The costumes of Aliança Catalana, the ultra party that imitates the left | Spain

Four words are central to Matteo Salvini's autobiography: “I hate the indifferent.” A priori, the author of the phrase does not seem ideal to illustrate the experiences of a far-right nationalist leader. Because Antonio Gramsci was not only the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, but also a Marxist theorist known today as totem of anti-fascism. The choice is obviously not accidental, nor is it the case that the head of the League quotes the singer-songwriter Fabrizio de André or the priest Lorenzo Milani. “It's as if Santiago Abascal were quoting Pasionaria, Paco Ibáñez and a working-class priest from Pozo del Tío Raimundo in his memoirs,” compares historian Steven Forti, who studies the growing tendency of ultra-family parties to appropriate speeches and symbols from the left. appropriate. , a noticeable trend in France and Italy, but also observed in Spain. Especially in Catalonia, now the epicenter of Spanish politics.

On the night of March 12, Sílvia Orriols, mayor of Ripoll and leader of Aliança Catalana, the pro-independence and anti-immigration party that has just entered parliament, replied this way about a possible congratulation to Salvador Illa: “I do not congratulate the imperialists.” Among the fellow believers who supported her in front of the cameras, there were smiles, gestures of approval and even some excited shouts. The response quickly made headlines. It was predictable. It is not common for a political leader to call another 'imperialist' within Spain. You also don't hear that term in the mouth of the extreme right.

“The term 'imperialism' sounds like PCE, like IU. And even there it is little used anymore, it is a bit moth-eaten,” says Guillermo Fernández, professor of political science at Carlos III University and author of What to do with the extreme right in Europe. According to him, Orriols' use of the term is loaded with political meaning and is one of the indications that the leader of Aliança “is more similar to the new European far right than Abascal”, which “makes her more profile”. powerful”. Among these similarities, a varied display of discursive and aesthetic resources expands on the left, including gestures such as hanging the LGBTI flag on the facade of Ripoll's town hall, a maneuver unthinkable in Vox and which was carried out in Orriols as a rendition of his accusation of homophobia against Muslims.

Fernández has also noted the casual feel of Orriols' clothing, far removed from the Vox canon, and his use of protest T-shirts. On the one he wore on Sunday when he voted, the name of the peasant movement “Revolta Pagesa” is written in white on black, a nod to the search for support in the countryside, far removed from Vox's equestrian photos, steeped in green hunting . There are certain paraphernalia of Aliança that are closer to the CUP than to Abascal and his people. Even the video that is activated when opening their website, with images of riot police beating civilians, seems like typical agitation material edited by anti-system links. None of this changes the essential point: Aliança is an identity-based far-right party. But in politics not everything is substance, forms are important.

Anna López, Doctor of Political Science and one of the leading specialists in this field, encourages to pay special attention to Orriols because Catalonia is its habitat, a “laboratory” of extremist experiments from the rise of PxC at the beginning of the century to Aliança. What is happening in Catalonia, López emphasizes, offers clues about the future of this entire political spectrum. And what happens is that Orriols has been contesting the CUP since his time in Catalonia's National Front because of the label 'revolutionary'. At the same time, Aliança's leader denounces “capitalist elites” and “employers” whom she blames for immigration and deindustrialization.

The finger in the eye

Another enemy Aliança must defeat is 'globalization', which he believes is causing 'multiculturalism', a bete noire of both Orriols and Abascal. Although the anti-globalization discourse previously associated with the left is now commonplace within the far right in Europe, it is the result of decades of a “cultural struggle” that originated in France, as Steven Forti describes in his article. The ideological parasitism of the new extreme right. Right-wing and red-brown Gramscists in France, Italy and Spain (1968-2022). The key figure is Alain de Benoist, philosopher born in 1943, father of the nouvelle droite and from thinktank GRECE, whose efforts are crucial for understanding the ideological evolution towards relative workerism of the National Front (FN) and its successor, National Agrupation (AN). The desire of lepenism for the angling of the left has been such that even prominent names appear in it. Florian Philippot, who comes from the progressive camp, was vice-president of the FN until 2017; Fabien Engelmann, a former Trotskyist militant, is the AN mayor of Hayange, a historic red fief.

The GRICE in turn exerted a powerful influence on the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, of which Giorgia Meloni was a member in her youth. The current Prime Minister also knows what it means to draw from the left-wing repertoire and play with quotes: from Fabrizio de André to Pier Paolo Pasolini, via Bertolt Brecht. As for Salvini, one detail leaves little doubt about his willingness to poke his rival in the eye: for the League's Roman headquarters he chose the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, where the PCI had had its headquarters. But it does not remain symbolic. Salvini, who as a young man attended Leoncavallo, a self-run social center that was a hotbed of the Milanese left, has had as frontrunner a controversial left-wing economist, Alberto Bagnai, and even Sergio Landi, a former PCI militant in another historic leftist bastion, Livorno.

Guillermo Fernández emphasizes how the inclusion of former leftists serves to lend additional credit to the diagnosis of the far right against the current left, while “legitimizing their positions, causing confusion and facilitating voting gates.” So the red past is not hidden, it is shown. Umberto Bossi, former head of the League, and his number two, Roberto Maroni, were not shy about recalling their origins on the left. At Vox Disenso Foundation, the thinktank from Vox, presents Herman Tertsch as a former member of the Communist Party of Euskadi. And Abascal chose an old ex-communistRamón Tamames, for his motion of censure in 2023. The change in ideological direction is always presented as the result of a degeneration of the left, not of the individual.

The flag of violation

Although Forti focuses on the Mediterranean region, the rojipardismo continues. Sahra Wagenknecht, a culture war enthusiast of the left-wing Die Linke and married to the veteran social democrat Oskar Lafontaine, has founded a party in Germany, the BSW, which stands out in the polls by mixing postulates typical of the AfD ultras, especially against immigration and culture woke up, with a speech in defense of workers' rights. The BSW is one of the beneficiaries of a climate of confusion that allows for the constant launching of “semantic grandpas” against the left, to use Forti's expression. Steve Bannon himself, guru of the new far right, has defended that progressives must challenge every concept, every flag, every myth. He sets a good example and describes himself as a 'Leninist'.

To what extent is the Spanish far right following the invitation to 'parasitism'? In Aliança, the commitment is clear, says Guillermo Fernández, who confirms that for this it is not necessary for the leaders to have read the French theorists, because “the far right viralizes ideas and shares experiences through many channels, especially social networks, imitating each other .” As for Vox, he sees the desire to 'approach' the domains of the left mainly as a 'provocation'. There you can register from your trade union, Solidaridad, for your Viva festivals, with a format reminiscent of the annual PCE parties. But Macarena Olona also fits in and quotes Julio Anguita or various spokespersons who use Lorca, Alberti and even Che Guevara to defend bullfighting.

For Anna López, using emblems of the left is “an easy way to gain television minutes,” especially since the recipients of the arrow usually fall into a trap. But this is not the way – he adds – that yields the most profit for Vox, but rather the appropriation of the concept of “rebellion” as opposed to the supposed puritanism of the left. Steven Forti agrees. Although Vox is a less modern party than its European colleagues, it has also managed to present itself as an 'offender', according to the author of the book. Extreme right 2.0. From Argentina, Pablo Stefanoni also concludes that the most important progressive banner that the right has managed to appropriate is that of 'indignation'. Author of the essay Has the uprising taken a positive turn?Stefanoni believes that we live in a time when the 'great political stories' of the 20th century have given way to 'internet trolls', an optimal terrain for the radical right to profile themselves as a rebel against so-called 'progressive totalitarianism'.

With a background of twenty years of research into this political space, Anna López warns against the mistake of underestimating these incoherent incursions by the far right into foreign fields. If there is “dissatisfaction” among the left-wing electorate with their parties, he insists, ultra-progress on classic left-wing grounds is perfectly possible, despite the obvious contradictions. An example of this is Le Pen, who not only presents himself as a champion of political incorrectness, but also claims the role of guardian of republican secularism. This is a value foreign to the historical matrix of a party in whose founding Catholic traditionalists had much say. However, Le Pen has been able to redefine secularism to serve her crusade against 'Islamization'. And who else has defended a secular state for the same reason? In her case, Sílvia Orriols advocated a dream of an independent Catalonia, in which a 'natural order' based on 'traditions' would simultaneously rule.

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