The Guardian: Fear of the far right and the collapse of Podemos gave Spain’s socialists victory

Sánchez’s victory is the result of two main trends. First and foremost is the rise of Vox, a new, openly misogynistic and xenophobic party that toys with nostalgia for Franco’s dictatorship. Backed by the likes of Steve Bannon, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, and indirectly financed (via the Madrid-based CitizenGo organisation) by a US super PAC with ties to Donald Trump, Russian oligarch Aleksei Komov and the Italian MP Luca Volontè, who is accused of bribery, Vox rode a wave of anti-Catalan sentiment into the government of Andalucía in December. Sunday’s massive turnout (75.8%) was most likely driven by widespread fear of a rightwing coalition government that would include it.

The second trend that explains Sánchez’s staggering victory is the decline of Unidas Podemos, the radical-left party that emerged in the wake of the anti-austerity indignados movement. Though the party initially promised to implement a progressively participatory new style of politics, over time its leadership has adopted a more traditional top-down approach that has been overly reliant on individual personalities. It lacked proper channels for democratic deliberation, so internal dissent most often took the form of high-profile desertions, such as that of former party leader Íñigo Errejón. It was also recently revealed that a group of police officers have been accused of conducting a smear campaign against the party, with help from government officials. Much was made, too, about the purchase of a pricey chalet by party leaders Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero, which was depicted in the media as a betrayal of the couple’s leftist ideals. [...]

Towards this end, Podemos could take some cues from the leftwing councils currently governing most of Spain’s major cities, including Madrid and Barcelona. Though not without significant shortcomings, these councils have made citizen participation a crucial part of their brand by organising citizen consultations and participatory budgets. On the other hand, a more radical approach to participation would involve opening the party up to more meaningful forms of deliberation and participation. Over recent years, Podemos’s failure to do so has come off as a disavowal of its initial promise. This is most disheartening because it leaves the impression that a new approach to politics simply isn’t possible. And when the new seems impossible, people are tempted to go back to the old ways or, worse, to embrace the destructive, authoritarian political nihilism of the far right.

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Politico: What Putin could lose in Ukraine

Unlike Poroshenko, who embraced Ukrainian nationalism and spoke only in Ukrainian, Zelenskiy is capable of speaking to Russians in their own language, and of reaching them through his Instagram and other social media channels. For Putin, having a Russian-speaking president in democratic Ukraine is like eating a live octopus — exhilarating, yes, but also terrifying. [...]

Putin, it seems, has a different take. The Russian president has not called the Russian-speaking comedian to congratulate him on his victory. There has been near silence from the Kremlin except a terse statement “recognizing” the election, while criticizing Ukraine for not allowing the 3.5 million Ukrainians living in Russia to vote.

Sure, Putin most likely prefers Zelenskiy to Poroshenko, who was more interested in going mano o mano with Putin than the nitty-gritty of governance. The comedian has promised to lift the ban on Russian artists and Russian social networks, and will most likely encourage a cultural thaw between the two countries. Direct flights might even be reinstated at some point. [...]

The real danger for Putin is what happens next. Zelenskiy fired the first salvo on election night by calling out to all post-Soviet states with the cheer: “Look at us – everything is possible.” His landslide victory in a free election has puzzled Russians who are used to elections being decided in advance. It makes them wonder whether Putin could also be so easily swept aside in a free election. The theater of democracy in Ukraine has already been infectious: Some politicians have called for debates in football stadiums for Russian elections.

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UnHerd: Who voted for Vox?

One of the key causes of current disruption, though, was glaringly absent from the highly-staged, high-stakes debates. Vox, a radical Right-wing group founded a mere six years ago, was not eligible to participate because it didn’t have any elected representatives in Madrid. Not any longer. Vox has since claimed 24 seats in Spain’s parliament – the first far-right grouping to win any seats since the death of Franco, in 1975. [...]

Vox offers an affirmation of traditional, unapologetic, masculine Spanishness. “The Left will never succeed in making us feel ashamed for that which only merits pride,” said Abascal at a rally last autumn. This is Spanish politics, cowboy-style: Vox’s campaign video shows its leader crossing a plane as a lone ranger on horseback.

Abascal proudly invokes Spain’s unity and Catholicism while calling for drastic measures against immigrants, particularly of a Muslim background. He defends family values and stands up for men against the oppression of “feminazis”. He champions hunters and bullfighting, opposes gay marriage (which has been legal since 2005), and wants to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape. [...]

The Catalan crisis is definitely a factor in Vox’s rise in a country that was long considered immune to the anti-immigrant, right-wing populism that has emerged in many other countries. But more important is the feeling that the progressive urban political elites have neglected their needs and disparaged their traditions and culture. This disconnect is something we are seeing throughout Europe. And is felt particularly strongly in rural populations. But the Vox message has also found purchase in wealthier, culturally conservative voters; this could be down to the fact that the party twins its conservative nationalist message with more liberal economic proposals (it seeks, for example, to reduce corporate tax rates, and abolish inheritance tax and estate tax altogether).

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PolyMatter: Is Amazon Too Big?

Politico: Salvini ally tipped to resign over corruption case

The League politician — who serves as a transport undersecretary but is a key economic adviser to the party’s leader, Matteo Salvini, and a close ally of Steve Bannon — is being investigated over whether he accepted a €30,000 bribe from a businessman in return for pushing specific renewable energy policies. [...]

The populist 5Stars have repeatedly called for Siri’s resignation. “When there’s the mafia involved, we can’t wait for the trial before deciding. [Siri] must go,” Luigi Di Maio, the 5Stars leader, said Thursday. According to prosecutors in Rome, Paolo Arata, the man who allegedly bribed Siri, was in business with Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian businessman facing a possible 12-year jail sentence for his alleged ties to the mafia. [...]

Agriculture Minister Gian Marco Centinaio, also from the League, told a radio show that Conte has no powers to remove Siri from office, and said “if he were to issue a decree to oust him against our will, we’d withdraw our confidence in the prime minister.”

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The Guardian: Why we need to pause before claiming cultural appropriation

The artist Kenneth Coutts-Smith wrote one of the first essays on the subject in 1976, entitled Some General Observations on the Concept of Cultural Colonialism. He never actually used the term cultural appropriation, but he was the first to bring together the Marxist idea of “class appropriation” (in which notions of “high culture” are appropriated and defined by the dominant social and economic class) and “cultural colonialism”, which describes the way western cultures take ownership of art forms that originate from racially oppressed or colonised peoples.

This is important to bear in mind. Our modern understanding of cultural appropriation is highly individualised. It’s all about what Halloween costume you wear, or who’s cooking biryani. But the way in which the idea was first used was to describe a relationship of dominance and exploitation between a global ruling class and a globally subjugated one. The idea that cultural appropriation is primarily a form of erasure – a kind of emotional violence in which people are rendered invisible – came along later. And this is the sticky point. Is it right to level the same criticism at an act of cultural borrowing that doesn’t have a clear angle of economic or political exploitation as for one that does?[...]

When you’re a second- or third-generation migrant, your ties to your heritage can feel a little precarious. You’re a foreigner here, you’re a tourist back in your ancestral land, and home is the magpie nest you construct of the bits of culture you’re able to hold close. The appropriation debate peddles a comforting lie that there’s such thing as a stable and authentic connection to culture that can remain intact after the seismic interruptions of colonialism and migration.

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