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| Isabel Díaz Ayuso's popularity and profile have given her a national presence Photo |
The woke Left can be defeated - Telegraph contributor Nile Gardiner
Spanish PM Sánchez calls snap general election after disastrous results in local elections - Politico Europe:
Spain was due to hold general elections by the end of the year, but the Socialist leader announced his decision to move up the date following Sunday’s local elections, which saw his party suffer heavy losses across the country.
The gains for the conservative People's Party indicate they could unseat the current left-wing coalition led by the Socialists, if they replicate the performance in national elections, Reuters reports. As a result of these results the government has called a shock snap election for July rather than wait till the due date of December.
The numbers showed few clear majorities, except in the Madrid region where regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso of the PP looked set to win re-election with an absolute majority.
From an earlier Politico report highlighting the prominence of Diaz Ayuso:
At a campaign rally in a square in Madrid’s wealthy Goya neighborhood, the conservative mayor of Lisbon, former European Commissioner Carlos Moedas, praised her.
“You have got rid of something which is the worst thing about the left today: its moral superiority,” he said. “As if they’re better people just because they’re on the left, as if they’re more human. Isabel has looked them in the eyes and said: ‘No, it’s not like that.’”
Moments later, to rapturous applause, Díaz Ayuso took up the same theme.
“What [the left] don’t understand is that when people are free and prosperous and united despite their differences, they are unbeatable,” she said.
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“She has taken ownership of the word ‘freedom’ away from the left,” said one person close to her who wanted to remain anonymous because of their position on her staff.
“If you say ‘freedom’ in Madrid, people think of Ayuso … She has waged all the ideological battles possible over the last few years and that explains her success.”
Those battles have included attacking the feminist agenda of the government, as well as casting doubt on climate change.
As for that feminist agenda, a report from Le Monde describes the outcome of a national law on rules for transitioning from one sexual identity to another:
While this law is a "historic victory" for the trans community to become less "stigmatized," it has also provoked the indignation of a part of the feminist movement, grouped within the Alliance Against the Erasure of Women. For this alliance, the law leads to the "legal erasure of biological sex," "inoculates children with sexist stereotypes," "makes it impossible to take any action to rectify the discrimination suffered by women in the public space" and could jeopardize the reserved spaces where women feel safe (toilets, domestic abuse shelters and prisons).
Political action is certainly central to taking control of the direction of ideology and the shape of the culture, but this task must be coupled with reclaiming influence for the common good within institutions such as education, the media, and the corporate domain.
American author and social analyst Rod Dreher, writing from the vantage point of his new home base in Europe, is worried by the aggressive US response wherever a nation's cultural heritage is deemed a persona non grata:
The United States is awash in its own many problems now. The ruling class, across institutions, has committed itself to the spread of an insane ideology that trains Americans to see each other in terms of racial identity, and acculturates them to grievances. It is also committed to the spread of a parallel ideology that is destroying biology, destroying science, destroying the mental health of young people, wrecking their bodies and their capacity to procreate, and so forth. The ruling class’s ideology is pulverizing the idea of truth-telling, and of merit and competence. I could go on. AND YET … the United States ruling class believes it has everything all figured out, and has the moral right to push countries like Hungary around, either directly or through its proxies in Brussels.
None of this makes Russia right, either in its invasion of Ukraine or about anything else! But folks, if you could only see how our country is seen by so many people outside of its borders. To be fair, America has a tremendous amount of goodwill built up in the hearts and minds of people all around the world. We are ruining it with our colonialist liberal messianism.
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