QUICK TAKE: an American Franco?

US 2024 kicks off with a hard-right Spanish twist.

Let’s roll with 2024 and the new plan. Happy New Year! Quick takes will be, well, just that, a quick mind dump of some interesting development to get us all thinking. A changing Spain in a complex 21st Century.

I clashed over the New Year’s weekend with one of the largest hard-right Trump influencer accounts in the US, Jack Posobiec, and his mob of 2 million followers after he started memefying Franco, posting: “EVERYTHING THEY TOLD YOU ABOUT THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR WAS A LIE. FRANCO SAVED SPAIN AND FOUGHT FOR CHRIST”. Posobiec is described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as “a political operative and internet performer of the anti-democracy hard right, known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns”. It turns out Posobiec isn’t the only one and that the idea of “an American Franco”, which has been a meme for others over the past few months too as the US hard-right begins the 2024 presidential election year trying to get Trump reelected. It’s not hard to wonder who they might have in mind for the Franco role. Any such outcome would of course be a disaster for freedom, democracy and justice in the United States, and consequently for the rest of the Western world. And while the lionisation of Franco in America will get Vox a few more global hard-right tribal points, it strikes me that the reaction to this story in Spain—where everybody knows much more about Franco than Posobiec—will likely to be to cause Abascal’s party to lose even more votes.

• Why is the US far right finding its savior in Franco? (Guardian)

• Is a Protestant Franco inevitable? (First Things)

• The absurdity of a "Protestant Franco" (Law Liberty)

• Protestant Francophiles? (American Reformer)

Also, reading through the hundreds of insults from Poserbiec's mob, which are pretty much identical to the insults from the Vox crowd in Spain, it strikes me that the hatred they express could basically be classified using the badge system the Nazis used in the concentration camps: communists, socialists, liberals, foreigners, homosexuals, the weak or disabled, the mentally ill. 80 or 90 years later, the same obsessions are being expressed with the same animus from the same part of the political spectrum.

• Understand a changing Spain better

• Guarantee the independence of this analysis

• Access all exclusive premium subscriber articles