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    <title><![CDATA[Ara in English - culture wars]]></title>
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    <description><![CDATA[Ara in English - culture wars]]></description>
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    <ttl>10</ttl>
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      <title><![CDATA[Ábalos 'in love'?]]></title>
      <link><![CDATA[https://en.ara.cat/opinion/abalos-in-love_129_5781264.html]]></link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><img src="https://static1.ara.cat/clip/daa66dc3-a9ad-444d-8260-72cbdb37292e_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg" /></p><p>The algorithm often suggests content that it itself labels as masculine, which, in the current state of culture wars, means I have direct contact with the most uninhibited expressions of the new right. And this week I had a good laugh with a meme of Ábalos that went viral following the court ruling. The montage consists of mixing a collection of statements by the former PSOE Secretary General and accompanying them with the sad music of <em>Skyfall</em>, the song from a James Bond movie. It alternates Ábalos's phrases expressing helplessness –"I have no one. I feel like I'm facing political power alone"– with the account of an extramarital affair –"She blocked me, and there I discovered the word <em>ghosting</em>, she explained to me what it meant. It hurts, because I had a real romantic relationship with that person. I lost everything, forgive my boldness, for someone I loved"–. The volume of the piano rises, we hear Adele singing "<em>This is the end</em>" and we read some variation of the text "If loving is a crime…" accompanied by the broken heart emoji. It is absolutely impossible not to laugh a little or feel a certain tenderness towards Ábalos.However, how is it that all this sympathy is flourishing in a right-wing cultural ecosystem? Naturally, part of the explanation has to do with the fact that, by humanizing Ábalos, the pressure can be redirected towards Pedro Sánchez, who is the real enemy. But the phenomenon is so organic and the meme spreads so much in apparently apolitical spheres, that I find it a perfect symptom of the left's cultural problem with the language of male desire.Traditionally, the right and the left have offered two complementary ways of channeling enjoyment, those tickles that go beyond reason and that are also an essential part of politics. Simply put, the right provided the pleasure of identifying with authority, and the left the pleasure of fighting it, which are two impulses present in the human soul that constantly compete and that may or may not make sense depending on the situation. However, the institutionalization of a form of progressive power, one of the most particular novelties of modernity, has opened a window for the revolutionary conservative, a new figure who is capable of appropriating both forms of enjoyment at the same time. Unlike the conservative we all have in mind, who calls people to repress excesses, the revolutionary conservative is capable of presenting the fight to return to traditional values as a risky and exciting crusade against progressive tyranny, a masterstroke that confers upon whoever knows how to execute it the monopoly of emotionality and leaves rivals in the burdensome position of the censor.</p>]]></description>
      <dc:creator><![CDATA[Joan Burdeus]]></dc:creator>
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      <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:17:54 +0000]]></pubDate>
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      <media:title><![CDATA[José Luis Ábalos appearing before the Senate committee on the Koldo case on May 6, 2024]]></media:title>
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