The False Democrats: Rebeca Argudo's Warning in Spain's ABC

In ABC, Rebeca Argudo argues that justifying street violence to defend one's own ideas makes a person totalitarian, not democratic. Her test is simple: imagine the same aggression directed at the ideas you yourself defend.

**ABC** columnist **Rebeca Argudo** published an article on **22 October 2026** titled "The False Democrats" addressing the justification of street violence by those who claim to defend the people's rights and fight the far right. The piece describes concrete episodes: a mob in France that threatened a woman with rape, a self-employed worker watching his business burn, a Chinese immigrant with a disfigured face, and a comic shop owner kicked after his store was looted.

## Coercion as a Method and Property as the Target

Argudo lists what, in her view, this defense of the people's rights entails: destroying everyone's property, looting businesses, and using coercion, threats and force to prevent anyone with a different opinion from expressing their ideas out loud. The column points to the underlying contradiction: if it is the violent ones who defend the people, then those who suffer the damage are not the people, because no one defends them or their rights. The author also includes the idlers who occupy public space with placards, whom she does not consider represented by vandals.

The article describes how a feminist activist told the threatened woman that what peine to her were "collateral damage." According to the column, that same label covers the self-employed worker watching his business burn and the shopkeeper kicked after the looting. The author stresses that no one was defending those victims or their rights.

## The Guillotine as an Argument and the Forgotten Democratic Method

The column criticizes those who appeal to history and the past success of drastic conflict-resolution methods, such as the guillotine, to glorify today's barbarity. Argudo objects that under absolutism there was no democratic method, and that today, when it exists, imposing by force what could not be imposed through the ballot is closer to totalitarianism than to the will of the people. Choosing violence or justifying it, she argues, amounts to renouncing argument, reason and democratic commitment. She calls it incivility.

## The Tolerance Test: Imagine the Scene in Reverse

The author proposes an exercise she describes as free, simple and infallible. It consists of imagining someone defending, with a microphone, the values you believe in, while those brandishing sticks and stones defend the ideas you most despise. Then imagine the scene in reverse. If in both cases you distinguish between the legitimate right to demonstrate and the unacceptable act of aggression, you are a democrat. If violence seems right and admirable when your own side commits it, and speech seems dangerous when it contradicts you, you are a totalitarian who defends rights and freedoms only for those who think like you. The column closes with a "sorry" addressed to those armchair revolutionaries.