In 2016, two completely unforeseen and traumatic political phenomena occurred: Brexit and Trump’s victory. Far from being minor or anecdotal episodes, both events brought something disturbing to the surface of politics, which until then was only intuited: that what until then we had understood as common sense had changed its meaning.
Reason had just given way to emotion in collective decision-making. More than sixty years of political concord born from the ruins left by the Second World War, when liberals, conservatives and social democrats—even Eurocommunists—came to an agreement to ensure collective peace, democracy and economic prosperity to a devastated continent, ended in one fell swoop. .
“Since 2016, reason stopped being the driving force, science was and continues to be called into question and the benefit of some (us) to the detriment of others (them) became the almost exclusive objective of politics”
Not only that: the old man also leaked dictum that Hobbes left written, in that distant 17th century, in that founding text of modernity that is the Leviathan: “the reason is the impulse, the increase of knowing the way, the benefit of humanity, the goal.” Not anymore. Since then, reason ceased to be the driving force, science was and continues to be questioned and the benefit of some (us) to the detriment of others (them) became the almost exclusive objective of politics.. That 2016 marked not only a change of course, but perhaps of era. We are still living its epilogue.
But to correctly understand the rise of the extreme right, we must transcend national borders and open ourselves to an international perspective. It is true that before 2016 there were far-right forces that were gaining electoral ground in their respective countries, but above all since that year they began to coordinate at a transnational level. Trump became an icon, a guide, a role model.
When he won the American presidential elections, Vox was going through a deep crisis in Spain that almost made it disappear. But in October 2017, Catalan separatists tried to engineer a binding referendum. In December 2018, Vox emerged with 12 seats in the Andalusian Parliament. And in 2019 it was already the third parliamentary force in the country. Just as happened with Brexit and with Trump before their respective successes, no one had given a damn for Vox since it was founded in 2013 until it achieved its first success in 2018.
“Vox has been, by far, the one that has most and best adopted and adapted Trumpism, in all its varied facets, to the Spanish political ecosystem”
The relationship between Vox and Trump began early: Abascal was the only Spanish political leader who celebrated his victory in November 2016. Not only that, but the Spanish party has been, by far, the one that has most and best adopted and adapted Trumpism, in all its varied facets, to the Spanish political ecosystem: from messages (America first or “Spaniards, first”) to the proposals (such as building a wall in Ceuta and Melilla and having Morocco pay for it), passing through the election of the same staunch enemies (the left, of course, but also the media communication or the WHO). The mimicry of those from Abascal with the spin doctors of the first Trumpism has been of such caliber that it would make one blush if the electoral gains they achieved by imitating it did not, on the other hand, produce astonishment.
At the origin of the increasingly close relationship between Vox and Trump was Rafael Bardají, former advisor to José María Aznar, who, according to Abascal himself, met with Trump’s team hours before his inauguration in January 2017. Bardají consolidated the love affair with American neoconservatism a year later through Steve Bannon, during his European tour to export to the old continent the good news of the alt right americano. Its short-term objective was to implement Trumpism as a political project in Europe to achieve a third of the votes in the European Parliament in the elections that were going to be held in 2019, where the different European extremist groups started from 16% support: they achieved 22%, ten percentage points from the objective.
However, beyond the similarity of messages, strategies and mental frameworks, to correctly understand the relationship between Vox and Trumpism, we must follow the money trail.the economic ties that lie beneath an ideological surface. The repeated trips of Vox leaders to the United States, which began almost eight years ago led by Hermann Tertsch and Iván Espinosa allowed the Spanish extreme right to interact with officials of the Trump administration and with think tanks extremists like the Heritage Foundation.
“The repeated trips of Vox leaders to the United States served to channel private donations to Abascal’s party from Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida”
In addition to weaving an important network of Republican support in Miami, Florida, Texas and New York; Those trips served to channel private donations to Abascal’s party from Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida, where the Spanish-Cuban Rocío Monasterio served as a link both due to her roots and her influence in the party apparatus.. Now that he has ousted her, Abascal will surely miss her when he balances his accounts and certifies, for another year, that donations and legacies are progressively reduced.: from more than a million and a half euros declared by the party itself in 2019, the figure has dropped to €117,723 in 2023, according to its own economic reports.
But the benefit that the Spanish and American extreme right extract is mutual: Abascal also contributes to the Trumpist cause by mobilizing the Hispanic vote through the channels of the family-run media conglomerate. Ariza as well as by the Disenso Foundation. More than 36 million Latinos will be able to vote in November, almost 15% of the electorate, a percentage high enough to lose or win the Presidency. While Latino voters have favored Democratic candidates in presidential elections for many decades, the margin of support has varied: in 2020, 61% of Latino voters voted for Biden, while 36% voted for Trump, but This difference has narrowed with Kamala Harris (54%) and, in key states such as Arizona and Nevada, Trump finds more support among young Latino men under 50 years of age, according to two surveys recently published by Suffolk University and the USA. Today.
“Trump’s main delegate in Europe, and also Putin’s, is without a doubt Viktor Orbán”
In short, Trump, with that unapologetic expressive incorrectness that elevates to the altars of high politics the outbursts usually uttered in bars by the most exalted patrons, is the new model of ruler for the extreme right of the world. As at the time, Mussolini was the mirror in which the satellite fascisms that replicated the Italian model were looked at, even for Miguel Primo de Rivera who established the first Spanish dictatorship. Trump is, along with Putin, the new Princealthough he has not yet found the Machiavelli to write to him. Both have their particular dedicated acolytes, plenipotentiary ambassadors and apostolic nuncios who point out the right path to follow.
Trump’s main delegate in Europe, and also of Putin, is undoubtedly Viktor Orbán. No wonder he is the longest-serving European extreme-right leader – since 2010 uninterruptedly – and has consolidated a new paradigm of illiberal democracy in his country. In addition to being the main destabilizing agent within the European Union, something that excites the Russian autocrat and the American satrap, with whom he met as soon as Hungary acceded to the presidency of the European Union, more symbolic than operational, sending a clear international message. what were its principles and who were its governing princes.
But between Orbán, Marine Le Pen and Salvini—Meloni, for the moment, is playing his own cards—Abascal is trying to stand out among the European congregation of leaders who look at the American with rapture, fervor and hope. After almost more than seven years of close relationship, Abascal considers himself one of them. And it seems that Trump’s people also consider him one of their own: this year, for the first time, he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Republican conclave. They are, as in Scorsese’s film, Goodfellas: good guys who want to make their respective countries great again. And for that you only need to cleanse the country of unamericans and anti-Spanish. And immigrants, of course.
