three presidents as examples of her benevolent saviour-like kings, who are only held back by the separation of powers. Her bamboozlement prevents viewers from recognising and rejecting her message, allowing Seiche to keep taking shots at democracy and defending autocrats, and giving more time for the viewer to absorb her misinformation-based premises. By the time they watch enough videos to see the conclusion, they might not find it so unpalatable.
A global threat
Seiche’s content has implications outside of El Salvador. This August, Colombia inaugurated President Abelardo de la Espriella, who styled himself after Bukele during his campaign, becoming the latest in a rise of far-right presidents in the Americas. His policies include a “tough on crime” approach to gangs, the mega-prisons popularised by Bukele, and limiting due process – moves that are all supported by Seiche.
Her rhetoric includes alleging rising crime levels in Europe, implying that immigrants expect handouts, warning of government censorship, secret government and media agendas, and decrying ‘suicidal empathy’ (the idea that showing too much empathy to the wrong groups – often immigrants – is destroying society), plays into racist narratives and conspiracy theories.
The Great Replacement Theory claims that the elites (typically the Jews) are replacing white populations with immigrants from the global south to further their political ends. It is a popular theme on the Joe Rogan Experience, and features in Rogan’s previously mentioned conversation with Musk, where it is discussed alongside government censorship, resources being ‘wasted’ on immigrants, crime in Europe ‘caused by immigrants,’ and the suicidal empathy letting them destroy civilisation – all of which are familiar themes in Seiche’s work. Other proponents who have appeared on the biggest podcast in the world include the sitting US Vice President J.D. Vance, and President Trump himself – allies of President Bukele.
The Great Replacement Theory also been embraced in the UK by far-right figures like Tommy Robinson, who is discussed alongside it in the context of misinformation-fuelled anti-immigration riots in the summer of 2024 on episode #386 of Skeptics with a K, where I first heard of it. And it’s no stranger in my home country of Canada; while researching this topic, CBC news published an article about the Dominion Society of Canada, which promotes the Great Replacement Theory, and their (at time of writing) upcoming conference – which is hoping to welcome Austrian white nationalist Martin Sellner.
As the institutions and values of liberal democracy are threatened by authoritarian movements around the globe, Lina Seiche’s work is a reminder of the importance of contextualising political content to understand their purpose and implications.
