Could Vox mount a Jan 6 MAGA or a Jan 8 Bolsonaro insurrection in Spain?
Abascal is on Trump's populist global MAGA team but what would he do with all of those years of rhetoric against Catalan separatist national populists?
The news gods have smiled on us. Just minutes after sending you last night’s article on the question of a conservative-radical-right coalition at this year’s general election in Spain, Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil invaded and vandalised that country’s parliament, presidential headquarters and Supreme Court. The scenes in Brasilia on January 8, 2023 offered a repetition of the scenes in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, when Trump’s MAGA supporters invaded the US Congress building.
In October, we analysed the worldview of the new global radical right in their own words as Vox held an international congress here in Madrid. That month, Abascal sent “all my support” to Bolsonaro in a video before the Brazilian elections, as “leading the patriots’ choice […] against communism and globalism”. Trump also sent Abascal another fawning video for that Madrid congress. So the immediate question is: could the MAGA national-populist radical-right option in Spain, Vox, ever plausibly pull such a stunt in Madrid?
Democratic political leaders in the rest of the world and all of Spain’s other national political parties were quick to condemn the new insurrection: “I condemn the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil”, said Biden in the US; “The will of the Brazilian people and democratic institutions must be respected”, said Macron in France; “I condemn any attempt to undermine the peaceful transfer of power and the democratic will of the people of Brazil”, said Sunak in the UK.
“The greatest threat weighing on democracy […] is the resurgency of extremist movements ready to flatten everything”, said Sánchez (PSOE, Prime Minister); “When the far-right doesn’t reach its electoral goals despite fake news, hatred and corruption, it ignores democracy and the coups begin”, said Belarra (Podemos leader, Social Rights Minister); “Democracy is never guaranteed. That is whey it is so important to protect it from its enemies with the right laws, that severly punish seditious coup leaders”, said Arrimadas (Ciudadanos).
“We cannot give in to populists and radicals, who try to undermine respect for institutions, democracy and public liberties”, tweeted Popular Party leader Feijóo last night, before only superficially rejecting the idea of a coalition with radical populists in a radio interview this morning: “If I can, I will try to avoid coalitions between the PP and Vox. I think it is better to have a government only with the PP, without Vox”. So he would, then.
Neither Vox as a party nor Abascal made any public comment last night. The party’s European spokesman, Buxadé, wanted to talk about immigration, environmental wokism and media conspiracies at a press conference on Monday morning. Asked about Brazil, he replied by relativising, both in terms of degree and of political orientation (what about the left in other countries?): “We condemn the violence, all the violence, carried out against constitutional democractic institutions, but all of the violence, not like the European left and not like the Spanish left especially”.
“The situation in Brazil deserves, has already deserved, rebuke from the candidate himself, Bolsonaro […] 58 million Brazilians voted for Bolsonaro […] we condemn this and reject it but there were not 58 million people there”. Does Vox mean everything that happened in Brasilia yesterday, the whole mob invasion of the institutions, or just the “violent” bits, like the beating of the policeman on the horse or the destruction of property? Are they against the idea of populist invasions of constitutional institutions entirely or just against doing so violently?
He ended by turning the question on its head in the Spanish case: what could the state do if the left rose up against the election result at the end of this year, if the right won, now that the socialist-communist government and Catalan separatists have repealed the crime of sedition: “That is what should worry Spaniards”.
And therein lies the paradox for Vox in the context of Spanish politics. If, hypothetically, a January 6 (US) or a January 8 (Brazil) event were ever to happen in the parliament or the PM’s office in Madrid and if, hypothetically, Vox were the party to encourage that because they are now part of the global MAGA populist radical right with Trump and Bolsonaro, they would first have to overcome years of their own nationalist opposition to and rhetoric against what Mas, Puigdemont, Junqueras and the separatists did in Catalonia in 2017 and become those Catalan national populist radicals at the national level.
It is also true that in the Spanish case, the first mass populist protests to “surround parliament” came out of the far-left 10 years ago and continued into the elections of 2015 and 2016, demonstrations that channelled years of anger and unemployment after the financial crisis and eventually morphed into Podemos and Puigdemont’s rebellion in Catalonia in 2017.
Finally, the youth of Spain’s modern democracy—with living memory of the 1981 coup and the 2017 Catalan coup—might play in its favour, with politicians from most parties constantly claiming to be more constitutionalist than the rest. It is hard to imagine 5,000 Vox supporters storming in to the Congress building or trying to get into the Prime Minister’s office in central Madrid. In theory, they would lose credibility within the hour as the images were streamed live on TV. But then I suppose people in Washington on Jan 5, 2021 and people in Brazil two nights ago also found it hard to believe.
Politicians behave hypocritically and shift their rhetoric to suit the situation all the time. Could the global MAGA ideological trend, mixed with whatever Covid conspiracy nonsense has come out of the pandemic, mixed with some more specific election-year events in Spain, prove stronger forces than years of opposition to Catalan separatists and make such an outcome plausible?
Just before Christmas, Abascal railed about Sánchez’s “illegitimacy”: “Vox will continue to work towards denouncing this illegitimate government in parliament, this government that takes completely illegitimate decisions, this parliament that has become illegitimate because it is applying decisions and polices that were not subject to elections, that were not on any election manfiesto, that are unconstitutional”.
The ideas and words are there. Where will events lead the actions?
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If Abascal really believes in all that rhetoric, why hasn't he sought a solution through the courts?