The End of an Era

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look at how blind the far right is to the meaning of their own words. Click over to read the original piece published in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I never thought I would see something like this happen. It seemed to go against everything the National Catholic party had ever demonstrated since its formation. It’s a move so contradictory to everything they had previously stood for, and so diametrically opposed to their normally clear and outright bias in favor of the Catholic Church, that it almost makes you wonder if it was a mistake.

In their coalition agreement with the PP, they even went out of their way to make it a point to favor the concertados over public schools which in their vast majority are run by the Church.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that the extreme right party, in coalition with the PP in Extremadura, were going beyond anything that the left would ever dare try. But against all this, the neo-fascist parliamentary group registered in the Assembly of Extremadura a proposal to encourage the government of Maria Guardiola to remove religion from schools.

I was completely taken aback when I read it. In the text they urged “the necessary measures to promote the immediate withdrawal of textbooks and educational material containing any type of indoctrination or potentially harmful content that may affect the innocence of minors.”.

The audacious move would mean an end to the long-standing, state sponsored torture that has been meted out in both public and private schools across the region since public schooling began.

No more textbooks indoctrinating children that the Christian god is the one and only true god. No more books terrorizing children with the idea that they or their loved ones would spend an eternity burning in molten sulfur for going against the bronze-aged precepts laid out in the bible. No more nightmares for the ‘sin’ of going to McDonald’s and eating a hamburger on Fridays. No more sleepless nights worrying that their classmates who don’t go to religion will suffer in a purgatory far worse than the clase de la nada they now have to endure as an empty, time wasting alternative to religion class.

The vague, blanket statements that the extreme right specializes in to provoke emotive reactions also cause confusion. They purposefully make it difficult to discern what they are really trying to say behind their negative slogans. Making it difficult to establish what they really mean with their inflammatory yet empty statements.

Rather than clarify what they are for, what the extreme right always does is to go on about what they are against. They vociferously claim to be against any type of ideology in class, but rarely, if ever do they specify what they support and what they propose in exchange.

The Spanish curriculum is centered on equality, inclusiveness, solidarity, integration, tolerance, no discrimination and democracy. If this is what they are against, it’s clear that their ideology goes radically against core constitutional values.

So, what do they stand for? The opposite perhaps?

Inequality, both economically and socially? Exclusiveness? Good Catholics and gente de bien on one side and ghettos with armbands for the rest? Apartness and intolerance for newcomers who have just arrived?

Their empty slogans remain extremely dangerous, but at least this time it may bring about something positive.