Albiol was able to see for himself that it is much easier to encourage the population to climb the mountain with torches than to then convince them that caution is more appropriate and that the reasonable thing to do is to descend in a civilized manner.
Sadism as a political principle
All of us who have been educated in the Christian tradition are aware that its anthropology is based on the idea that all human beings share the same dignity because they were created by God. This conception contributed decisively to the consolidation of a moral universalism of great importance for the West, which later, already in modern times, would be reinterpreted and secularized in the theories of natural rights, also leaving an indirect mark on the subsequent language of human rights.
In his influential book ‘Against the tidethe economic historian Douglas Irwin also shows how certain currents of Christian thought contributed very early to legitimize commerce as a socially necessary and morally permissible activity. Despite its anti-commercial roots, Christianity eventually consolidated the doctrine that all the wealth and resources of planet Earth were deliberately dispersed by God to promote commerce and peaceful cooperation among human beings. Already in the 5th century, certain Christian thinkers like Theodoret, Irwin tells us, understood that the absence of economic self-sufficiency required societies to cultivate friendship throughout the world. Therefore, human beings would be nothing more than brothers obliged to share the inheritance of the rare natural resources that planet Earth has bequeathed to us.
We know, however, that this worldview was buried by the brutal practices of conquests, wars, massacres and slavery, often justified in the name of Christianity. However, even in the worst moments of history, such as those which followed the invasion of America by Spanish troops, Christian society suffered from the lively tension between the doctrine of imago Dei —we are all children of God—and interpretations ad hoc developed to justify new social and ethnic hierarchies. There is perhaps no better example than the Valladolid debate of 1550, where Bartolomé de las Casas defended the American Indians as equals in nature against those who considered them inferior beings deserving of the punishments inflicted on them by the conquerors. This ongoing tension explains why Christianity was both a source of criticism and a legitimizing language of domination.
Later, with the consolidation of nation-states, Christian universalism was gradually subordinated to national and proprietary logic, in a process that reinterpreted – and partly gutted – the principle of imago Dei, while surviving as a discursive tradition – that’s how it came to me as a child, for example. It is this slow break with fundamental Christian principles that explains the paradox of today’s far-right parties – and their voters – who declare themselves Christian, but at the same time harbor a deep hatred towards human beings born poor in other parts of the world. It is an identity reconfiguration of Christianity which empties its moral universalism and transforms it into a cultural device of national exclusion, a turning point particularly present in fascist movements.
The recent incidents in Badalona, where more than 400 immigrants found themselves on the street after being expelled from a former institute where they were taking refuge from the cold, are a contemporary manifestation of this drift. Although the municipality was obliged by the courts to find a housing solution for these people, it was first and foremost the Church which offered to accommodate some of the people concerned. In front of them, a few hundred racist neighbors were maneuvering to avoid the help offered to them by the Church. A sample of fascism that sums up the worst of the human species: the desire not to allow the slightest help to those who need it most.
According to what the press tells us, the mayor of the municipality, the ultra Xavier García Albiol – of the PP – went to the improvised fascist demonstration to try to act as a mediator. In the audio recordings, however, you can hear how the mayor offers recommendations to the Exalted so that they do not commit hate crimes that could later be used as evidence in court. In addition to this, which is more a collaboration with the fascists than a mediation, the mayor saw how his proposal to allow immigrants to sleep at least the same night in the church failed: the fascist neighbors did not accept even this minimal concession.
In fact, Albiol was able to see for himself that it is much easier to encourage the population to climb the mountain with torches than to then convince them that caution is more appropriate and that the reasonable thing to do is to descend in a civilized manner. This PP mayor was one of the first to incite hatred with his anti-immigration speech, and until now, he has been able to make it politically profitable. However, at that moment, he feels overwhelmed because others are channeling a hatred that no longer finds limits. This is exactly what is happening to the PP throughout Spain: whatever the anti-immigration discourse, it is the far right of Vox that wins in every episode like the one in Badalona.
Fortunately, class organizations such as CCOO, but also private neighbors and church organizations themselves, have been an example when it comes to helping and helping people whose main handicap was being born in the wrong place in an unequal world. All of them would today be the most advanced and coherent version of our historical Bartolomé de las Casas, who, therefore, also denounced the mistreatment and abuse against these poor people pierced by the Spanish spears. On the contrary, the fascist elements who demonstrated the other day, as well as the leaders of Vox and the PP who fueled this climate or who directly protect and encourage this behavior, would have been aligned in 1550 with those other theologians who, forgetting their Christian roots, preferred the profitability of a world torn by wars and misery.
As these types of situations teach, it is not too bold to assume that the majority of these fascist protesters – along with the Vox and PP leaders who incited or applauded them – then left to complete preparations for the Christmas holidays; They surely installed crèches in their homes and celebrated with their families the birth of this Palestinian child whose preaching no one remembers anymore because ethnic nationalism and the lure of money have devoured everything.
This is why it is worth reflecting on the extent to which a part of our society has emptied of content the words it claims to revere – Christianity, dignity, humanity – and reduced them to cultural decoration without moral obligations. No daycare can hide the fact that denying shelter, food or shelter to those sleeping rough is not only political barbarity, but a profound ethical failure. If Christianity means something more than folkloric and identity slogans, it is expressed above all in the obligation to help the most vulnerable. Everything else – the torches, the shouting, the institutional cowardice and calculated complicity – is neither tradition, nor order, nor defense of anything: it is simply fascism wrapped in Christmas paper.
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