Some of the participants in the ultra demonstrations these days, many of them in front of the PSOE headquarters on Madrid’s Ferraz street, have shown a certain mental cocoa when uttering certain slogans or raising certain flags. In some of their phrases you can also guess the manipulative ability of those who direct them.
Let’s look at a small dictionary of that extensive catalogue.
double-headed eagles. Many participants carried Spanish flags with the double-headed eagle. In a video, two far-right people – asked about it by the person recording them – respond about that symbol. One says that it comes from the Catholic Monarchs and that it is the eagle of Saint John (without knowing that that one, the one used in the Franco regime, has only one head), but the bearer of the banner defends that it is the eagle of the Habsburgs, although it seems like someone blew it. In reality, the double-headed eagle has crossed European and part of American heraldry for centuries. And indeed, it was the emblem of the House of Habsburg or House of Austria, precisely the option defended for the Spanish throne by the Catalans (although not all) in the War of Succession (18th century) against the House of Bourbons (France). ), who ended up keeping it. In other words, it was a symbol of the side with which the independentists now identify, in a sensational historical pirouette. That symbol was also planted on the current flag of Russia, and on many other banners. This eagle already flies over all ideologies.
dictator, dictatorship. Those gathered shouted: “Sánchez dictator.” The idea has also been expressed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of Madrid, despite the fact that one of the requirements to be a dictator is not to allow one to be called a dictator. The academic definition of “dictatorship” describes a political regime that, by force or violence, concentrates all power in one person or organization, and that represses human rights and individual freedoms. Those who pull the strings of these demonstrations know this perfectly, but with such a word they encourage an underlying, subliminal and manipulative message: “This is a dictatorship: Sánchez’s dictatorship. If you, dear people, don’t care about Sánchez’s dictatorship, you won’t care about ours either.”
coup. It is striking that those who reproach the Government for carrying out a coup d’état are precisely those who display the symbols of Francisco Franco, who came to power… thanks to a coup d’état. This expression has also been used by Santiago Abascal, president of Vox. The meaning of “coup d’état” implies a violent action by military or rebel forces aimed at displacing the authority that currently has it from power. Here the same trick is produced that is concocted with “dictator”: “If we manage to make them believe that this is a coup d’état by Sánchez and they don’t care about that, they won’t care about ours either.”
milkmaid “Those milkmaids, to the border!” Esperanza Aguirre said in a Cuatro program that she had just learned that police vans were called “milk trucks.” The former Madrid president must have few manifestations of risk on her resume. The name comes from the seventies, when the Francoist police used white vans very similar to those then used to distribute milk. And since “leche” also means “hit” (“I hit the streetlight with milk”), everything fit together. Milk was distributed in both cases. The funny thing is that today’s ultras have assumed the intelligent sarcasm of those who were persecuted by ultras back then.
mason. Those gathered shouted: “Sánchez, mason, defend your nation!” The Franco regime took it against Freemasonry, it is not clear why. “Mason” comes from the French maçon, “mason” (one who works with the dough), which does not seem very suspicious at first. Freemasons meet in lodges, a word of Italian origin related to “lonja”, a place like any other. Freemasonry originated in the medieval guilds of construction workers, hence the relationship with bricklayers. And it grew up in England during the 18th century, already under the mantle of the Enlightenment. Its members held secret meetings with striking rituals (but without sacrificing animals or anything like that), and dedicated themselves to debating philosophy in cordial fraternity. Spain brings together about 3,000 Freemasons, according to 2018 data. To join a lodge you need the support of other members, to enjoy a good reputation and “adequate moral conditions.”, pass two votes and commit to respecting internal hierarchies and customs. Furthermore, one can leave whenever they want, without further formality. At first glance it doesn’t seem like a big risk for the State. A few weeks ago, I went to dinner at a restaurant in Burgos and the door to an adjoining room clearly announced that it was reserved for a lodge. It doesn’t seem like something very secret either. Of course, Freemasons must keep secret about what is said in their meetings, but this also happens in the Council of Ministers. It may be that the lodges function for practical purposes as influence groups, intended for what had always been called “making an agenda” or “making contacts”, or “having a hand”; what is now called networking. Therefore, the traditional “fix this for me, you who have a hand in Madrid” could be said in that case “fix this for me, you who are a Mason.” As in any human organization, some of its members have fallen into excesses or crimes, as shown by the history of the Italian P2 Lodge, dismantled more than 40 years ago after it had financed neo-fascist groups. Perhaps the protesters these days do not even imagine that there were Freemasons who would have supported them, and not Sánchez.
die standing “I would rather die standing than live on my knees.” A photo shows that banner displayed by a protester on Ferraz Street. The extreme right protests with slogans from the left. This one in particular has been attributed to the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, the Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Ché Guevara and the Spanish communist and republican leader Dolores Ibárruri, Pasionaria (because surely all of them used it, even if they were not its authors). Stalin, the Soviet dictator, also loved the phrase, according to Boris Cimorra in Radio Moscow (Sekotia, 2022). I wonder if the protester knows who all of them were.
fucking The ultracongregates chant: “Fucking red whoever doesn’t bounce” and “let’s fucking defend Spain.” The noun “puto” fulfills in the first case an adjective and derogatory function, as would happen with the common noun “cochino” in the phrase “this filthy manifestation”, for example. And in the second, it enlarges the term it accompanies as a grammatical intensifier, giving it more value, as happened when Jennifer Hermoso said on August 20: “We are champions of the fucking world”. It is the same effect of the intensifiers that appear in expressions such as “very calm”, “it is very nice” or “I found it super interesting” (these are intensifiers: “the sea”, “good” and “-super”), all of them. without a hint of profanity but less expressive than “puto”. Here, “putodefender” is equivalent to “superdefender”. Therefore, the ultras are going to super-defend Spain from the Spaniards themselves. At the moment, they have not talked about defending Spain from the fucking Spaniards.
red. “Red is the one who doesn’t bounce,” they chanted. The political meaning of this adjective (originally equivalent to “radical, revolutionary”) arrived in the Dictionary in 1925; and in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) a distinction was made between “reds” and “blues”. The Falangists wore blue shirts, which some of Franco’s ministers would later boast about; and in the early days, the general himself. However, the ideological identification of this second color has not reached the lexicon of the academies. “A red” is a leftist, but a rightist is not “a blue.” Currently, both the PSOE and the PCE use red as their characteristic color; and the blue, the Popular Party. And since 2014, the fifth meaning of “red” defines it as “leftist, especially communist”, and the sixth meaning indicates: “In the Spanish civil war, republican.” Its use has declined in recent decades, as seen in Google’s Ngram tool if one searches for “the red ones”, as a noun. But with so many people who vote but don’t vote, these ultras are going to see red everywhere.
The far-right Mariano Veganzones of VOX is Minister of Industry, Commerce and Employment in Castilla y León. He has a salary of €87,532 per year. He said that “there is no lack of workers, there is a lack of desire to work.” Today he jumps up shouting “fucking red, whoever doesn’t bounce”pic.twitter.com/pLMrbgDOUD
— Fonsi Loaiza (@FonsiLoaiza) November 12, 2023
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