Pedro Sánchez tests the docility of the Spanish people towards socialist censorship

Spain is immersed in a political drift dominated by three characteristics of its coalition government of socialists and communists.

The 'anti-Francoist' left is reviving Francoist censorship against journalists in Spain
Imagine if the Holocaust were broadcast on TV and today Germany declared itself a victim

These characteristics are fanaticism, authoritarianism, and political corruption. The Prime Minister is clear proof of this. For some time now, Pedro Sánchez has been instigating antisemitism to use it as a smokescreen to cover up the serious corruption scandals affecting the Socialists, including his closest personal circle. Any other government in the European Union would have already fallen after everything that has come to light in Spain, but Sánchez clings to power in an increasingly alarming display of authoritarianism.

Ese autoritarismo se observa en los numerosos abusos de poder que Sánchez viene cometiendo desde hace años. Anoche vimos otro más. Tras imponer que España no participase en Eurovisión porque Israel iba a estar en ese concurso musical (recordemos que se trata de la única democracia real de Oriente Medio y un país que sufrió hace tres años el peor ataque terrorista de su historia), RTVE, un medio estatal controlado por el gobierno, decidió censurar la emisión de ese concurso, cuyos derechos de emisión para España son exclusivos de esa cadena de TV. Es algo que no había ocurrido ni durante la dictadura de Franco.

Because of this government censorship, many Spaniards had no choice but to follow the event on YouTube. Finally, and as happened in the last two years, the Israeli participant came in second place, a major blow from Europe to antisemitism, including the kind Sánchez has been promoting from power to cover up socialist scandals. Furthermore, it was also a slap in the face to censorship, something that Spaniards thought they had overcome after the end of Francoism but which Sánchez has revived to ban journalists who are inconvenient in Congress (as we have seen this week) and now also to prevent millions of Spaniards from watching a popular TV quiz show on RTVE simply because he has not banned Israel.

Sánchez's excuses for promoting the veto against the Jewish state are as false as they are cynical. However much the Spanish left insists on promoting this falsehood, the only crime of genocide perpetrated in the Middle East was the one Hamas committed against the Israeli population with its terrorist attack of October 7, 2013, a crime about which we have learned new and appalling details this week, about which the Spanish government has said absolutely nothing, after having decorated an antisemitic fanatic who denied those atrocities.

Moreover, Sánchez is a staunch ally of the Chinese communist dictatorship, an anti-democratic regime that perpetrated the greatest genocide of the 20th century and that has maintained an illegal military occupation of Tibet since 1950 without Sánchez having condemned it even once. Let us remember, in fact, that Sánchez has accused Israel of "genocide" but not Russia, which has been massacring Ukrainian civilians for four years in an illegal and unprovoked invasion. This double standard of Sánchez can only be explained by his antisemitism, an ideological prejudice for which he is capable of doing anything.

The most astonishing thing about last night's censorship is the nonchalance with which many have accepted it and the brazenness with which government supporters have even justified it—people who spoke in outrage about Francoist censorship but who now applaud socialist censorship. With each new abuse of power in this regard, Sánchez is testing the docility of Spaniards toward socialist censorship, and the response has been very alarming. In Spain, there seems to be an absurd tolerance for socialist abuses, a phenomenon that is the result of many years of ideological hegemony by a left wing that believes it has the right to disregard the rules of coexistence to impose its opinions on others.

Let's imagine for a moment if the target of this censorship operation were no longer just a television contest, but a sporting competition. This year, UEFA is organizing the World Cup, which will take place in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Israel failed to qualify, but let's imagine for a moment what would happen if they had: Would Sánchez be able to censor the World Cup just as he did with Eurovision? Would we see justifications similar to those we've seen regarding the ban on broadcasting that contest in Spain? There was already a pressure campaign from the Spanish left to veto Israel in that event, pressures that the Iranian national team has not suffered, which will participate in this World Cup, being a country subjected to a brutal Islamist regime that massacres its own population. But the Spanish left has not raised any objections to this.

How far is the fanaticism of the most antisemitic left in Europe capable of going? And to what extent are many Spaniards willing to continue being trampled on by a fanatical, authoritarian, and corrupt government?

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Photo: AFP.