The international ultra
BarcelonaOne of the interesting effects of the arrival of supposedly strong powers – of inspiration male
Donald Trump's return to the presidency of the United States is accelerating in Europe a process of empowerment of his henchmen and a silent adaptation of many others. An adaptation or silence that is essential for changing the framework where the limits of public conversation are set and for some positions to be given respectability. If Trump talks about turning Gaza into a Port Aventura, the serious conversation about the two-state solution and whether it ends affirmative action policies is blown up, and with trumpet and naturalness there is talk of abandoning the objectives of promoting diversity in countries that are light years away from the diversity achieved in the United States with affirmative action policies.
The empowerment of the far right in Europe is particularly striking with this weekend's coven in Madrid. Obviously, far-right parties in Europe already existed before Trump, but today they claim their voice and strength by hiding behind a rooster that crows from the White House.
Trump's man in Spain is Santiago Abascal, who as the new president of Patriots for Europe, the third parliamentary group in the European Parliament, has received his allies: the French Marine Le Pen, the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, the Dutch Geert Wilders (PVV) and Matteo Salvini, vice president of the Italian government and leader of the League. Salvini's proximity confirms Vox's break with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni (Brothers of Italy), who has become the ultra-respectable for a good part of the traditional right in the EU. Madrid, which has become the European capital of the far right, also brings together extremists from Portugal, Estonia, Greece, the Czech Republic, Austria and Poland.
Populists and xenophobes
They all have in common populist and xenophobic discourses, against Agenda 2030, the LGBT community, immigrants and the European project. Their good news is that the golden age of Europe, in Trumpian terms, is about to arrive and that neither the traditional right nor social democracy respond to social problems. And they ridicule the left: "Woke is broke".
Paraphrasing Make America Great Again (MAGA), the ultras of Europe speak through the mouth of Elon Musk when he urges Make Europe Great Again (MEGA), as if there had never been an ideal Europe, which they obviously do not specify in which period of the 20th century they would place it. They are ready to make the cultural confrontation at the expense of the idea of freedom. A freedom that they deny to those who do not think like them. The ultra international does not come out of nowhere. Today in Europe we have 19 million ultra votes expressed in the last elections to the EU. Affirmative votes to which are added millions of adaptive votes, Europeans who feed the beast with pusillanimous or indifferent attitudes. The ultra objective today is to end the two-party system and make the overtaking the traditional right. In Italy they have already achieved it and in France they are not far behind. They have fed on frustration, economic uncertainty and xenophobia.
The ultras have detected the fear and have successfully taken over the issue of immigration and security. By stirring up fear of difference and equating immigration with insecurity. And they have achieved one thing: detecting the unrest and giving it an easy solution. The threat is the different. The one who changes the white physiognomy of our cities. And who can fight it if they make people believe that traditional formulas, in theory, have not worked well? The traditional parties are threatened by the appropriation of the discourse of anger, grievance and hatred of what is different. There are two attitudes that threaten democracy: that the traditional parties buy into the ultra mental framework and that they abandon the debate on fundamental issues out of fear.
We also have the need for debate in Catalonia, and we must make our positions clear. Catalonia is and will be a country of immigrants. We must set the conditions for integration, which will come from the capacity to welcome and economic prosperity. Immigration is not debatable. It is here and it is part of our society. It is a cultural, social and economic wealth. It would be a disgrace if, under pressure from the Catalan Alliance, an essentialist or ethnicist vision of the country were to filter through.
Catalonia is made up of old, old, new and brand new Catalans.