Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/22/spaniards-arent-afraid-to-protest-so-why-are-american-conservatives/
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Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government. Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain’s socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain. By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.
The protests are organized by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and Vox, its further right, populist party. In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime “against the constitution” and “national unity.”
But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they’re about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.
Where Are the American Demonstrations?
The problems faced by Spaniards are strikingly similar to those facing Americans. The American left hates our heritage so much they torched American cities and destroyed historical statues and monuments for an entire summer. Our corrupt president, Joe Biden, was able to take power thanks to a rigged election, and his administration has weaponized the federal government against his most prominent political adversary, former President Donald Trump, and anyone in ideological opposition to the Democrats.
The Biden administration’s disregard for border security encourages mass illegal immigration at the Southern Border, exposing the public to dangerous criminals and additional economic burdens while the middle class struggles to stay afloat amid increasing taxes, inflation, and gas prices. And despite the public’s rapidly increasing suffering, Biden prioritizes sending billions of tax dollars to foreign wars and international green energy projects.
All these things, but particularly the federal government’s targeting of conservatives and its assault on election integrity, should be sparking massive protests. Yet they aren’t. Unlike Spain, America was founded on the idea that human beings have God-given, inalienable rights. Freedom of speech and assembly are not just First Amendment givens in the United States, but part of our culture. So why aren’t conservatives protesting?
Using fear and intimidation, the left is scaring conservatives into giving up their freedom to assemble. One of the primary fear tactics is to severely punish those who, on Jan. 6, 2021, opted to protest Democrat’s election-rigging practices, such as mass mail-in balloting and Big Tech censorship. As newly-released Jan. 6 footage further reveals, many of the Jan. 6 protesters accused of rioting were peaceful.
Yet federal courts openly admitted to making examples out of peaceful protesters in order to “deter others.” J6 demonstrators have been harassed by federal agents, held in solitary confinement, and demonized by the Jan. 6 Committee, Biden, and the corporate media.
The American people have also been further scared into silence and compliance by FBI agents who terrorized pro-life activists, attempted to infiltrate traditional Catholic communities, labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists, and covertly categorized Trump supporters as “extremists.”
Conservatives aren’t just afraid — they’re also hopeless. After witnessing the Marxist race riots of 2020 and the erasure of their civil liberties during Covid, many Americans no longer recognize their homeland. A recent Harvard Harris poll shows that 80 percent of GOP voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, a July 2023 poll reported that 86.92 million Americans find “somewhat” or “very” difficult to pay their household expenses, with the middle class being the most affected income bracket.
How many times have we heard friends and family members say, “The country is lost?” This fear and despair are understandable, but the stakes have never been higher. Bravery and self-sacrifice are necessary to defend a nation against forces wishing to destroy it. As Abascal explained to Tucker:
“The nation isn’t just made up of all the Spaniards here today, it’s not just the people you can see walking down the street. Our nation is our history. It’s in the cemeteries where our forebears rest. The nation is the sum of the living, the dead, and those yet to be born… I think that what we do today, even if we aren’t victorious as we hope, can make it so that others in the future, our children, future generations, can achieve that victory. [Then] it will have all been worthwhile.”
Spain Understands The Stakes
Spain has first-hand experience with communism. When communists controlled Spain, both in the lead-up to and during the civil war in the 1930s, it resulted in the persecution of Spanish intellectuals, clerics, and Christian laypeople. Spanish communists began their anti-Christian hate by banning all religious schools, removing crucifixes from classrooms, and deeming all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state. Eventually, they started burning Catholic Churches and mass executing Catholic religious and laypeople. Property rights were thrown out, and conservatives were unjustly convicted in kangaroo courts and executed. By the end of the war, a reported “13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters,” and an unknown number of laypeople were killed.
The wounds inflicted by Spanish communists are still raw. The memory has not died. So, in 2022, Spain implemented its “Democratic Memory” law, an Orwellian piece of legislation that mandates a pro-leftist view of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Through “criminal and economic sanctions for dissidents,” the law effectively eradicates “academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of education,” writes Hermann Tertsch, a Vox Member of the European Parliament.
Like in America, Spanish leftists brand anyone who contradicts their history narratives as thought criminals. According to Abascal, leftists have also created a two-tier justice system and “are now arresting young people for protest[ing] … saying they don’t have permits.” Unfortunately for the left, these fear tactics have not been entirely effective, as the ongoing protests demonstrate, perhaps because too many Spaniards know what communist control looks like.
In America, we are blessed not to know. However, that blessing is also a curse. We don’t appreciate how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny. Unable to oppose or even recognize tyranny, younger generations have lost touch with the American revolutionary spirit after sending generations of Americans to spend their formative years in reeducation camps run by cultural Marxists (aka public school and the university system).
Perhaps a way to regain America’s lost fortitude is by watching conservative freedom fighters in Spain. We may not have the national memory of communists burying priests alive or defiling and decapitating nuns, but we can look to Spain for motivation.
Indeed, the Spanish protests should inspire Americans, and Spanish history should be a warning. If we resign ourselves to failure or allow ourselves to be intimidated into silence, the consequences will be nothing short of complete national destruction.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
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