The neo-Nazi past of the new leader of the Vox union

BarcelonaAn old acquaintance of the far right will become the head of Vox's union, Solidaridad, starting this Saturday. Jordi de la Fuente (Barcelona, ​​​​1986), a politician with a past in the neo-Nazi party Republican Social Movement (MSR), dissolved in 2018, with which he was the head of the list in the 2010 Parliamentary elections, and who also ended up in Platform for Catalonia (PxC) and was secretary of organization in 2016, when Josep was the secretary of organization in 2016. A regular at protests in front of centers for immigrant minors – he still has a pending trial for an assault on El Masnou in 2019 –, he is also controversial for his former support for the Russian ultra-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, and for his anti-Semitic past. He has been a protagonist of Islamophobic protests such as the 2017 one against a mosque in Nou Barris, after having held the position of advisor to the secretary general of Vox. He is now a councilor for the far-right party in Sant Adrià de Besòs and a provincial deputy in the Barcelona Provincial Council. Like him, other PxC officials turned to Vox following the dissolution of the far-right party. Who is he and what is the union?

In September 2020, Vox promoted the Solidaridad union for its struggle of ideas, which it embodies in "false workerism," as David Karvala, a longtime leader of Unity Against Fascism and Racism (UCFR) and an expert on the far-right phenomenon, explained to ARA. In fact, its leader has been Rodrigo Alonso, a Vox leader in Andalusia and a businessman who, rather than heading an employers' association, has led the union. On paper, the organization has defended workers by attacking immigration, foreign competition, "globalism," the European Union, and the 2030 Agenda. Now, De la Fuente, who in the past has been a staunch defender of the "national-revolutionary" thesis, will join Solidaridad. Despite attempts by ARA to contact him, the politician has not responded to the newspaper. The leadership has supported him, and Vox spokesperson José Antonio Fúster has made it clear that he shares the party's ideals and that his neo-Nazi past is "very remote."

In an interview with OK Diario This Friday, however, De la Fuente expressed himself thus: "I have joined the militia where I consider [sic] I should have been because the ideas were the same; I am rabidly patriotic and I have always defended justice. I come from a working-class neighborhood and a humble family, and I have always been totally repulsed by globalism and imposition. But I know if it has brought me to where we are, very happy and calm." And regarding his past anti-Semitism, he said that "denying the Holocaust is a crime" and that "we are not here to discuss historical aspects that have been judged and evidenced in history," which "goes beyond the work of a union." "Now do I have to apologize? Why? Everything evolves," he concluded, emphasizing that he shares "Vox's views" and defends Israel's position.

Karvala has references to De la Fuente's movements since the beginning of the century. "A man with his track record, fighting to establish a neo-Nazi group, hasn't stopped thinking what he thinks, but rather joins [Vox] as a way to implement what he wants," he maintains. There is also a contradictory element that he doesn't find shocking, which is Vox's pro-Israel position: "Despite the party defending Israel, the line is antisemitic because it blames a hidden hand for the indigenous replacement, and this is an antisemitic theory." And he warns: "There is a key point of fascism: they can say anything, they lack principles, they have goals (authoritarianism), and the means can change." Islam is now the target and Israel the ally.

Ideological Origin

But where does the ideology the politician has drawn from come from? MSR "is reflected in the Italian fascist regime of 1944," with a "pseudo-anti-capitalist and socialist line of National Socialism." In Karvala's opinion, the politician makes it clear that "the most radical sector controls Vox."

The leader of Somos Identitarios and former leader of Plataforma por Catalunya, Josep Anglada, also from the far right, tells ARA that he had already heard of De la Fuente in his time: "In 2014 I was no longer there; he joined after her. He had had some references and he had had some references. In fact, he remembers that he was "openly Nazi, against Israel" and points out that the current leadership of Vox "is already doing well" with his profile due to the "Falangist" attitude of Jorge Buxadé: "There is no need to hide from anything anymore because they already have the armchairs," he believes. The one who does not forgive him is a former Nazi comrade, Juan Antonio Llopart, who led the MSR: in a post on X He called him a "waste" and a "traitor" and in another he lamented the decision to "renounce" his ideas "in exchange for a salary or abandoning principles and ideology."