Lex Luthor's Kryptonite

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look into whether they have found a way to pierce the shield of lies and fabrications. Have they found the kryptonite to fight the far right cordyseps? Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Once it seemed an impossibility. Since the phenomenon first raised its evil orange head, it looked like there was no stopping it. There was seemingly no way to halt its progress and it quickly metastasized. It showed no known weaknesses. It was a political ebola virus that rendered its victims like zombies. It was a far right-wing cordyceps that seemed to take over people’s minds and make them immune and even reactionary towards truth, reason, facts and plain old decency.

No one really believed it had a chance at first. Even those from the party he recently chose to invade didn’t believe it at first. Robert Kagan, an influential member of the Republican party at the very beginning once wrote, “This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes, but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac 'tapping into’ popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party – out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear – falling into line behind him.” The orange cordyceps had found a host and there was no stopping its growth.

Trump himself once boasted, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" And he seemed to not have been exaggerating. He’s been liable of sexual assault, yet the Christian right in the country see him as a saviour of the faith. He has now been convicted on 34 felony counts for paying hush money to a porn star for a fling they had and instigated a violent attack on the Capitol building resulting in the deaths of police officers, yet the party that once claimed it was the party of Law and Order still blindly support him. And on top of that, there are many, but many more possible convictions in the wings. The cordyceps was invincible.

That is until a tired, yet overly proud old man decided, or more likely, was convinced to step aside and Trump’s kryptonite was discovered. Up until then, the left and the reasonable right had always attempted to combat his barrage of mistruths, distortions and all and out lies with cold hard facts. But as his mentor Goebbels once stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Those immune to the orange virus had been fighting it with antiquated methods. They were following outmoded rules of engagement that civil society once held true. This far right monster needed a new line of attack.

The recent Democratic congress demonstrated that the counter narrative doesn’t necessarily consist of trying to disprove their constant lies, but more taking their own words and exposing them to harsh light of day and truth. These people are ‘weird’. It is not normal to want to ban books. It is not normal to desire a theocracy, it is not normal to wish for the end of democracy. It’s plain weird.

And the new tact seems to be working. They have found their Achille’s heel. Now if only those still uninfected here in Spain take note and learn how to turn the tide.

The (mascaraed) Wolves from Little Red Riding Hood

Revisionism at its worst in today's Camino a Ítaca. Thinly veiled genocidal thoughts from those that would happily liquidate those that think differently. The American right takes a scary turn as they praise one of the most bloody dictatorships of the 20th century here in Spain. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in the HOY, or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The phrase on X (formerly Twitter) was equal parts dangerous and threatening. Its reckless ignorance and skewed revisionism instantly sent chills up the spines of anyone who values freedom and democracy. It instantly evoked violent images of people being lined up against pockmarked walls and being shot or being thrown out of helicopters over the sea.

“Basically, America is going to need a Protestant Franco.”

The world ‘fascist’ gets thrown around a lot these days. Not since the dictator died peacefully in his sleep or his political progeny founded the beginnings of the PP has the word been so in vogue. Its use to label what is going on in the growing far right movements around the world could even, at times, be described as overuse. For some it has become a kneejerk epithet for anyone holding conservative views, thus diluting its real meaning in its overemployment. Well, that is until it isn’t and is used to accurately depict something.

It seems the alt-right in the United States has found a new (for them) symbol. They now extol in the brutal, long-ruling Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. The man who worked with like-minded fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini to overthrow a democratically elected government and murdered more than a hundred thousand innocent civilians whose only crime was that they ‘thought differently’.

If anyone, here is a man who can accurately be labeled as a fascist and has now become a sort of prototype of the type of government that the far right would like to install in the United States and elsewhere. He has become an avatar of religious authoritarianism and their model for confronting the left in the United States and around the world.

But these elegies are not coming out of the dank, dark corners of the deep internet from nostalgic forty-year-old trolls who still live their parents and have never had a girlfriend. This outright praise for authoritarianism and pure fascism is coming from none other than one of the candidates for vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance.

Trump’s smarmy looking running mate, who has the distinct air of one of those preachers who are caught fellating strangers in truck stops, recently provided a blurb and praise for a book called ‘Unhumans’. It’s a conspiratorial screed that argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. And the man who supports these ideas could be an eighty-year-old heart attack away from being the most powerful man in the world.

The far right here in Spain know that to show such outright support for the caudillo is still, on the majority, politically noxious. They are still at the stage of being wolves in sheep’s clothing even if you can easily see their ears. But support like this from principal figures from the right from the most powerful country on earth could embolden them beyond simply revoking historical memory laws where they used to govern. The question is, can’t everybody see the wolves?

The Prosecutor vs. the Felon

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we divert our gaze away from Spain to across the Atlantic to matters that will have global implications. The irony of it all supercedes anything writers can produce. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

It’s a situation that would supersede the great Oscar Wilde’s ironic capabilities and one which would perhaps leave the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson at a loss for words due to its inherent absurdity.

But after Biden’s slow motion car crash into forced retirement, the United States is now faced with a situation where a Black woman candidate is infinitely more viable than two white men: the incumbent and his ex-president opponent.

A woman who for years as a public prosecutor put criminals like her opponent in prison now stands a very good chance of becoming the next President of the United States and by proxy, of the free world. And the underlying irony is what she represents, precisely everything that her opponent, the convicted felon fears.

It is sad that there are people who cannot and/or will not allow themselves to be convinced by logic but here we have a woman with an exemplary public record standing against a convicted criminal.

Her opponent is a man whose supporters innocuously believe will somehow maintain and defend their Christian values, yet willingly overlook the reality. This is a predator who has often boasted about how his popularity enabled him to freely grope women’s genitals and who has been convicted of paying hush money to a porn star for an affair they had. And then on top of that, someone who has been convicted, not simply accused, of sexual assault.

They also fervently believe that this shyster is some sort of wizard with money management, yet forget or ignore that he has had to file for bankruptcy…six times. Despite all this, his cult followers continue to light candles for this exposed used car salesman.

They seem to be willing to overlook all of this to support someone who will defend that deep down conservative fear that someone somewhere they consider inferior to themselves is unjustly being treated as their equal.

The thing is, much more that the coddled billionaire who inherited his wealth, Kamala Harris is a much more accurate representation of what the United States is today. She is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. Yet in the mind of the American public, Harris’s Blackness wins out; her South Indian ethnicity demoted to a secondary, apolitical category.

Her blended family aligns with modern America: she is a stepmother to the children of her spouse; she does not seem to have a relationship to the long-suffering wifedom that plagued the last female candidate, Hillary Clinton. 

It contrasts so sharply with her bigoted opponent. It’s easy to forget that his political career began with a campaign to convince the public that Obama was not born in the United States. This past week has seen him awkwardly trying to figure out how to hate Harris from scratch when it seems likely that any of his infamous slanderous slogans will somehow fly back in his face.

Faced with all of these incongruities, I’m reminded of the 19th century escaped American slave, Frederick Douglass’ words when speaking about the fourth of July under slavery. “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.”

If that’s what it takes, then so be it.