A group of gunmen beat up two young men in a barbershop. They’ve been locked in to prevent security cameras on San Francisco Street from filming police abuses, but they probably didn’t expect that this business also had a security camera. LUZ has published a video of the Socialist Council of Bilbao and has been widely disseminated on the social networks of this medium.

Among the 159 comments that the Instagram post has received, many criticize the racist attack of the Basque Government. On the contrary, it also highlights a large number of xenophobic messages in two languages. Here are three in English:

“Why did they show up there? What is the context. We need to know that.”

“Police doing their job in a conflict zone with robberies, threats, rapes, etc. On behalf of all these people, I don’t know what world you live in, those of you who write to protect these North African criminals.”

“And when a group of bad immigrants rapes a girl? Will the police be blamed instead of them, too? If there is no feminism and liberation, anti-racism is not possible! !”.

Even for those of us who don’t try to swallow the myth of the Basque oasis, such messages are surprising, replicating similar speeches of the “uncomplicated” ultra-right, including the instrumentalization of feminism. It is as comfortable as it is that fascism is a Spanish affair to think that the rapists are immigrants and not our relatives, lovers or friends.

I will not deny that it is reassuring that VOX has only one seat in the Basque Parliament and that it has no representation in the Bilbao City Council. However, this does not mean that the legitimization of far-right discourses does not affect us.

Fifteen years ago, such comments were common in the media (I know, I was a spokesperson for SOS Racism in Bizkaia at the time), but it has been a great leap to see the arrival of fascists in the institutions, both in the Basque Country South and in the North. Anonymity makes it easier to spread hate speech, and at the same time, haters increasingly need fewer lockers.

Finally, my favorite comment from that video: “What kind of emotional disconnect or hatred do you have to have in order to be able to do this or applaud?”