Spanish MEP Miguel Urbán considers that the Government of Argentina, headed by the ultraliberal Javier Milei, and other far-right-wing Executives of the world seek to question the policies of historical memory so that the flame of the struggle of the present cannot be ignited in the reading of the past.”

“It is a common feature and a deliberate attack on what the democratic foundations would be,” says in an interview with EFE in Buenos Aires, this member of the European Parliament since 2015, a central figure of the Anti-Capitalist political organization – which was integrated into Podemos from its foundation until 2020 -, and author of the essay ‘Trumpisms’.

Urbán, son of a communist militant tortured during the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) by the policeman Antonio González Pacheco, better known as ‘Billy el Niño’, is in the Argentine capital to, among other reasons, accompany other victims grouped under the so-called ‘Argentine complaint’ against the crimes of the Franco regime.

In addition, this Sunday he will participate in the mobilization that will take place in Buenos Aires within the framework of March 24, Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, in which the victims of the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) are commemorated, on the anniversary of the coup d’état that overthreuched the democratic powers of the South American country.

The Government of Milei – and particularly the vice president, Victoria Villarruel, with family ties with the military and accused of ‘denialism’ of the crimes of the dictatorship by associations that defend human rights in Argentina – has been equidistant with this symbolic day.

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“Obviously we are witnessing a questioning of memory as a questioning of democracy,” says Urbán, who considers that this type of policy is the same as those used by other far-right leaders in the world, such as the Portuguese André Ventura, leader of the Chega! party, or the Spanish Santiago Abascal, president of Vox.

Urbán attributes this trend to the “element of the cultural battle”, usually argued by reactionary leaders to position himself “against the ‘cowardly right’ that does not question the ‘progressive dictatorship’.”

The MEP thinks that Milei is nothing more than “the Argentine decline of this global reactionary wave” that he describes in his latest book and that he presented this Friday in Buenos Aires.

“These phenomena start from eating the political space of the international right (…) Milei could not have been president if he had not managed to get the right to prefer to support him rather than a ‘right-wing uncle’ like Sergio Massa (the presidential candidate of Peronism in the 2023 elections),” says the MEP.

Urbán considers that “the same radicalization” motivated prominent conservative leaders – among them, the former president of the Spanish Government Mariano Rajoy (2011-2018) – to ask for the vote for the far-right Milei in the last Argentine elections.

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“(The phenomenon of the extreme right) is not a European measles,” warns Urbán, who calls the importance of the communication skills of far-right leaders or issues such as the rise of disinformation “peripheral”.

“We could not understand this global reactionary wave without understanding that we are facing a real crisis of the regime of capitalism; a crisis resulting from the combination of the neoliberal governance crisis (…) and, on the other hand, the ecological crisis and climate change that constitute a kind of ‘cancellation of the future’,” explains Urbán.

Faced with the anxiety of the present, the MEP, who participated in the 15-M movement (or ‘of the indignadomen’) in Spain in 2011, believes that the extreme right proposes an imaginary of the past “known and that gives assurances.”

“It’s a matter of passion and not of reason,” says Urbán.

In this sense, the MEP believes that Milei’s ultra-liberal positions are more difficult to “inoculate” than those of the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, characterized by his harshness in police action against the violent gangs of the Central American country.

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