Errejón criticizes PSOE and Podemos for making “fear” of Vox the center of their campaigns

Íñigo Errejón just published With everything (Planet, 2021), the story of the “fast years”. Everything that goes from 15-M to today … and its consequences. The pages, moreover, are filled with a certain autobiographical narrative, which allows us to know the author from a point of view hitherto unpublished.

Errejón also exposes the victories and defeats of the last electoral cycle. One of the great setbacks is attributed to that obsession of PSOE and We can –Although it has avoided mentioning them expressly– by focusing its electoral campaigns on the “fear” of Vox.

The founder of Podemos and now a deputy for Más País diagnoses that, despite the left being in the government, “the offensive belongs to the reactionaries.” An “offensive” that fits in the political sphere, but also cultural and social.

“The progressive Spanish people have a feeling of diminution. It is as if they were on the defensive culturally and socially, in a state of withdrawal,” Errejón lamented.

As an example, he has put on the table the campaign of the Madrid autonomous communities, where indeed PSOE and Podemos raised the flag of “fear” – the bloody letters and bullets are visible. More Madrid did not. And according to Errejón, that is one of the great keys that explains the victory of Monica Garcia to the detriment of the hits of Angel Gabilondo and Pablo Iglesias.

“The book is optimistic and provides ideas for the future, but I am in charge of the present moment. The adversary forces us to discuss things that ten years ago would have seemed impossible. There is an emboldening of reactionary sectors that previously lived politics since the margins “, has expressed Errejón.

The former director of the Podemos electoral campaigns has opted for an imaginative policy, positive and proposals to combat what he has called a “de-democratizing wave”, but he has charged against the government coalition for being on the defensive in what refers to that battle.

The 15-M cycle – exhaustively shelled in the book – has reached a phase of “exhaustion”. Then, by a “pendulum” effect, this boom of Ayuso and Vox. That is Errejón’s conclusion.

“It is the ideology of the servant. Politically incorrect men who tell you that the world is a jungle in which you step on or step on you. We believe that a different society can be achieved,” he commented.

Hence his bet: “Progressive forces must come out of the belief that fear of the other mobilizes. We did well in Madrid because we did not enter the campaign of fear. And some believed that fear of the ultras was the best way to win “.

That has not been his only dart to PSOE and United We Can. He has also reproached them for not having formed the current government in 2016, when the “political, social and arithmetic context was much better.”

Errejón’s book begins with his first political commitment, of a “libertarian” nature, acquired when he was barely thirteen years old. Then he continues with the passage through the university – where he meets Pablo Iglesias– and its turn towards more “assembly” positions.

Then the foundation of Podemos and its decline begins. Also the break, where what happened is explained with precision. There are stomach aches, anxiety, fear … And also a “breathing again”, which has to do with the foundation of his new project.

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