Is Vox really a fascist party?

We analyze the irruption of this political party and its ideology.

Vox. Three letters, one word, one monosyllable. From the Latin "voice". It is the phenomenon that is in vogue.

It makes all the big headlines in digital and traditional newspapers. It is on everyone's lips; at family gatherings, at friends' dinners. The national news broadcasts open daily with some news concerning the controversial political formation that has burst stridently into the Andalusian Parliament, as a result of the autonomous elections held on December 2, 2018. Never before three letters had so many interpretations and debates. But, is it correct to label it as a fascist party?

The party is led by Santiago Abascal Conde (Bilbao, 1976), a former militant of the Basque Popular Party, once called "the party of the brave", given the dark circumstances that took place in that Spanish region during the eighties until well into the new millennium, where the terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (E.T.A.) attacked, kidnapped and assassinated politicians and civilians opposed to their struggle and ideology, with a special fixation on the PPV. And although Vox is the current surprise, it is not a new party, it was founded five years ago.

Vox, from ostracism to media stardom

As we have explained in the introductory paragraphs, Abascal's formation is not a creation of the day before yesterday, but has already been in the Spanish extra-parliamentary activity for five years, a fact to be taken into account. Vox was constituted as a political party and registered with the Ministry of Interior in 2014, the result of a split from the center-right party "Partido Popular", whose former militants saw their basic principles betrayed by the then President of the Government of Spain, Don Mariano Rajoy Brey.

Its first years were complicated and involved in controversies from the beginning. The criticism of political correctness, meetings with the French National Front or the informal support of religious platforms such as Hazte Oír, meant a bad acceptance by their fellow citizens and political analysts.

The images of its members with loudspeaker in hand on a wooden stool like an evangelical preacher did not augur well for their future.. Their persistence, tenacity and conviction have brought them good results and their discourse is debated daily on all television sets.

A fascist party of the 21st century?

There are an infinite number of columnists, opinion makers and political scientists who have rushed to attach this label to the party that has achieved an unexpected result, winning 12 seats in the Parliament of the Junta de Andalucía (Andalusian Regional Government). Their communication mechanisms, disruptive speeches, high-flown words and staging have earned them this categorization. But, is Vox really a fascist party? Let us analyze some data.

According to political science -politology-, fascism is an ideology of exaltation of the leader, a discourse of constant appeal to the representation of the people (in these cases neglected). (in these cases neglected), an authoritarian and, above all, antidemocratic vision of what power is, whose media and public opinion are controlled by the government that the people have ceded to it. Giving up freedom in exchange for security and stability, as was the case in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The authorship of this ideology corresponds to Benito Mussolini, a thought that took place in the period of the two World Wars of the 20th century.

For the vast majority of the Spanish media, Vox meets the basic requirements to define this formation as fascist. Some experts on the subject from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, have no doubt. The authors base themselves, among other points, on the support it has received in its beginnings, and continues to receive in the present: Marine Le Pen and some members of the Francisco Franco National Foundation publicly showed their joy for the results harvested last December 2, 2018.

However, another reference of political analysis and PhD in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Jorge Verstrynge, assured in the microphones of A3 Media that "Vox has nothing like that. I tell you that I was a real fascist. These people have run in democratic elections, which breaks with the essential element of fascism". Íñigo Errejón, founder and Secretary of Analysis and Political Change of the social-democratic formation Podemos, was more ironic: "Vox did not have 400,000 fascists voting for them.".

The background of Podemos

Is Vox a fascist party? This party has earned some enmity among the public opinion for sustaining some of the most controversial points of its electoral program, such as the repeal of the Integral Law of Gender Violence, the recentralization of the Public Administration, the defense -not by law- of the traditional family and of the Judeo-Christian cultural values that constituted modern Spain.

But, is this fascism, or does it correspond to a media strategy to demonize Abascal's formation? There is a similar precedent, not at all distant either, of the party that obtained an unexpected success five years ago in the European Elections of 2014, and which is on the opposite axis of the political spectrum to Vox: Podemos. Since Constitutional Spain, political activity and governance has resided in the so-called "alternation" of the two-party system formed by the right (Partido Popular) and the left (Partido Socialista Obrero Español).

Thus, the links of Podemos with communism and chavismo, which existed and exist, served to polarize public opinion and portray Podemos and to portray Podemos as a communist party, without further ado, despite the fact that it did not comply with any of the typical characteristics of communist parties (starting with setting as one of its main objectives the collectivization of the means of production).

Something very similar happens with Vox, which although it openly expresses ideas that from the political left are branded as anti-democratic, such as discrimination against homosexuals (it proposes to withdraw their right to marry, with all the legal impediments that this generates), or the possible support of Francoist sectors, it is not a fascist party. Neither does it justify the use of violence above the law, nor does it try to mobilize civilians to support the party by dominating the territory, nor does it manifest a cult of the leader.