What makes to a left-wing British, supporter of class struggle politics, support the Catalans separatists? What makes an Owen Jones, young star of British activism, scourge of the powerful breed, take sides for those who always ruled in Catalonia and consider themselves as its owners? What takes to a self-appointed working- class defender to put himself on the side of Pujol, Mas and the independentist elites belonging to the wealthy class? This is the long-standing question. The question about what the hell happens within the left-wing that makes so many of them be shoulder by shoulder with Catalan separatism. This confraternity is not surprising anymore among the Spanish’ leftists. But when the international swarm of prestigious and influential useful fools shows up, well, let allow ourselves having some minutes of astonishment.
Mr Jones, for example: who as an influencer must be always present at all fronts, spoke out about the court’ decision in the following way:
Whether you support Catalan independence or not is irrelevant. A supposedly democratic European state locking up political dissidents is grotesque –as is the lack of condemnation by other European governments.
I would not qualify as just grotesque, the fact of jailing political dissidents. This is not the correct term. But yes, it is grotesque, perfectly ridiculous, doubting Spain to be a democratic state and even more to call "political dissidents" the former members of Catalan government condemned by the Supreme Court. These new leftists, these nowadays Young Red’s Guard, not only have lost their course, attracted by the nationalist magnetism, they also have no idea about what is a dissident.
If Mr. Jones, or any other one, wants to meet dissidents in Catalonia, he should ask for all those who have opposed to nationalist hegemony and to the separatist project. Ask for all those who have suffered the consequences of their dissidence, or had to hide that. But calling "dissidents" those who occupied, almost with no interruption, the regional political power, and have used it to instill the hate –hate to Spain and the rest of the Spanish people– is more than a mistake: is an insult. In the past, the dissident was against the Power. Under this new definition, is in the Power, and in what way! And this even ignoring that the alleged dissidents have been characterized by being highly corrupt, starting by the creator of all this, the man who shaped contemporaneous Catalan’s nationalism, that is, Jordi Pujol.
Owen Jones has a book, the one that gave him fame, about the mockery of the working class by the elites and the British media. If he watched TV3 and read independentist’ press, he could write more than one book about how the Catalan nationalism has made Catalans with origins from other parts of Spain the object of derision, jibes and mockery. And it was not just once, not just a bad joke from time to time; is systematic. A derision and systematic snub, always related to their social condition, to the belonging to the working class of all those Catalans that they do not consider as authentic Catalans. If Mr. Jones wants to see classism, and we suppose that he criticizes the one existing in its own country, he has to come and see how his beloved independentist treat the Spanish speaker Catalans, which is also the way they treat the rest of the Spanish people: as inferiors, from an arrogant supremacism.
We have to be astonished, there is no other way, of seeing people who claims for class-oriented and wealth distribution politics, defending the cause of those that, from one of the wealthiest regions in Spain, desire above all, not to contribute. Those who define as a robbery that part of their taxes are invested in other less-favoured regions. The ones who don’t want to pay for people from Extremadura or Andalusia have hospitals, schools and social services. They are the ones who often label their fellow Spanish citizens as lazy and scroungers, living at the expense of their wealth. But no way: it turns out that the Jones’ of the World that fustigate rich people so much, are with the separatism of the rich.
Is it because of all that they ignore about Catalan nationalism? Is it because all of the bold topics with which they seem to replace a real knowledge about Spain? I don’t know. Could it be that in the politically red hearts of these Jones there is, after all, a denser, a more primitive red, a bloody red, that impels them to look at Spain over their shoulders, an inferior country of inferiors. As the Catalan nationalism has done historically. Perhaps this is the dark drive linking people so disparate, in theory, like a British leftist and a Catalan supremacist.
Translated by Agustín Castro.