Vox: about pests, rats and cockroaches
In recent days, following the violent incidents in Torre Pacheco (Murcia), Vox leader Santiago Abascal has once again deployed his harshest rhetoric, calling irregular immigration a plague. In a press conference on July 14, he described the situation as a "genuine plague" nationwide. Other members of his party have demanded mass deportations and refuse to condemn calls by extremist groups to "hunt" migrants. The choice of word is not innocent: plagues are destructive, invasive, impossible to control; they provoke disgust and fear, and must be exterminated. For now, admittedly, Vox doesn't go that far: its platform doesn't literally propose "hunting" or extermination, but rather the immediate and widespread expulsion, even of the children of migrants already born in Spain. But then the words are: when it becomes normal to call a human group a plague, the next step—"hunting" or "extermination"—begins to be considered socially justifiable.
The history of humanity teaches us that genocides don't happen overnight. And often, the comparison with animals. But not with just any animal: they're not compared to horses or lions, but to rats and cockroaches, to those beings we instinctively associate with fear, filth, and disgust. It's as disturbing as it is evident from the evidence in Germany. In Rwanda, during the 100 days of the genocide in 1994, the radio called the Tutsis inyenzi –cockroaches– and urged the Hutus to "step on them." Both crimes against humanity were possible because society had previously accustomed itself to thinking of its victims not as human beings with rights and dignity, but as repulsive pests.
Abascal is neither Hitler nor Colonel Bagosora, but the words he uses resonate with the same frequency of hatred and degradation. Calling a group of people—who, moreover, in many cases have Spanish nationality—a "plague" represents a qualitative and dangerous leap in the process of denying their dignity. This denial is exactly what modern laws and democracies promised to eradicate after the horrors of the 20th century.
That's why political condemnation isn't enough. This type of speech should also have legal consequences.
In this regard, the judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the case The Prosecutor vs. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngeze (ICTR-99-52-T, 2003) clearly established that the use of expressions such as "cockroaches" to refer to the Tutsis constituted direct and public incitement to genocide. In its landmark judgment, it emphasized that these words were not mere rhetorical metaphors, but acts with an undeniable impact because they contributed to psychological and social preparation for extermination. Therefore, language that dehumanizes and stigmatizes in a context of tension and risk, when applied to minority groups susceptible to racist discrimination, is not protected by freedom of expression and may be punishable when it contributes to inciting violence.
Democracies are built on the premise that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights. When a political leader calls other human beings a pest, he violates this premise, erodes the framework for coexistence, and moves dangerously toward a scenario in which violence becomes conceivable, justifiable, and ultimately inevitable.
A decent society cannot allow this drift, either politically or legally. Migrants are not pests, cockroaches, or rats: they are people. They cannot be judged by their skin color or their origins. Only by their actions, and these can only be evaluated by the courts. And anyone who aspires to govern that country should remember this in every speech. Because with this language, Vox clearly aligns itself with some of the most destructive rhetoric of the 20th century. Its leaders and voters should be fully aware of what they are defending and cannot plead ignorance if the consequences of these words, sooner or later, end up materializing—and Torre Pacheco seems a prime example of this. Because words are not innocuous; they can be downright criminal and, on other occasions, as we already know, the prelude to the worst crimes imaginable.
