It is as true that in the late 18th century the French Revolution was the beginning of the end of feudalism and absolutism in Europe, as it is true that popular sovereignty was not imposed quickly or uniformly in the Old Continent. Surely, that slowness in overcoming the medieval hindrance is what illuminated Karl Heinrich Marx to give birth to scientific socialism, historical materialism and communism, although personally he was a comfortable bourgeois parasite who never worked as a salaried employee, that is, as one of the central figures of his theory. In any case, the Storming of the Bastille did not, in any way, mean the end of the oppression and suffering of Europeans.
With the devastation left by the Great War, which ended in 1918, and its consequent depression, in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution that began in 1917 and the brand new communism debuting and already prevailing in the USSR, with Lenin intervening in private property and transferring it to the State and with Stalin approaching power, in 1921 the socialist Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini founded the PNF, National Fascist Party. Yes, I have referred to Mussolini as a socialist because before founding the PNF he was a senior leader of the Italian Socialist Party and Director of one of its official bodies, the magazine Avanti. I would like to include a phrase from Mussolini once he had founded the Fascist Party: "Socialism means elevation and purification, and its implementation will be the result of a long series of efforts. Everyone, in reality, from the professional to the worker, can put a stone in this building, carrying out a socialist act every day."
Fascism saw the light as a version of socialism, the inertia of socialist thought was inevitable in the Europe of the second decade of the 20th century, which included nationalist identity tinges with a marked imperialist and territorial expansion tendency. Of course, in economic terms it opposed liberalism, relying on corporatism and the omnipresent interventionist role of the State. Meanwhile and simultaneously, in Germany a movement similar to Italian fascism was gaining ground, led by another socialist named Adolf Hitler, Nazism.
Who could be called a fascist in 2018, then? In view of what fascism was, a fascist today would be that socialist who firmly believed in an interventionist, totalitarian, supremacist, racist and expansionist State. The term 'facha', according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy), has different meanings, but taking the one that gives meaning to this article, 'facha' is derogatory and means "fascist".
Millions of Spaniards, in fact the vast majority of the thirty-five million who can vote, are patriots, love Spain and believe in it, do not like positions that grant territorial, fiscal, health, educational or linguistic privileges and enjoy the idiosyncrasies and particularities of all the regions of their beloved country. As if the above were not enough, that vast majority also like the State Security Forces and the Armed Forces. If there is one thing that Spaniards mostly reject, it is that there are minorities that try to snatch from the vast majority what so much effort has cost to achieve and maintain.
I include myself in the vast majority described in the previous paragraph and I am called fascist or 'facha' indistinctly, I suppose depending on the mood of the ignorant denouncer on duty. Without a doubt, they insult me for my profile, which as I have made clear, is the profile of the vast majority of Spaniards. But beyond the fact that their insult does not make the slightest dent in me, I take the trouble to write this article to clarify concepts and demonstrate the idiocy of anyone who, being a socialist or communist, insults by calling fascist or 'facha', which is essentially their own profile, those of us who are anything but what the founder of fascism was: socialist.
The enormous ignorance and incoherence of the socialist is demonstrated, just as Mussolini was and as he himself is, who uses fascist or 'facha' to insult someone who is antagonistic to socialism. I end by regretting that, although I do not care that they call me insulting me with something that I am not, perhaps others of the same vast majority of Spaniards to which I belong, do care.
By Sigfrid Soria
