It is said, and repeated, that we should not fear a repetition of the past, despite the fact that some speeches and some attitudes seem taken from the hectic thirties, before the Civil War. It is also said that the political polarization that we see in the Congress of Deputies and on the networks is not replicated in society, at least with the same intensity. This is how we are pulling, but we are in the hands of forces that we do not control. I thought about it after reading an article by Canadian political scientist Michael Ignatieff in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
Professor Ignatieff, who tried unsuccessfully to become prime minister of his country, puts the problem this way: "Once the leaders of a democratic system start resorting to 'enemies politics,' language, habits The mental and partisan demonization tactics practiced at the top of the system will spread out and down, through the media and the internet, and will begin to affect the political instincts of citizens in general.” He refers mainly to the ways of Trumpism, which encouraged the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But he also pays attention to what is happening in Europe.
Perhaps because polarization has become commonplace, we don't see the dangers of this type of scenario. Ignatieff remarks that "a politics of enemies treats political opponents as threats that must be eliminated or destroyed." Unfortunately, that happens today in Spain. The illegitimate government phrase applied by the right to the PSOE-Podemos coalition executive from day one elevated the politics of enemies to primacy of relations between parties. Before, with the purely judicial approach that the Rajoy cabinet made of the process, the policy of enemies was the ultimate reason for all the decisions that were made from Madrid.
For the jurist Carl Schmitt, a conservative who joined Nazism, the basis of politics is the friend-enemy distinction. A concept that did not dissolve with the defeat of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. On the contrary, populisms update it. “What makes a policy of enemies seductive – explains Ignatieff – is that their cruelty is often presented as a defense of democracy”.
Let's look at our current situation: the members of the PSOE are described by the PP and the ultra-right as enemies of the system, of democracy and of the homeland. However, the popular leaders do not request the illegalization of these formations, because they know that it would not prosper and, furthermore, it would turn a "full democracy" into a caricature.
The strategy consists of presenting Catalan and Basque podemites and sovereignists as a foreign body, as if there were first and second class voters. What would come to be "good people" and "the others". In sectors of the left and the independence movement, there is also the temptation to exclude, with equally toxic language.
Polarization and exclusion go hand in hand. A prestigious economist who should have been a director of the Bank of Spain at the proposal of the PP resigned on the day of his appointment, because he appeared on a list of academic support for Professor Clara Ponsatí, who was Minister of Education and today is a MEP of Junts.
“Moderation is perceived as weakness, prudence as pusillanimity,” Ignatieff asserts. And I remember every day what the great historian Josep Termes repeated to us: "I am a moderate because I am a radical."
