Setbacks and setbacks

Kurt Tucholsky, who saw his books burned by the Nazis in the public square, practised a cabaret-like sarcasm that did not prevent him, whether out of desperation or by accident, from dying from an overdose of sleeping pills. A pacifist and anti-militarist – they are not always the same – he is the author of phrases such as: “Germany has an anatomical singularity: it writes with its left hand, but acts with its right hand.” The Acantilado publishing house has published some of his books, which remind us that not everyone remained silent in the face of the rise of Nazism and that, in situations of social and institutional chaos, being right is more of an electoral burden than an advantage.

On Sunday, the first post-election analyses in Germany, from Berlin, agreed in proclaiming a change of era and comparing it, in terms of significance and uncertainty, with the fall of the wall. We do not know if these diagnoses are correct, precisely because the current uncertainty is fuelled by the perverse exploitation of confusion. Were the analysts of the fall of the wall in 1989 right or did they confuse expectations with reality? In the special programmes of RAC1 and Catalunya Ràdio, the experts recalled that the youngest voters no longer share the forms of communication of their ancestors and that today TikTok is more important than controlling public media. They also underlined the importance of a right wing with a Christian and humanistic tradition with principles that prevent them from making pacts with proselytes of racism and intolerance. The theoretical moderation of the parties that could agree on a new government should take into account that, at the extremes, the commonality between them is the singularity – let he who is without sin cast the first stone – pro-Russian.

There are still those who believe that moderation will win the battle against extremism.

This generational gap also influenced the rise of those who, in the time of Tucholsky, corrupted the democratic foundations to the point of imposing a fanaticism that inspires the current fanaticism. Today we diagnose this mutation trusting that rational rigor and common sense will win the battle against the impunity of lies that, unfortunately, are not the patrimony of a single side. At the linguistic level, the media agree in defining the results of the social democrats as a descalabro and a flop in Spanish and, in Catalan, patacada and daltabaix . The etymology of descalabro is the most disturbing: it comes from the Latin descalaverare , which means “to leave without a skull.”

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Meanwhile, the Andalusian PSOE is celebrating its fifteenth congress with the usual display of unconditional euphoria. The party has the ambition to win the battle against Juanma Moreno Bonilla's PP, which is not exactly the same as Alberto Núñez Feijoo's PP (yesterday he slipped up with Ana Rosa). The slogan of the congress, “Andalusia ahead”, inspires the sarcasm of those who, without losing a second and with a sarcastic tone, add: “And behind”.