From ”that wasn't really communism” to “a left-wing Gov would be needed in Spain”

Between 1989 and 1991, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe under the weight of the failure of its own formulas.

Leftist statism, an effective disguise for being authoritarian and avoiding reproaches
Six Spanish political parties support dictatorships, and all six are left-wing

I was very young then, but I remember well what followed in the years that came after. Instead of acknowledging the errors and crimes committed (we are not talking about something marginal, but rather a totalitarian movement that killed more than 100 million human beings, perpetrating some of the greatest genocides in history), communists launched a rebranding campaign to convince us that this resounding failure was not due to the policies themselves being flawed (referring to the abolition of private property and freedoms, the granting of absolute power to the State, and the torture and murder of dissenters), but rather to the claim that what had taken place was not *real* communism.

This cynical explanation was disseminated in various ways. According to some extremists, communism failed because it was not bloodthirsty *enough*: in their view, it should have been even more ruthless toward anyone who raised objections to its dogmas. Others argued that European communism had actually been "state capitalism"—a claim as cynical as saying that Nazism failed because it was "Aryan Judaism." Whatever the argument, the goal was the same: to absolve communism of all responsibility for the consequences of its actions, so that—before long—it could once again attempt to deceive the masses with the same utopian falsehoods that had duped others since 1917.

We are currently witnessing a similar process in Spain. The Socialists have been in power for eight years under Pedro Sánchez, and for the last six, they have governed in a coalition with Communists: first with Podemos and now with Sumar, displaying astonishing incompetence. This government has trampled on the Constitution countless times, attacked judicial independence and the free press, and ultimately plunged into a wave of corruption scandals—to which those in power have responded with an authoritarian drift that now threatens to reduce the rule of law in Spain to rubble.

One of the consequences of these eight years of leftist rule is evident in the housing sector. Establishing a home in Spain is more expensive than ever today, with a rental market where prices have skyrocketed (a result of the Left’s zeal to intervene in the market and encourage rent defaults and the illegal occupation of properties) and with the prohibitive cost of purchasing an apartment—a consequence of a heavily regulated real estate market where obtaining a building permit for a residential complex can entail up to two years of bureaucratic hurdles and red tape.

This situation creates an explosive cocktail when combined with another ingredient: low wages and high unemployment figures, the result of heavy state interventionism that stifles business creation and drives away foreign investors. What Spain is experiencing is the result not only of eight years of Sánchez’s leftist government but of decades of socialist policies. The Socialists have held power for 29 years since 1982; furthermore, the main opposition party, the Popular Party (PP), largely adopted social-democratic prescriptions, meaning there has been virtually no real change in economic policy.

After eight years of leftist governments, Spanish socialists and communists are now adopting a combative stance—acting as if the Right had been in power since 2018, when in reality, we have had to endure them and their constant economic blunders, which have been particularly damaging to farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises. Once again, the Left’s propaganda campaign seeks to convince us that we need more of the left to fix what the Left has destroyed, much like in 1989, when some tried to make us believe that the disaster wrought by communism could be solved with more communism. Ultimately, you realize that now, just as 36 years ago, the Left takes people for fools; and to be fair, in the case of their most fanatical followers, they aren't wrong: they will keep voting for socialists and communists time and again, even as they are led to ruin.

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Image: Meta.ai.