What is Vox a fascist party?

After the election day in Andalusia, thousands of people, mostly young people, rallied in several cities in protest over the emergence of Vox, screaming, “this is not democracy, it is fascism”. The good results of the party of Santiago Abascal have led to the discussion of whether this is an option from the extreme right or directly fascist. The professor of Constitutional Law and political analyst Robert L. White, the historian Fernando del Rey and the researcher Guillem Vidal discusses to what extent the new party has crossed the border between a right —democratic approaches ends with respect to immigration or the rights of women— and a party directly anti-democratic.

“For me, for the next generations”, explains the professor gallego Roberto Blanco, 60 years old, “the extreme right are the types of the strings, the violent, the New Force of Blas Piñar, which was arreándole to people on the street. It is true that today in Europe there is another extreme right, Marine Le Pen or the Alternative for Germany, which are parties that are competing for democracy from within and that does not seem to want to end up with the system. If we call the extreme right, the Vox should also be llamárselo, and in fact it seems that Le Pen congratulated Abascal. But I, as I said, maybe because of age, can relate to the extreme right-wing forces with a more violent, more anti-democratic”.

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White has established two factors to explain the poor results of the Vox. “One is the component of nationalist Spanish. The nationalist backlash against, on the one hand, the absurdity of the pro-independence Catalan and, on the other, the covenant of parliament Pedro Sanchez with parties who have organized an insurrection in any rule, whether rebellion, sedition, or the like. This factor would also explain the debacle socialist”. The other factor, according to professor of the University of Santiago de Compostela, “is the component xenophobic, and this itself can be identified without any doubt as the extreme right”.

The historian Fernando the King established a preliminary question: “This right-wing, extreme-right or right-liberal, are the classifications very short-term. The historians we move with the parameters of the period between the wars, and perhaps it is a mistake because such a classification depends on the circumstances”. King, a professor at the University Complutense of Madrid, warned in categorical form: “I believe that talk of fascism is an exaggeration. Fascism is a phenomenon in the strict sense, exclusive of the period between the wars and then there may have been ramifications, but if we use the Betsmove concept of fascism to apply to this is a distortion, is to not know what was fascism, which is a thing a lot more gross and so suddenly violent and military. Obviously, it is a hard-right but I would not dare to classify today as a right-authoritarian or radical, advocating precisely for the dictatorship, by the power of the military, by violence, by the paramilitarización, nothing to do with this. This is a new phenomenon, typical of our time; what we are warning all over Europe”.

The historian puts Vox in the “radical right” but, for the moment at least, within the democratic game: “Within the arc of the right-wing conservative, obviously Vox is more to the right of the PP. That is a no-brainer. Now, to call this fascism seems to me an exaggeration. I don't see fascism by any side. They accept evil that the constitutional framework, they want to reform the Constitution, respect the rules of the game, have a address hard issues such as the rights of women. It is clear that in that is a speech very hard, and it is also very hard on antinmigración. There is a clear parallel with this reformulation of the right that is taking place in Europe, in Hungary, in Poland, it is obvious that there are parallels, but to me the National Front in French it seems to me more radical than Vox”.

The political scientist Guillem Vidal, professor at the European University Institute, clearly located to Vox on the extreme right, but it sets up two sub-groups, the extreme right fascist —in that would place the greeks of Golden Dawn— an extreme right populist radical style of Marine Le Pen: “There would be I to Vox. A style of parties that emerged in the eighties and that is sets of the fascist ideology, and that focus more on going against the immigration and against the European Union. It's a little early to put it in absolute terms, but in my opinion the direction that it is taking Vox is much closer to a populist right-wing radical to an extreme right-wing fascist”. Vidal is based on several clues: “One is that the campaign has not been shown to have had especially a speech is anti-democratic, that is to say, change from a democratic regime to a fascist regime. Question the liberal democratic system, but do not fall within that ideology. And then there are things like Steve Bannon by going to Andalusia and talking with them. I think that the direction they want to take is to resemble these other parties have had some success in the north of Europe”.

There is another important issue in the King and White are in agreement. “It seems to Me a mistake egregious exaggerate the language calling them fascists”, says The King, “because you are pushing to be. And, today, have not expressed that they want to break the system. In that sense, and at least from the point of view-verbal, We may have been much more radical and anti-establishment”.

Roberto Blanco insists on the idea: “you have to be very careful with the words. Interest of party you can't put a shoot for elevation, because you may find yourself saying things that, far from slowing the movement favors”. Professor Vidal leaves door open to calm: “There are studies that we know that this type of discourse, once they enter the Parliament, tend to be standardised”.