Cas Vito Quiles: This is how the far right uses universities to gain momentum.

Barcelona"They seek maximum notoriety with minimum argumentative effort." This is how political scientist and expert on the far right, Anna López, defines the acts. like the one that the agitator Vito Quiles tried to carry out this Thursday at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).The fact that profiles like Quiles or organizations like the Spanish nationalist entity close to Vox, Se ha Acabado – which supported the agitator – choose university centers to carry out these acts is not in vain. Whether they can carry them out or if there is a negative response to their presence and they have to cancel or modify them "represents a win-win"for them, says UPF political scientist Toni Rodon.

Vito Quiles intended to give Bellaterra the starting gun for a series of events at several universities in the State. The premise inevitably recalls the events of the 'influencer Charlie Kirk, close to Donald Trump, was assassinated while giving a talk at Utah Valley University. This is according to López, who considers these types of events to be "the direct export" of a model that involves bringing "highly polarizing figures" to universities to provoke protests, which serves as "proof" of the left's supposed "cancel culture," which they use to amplify their discourse. Following this pattern, Se Ha Acabado denounced in a statement the "censorship" and "attacks suffered" this Thursday at the UAB.

Even if a protest doesn't take place, far-right organizations and agitators also benefit from holding the event, since "they use their presence at the centers to say that they have more and more people on their side," explains Rodon. He also warns that while organizations such as Se Ha Acabado or Students for Change have more followers today than a decade ago, "their presence at universities is still quite small."

Anti-intellectualism at the heart of intellectualism

Although they are few in number, with the events they organize, "they try to introduce the idea that their actions bring a distinct intellectuality that goes against everything that, according to them, universities represent," says Rodon. In this sense, López explains that attacking academic centers "is a direct way" these groups have of "delegitimizing knowledge that they find uncomfortable." To do so, they present the activities of universities "as mere 'progressive propaganda' and not as academic rigor," says López, and they try to position themselves as defenders of concepts such as "common sense," the "real people," and stances against supposed "elites," considering universities precisely as part of these.

Although the events take place on university campuses, the organizations' goal "is not to gain support within the university," but rather to ensure that what happens "has repercussions outside the centers," notes Rodon. "They want to create a viral video clip," says López, to become "media victims." In this way, they try to gain followers through social media, "where they have a very large community," notes Rodon. Through these channels and the victim role they adopt, "they reaffirm their narrative of the 'brave' and 'persecuted' man or woman who dares to say what no one wants to hear," the political scientist portrays, emphasizing that "for them, the incident is the news," not the...

The universities' response

Faced with these events, universities are left in a difficult position: either they ban events to prevent certain human and fundamental rights from being called into question, or they allow them, relying precisely on the fundamental right to freedom of expression. In Catalonia, for example, the University of Barcelona (UB) vetoed a talk by Francoist historian Fernando Paz, whom Vox had to resign as the head of the list for Albacete due to the candidate's flirtation with neo-Nazi movements. The UB defended the veto because the speaker's values were "contrary to those of the center."

When it comes to banning an event, a dilemma arises: is it banned because of the person holding the event or because of the content of the event? When the content is clear, "it's easy to ban it," notes Rodon, who recalls some talks on so-called alternative medicine banned by university centers. However, "despite knowing the background of a person, it is more complicated to veto if the exact content of the act they intend to do is not known." Rodon points out that it is about striking a "balance" between "plurality and the disruption to university coexistence" that an act will entail, taking into account that "the far right has understood that in order to be a majority it must."