Don't believe the mainstream media over-hype about Vox

In the buildup to the Spanish General Election elements of the UK press, especially the BBC, were absolutely determined to talk up the prospects of the far-right party Vox.

But as the results came in a lot of mainstream media hacks failed to adjust to the actual reality. Vox only bagged 10% of the vote and finished 5th, and there were a lot of other extremely important stories, several of them much bigger than the extreme-right gaining a foothold in the Spanish parliament for the first time, but somehow the media continued their fixation on Vox.

In this article I'm going to run through a few of the stories and issues that got lost behind the Vox hype.

PP's worst result ever

Partido Popular are the Spanish version of the Tories. They're the shockingly corrupt, pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, right-wing establishment party who have switched power with PSOE ever since the end of Franco's fascist dictatorship in 1975. They ruled Spain in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, imposing ruinous austerity, overseeing huge unemployment rates, attacking workers rights and individual liberties, and creating an unprecedented exodus of the younger generations who spread across Europe looking for work and opportunities.

On Sunday 28 April 2019 they suffered by far their worst electoral result in their history, collapsing from 32.6% of the vote at the last election in 2016 to just 16.7% and 66 of the 350 seats.

To put the scale of this defeat into perspective their previous worst result was in 1989 when they got 25.8% of the vote and 107 of the seats.

In the UK we can only dream of the Tory vote collapsing in half, and them returning to parliament with less than 20% of the seats in parliament.

PSOE win

PSOE are like the Spanish version of Labour, they're significantly to the left of the PP, but in recent decades they've failed to really live up to the "socialist" name, often opting for Blair-style neoliberalism-lite. They'll generally protect workers and champion socially progressive causes, but when it comes to rolling back privatisation and reversing tax handouts for the mega-rich they're nowhere near living up to their socialist name.

28.7% of the vote and 123 seats in Congress is a long way from the best performance in their history, but since 2014 Spanish politics has fractured from two main parties to five, and finishing 12 points above their nearest rival under these circumstances is not bad at all.

123 seats is still well short of a majority, but it's such a comprehensive lead over their rival parties that it's inconceivable that they won't form the next government.

PSOE majority in the senate

PSOE fell short of winning a majority in congress, but they secured a clear majority in the Spanish senate with 139 of the 265 seats, their first senate majority since 1989, and their best senate performance since they won a senate landslide in 1986.

A first left-wing senate majority in three decades is clearly a huge story, but one that's flown under the radar in a lot of mainstream media coverage, thanks mainly to all the Vox hype.

Ciudadanos

One of the major reasons for the collapse of PP was the rise of the right-wing Ciudadanos party which formed in Catalonia in 2006, but only really became a party at the national level in 2014.

After absorbing most of the anti-independence vote in the 2017 Catalan regional elections to become the single biggest party in the Catalan parliament, they were projected to do very well in the next General Election, but they've fallen back significantly since their peak in mid-2018 when they were actually leading in multiple polls on almost 30%, to finish in 3rd on 15.9%.

It's still technically the best result in their short history, but in light of the spectacular PP collapse, and where they were in the polls just a year ago, a modest 2.8% increase in their vote is clearly an under-performance.

With 57 seats a PSOE-Ciudadanos coalition is mathematically possible, but highly unlikely given the unpopularity of their leader Albert Rivera with PSOE supporters.

Unidas Podemos

Despite forming a political alliance with another left-wing party (Izquierda Unida) Podemos has fallen back significantly from their high point in 2016 to finish in fourth place with 14.3% of the vote and 42 seats.

Unidas Podemos would have been the most likely coalition partners for PSOE, but they dropped so many seats that even together they're still well short of a majority.

There are many reasons for the Unidas Podemos fallback, including former-PSOE voters going back to their previous allegiance, a lot of bitter public infighting between different internal factions, and some ridiculous behaviour from their leader Pablo Iglesias.

All is not lost though, because although 14.3% of the vote is a poor result compared to their achievments in 2015 and 2016, it's only a fraction behind PP in second, which is hardly terrible for a political party that was only formed in 2014.

Vox
 

Vox are a far-right ultranationalist party that were founded in 2014 by defectors from the ruling PP. Until this election Vox had won nothing at the national level, just a few seats in regional elections.

Bagging 10% of the vote and 24 seats in congress represents a significant stride forward for the extreme-right in Spanish politics, but in reality they're only slightly to the right of PP, they're just more open and overt about their bigotry, misogyny, extreme-right politics, and desire for the centralisation of political power in Madrid than the establishment right-wing party they split away from.

10% is clearly better than the 0.2% they achieved at the previous election, but anyone trying to make out that the story is all about them when 90% of Spanish voters rejected them, and they finished in fifth, with fewer seats than the Catalan Independence parties, is clearly pushing an agenda, rather than reporting the news.

Results in Catalonia

There are two ways of looking at the results in Catalonia. From an independence perspective, and from a left-right perspective.

The left-wing pro-independence Republican Left group won the most votes and most seats for the region.

It's difficult to argue that their popularity hasn't been driven by the fact their leader Oriol Junqueras has been held as a political prisoner by the Spanish state since 2017.

And it's also difficult to argue that a party led by a political prisoner taking a massive historic win isn't a huge story that should at least have got a look in instead of the Vox over-hype.

Anti-independence PSOE came second in Catalonia and the more neutral Podemos group in the Catalan region slipped to 3rd, meaning all three of the most popular parties in Catalonia are on the left or centre-left.

The right-wing Ciudadanos party had an absolute disaster coming in 5th, less than a year and a half after coming first in the Catalan regional elections.

PP collapsed to 6th place bagging just 4.9% of the Catalan vote, meaning that they're essentially a dead political force there, which is hardly surprising given their former leader Mariano Rajoy's ridiculously arrogant and incompetent mishandling of the independence issue back in 2017.

Coalition or minority government?

Since PSOE and Unidas Podemos have fallen just short of enough seats to build a majority, they'll need support from smaller regional parties. The Catalan Republican Left party have 15 seats, but it's unlikely they'd collaborate without significant concessions, including the possibility of an officially sanctioned Catalan independence referendum.

The other option is for PSOE to go it alone as a minority government, then call another general election if the opposition parties vote down their budget again. Obstructionism would be a bold move from the likes of PP and Ciudadanos given that the political momentum is with PSOE.

It's hard to see how PP and Ciudadanos wouldn't be punished by the electorate if they forced the Spanish people into a 4th General Election in the space of four years through obstructionist tactics.

The Spanish right is split

It's often the case in politics that splits in the opposition end up handing power to the political right, but in Spain in 2019 the right has splintered into three (PP, Ciudadanos, Vox), while the left vote is divided between two (PSOE, Unidas Podemos).

The reason PP have collapsed so badly is that their vote is being eroded from both sides. Vox have pinched 2 million+ votes from PP by pushing far-right ultranationalist bigotry, while Ciudadanos have pinched a significant proportion of "centre-right" PP voters.

Between the three right-wing parties they bagged 42.9% of the vote, which is only a slight decline on the 45.8% the three parties' combined vote at the last General Election in 2016, but because the right-wing vote is more evenly divided between three right-wing parties, rather than being concentrated mainly with PP, they've fallen even further short of building a right-wing coalition.

Conclusion

Elements of the British press really wanted Vox to do well because "fascism is rising again in Spain" is a story they can really hype. The far-right did indeed bag a foothold in the Spanish parliament, but 10% is significantly below people's worst fears, but the UK media seemed unable to adjust their footing, drop the far-right overhype they wanted to present, and cover other significant and historic aspects of the election.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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20 questions mainstream media should ask about the Institute for Statecraft scandal (but probably won't)

The Tory government has been caught red-handed shovelling over £2 million in public cash at a dodgy propaganda unit called the Institute For Statecraft which disguises itself as a charity for the purposes of avoiding tax.

A cache of leaked documents has revealed that this publicly-funded pseudo-charity has been interfering in the democratic processes and broadcast media outlets of our European neighbours, and furthermore the Twitter account they runwith the extraordinarily misleading name "Integrity Initiative" has repeatedly published highly partisan political attacks on the Labour opposition.

Here's a full article on the scandal with more details.

The mainstream media have been extremely quiet on the story, and don't be naive enough to expect to be hearing any BBC coverage of this scandal whatever.

However if we did have any kind of functional mainstream media (one that was intent on actually holding the powerful to account and asking incisive questions about their behaviour rather than generally running distraction for them and burying their scandals), here are some of the questions mainstream media journalists should be asking about the Institute for Statecraft scandal:

• What is  UK-based charity doing meddling in Spanish political processes?

• What is a UK-based charity doing bragging about "silencing" people on Serbian television?

• Are the Spanish and Serbian governments aware that a UK-based (and UK government funded) organisation has been actively meddling in their states, and did they give permission?

• What Key Performance Indicators have the Tory government set in regards to the £2 million+ in public funding, or is it just a "no strings" handout from the government?

• Aside from the £2 million+ in government funding, who else is funding this pseudo-charity?

• Were Tory government ministers aware ofInstitute for Statecraft's foreign interference tactics before the internal document cache was leaked?

• Did Tory government ministers sign off on the covert political interference in other European states, or did the charity use public funds in this manner purely of their own accord?

• Is this foreign meddling an abuse of charitable status, and how much do these clearly uncharitable political activities undermine public faith in what charities actually exist to do?

• Is it acceptable for the governing UK party to lavish £2 million+ of public funds on an organisation that smears their political rivals?

• Does a UK governing party actually have any legal responsibility to ensure that the public funds they're distributing are not used for the purpose of attacking their political rivals, and if not, why not?

• Does the £2 million in government funding for an organisation that is interfering in other nations' sovereign affairs constitute evidence that the Tories are quietly privatising and outsourcing the functions of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

• If this was a right-wing pro-Brexit pseudo-charity (like the Institute for Economic Affairs for example) that was caught red-handed spreading partisan political smears and interfering in democratic processes, would award winning investigative journalists like Carole Cadwalladr be quite so keen to talk the scandal down and pivot criticism away from the guilty parties?

• Does the fact that numerous UK mainstream newspaper journalists have been named as collaborators working in "clusters" on behalf of the Institute For Statecraft in the leaked documents explain their media colleagues' disinclination to properly investigate the scandal?

• Have members of the "cluster" cells this pseudo-charity has set up received payment or incentives for their involvement, and if so how much? 

• Have the MPs who have involved themselves with this pseudo-charity properly declared their involvement, and any payment or benefits, on the Register of Parliamentary Interests?

• Is the colossal amount of money this government-funded pseudo-charity is flinging around on running seminars and foreign jollies (globs of between £20,000 and £60,000 for seminars and academies),  an absolute affront to decency at a time when disabled people, low-income workers, and literally millions of British children are being condemned to destitution by Tory austerity dogma?

• Isn't setting up shadowy publicly-funded operations to spread online propaganda and interfere in the affairs of other European democracies exactly what the UK government accuses Putin and the Russian state of doing?

• Even if we agree with this pseudo-charity's extraordinary use of public funds, isn't getting caught red-handed meddling in other countries affairs a massive display of incompetence from whoever signed off on this scheme at the Foreign Office?

• Doesn't getting caught engaging in shady cyber-war activities and overseas political interference massively damage the UK's credibility when it comes to criticism of stuff like Russian propaganda bot farms, and Russian political meddling overseas?

• Is it time for the Charity Commission to draw up new rules to prevent this kind of egregious political abuse of charitable status?

Aside from these specific questions, there's also the thought experiment of whether Jeremy Corbyn would be getting such an easy ride had he become Prime Minister and then set about pumping £2 million+ of public funds into a shady left-wing pseudo charity that smeared his political opponents at home and interfered in the democratic processes and broadcast media of our European neighbours? [if your answer to this thought experiment isn't "absolutely no way" then you can't have been paying much attention at all for the last three years have you?]

None of these are difficult questions to come up with, and any journalist willing to peruse the cache of leaked documents should be easily capable of thinking up plenty of other pertinent questions about this scandal.

However it seems unlikely these questions will be asked by most mainstream media outlets (and especially the BBC) because they undermine the prevailing mainstream media narrative that casts the Russians as the perpetual baddies because they spread propaganda and interfere in other countries affairs (which they do) and the Brits as the honest and trustworthy goodies standing firm against the nasty Russian threat (despite getting caught red-handed engaging in the same kind of propaganda tactics, foreign meddling, and geopolitical influence-mongering).

In fact the leaked Institute for Statecraft documents reveal the shady means by which this prevailing 'new cold war' mainstream media narrative is actually being spread, including the development of "clusters" of journalists working to spread the Institute's propaganda.

Half of the problem is that in order to question the Institute for Statecraft scandal, a lot of mainstream media hacks would have to question themselves and their colleagues.

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Theresa May's Putinesque propaganda war

Interfering in other countries' democracies, channelling public funds to shady operations that attack and smear opposition politicians and undermine the freedom of the press, maintaining secretive networks of loyalist journalists and civil servants at home and abroad, spreading social media disinformation, electoral cheating to maintain power, and all as the head of a political party bankrolled by dodgy Russian oligarchs.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is a description of Vladimir Putin and his regime, but in fact it's Theresa May and the Tories.

Anyone who has paid the remotest attention to how the Tory cabal funds itself will know that they've racked up more than £3 million in donations from dodgy Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies since 2010, including the sale of direct personal access to government ministers just weeks before the Tory government quashed Labour moves to clamp down on the tsunami of dodgy Russian cash flooding into the City of London.

Anyone who was paying attention during the 2017 general election will know that the Tory party is just as willing to use despicable social media propaganda to achieve their objectives as Vladimir Putin and the armies of Russia-based social media propaganda bots.

And who could forget the brazen electoral cheating the Tories got away with in 2015?

And now we're learning about the incredibly shady activities of a government funded propaganda operation called the Institute for Statecraft after the leak of a cache of damning internal documents about the global propaganda operation they're running (see here to browse the documents for yourself).

The Institute for Statecraft has been set up as a charity so as to avoid paying tax, and has benefited from around £2 million in public cash channelled through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

They've established what they refer to as "clusters" in democratic states across the developed world, including the UK, Spain, France, Greece, the US/Canada, Scandinavia, the Baltic region, and the Balkans. These shady cells act as anti-Russia propaganda outfits and also actively interfere in other countries' democratic processes.

One of the operations they're most proud of was their mobilisation against the appointment of Army reserve colonel Pedro Baños as Spain’s Director of National Security with a concerted smear campaign in the media within hours of the announcement.

They also openly brag about their interference in Spanish politics and the "silencing" of non-conformist voices on Serbian television in a document called "Top Three Deliverabilities for the FCO".

So the UK government is funding this organisation to the tune of £millions, and they're reporting back on their successes in interfering with the political systems and free press of other democratic states.

For an organisation that has been ostensibly created in order to counter Russian propaganda, this all seems more than a little Putinesque does it not?

The Institute for Statecraft operates a Twitter account called "Integrity Initiative" which, according to their Twitter bio, exists to "counter disinformation and malign influence" and "promote media literacy and media freedom".

So now we have an organisation that brags about silencing unwelcome voices on Serbian television simultaneously posing as champions of "media freedom" on Twitter!

And it gets worse. This government funded Twitter account has published several highly partisan political attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, including one Tweet labelling him a "useful idiot" and others sharing the work of bitter anti-Corbyn propagandists in the mainstream media.

So we have a shady propaganda outfit that's pretending to be a charity in order to avoid paying tax raking in £millions from the Tory government while they abuse the leader of the opposition on social media.

The channelling of public funds into a shady organisation that attacks and smears the leader of the political opposition is an absolutely appalling look for an organisation that ostensibly exists to counter Putinism.

The Tory government's use of public cash to fund a shady organisation that interferes in other countries' democracies, attacks press freedom, and bitterly attacks the leader of the opposition would be an absolute outrage under any other circumstances.

Just try to imagine it. Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister and then sets about channelling £2 million in public cash into a shady left-wing pseudo-charity propaganda outfit that actively interferes in other democratic states and bitterly smears his political opponents at home.

Do you honestly believe that there wouldn't be absolute outrage about it across the BBC and the corporate mainstream media?

But you almost certainly won't be hearing anything about this outrageous Tory scandal on the BBC or in the right-wing propaganda rags, and one of the principle reasons why is that this shady pseudo-charity has infiltrated them (especially the Times with three of their 'journalists' listed as Institute for Statecraft assets) as well as dozens of charities, think tanks, and government departments.

Another principle reason is that the mainstream media groupthink is to desperately defend the crumbling and incompetent Tory establishment out of fear that Jeremy Corbyn will actually follow through on his word and reform the political system to put the interests of ordinary people at the heart of government for the first time in decades, rather than continually pandering to the wealthy and coddled establishment cass to which most mainstream media hacks belong.

Hence this scandal will be brushed under the mainstream media carpet along with all the other outrageous Tory scandals they either forget about within days, deliberately obfuscate, or don't even bother to cover at all.

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The Spanish knew about Abdelbaki Es Satty's jihadist links, but they didn't bother to tell the Catalan police

The Islamist extremist who masterminded the August 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils had worked as an informant to the Spanish security services.

Spain's National Intelligence Centre (CNI) have admitted that they had contact with Abdelbaki Es Satty that began during his four year jail sentence for drug smuggling between 2010 and 2014.

It's also been established that Es Satty was known to the Spanish intelligence services when he first arrived in Spain in 2002, and that his contact details were included in the address books of the terrorists who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 193 people.

Es Satty was killed in an explosion in the bomb factory he was operating in the small Catalan town of Alcanar in August 2017.

The CNI have refused to admit when Es Satty stopped working as an informant for them, or how much he was paid. They also failed to intervene when Es Satty appealed against his deportation from Spain in 2015 because the court were presented with no information whatever about his links with Islamist terrorists.

The CNI have not offered an explanation for why none of the information on Es Satty's jihadist links and drug smuggling activities were ever shared with the Catalan police when it became clear that he'd settled in Catalonia either.

What's even worse is that despite the Spanish security services having failed to share the information they had on Es Satty with the Catalan police, Spanish sources in Madrid even set about briefing the press that the Catalan police were at fault for "missing opportunities to uncover the plot".

Given how the justice system works in Spain nobody in the Spanish intelligence agencies will ever face criticism, let alone punishment over this scandal, and if Es Satty was still working as an informant while he was actively plotting terrorist attacks, the fact will never be made public.

We know this because if you're part of the Spanish establishment you can walk free even after being found guilty of vast multi-billion Euro frauds (like Rodrigo Rato and Iñaki Urdangarin have), while if you're considered an enemy of the Spanish state you can be imprisoned without trial for "crimes" like peacefully promoting Catalan independence and organising a democratic vote.

It's absolutely no surprise that the Spanish legal system is widely regarded as the most corrupt in western Europe, and it would take an extraordinary display of wishful thinking to expect anything resembling a proper unbiased investigation into the Abdelbaki Es Satty scandal.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The danger of toxic political tribalism

One of the most infuriating things about writing about politics is the way that so many people don't even bother trying to understand what I've written these days, and just crudely caricature my views instead of actually considering what I actually said. 

People tend to do this because they're political tribalists who want everything to fit into simple and arbitrary "black vs white", "us vs them" type classifications, when things are rarely ever that simple in reality.

Labour 

Probably the most common politically partisan assumption that gets made about me is that I'm blindly pro-Labour. In fact I'm highly critical of many of the things Labour did and didn't do between 1997-2010, their unspeakably inept "austerity-lite" positioning for the 2015 General Election, and the fact that the upper echelons of the Labour Party are still riddled with active opponents of the kind of democratic socialism that the majority of Labour members and voters actually want.

Just because I think Jeremy Corbyn is a principled guy and the best Labour leader in decades, doesn't mean that I've completely forgotten about the toxic legacies of the New Labour experiment. Nor does it mean that I blithely imagine that the Labour Party isn't in need of massive structural reform before it could possibly become the kind of organisation that genuinely represents the will of it's members.

The Brexit debate

Another of the most common tribalist accusations that's hurled at me is that I'm blindly "pro-EU", but anyone who thinks I argued against Brexit in 2016 simply because I love the EU so much clearly wasn't paying any attention to anything I was actually saying.

It's clear that the tribalism cut both ways, with plenty of Remainers forming toxic tribalistic "us and them" mentalities too (look at the charts). However the overwhelming bulk of the insults and abuse I suffered during the EU referendum debate was hurled by Brexiters, so I can't help focusing on them.

I didn't argue against Brexit because I imagined the EU to be faultless (far from it), I argued against it because the leading Brexiteers were clearly willing to lie through their teeth to get their way, because they obviously had no plan for how to actually manage Brexit if they did get their way, and because it hardly took a visionary seer to predict that a "make it up as we go along" Brexit administered by the Tory party would turn out to be a disaster for pretty much everyone in the UK apart from the mega-rich with sufficient capital stashed in tax havens to insulate themselves from the chaos.

But as far as a lot of Brexit tribalists were concerned, that kind of analysis was enough to caricature me as a rabidly pro-EU, anti-British traitor so they could ignore what I was actually saying and instantly dismiss it as the crazed ranting of someone from the enemy tribal ideology.

Catalonia

More recently people have begun hurling accusations that I'm a supporter of Carles Puigdemont and his centre-right pro-Independence party in Catalonia, simply because I've been highly critical of the way the much-more-right-wing Spanish government and the Spanish nationalist establishment in Madrid have been handling the Catalan crisis.

It's as if people can only conceive two possible positions in this political debate too. You either support the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish nationalist establishment in Madrid, or you support Puigdemont and his party. 

There is no middle ground, and just like with Brexit, if you criticise the behaviour of one side, you're immediately characterised by supporters of that side as a promoter of the enemy ideology to be hated, ridiculed and despised.

In my view the Catalan independence movement is actually much more like Brexit than the Scottish independence movement was, because unlike in Scotland in 2014 there isn't really anything resembling a detailed plan for how to manage transition from the union to independence, which makes supporting the Catalan independence movement very problematic for anyone who recognises that economic chaos tends to impact more seriously on the poor and vulnerable than the capital rich.

But Spanish nationalist tribalists don't give a shit about what I actually think about Puigdemont or the actual case for independence, because they're far too busy trying to shout me down as a despicable enemy to listen to what I was actually saying.

Self-determination

Despite my reservations about the unpreparedness of the Catalan government for the transition to independence they've been trying to achieve, I strongly believe in the right to self determination as a matter of principle.

I absolutely reject the idea that the right to self determination can be eradicated in perpetuity by a rushed 1978 constitution that was drawn up in the shadow of a brutal fascist dictatorship, under the very real and terrifying threat of more military rule if the constitution wasn't agreed.

Even if people interpret the Spanish constitution to say that the natural right to self-determination is permanently extinguished as "illegal", it's important to remember that a significant number of national independence declarations were made illegally. The United States, Belgium, Philippines, Albania, Ireland, Egypt, Bangladesh, Croatia and Slovenia are some of the high profile examples. 

It's also important to remember that within living memory it was illegal for black people to travel on the same bus or use the same washroom as white people in countries like the United States and South Africa. It was illegal for consenting gay men to have sex with each other in the United Kingdom (and many other countries). And it was illegal for Catalan people to speak their own language, or to give Catalan names to their children in Catalonia.

When it comes to imperialists and powerful political elites making and interpreting the rules in their own favour, and against minorities, there's often a hugely significant distinction between what is illegal and what is actually wrong.

Justifying violence and repression

The problem with the Catalan crisis of course is that the Spanish nationalists in Madrid have handled the situation about as badly as it's possible to imagine. They sent thousands of police into Catalonia from other parts of Spain to steal ballot boxes, attack non-violent civilians, shoot people with rubber bullets, and drag women out of buildings by their hair. Then the king of Spain deliberately made a bitterly partisan Spanish nationalist speech in front of a portrait of a brutal tyrant famous for repressing Catalonia and banning the Catalan language. Then Mariano Rajoy allowed one of his ministers to make a death threat against the Catalan President without the slightest censure. Then the corrupt and highly partisan Spanish judiciary set about rounding up Catalan political prisoners. Then the right-wing Spanish government overthrew democracy in Catalonia and seized control of the local broadcast media and police force for themselves. Then the Spanish nationalists announced an election for December 21st and set about arresting Catalan nationalist politicians and holding them without bail so that they can't actually stand in the sham election. 

The really sad thing is that a lot of people who oppose Catalan independence seem willing to justify, excuse or deflect attention away from the grotesque things Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish establishment have been doing to try to stop it from happening. 

Even when it comes to violence, death threats, government take-over of broadcast media, political censorship, the taking of political prisoners, and the holding of rigged sham elections, the reaction is to excuse such repressive measures with spurious appeals to legality, to condone them with victim-blaming tactics, or to distract from them with blatant displays of whataboutery.

Furthermore Spanish nationalist tribalists tend to immediately condemn anyone who criticises the divisive, belligerent and repressive approach of the Spanish nationalist establishment as a Puigdemont supporting separatist.

It's as if they're so invested in the anti-independence vibe that they refuse to see that it's a staggeringly counter-productive approach to opposing a non-violent political movement to brutally repress non-violent civilians, take prisoners of conscience, and bring back horrific memories of Franco era repression while gleeful Nazi saluting Falangists are simultaneously celebrating in the streets.

Misrepresentation of the enemy

Despite what tribalists try to claim about my views, there's actually a huge difference between blindly supporting everything that the secessionist leaders say and do, and believing that people have a natural and non-extinguishable right to self-determination.  

And there's also a huge difference between uncritically supporting all of the actions of all of the Catalan independence politicians, and simply pointing out that the violent, belligerent, divisive, oppressive and anti-democratic actions of the Spanish political establishment are creating a huge rift between Catalonia and Spain that is actually increasing the popularity of the Catalan independence movement. 

In fact the absurdly counter-productive attitude of the Spanish nationalist establishment should actually be something that every rational opponent of Catalan independence should be deeply concerned about. But because they've bought into the binary tribalist allegiances game, they'll actually defend (or attempt to distract attention from) what their side is doing, rather than think about the damage it's causing to their own position, and bitterly misrepresent anyone who raises such concerns as a Puigdemont-loving separatist from the enemy ideology who needs to be shouted down, criticised, and insulted.

They simply refuse to compute that someone could believe that the repressive actions of the Spanish nationalists are making the Catalan independence movement ever more likely to succeed, while the less belligerent and divisive approach of just allowing Puigdemont to hold his referendum with a 50% of the total electorate requirement, then calmly and peacefully pointing out that he didn't actually have a coherent plan for independence, would likely have seen the Catalan independence movement beaten at the ballot box.

Victimhood tactics

One of the classic tactics political tribalists use is to pick one of the most insulting things someone from the enemy ideology has said, and then cry victim by claiming that absolutely everyone from the enemy ideology uses insults and abuse like that. 

Thus the tide of victim-complex Brexiters who keep yelling at me that I've unfairly called all Brexiters racist (when I never have, and even actually published an article called "not all Brexiters were racist") and Spanish nationalists crying that I've called them all fascists (when I've done no such thing either).

People resort to this kind of fake victimhood tactic because it's very much easier to argue against a fabricated (straw man) misrepresentation of what the other person is saying, than to actually consider what they've said and find a real fault with it.

The danger of tribalism

Aside from people continually trying to stuff me into simplistic arbitrary positions that I don't actually hold (blindly pro-Labour, pro-EU, right-wing Puigdemont supporter) and totally misrepresenting what I've said to the point of outright lying about it (which annoys the hell out of me), there's something more sinister about this kind of hyper-partisan political tribalism.

We've all seen Brexiters performing bizarre acts of mental contortionism in order to defend the "£350 million for the NHS" lie (and making excuses for all kinds of indefensible stuff like their dodgy donations, their Twitter bot armies, their collusion with foreign interests, Nigel Farage's Nazi style anti-immigrant propaganda, and all of the other lies they told about the joys of the Brexit fantasy land). And now we're seeing plenty of Catalan independence opponents wilfully defending stuff like police brutality, the taking of political prisoners, massive acts of political censorship, and the holding of sham show elections where the leaders of opposition parties have been jailed without trial.

There are clearly a lot of people out there who decide a political position, then rapidly develop a tribal hatred of anyone they characterise (rightly or wrongly) as holding the opposite position, and a strong tribal affinity with others they identify as holding the same position, which is an affinity that stretches to defending the absolutely indefensible out of tribalistic loyalty.

Once people have got themselves into a position where they're actually defending the lies told by Brexiteers during the EU referendum, or the outright assault on democracy and civic freedom that the Spanish nationalist establishment has been conducting in Catalonia, it seems highly likely they'll defend literally anything, just as long as they identify the perpetrators as one of their tribalist allies, rather than a tribal enemy.

This is obviously an incredibly dangerous situation, because once we're willing to turn a blind eye when our tribal allies are doing things we'd scream blue murder at if it was our tribal enemies, we're not only utterly debasing ourselves, we're creating a rotten political environment where stuff like outright lies, corruption, state violence, repression, and political censorship become completely normalised.

for example if Britain somehow comes to its senses and stops (or at least pauses) the absolute farce that the Tories are making of Brexit, there's no doubt that there would be plenty of Brexiteers joining in with the riots when Nigel Farage and his ilk attempt to trigger a violent uprising in response, as they've openly threatened to do.

Similarly, even if Spain resorted to the re-imposition of military dictatorship in Catalonia, which seems to be getting closer by the day, how many of the anti-Independence people are going to suddenly admit that their fellow anti-independence tribalists have now gone too far, rather than blaming the whole thing on Catalans and saying "they brought military dictatorship upon themselves"?

More escalation

Just imagine how the Spanish nationalist establishment will react when the pro-independence parties win another majority in their sham election in December, despite having most of their high profile politicians taken as political prisoners and the regional means of communication either turned into Spanish nationalist propaganda or simply shut down?

The only reaction of the Spanish nationalist establishment to any event in Catalonia so far has been escalation and more repression, so why would they dramatically change position to a more democratic and conciliatory approach when their effort to rig the snap election ends up going all wrong, as it almost certainly will?

Expecting the Spanish nationalists to change tack away from spectacularly counter-productive belligerence is about as likely as expecting tribal opponents of Catalan independence to suddenly throw up their hands and say, "hang on a minute, maybe this guy I've been tribalistically smearing as a Puigdemont fanboy was right all along, and that resorting to violence, belligerence, censorship, and repression is actually a spectacularly counter-productive way of opposing a non-violent political movement".

They'll stick with their chosen tribe, no matter how disgusting and unjustifiable the violence and repression that they have to justify, excuse, or deflect attention from. And they'll keep labelling me as as a member of the enemy tribe and misrepresenting what I'm saying, because that's so much easier than listening to what I actually said.

The worrying thing is that political commentary seems to be ever more populated by tribalists like this.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The EU reaction to the Catalonia crisis is absolutely unacceptable

October 27th 2017 will go down as a historic day in Catalonia no matter what happens from here on in. The Catalan parliament has voted to declare independence from Spain, and the Spanish nationalist government in Madrid has responded by launching a coup against the democratic and social institutions of Catalonia. 

Within minutes of the Catalan declaration of independence the right-wing Spanish government moved to scrap the Catalan parliament, and to give themselves to power to seize control of the Catalan police (Mossos) and independent Catalan broadcast media.

The Spanish prosecutor in Madrid has threatened that everybody involved in the independence vote will be arrested and held as political prisoners like the two Catalan civic leaders Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart who are already being held captive.

Anyone with any political sense whatever must be able to see what an atrocious mess the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has made of the situation with his tactics of violent repression and continual bone-headed escalation.

When he used brute force against non-violent civilians on the day of the referendum he not only created a PR disaster for Spain, he also completely destroyed his ability to cite the low poll turnout as a reason the referendum lacks legitimacy (you can't steal an estimated 700,000 votes from ballot boxes and violently intimidate people away from the polling stations, then complain the turnout wasn't high enough).

When he continually refused to enter dialogue with the Catalan secessionists after the vote, and set about plotting a coup to abolish the Catalan parliament instead, he simply spurred them on to make their independence declaration before the Spanish nationalist coup was launched.

Sadly a lot of people who oppose Catalan independence have bought into the simplistic tribal mentality that if you oppose the Catalan secession, then you need to side with and justify the idiotic and self-defeating moves that Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish nationalist establishment have made in response.

Even more disappointingly, several politicians and institutions that should have been positioning themselves as neutrals have destroyed any hope that they can mediate between the factions by openly siding with the Spanish nationalist government in Madrid.

Just hours before the Catalan parliament declared independence and Madrid responded by launching their coup, the EU President Donald Tusk issued what is likely to be remembered as on of the most ill-considered political statements an EU representative has ever made.

His absurd proclamation that "nothing changes", his determination that the EU will only talk with Madrid, and his pathetic "hope" that the Spanish nationalist government don't resort to violence (again) are unacceptable.

Whichever way you look at it "nothing changes" is a delusional rejection of observable reality. Not only has the Catalan parliament unilaterally declared independence from Spain, the Spanish government is launching a social and political coup against Catalonia.

Spain is undergoing its worst political crisis since it joined the EU. In fact it's arguably the worst crisis since the 1936-39 civil war when the fascist  military dictator Franco seized control of the country and set about brutally repressing the Catalan people until 1975.

If this kind of extraordinary political meltdown is considered business as usual in the EU, then perhaps the Brexiters were right all along that the EU is an absolutely farcical organisation that the UK is better off out of?

Tusk's declaration that Spain remains the EU's "only interlocutor" is a catastrophic error of judgement under the circumstances. If the EU leadership had any sense whatever they'd be positioning themselves as neutral mediators not openly siding with Madrid and refusing to even talk to the Catalan political leaders, because after all, the Catalan people are EU citizens too.

Then to tack a vague wishy-washy sound bite onto the end of his statement about how he hopes that the Spanish government favours "force of argument not argument of force" is simply not good enough.

The Spanish government already graphically demonstrated its willingness to resort to violence and repression on October 1st (we all saw it happening on social media) and the EU demonstrated its refusal to condemn it, so EU figures simply hoping that the Spanish government don't resort to violent repression again is clearly no disincentive whatever.

What Tusk should have done is explain that it would be unacceptable for an EU member nation to resort to violence and repression against EU citizens, because all EU citizens are entitled to freedom of speech and freedom from state repression.

Another problem with this vague hope that the Spanish government don't resort to violence and repression is that it's stark-staringly obvious that the only way that conflict and violence can be averted now is through urgent dialogue and mediation. Something that Tusk made all the more difficult in his previous sentence affirming that the EU sides with the Spanish government and has no interest whatever in talking to the Catalans or taking on the role of the neutral mediator.

It's hardly possible to be disappointed with the belligerent, violent, and anti-democratic escalations of Mariano Rajoy and his party. He was always a fool promoted way beyond his abilities, and they were always a bunch of extraordinarily corrupt hard-right fanatics. Only a fool would have expected better from that repulsive bunch.

However, the EU stance, as outlined in Donald Tusk's Twitter statement, is absolutely exasperating. 

If they continue to bury their heads in the sand and refuse to act as impartial mediators this crisis is only going to get worse, and the EU's critics will have an absolute field day when Catalonia descends into tyranny, police violence, mass civil disobedience, the taking of political prisoners, or even tanks on the streets of Barcelona.

It's bad enough that the EU allows this kind of extreme political repression to go on just across the border in Turkey without imposing sanctions and demanding the restoration of liberal democracy, but it'll be a whole new level of wrongness if they allow this kind of repression within EU borders and against EU citizens, and insist on siding with the government that is inflicting it.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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