The lament seeps through the plastic covering the scaffolding of a building under construction: “I pooped on Christmas!” It is impossible to see the face of the woman screaming from across the street, but she immediately draws a smile of solidarity from the rest of the passersby. Christmas arrived in November, and won’t leave until almost February, and with it school functions, work lunches, Christmas raffles… and family celebrations. The worst thing that can happen in all of these events is that you run out of topics to talk about, and stay silent, waiting for the evening to end soon. The alternative, and more serious, is for someone to raise the hot topic of the moment, where the majority have taken a clear position: immigration. If diners don’t start from compatible, if not popular, positions, a storm can be unleashed.
The only thing that usually saves the day is the love that unites those gathered around the same table, although as the years pass, little of the blood that runs through their veins is shared with them. An emotional bonfire to put out the Christmas fire, which doesn’t exist on X or other similar social networks, where you typically interact with complete strangers with a brutality that could never be used face-to-face. Dehumanization is common, and any truth is read and thrown indiscriminately against another.
Sometimes this is almost a social experience. The latest example of this is the dismantling of a far-right terrorist group that calls for the use of violence to achieve its goals. What is it? Achieving better distribution of wealth? Fight so that what Silvia Pérez Cruz sang: “It is indecent, a people without homes, homes without people?” Do you guarantee that anyone can earn a living without struggling to make ends meet? No, to preserve the white race, which they consider threatened by immigration. What is known as the Great Replacement Theory. The tweet shared by the National Police with the arrest of the three members of The Base read: “The first terrorist cell of an accelerative nature discovered in Spain has been dismantled.”
Within a few hours, the post received thousands of views and hundreds of comments. The interactions are divided into three groups. The first are those who accuse the police of hiding reality under the concept of “acceleration.” “A group of far-right neo-Nazis. It doesn’t cost much to communicate clearly,” sums up one user. Like him, not many people know the theory behind far-right groups: they seek the collapse of the system through violence and chaos to build a new order of white supremacy. It is an ideology that Europol has already detected as a serious threat in 2021, says political scientist Laura Mendes in X. The second, those celebrating the police investigation. Third, those who approach detainees whom they consider to be patriots.
It’s not easy to find The Base’s profiles on X, Instagram or Facebook. The Spanish cell’s Telegram group, now dismantled and with fifty subscribers, no longer exists. The public group is also still active. But fascist propaganda is still available on a range of other networks, such as VKontakte (VK), Russia’s Facebook, which has more than 90 million active users, according to company data. There The Base has a profile, where it extols supremacy, posting photos of its Spanish faction as well, showing its members wearing masks and armed.
This racist content reaches and penetrates all latitudes, to the point that there are those who are proud to be fascists or fascists. If it happens at the next family Christmas meal, the first thing to do is pull out the emotional ashtray. Then, whether it works or not, take them to the movies to see it Nuremberg.