The Spanish left fears the USA and Israel more than dictatorships like Russia and China

In Spain, the left and the far left have spent decades demonizing democratic countries like the United States and Israel.

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At the same time, socialists and communists maintain good relations with dictatorships like communist China and Cuba. At the diplomatic level, and as we have seen in recent years, the government of Pedro Sánchez, a coalition of the PSOE socialists and the Sumar communists, has decided to sever ties with Israel but not with dictatorships like Russia and Iran. Last year we saw the Prime Minister of Spain accusing Israel of "genocide" but not Russia, which has been launching indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population of Ukraine for four years. This bias is already having an effect on left-wing voters.

This week, the socialist newspaper El País published a 40dB poll. The results indicate that a greater number of respondents see Trump as a threat to world peace than Putin. More also consider Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a greater threat than Iranian dictator Mukhtaba Khamenei or North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Among voters of the communist party Podemos, only 32% marked Putin as a threat to world peace, much more than Trump (78%) and Netanyahu (75%).

Only PP and Vox voters see Putin as the greatest threat, but even among them the effects of the ideological bias of many Spanish media outlets are perceived: for PP voters Trump and Netanyahu are a greater threat than Khamenei, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping (let us remember that the latter leads the world's largest dictatorship, which is generating increasing conflicts with Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan), while among Vox voters they perceive Trump and Netanyahu as a greater threat than the Chinese dictator.

Thus, the Spanish left currently fears democratic countries like the US and Israel more than dictatorships like Russia and China. It is the same left that is always negatively recalling Franco's dictatorship, but which today doesn't look unfavorably upon certain dictatorships simply because of their hostile attitude towards the West. This highlights the curious concept of democracy held within socialist and communist ranks, which is no longer surprising.

Furthermore, if we look at the survey results (taking them with a grain of salt, given the publication), there is a growing bias among Spaniards against the US and Israel, two friendly countries that largely share our cultural values, while there is a staggering indifference towards dictatorships that practice and finance terrorism. Many Spaniards are rightly indignant about the anti-Spanish Black Legend and the absurd prejudices against Spain that still exist in other countries today, but at the same time many Spaniards harbor the same prejudices against two democratic countries like the US and Israel that they lament when their own country suffers them.

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Photo: AFP. A meeting between Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Beijing on October 18, 2023.