There are plenty of real catastrophes in today’s world. But from military build-up to fantasies of mass deportation, right-wingers are promising their supporters better disasters: ones where they get to be in charge.
When Carlos Mazón took power as head of a right-wing government in Valencia last year, it seemed the climate crisis was nothing to worry about. He had formed a coalition between his conservative Partido Popular and the far-right Vox — and in order to seal the deal, he agreed to scrap the Valencia Emergency Response Unit. Last month, Valencia was devastated by floods, with over two hundred people killed as warnings failed to go out and bosses refused to let workers go home to safety. Well into the crisis, Mazón was enjoying a long lunch.
Despite these political responsibilities, following the disaster, the far right has attempted to capitalize. It blames Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his broad-left government for destroying Franco-era dams that would have allegedly stopped the flash flooding. In reality, as El Diario reports, the vast majority of dams removed have been small weirs, less than two meters tall, and all were “useless infrastructure.” Franco’s dams would have not saved the Valencian people. But for right-wingers who deny a real disaster and then invent fake ones, this hallucination is key to understanding the destruction in Spain.
This strain of right-wing thought is the subject of Richard Seymour’s new book, Disaster Nationalism. In it, Seymour uses tools from psychoanalysis and Marxism to examine what is going on with the global far right. Olly Haynes interviewed him for Jacobin about his new work.
Olly Haynes
Could you explain what disaster…
Auteur: Richard Seymour
