Since the banning of the far-right National Action in the in 2016, other countries have followed suit. In , groups like Combat 18 and Citizens of the Reich have been proscribed as terrorists. has done the same with Combat 18, Blood and Honor, Three Percenters, Aryan Strikeforce and the Proud Boys.

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Spain has also designated particular organizations as terrorists. Their legal prosecution has affected the nature and activity of the far right at the national level.

Hate and Radicalization in Spain

In 2017, the educational launched a on the behaviors and attitude of Spanish millennials. The study unveiled the increasing ideological radicalization of that generation, as one in five young individuals (out of a total sample of 1,250) supported either the extreme left or right.

Four years later, Spain witnessed an anti-Semitic delivered in front of 300 attendees at an event held at the Almudena cemetery in Madrid to commemorate the (Blue Division), a group of 14,000 young men who fought for Adolf Hitler in World War II. Torn between bewilderment and outrage, Spaniards wondered about the speaker but also about the speech.

The inflammatory speech was given by Isabel Medina Peralta, an 18-year old history student, member of the Francoist party La Falange (The Phalanx) and a fascist and national-socialist. Her comments are currently being investigated by the prosecution office in Madrid as a hate crime.

Medina’s case is just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem: the increasing presence and relevance of extremist groups in Spain. That increase has been partly driven by a growing sense of dissatisfaction toward the political elites and rising immigration, with the subsequent perception of economic and cultural threat this may represent.

It is such factors that, in turn, facilitated the relative success of far-right parties like Vox, which was founded in 2013 and holds 52 seats at Spain’s Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. Spain has ceased to be an “ among European countries that have witnessed the steady growth of right-wing radicalism since the mid-2010s.

Legislation

Spanish law does not any display of Nazi and fascist symbology unless it is related to criminal behavior. In other words, it does not punish the display of extremist symbols unless they are accompanied by active conduct. It is criminal actions and messages that allow for law enforcement to get involved, rather than the use of symbols. The mere display does not make the act a crime. The only exception to this is of July 11 against violence, xenophobia, racism and intolerance at sporting events. The law states that the of Nazi symbology could lead to a fine of up to €3,001 ($3,400) and a six-month ban from attending any sporting event.

However, there are some existing laws in Spain that could be used to enable the proscription of extremist groups. For example, the Spanish penal code, specifically , states that those who publicly encourage, promote or incite hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence against a group because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs or sexual identity will be “punished with a prison sentence of one to four years and a fine of six to twelve months.” This also applies to those who produce or disseminate material that encourages, promotes or incites violence against groups.

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Article 510 also allows the prosecution of those who publicly deny, trivialize or extol genocide and other crimes against humanity. of the Spanish penal code could also be applied in prosecution and proscription processes. Section 4 of this article, in particular, states that associations or groups are punishable if they promote discrimination, hatred or violence against people, groups or associations by reason of their ideology, religion or beliefs, ethnicity or gender.

Where the Spanish penal code would not be enough to proscribe an extremist group, the  Rome Statute of International Criminal Court may be employed. Article 7 on crimes against humanity specifically indicates that a group may be prosecuted under international law if it is responsible for the persecution of a community or collective based on political, racial, national, ethnic, culture, religious, gender or other grounds. When inciting, promoting or motivating such persecution, international law should be applied as a preventative measure.

Organized Extremism in Spain

Proscription in Spain began with the dissolution of the neo-Nazi organization (Blood and Honor) by Spanish judges, who condemned 15 of the 18 defendants to prison terms of up to three and a half years. Several extremist groups remain active in Spain today.

Democracia Nacional, a far-right party founded in 1995, is one example. Its current leader, Alberto Bruguera, and 14 other members of the party have been by the special public prosecutor on hate crimes for attacking a mosque in Barcelona’s Nou Barris neighborhood in 2017. The prosecutor has requested a 10-year sentence for its leader. The party’s vice-president, Pedro Chaparro, has also been accused of photojournalist Jordi Borras in 2015.

Alianza Nacional is another problematic group. In 2013, a judge in Vilanova i la Geltru, a city in Catalonia, sentenced three leaders of the organization to two and a half years in prison due to the dissemination of Nazi ideology online. Their message spread hatred against black and Latinx groups as well as immigrant communities and liberal multiculturalism. They blamed these groups for taking the jobs of Spaniards, along with fostering the use, abuse and trafficking of drugs, amongst other crimes.

Hogar Social is a neo-Nazi group that is well known for its campaigns to collect and share food “only for Spaniards” as well as to squat in buildings.Some of its members have been prosecuted and were due to be judged in December 2021 for inciting hatred and attacking a mosque in March 2016 after a terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium. They face potential sentences that range from one to four years in prison. The leader of Hogar Social, Melisa Jimenez, was in 2020 and later released for attacking the Socialist Party headquarters and displaying resistance to authorities.

Bastion Frontal is a neo-Nazi group related to the French organization Social Bastion. It was established during the COVID-19 pandemic in the working-class neighborhood of San Blas in Madrid. The group to have around 100 active members who are between the ages of 15 and 25. The creation of Bastion Frontal was mainly triggered by the decay of Hogar Social and the rise of VOX, but it does not identify with the latter due to it being a constitutionalist party. Instead, Bastion Frontal aims to abolish the Spanish Constitution. Although its members claim to have a physical headquarters, Bastion Frontal’s presence is mainly online. The prosecutor’s office in Madrid has filed a against the group because of hate crimes due to its threats against unaccompanied minors from Africa, including Morocco.

Echo Chambers

Spanish society has been going through a process of polarization, which has been pointed out by academics and civil society actors. The situation, as scholars have , has remarkably worsened during the pandemic, mainly due to the amount of time people have spent in front of their screens. In particular, young adults are the most vulnerable. In this context, isolationism and echo chambers have further contributed to the strengthening of an already growing extreme right.

Spain’s practice of prosecuting after crimes against human rights have been committed is only a relatively effective strategy, as it focuses on the individual rather than on the social, economic and ideological networks that the individual relied upon to carry out the violence.

*[51�Թ� is a media partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“Don’t Wear a Mask” was the main message, and although we don’t know the authorship of this graffiti, it belongs to Canada’s anti-mask rhetoric in the context of COVID-19. Conspiracy theories and claims to freedom of choice have characterized the radical-right fight against mandatory mask policies in Canada, bringing new light to its opportunistic and illiberal nature.

March to Unmask

The Canadian response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been largely described as standing in sharp contrast to the United States. However, early this summer, nearly three in five Canadians that they were “regularly wearing face masks when out in public,” which constitutes one of the “lower rates of face-mask usage of countries surveyed.” Similarly, by mid-summer, that Canadians were “less eager to wear face masks than their American neighbours.”

In addition, while in the first months of the pandemic Canadians’ trust in government, doctors and scientists increased across the political spectrum, that soon splintered, and the gap between Canadians who self-identify as left-leaning and those who self-identify as right-wing continuous to grow. As data suggests, while at the outset of the pandemic mask usage was below 10% for both left and right-leaning groups, over time, the discrepancy between the left (in the 90% range) and right (60% range) grew substantially.

One of the main reasons why this is happening appears to be the increasing appeal to by those on the right side of the political spectrum. This is due to the increase in mistrust in mainstream media and skepticism toward liberal democracy, which has allowed for a growing tendency to rely on alternative sources of (mis)information. This trend has been reflected in anti-lockdown rallies across Canada, the latest of them taking place in October in , where thousands of people mobilized against provincial restrictions designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including mandatory mask policies. Many carried signs promoting QAnon conspiracies, which have fueled the viral anti-mask phenomenon, embraced as an of “people taking the fight against their shadowy enemy.”

Up until now, rallies decrying mandatory mask policies have been held in at least six Canadian provinces as part of the movement, which argues that wearing a mask should be voluntary and demands “the right to choose.” A national parallel movement, , has also mobilized thousands who are “fighting for humanity” and for “their freedom” against COVID-19 restrictions. The co-founder of Hugs Over Masks, Vladislav Sobolev, “what is happening in Canada [with] the uprising of Nazi Germany, as well as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,” arguing that wearing masks is in fact dangerous for people’s health and a violation of their .

Sobolev stated that theirs is a “spiritual war,” a claim that was again heard over a month ago in Montreal, Quebec, where organized what was one of the biggest protests against the Quebec government’s COVID-19 measures to date. At the , some held signs about the 5G internet network, whereas many carried placards displaying QAnon’s emblem or waved pro-Trump flags. Only a week later, another against “mandatory mask wearing and … the government state of emergency” took place outside a Montreal subway station, where protesters chanted “Liberty!” as they waved Quebec flags. A leading figure in the protest, Alexandre Laberge-Ayotte, that he was not “anti-mask, but rather ‘pro-choice.’”

Whose Choice?

Roxane Martel-Perron, a specialist in right-wing extremist groups at Montreal’s Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, that while “The far-right movement had kind of died down last year,” the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed some extremist figures to use the anti-mask issue to get a foot back onto the public sphere and find new audiences. Radical-right groups in Quebec gradually waned over 2019, but this was only after they had won the battle for the provincial Bill 21, or the Act Respecting the Laicity of the State. The new law was supported by : the religious neutrality of the state, the separation of religion and the state, the equality of all citizens, and freedom of conscience and religion.

While under debate by Quebec’s National Assembly, Quebec’s radical-right groups in support of the provincial government’s law against religious symbols, pointing at the importance of ����ï������é (secularism). However, Bill 21 ultimately Muslim women the choice of dressing according to their religious beliefs while holding positions of authority. As a consequence, the act was as “unconstitutional” and affecting primarily “immigrant and racialized communities” working in the public sector.

Meanwhile, Quebec’s premier, François Legault, that the bill was “consistent with the views of most Quebecers that the state ought to be religiously neutral.” Similarly, Quebec nationalists on seeing Bill 21 as “a symbolic affirmation of their nation’s right to chart its own social course.” The law was passed in June 2019.

The arguments used by radical-right and nationalist groups throughout 2019 in favor of approving Bill 21 constituted fundamental threats to liberal tenets such as religious freedom, but also freedom of choice and expression, which is precisely what the radical right demands with its current anti-mask rhetoric in Quebec. While the radical right invoked freedom in support of Bill 21 in 2019 and against COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, in neither of those cases was the word “liberty” used to protect Canada’s cherished democracy and its policy of multiculturalism for the promotion of cultural heritage. It was used to challenge the people’s trust toward the very institutions in charge of protecting them.

The blatant contradictions around radical-right uses of the notions of liberty and freedom in Canada bring light to its notions of privilege, which stem from narrow understandings of citizenship, nationhood and belonging. It demonstrates that freedom of choice is perceived as being exclusionary or limited to the nation, namely the ethnic majority. This reflects a sense of ethnic supremacy, in this case, white supremacy in particular. Finally, it illuminates the capacity for radical-right movements to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic in order to spread hate by exploiting liberal tenets to the detriment of democracy.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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