Hate Speech on Twitter: Vox in the Catalan Parliamentary Elections

ABSTRACTThe Spanish far-right Vox party ran for the first time as a candidate for the Catalan parliamentary elections in February 2021. This paper analyses the party's political discourse on Twitter during the Catalan parliamentary election campaign in order to assess whether the degree of dialectical confrontation of their messages can exceed the limits of democratic debate. The results reveal how this far-right party's inflammatory messages, which seek to insult its political opponents, ultimately foster an undemocratic environment that turns Vox's political rivals into its enemy, driving social polarisation and a discourse of hatred towards individuals defending other ideologies or parties. Ultimately, it is intended to add that political-ideological nuance for future research that surpasses traditional hate speech —such as those based on criteria such as race or sex— and the suitability of Twitter for the proliferation of the latter.KEYWORDS: Hate speechfar-rightelectoral campaignTwitterCataloniaVox Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The follow unfollow technique is used to gain followers on social networks and consists of following a massive number of accounts so that a proportion of them follow you back. Once the follow is achieved by the other user, the follow is unfollowed.2 Vox MP for Cordoba.3 Vox MP for Badajoz.4 Vox Spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies and Deputy Foreign Affairs.5 Deputy Spokesperson and Secretary General of Vox in the Congress of Deputies.6 Vox MP for Valencia.7 See Sociological Research Centre survey at: http://datos.cis.es/pdf/3309_Estimacion.pdf (last accessed: 04/03/2021).8 This phenomenon did not occur in other regional elections (Aladro-Vico and Requeijo-Rey Citation2020, 215), so the publication of this poll was a decisive factor in their social media communication strategy.9 “Let's take back Catalonia”, or “Let's recover Catalonia”.10 “Only Vox is left”.11 “Only Vox”.12 “Vox extreme necessity”.13 “Now you have Vox”.14 “Progre”, an abbreviation of “progresista”. Vox uses this term in a pejorative sense to suggest a person who fervently engages in arguments on social justice, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, in order to raise their own personal reputation. Equivalents in English include “social justice warrior” (SJW), the “Twitter lynch mob”, among many others.15 The term “podemita” is used pejoratively by Vox to identify followers of Unidas Podemos party [the United We Can party].16 Journalism for progres.17 The term “caste”, popularised by Unidas Podemos, denotes “a closed and inbred group that has turned corruption into a system of government to further their interests” (Criado-Aguilera Citation2017, 69). Vox uses this term as a weapon, since for them it is precisely the members of that left-wing party who enjoy privileges compared to the rest of the citizens. The hashtag reads: “The caste at the cost of your dosh”.18 The hashtag reads “Enough of progre censorship” For Vox, the concept “progre” encapsulates different social, media and political actors who identify the most negative aspects of politics. Constant references are made in Vox's messages to the social distance dividing the political vision of these actors and that of the party. (Cheddadi Citation2020, 65).19 “Wretched little right wing”20 “You don”t choose your sex”21 Cruz, Marisa. 26/02/2021. «La Junta Electoral secunda la suspensión de la cuenta de Vox en Twitter por incitar al odio». El Mundo. Available at :https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2021/02/26/603902a121efa07f018b4673.html (last consulted: 05/03/2021)22 The political party Vox considers that the Popular Party does not apply programmes more identifiable with conservatism because of cowardice. For this reason, it recurrently uses the adjective "cowardly right-wing" to refer to them.23 The Vox party and its followers recurrently use this name to refer to Pablo Iglesias, founder of the Podemos party, because of his ponytail hairstyle.24 Paxton points out that there is a number of “mobilizing passions” characterising fascism. Among them, he highlights "the belief that the ones’ group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external its enemies”, such as secessionists, feminists, immigrants, among others Citation2004, 79).25 From this point on, and unless otherwise specified, the figures in parentheses refer to the frequency with which a term appeared in the set of analysed tweets.26 In January 2021, the young people's roundtable TV show GenPlayz hosted a debate entitled “Are we living in a progre dictatorship?” In it, various young people began by discussing the meaning of the term “progre”. One of debaters remarked: “I've used progre as an insult […] Does it really mean anything right now? I don't think so. It´s simply used to ridicule”. Another person added: “I understand progre as an insult given to people who are more to the left of the ideas” (RTVE Citation2021). Evidence of the pejorative connotations attributed to this term.27 For instance, the example of Carla Toscano and her tweet of 7 February: “The hatred and violence against @vox_es is not spontaneous. It has been fabricated and orchestrated by political parties and journalists demonizing us, calling us batasunos, terrorists, fascists, racists and chauvinists” (Toscano Citation2021).28 Note: Ignacio Garriga Vaz de Concicao (@Igarrigavaz) is part of both groups, since he was the Vox candidate for the Presidency of the Generalitat without abandoning his seat as a Spanish MP.29 Sketch Engine graphics have been configured by this program from its Thesaurus tool. The latter automatically generates synonyms or words belonging to the same category (semantic field). The closer a word appears to the central term, the more similarity is seen between the two or the more characteristics they share. The size of the word corresponds to the frequency, i.e. the number of times it appears in the text. The colors simply illustrate the different grammatical category (verb, noun, adverb, adjective).Additional informationFundingThis work is part of the project “CARTODIOCOM": Cartography of hate speech in Spain from communication: sports, bullfighting and politics (Reference: PID2019-105613GB-C31) funded by the MINECO.