Many people in the fachosphere

Pedro Sánchez declared to The vanguard on January 30 that the “fachosphere” intends to “polarize, insult and produce distrust with a clear purpose.”

“Fachosfera” can be considered a transparent neologism: “the facha world.” It does not appear in our dictionaries, nor does it appear in the millions and millions of records stored in the Royal Academy's data bank; but any person competent in the Spanish language (that is, about 600 million) knows how to look inside the word and understand its elements. So we are faced with a useful term for political and journalistic communication. Not like others.

“Fachosfera” has come to us from the French fachospherelanguage where it was formed from facho (shortening and alteration of fascist) and of blogosphere (blogosphere, set of blogs). The jump from him to Spanish occurred especially when the newspapers they translated correctly the title of a successful book published in 2016 in France: The fachosphere. Comment l'extrême droite report la bataille du net (“The fachosphere. How the extreme right wins the battle of the Internet”), written by journalists Dominique Albertini and David Doucet.

However, these were not the creators, because the term had already circulated years before in the French press. I discover it for example in the digital version of a weekly report L'Express of December 3, 2009, referring to the fachosphere's intention to put an end to the minarets (mosque towers from where the muezzin calls for prayer).

However, the fact that that neologism was shown on the cover of a book helped its dissemination, and it was later reproduced by other Gallic authors, some of them translated into our language; which builds another border crossing so that the word crosses the Pyrenees. Thus, “fachosphere” is read in political controversy, by Jacques-Alain Miller, in What's missing at night, by Laurent Petitmangin, and in The visionary, by Abel Quentin, all of them published in Spanish in 2021.

In EL PAÍS it has not been used until very recently. I found it for the first time on July 25, in a column by Idafe Martín, the only author who had written it in this newspaper—on seven occasions—before Sánchez's words were recorded.

And how is “fachosphere” defined? This term designates both in French and in its translations the frenetic activity of the extreme right on blogs and social networks, where spaces for intoxication and dissemination of hoaxes were opened up that it never had before. With that meaning it can already be seen in digital French dictionaries, such as Larousse online: “All websites, blogs, social networks, etc., linked to the extreme right or that defend their ideas.”

But here suddenly Alberto Núñez Feijóo is considered concerned, inexplicably, due to the mention of Pedro Sánchez; and he answers as if he had been referring to him, his party and his voters: “The President of the Government described the millions of people who are against impunity for power as fascists.” [a cambio del poder, se supone]and the millions of Spaniards who are against the privileges of the separatists [para los separatistas]. (…) No president of the Government had ever done so in the democratic history of the country to disqualify millions of compatriots in this rude way by calling them fascists.”

The president of the PP did not realize what saying that meant. If Sánchez was referring to those who seek to polarize, insult and produce distrust as members of the fachosphere and he felt he was being referred to with all his legions, that means that Feijóo and company are dedicated to polarizing, insulting and producing distrust.

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