PP and VOX aren't fascism: a term that no longer means anything

PP, VOX and the label that has lost its edge

"Fascist" has become the cheapest word in the Spanish political vocabulary. It applies to a party even slightly to the right of the PSOE (Spain's main centre-left party), to a working-class neighbourhood voter and, depending on the day, even to a former prime minister who governed with an absolute majority. The accusation is so ubiquitous that it no longer distinguishes anything. And that is where the issue begins: when everything is fascism, nothing is.

This semantic inflation runs through every electoral cycle. The underlying suspicion is that PP and VOX do not fit what history designates with that word, but neither do they resemble the European social democracy that both invoke when it suits them.

From 'reaccionariopobre' to 'social democrat': the map of overlapping labels

The repertoire has become self-referential. "Reaccionariopobre" (roughly, poor fascist) designates the worker who does not vote for the left, a term that says more about the person using it than the person receiving it. At the opposite end, there are those who place the PP squarely in the social-democrat space, with a double argument: in certain circles it calls itself that, and its economic policy differs little from the bloc it claims to fight. The paradox is uncomfortable for both sides. If the PP is social-democrat, the PSOE is left without ground of its own. If it is fascist, the comparison with the twentieth century falls apart on its own.

Another line of thought holds that the real danger comes not from extreme labels but from a financial mercantilism that reduces everything to profit and speculation, and that the working class would fare worse under it than under any paternalism of the past. Taken to its extreme, that diagnosis sometimes drifts into conspiracy narratives about finance. There, the analysis loses its footing.

What remains of the term when it is used for everything

Fascism has a recognisable historical definition: a single party, corporatism, the abolition of elections, a cult of the leader, organised violence against dissent. None of those traits fits parties that stand in elections and govern within constitutional frameworks. Confusing the two levels does not strengthen the criticism: it dilutes it and, in passing, whitewashes by comparison what genuinely was.

The uncomfortable question remains, the one nobody closes: if the label serves to win a headline but not to describe a programme, what is the debate actually about? Data would be the reasonable answer. It rarely happens.