Siempre en la primera línea de la polémica
La salida polémica de Podemos en 2015 no hizo que desapareciese de los grandes focos y siempre ha estado al pie del cañón con recurrentes participaciones en medios de comunicación. La polémica ha sido una constante en su carrera además de por su personalidad, por sus vinculaciones con la supuesta financiación ilegal en los orígenes de Podemos o sus presuntas irregularidades de su etapa como asesor de Hugo Chávez.
Por otro lado, su análisis de las últimas elecciones a la Comunidad de Madrid del pasado 4 de mayo fue cuanto menos llamativo. Juan Carlos Monedero criticó a la derecha, pero lo más llamativo, fue que descalificó a las personas humildes que no votaron a la izquierda, asegurando que “los que ganan 900 euros y votan a la derecha no me parecen Einstein (…). Cuando tienes una conciencia falsa de la realidad y votas a tus verdugos, te estás equivocando”.
PODEMOS
What inspiration do you find in the past, particularly the fight against fascism?
JCM: When it comes to antifascism there is a major difference between Spain and the rest of Europe. Antifascism is an inextricable part of Europe’s democratic DNA. It’s impossible to understand the French Constitution of 1946 without taking into account the National Council of the Resistance. The same goes for the Italian and German Constitutions of 1948 and 1949. In Spain, however, the antifascists are little more than an urban tribe.
When the indignados took to the streets in May 2011, something curious happened at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. When someone flew a Republican flag, someone else requested that it be taken down because it was divisive. Were they right? After all, the indignados took their name from a book by Stéphane Hessel, the French writer who fought fascism in the Resistance. The kid who claimed that the Republican flag was divisive probably didn’t know that the first tanks to enter a liberated Paris in 1944 were driven by Spanish Republicans who had fought in the Ninth Division with General Leclerc. That’s where the democratic DNA of Spain should be, although currently it isn’t.
We’ve got our work cut out for us. The neoliberal model has worked very hard to wipe out history and turn it into a kind of decaffeinated theme park. It has prevented us from connecting with the historical anger and frustration that anticipated our current anger and frustration.
What does fascism look like today?
JCM: Let’s take a step back to 1945. The Right had turned to fascism in the interwar period, and it had been soundly defeated. If you look at the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, you’ll see it’s actually quite socialist. But the effort of the social-democratic parties in the West to build a somewhat more decent world had a fundamental problem. It built democracies on the inside while allowing for poverty and dictatorship on the outside.