'Papuchi' in Tehran
The so-called culture wars are a propaganda tool originally used by the right to impose revisionist, or denialist, versions of major historical events, primarily from the 20th century: the Holocaust, for example, or the Spanish Civil War. It quickly became automatic, and every more or less shocking news story generates its own culture war or guerrilla warfare. There are so many that they often operate through juxtaposition or disorderly accumulation. This week's menu of culture wars features Iran and Julio Iglesias. The fact that simply putting them together provokes a kind of stupefaction, or a kind of stasis, is part of the very mechanism of culture wars, which, to function, need above all to elicit visceral reactions.
The accusations against Julio Iglesias for sexual slavery present us with appalling facts that are, at the same time, hardly surprising coming from him. Generally, children shouldn't be burdened with the misdeeds of their parents, but it's impossible not to recall the daddy Iglesias Puga, idol of Forocoches, a sinister character who boasted that his job (he was a gynecologist) had given him direct access to thousands of women. His son, the singer everyone's talking about now, also used to quantify the number of women he'd slept with in the thousands. The question isn't so much where these kinds of ghosts and predators come from, but the crowds that applaud them and laugh at their jokes. And, if they are ever held accountable for their disgrace, why do some leaders defend them by appealing to culture or national dignity? This isn't just happening in Spain: recently, Macron was staunchly defending the filthy Depardieu.
The culture war over Iran is based on an even more twisted premise: since Iran is an enemy of Israel, the right and the far right overinterpret the fact that the left wants to overlook the atrocities of the ayatollahs' theocratic regime, especially regarding women. "Where are the feminists? Where are the woke"?", the fascist bellows from his tweets, podcasts, articles, and talk shows. "They dare to do it with Trump, but not with Khamenei." Poor Trump, alone and defenseless against the Wokist hordes.
Obfuscation, bad faith, and spiraling delusion are the runaway waters in which the remnants of freedom of expression flow, degraded into the continuous and unpunished dissemination of lies and mental detritus. Some are capable of condensing all of this into the migrated space of a tweet. Perhaps it will also be an art form, like the one that made Julio Iglesias the Spaniard who captivated the world.