While I’m writing something silly about fruit juice, the foul Vox machine has been heating up the racism card. Last week, their spokesperson Rocío de Meer was on about deporting the eight million foreigners here (and turning Spain into, once again, a Christian nation, a bit behind the times perhaps, but with everyone knowing their place).
Now, in one of those towns where there are lots of North African labourers, in Murcia (a fertile province for those who hear voxes), there have been several days of riots in Torre Pacheco (population 41,600 of which around 11,500 are foreign workers).
The issue comes from local and imported troublemakers following an incident last week where an elderly local person was beaten by a local Moorish kid with a rock, with his two friends watching, to put something on TikTok. A video of a totally different event, occurring in Almería, found its way to the social media. ‘The person who was beaten and appears in the video released by the neo-Nazis Alvise, Desokupa, Frente Obrero, Vox, and their media apparatus is named as José Moya. He's a sin-techo (a beggar) from Almería which is where this event occurred. The two boys who beat him are Spanish and are in prison’.
But, back to Torre Pacheco. elDiario.es says ‘Over the weekend, brigades of dozens of extremists have deployed violently through the streets of this town with the intention of "hunting" immigrants. Their pretext? That a 68-year-old man was beaten last week. Initially, it was said that the attackers were a group of Moroccans; now, the story is more likely that the attacker was a young man (a Moroccan youth was later arrested while attempting to escape to France). With that, with a single action, denounced and xenophobically described by Vox as if it were almost an act of war, an entire operation of collective violence has been fabricated, which has received reinforcements from outside the town…’ By Monday, ten people had been arrested, another thirty had been fined and a further eighty identified by the police. Many of them coming in from elsewhere to participate.
Newtral wades through the various fictions here. A video of ultras attacking a kebab store while the police look on in Torre Pacheco is here. From El Plural here: ‘The Vox leader in Murcia, José Ángel Antelo, maintained that Spain should be a country "for those who come to work and respect its laws," and called for stricter enforcement and deportation policies. "We don't want people like that on our streets or in our country. We're going to deport them all: not a single one will remain. People come to Spain to work and generate wealth, not to commit crimes or spread terror," he added’.
For Santiago Abasca
l (seen here dressed as a concentration camp commandant in a mock-up video from minute 3.14 made with material from ‘Deport Them Now’ in an Italian exposé) and his extremist party, it’s all good. La Marea has more here.
Deport Them Now is explained at EOLaPaz here: ‘On the fringes of social media, where algorithms reward outrage and misinformation, the "Deport Them Now" group emerged in 2021. This transnational platform quickly transformed from a mere hashtag into a structured xenophobic movement. With roots in Anglo-Saxon far-right forums and connections to European identity movements, its message is clear: the mass expulsion of immigrants is the only solution to Europe's "problems" of security, unemployment, and cultural identity’’…’
From elDiario.es here: ‘experts consulted by elDiario.es about the Deport Them Now group agree that it "is suspicious." They emphasize that it is "well organized," and one suggests that it could be the result of astroturfing, a manipulation strategy that consists of simulating a spontaneous citizen movement when in reality it is directed by those with specific interests. This is a common tactic in political and digital propaganda: feigning popular support for a cause, when that support is actually inflated or outright fabricated, in order to gain legitimacy and amplify its impact.’
From Robando Tu Tiempo here: ‘The bulo of the small government handouts and the selective memory of a country that also emigrated. Few hoaxes have penetrated the collective imagination as deeply as the one that immigrants come to Spain "to live off small allowances". A mantra repeated ad nauseam by the far right, amplified on social media and in bars, and defended without data by parties like Vox, whose discourse is based on fear, misinformation, and xenophobia. But when this narrative is compared with the data, there is no other possible conclusion: it is flatly false…’
Onda Cero says: This is what would happen in Spain if immigration disappeared. Spain is not experiencing an invasion, but rather a relationship of functional interdependence with the countries of the global south. In other words, what is presented as a problem is, in reality, a structural necessity’.
From El HuffPost here: ‘The impossible promise to deport eight million people: "It would be social and economic suicide". Vox's proposal violates fundamental rights and would lead Spain to ruin with a sharp drop in production and a blow to the pension system’.
Later: A far more disturbing attack by a recent Moroccan immigrant (he was already due to be returned to that country) occurred this Wednesday morning in Tenerife, where he set on fire an underage girl, who is now in hospital with 95% burns. The question for the Voxers, of course, is… is she Spanish or is she Moroccan? It will make a huge difference to them.