The Barcelona Censorship Club, Hosted by Pedro Sánchez
Socialist strongmen from around the world, plagued by corruption scandals and sinking popularity among their people, converged on Barcelona on April 17 for a “Progressive Summit” calling for controls on social media and “nonintervention” in Cuba and Iran.
The gathering was hosted by Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, whose wife has just been indicted for influence peddling and embezzlement of public funds. A close aide and one of his top ministers already languish in jail on similar charges. Spanish police are also investigating allegations that his ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) has been financed illegally with Venezuelan money laundered through the government bailout of a phantom airline. (RELATED: What’s Wrong With Spain? It’s Pedro Sánchez.)
Sánchez’s justice minister has denounced the proceedings as a right-wing “judicial coup,” launching personal attacks against judges issuing subpoenas and indictments. (RELATED: Sánchez’s Spain Is a Caricature of Political Corruption)
Despite suffering crushing defeats by conservative opponents in a series of recent regional elections in which support for his far-left coalition partners virtually vanished, Sánchez asserted at his keynote address that “the time of a right wing surrendered to reactionary principles has come to an end.”
He outlined plans to “defend our democracy” through stepped-up “governance” of the internet and “coordinated implementation of digital controls” with mechanisms that would be worked out in side meetings. Sánchez has been a principal architect of the Digital Control Act recently adopted by the EU to police the media and curtail free speech, bringing in China’s Huawei to manage Spain’s government communications. (RELATED: Europe’s Speech Crackdown Is Crossing the Atlantic)
The summit’s other main star, Brazil’s Lula da Silva, also lambasted conservative opponents for “promoting lies and manipulating algorithms,” calling the internet a “battlefield” in which “the right screams and attacks.”
South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa stated that “political discourse is being reshaped by algorithms that fuel extremism and hate,” even as his own supporters incite the persecution of whites through state propaganda. (RELATED: Can Trump Force Regime Change on Toxic South Africa?)
They appealed for the U.N. to promote global social media regulations and name a woman as its next secretary general.
[I]ncreasingly threatened by exposures of the brazen corruption and drug trafficking connections in their governments … they struggle to institutionalize virtual one-party states through vote fixing and expanded state controls.
Like their Spanish host, Lula, Ramaphosa and others heading the summit, including Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, feel increasingly threatened by exposures of the brazen corruption and drug trafficking connections in their governments as they struggle to institutionalize virtual one-party states through vote fixing and expanded state controls. (RELATED: I’m a Spanish Taxpayer. This Is Why the West Doesn’t Need to Reward Illegal Immigrants.)
South Africa’s press has recently revealed, for example, that Ramaphosa’s vice president, Paul Mashatile, personally signed off on $9M in state money to a construction contractor for a public housing project, which built nothing while he enjoyed lavish holidays at his friend’s luxury beach homes.
Brazilian investigative journalists have similarly revealed that one of Lula’s closest aides and treasurer of his ruling Workers’ Party (PT), João Vaccari Neto, previously convicted for vote buying, has been involved in real estate dealings with a jailed member of Brazil’s premier drug cartel, Primeiro Comando da Capital.
Mexican president Sheinbaum has inherited the legacy drug connections of her ruling Morena party, which has taken millions of dollars in donations from the cartels that “truly run Mexico,” according to U.S. President Donald Trump.
A former U.S. intelligence officer involved in narco trafficking investigations has told The American Spectator that a recent operation between the CIA and elements of the Mexican army to capture Jalisco New Generation Cartel boss, El Mencho, was conducted without Sheinbaum’s initial knowledge for fear that he could be alerted.
Sheinbaum flew to Barcelona on a commercial airliner in economy class in a show of common touch. Being president of a country in which some of the world’s most dangerous criminal gangs run rampant, her gesture was also indicative of how safe she feels.
Colombian president Petro is a former member of the M19 guerrilla organization, which was among the first Latin American terrorist groups to engage in drug-for-arms exchanges with Cuba during the 1970s, a system adopted by Colombia’s FARC, ELN, El Salvador’s FMLN, and other groups. Petro has said that Sheinbaum was M19’s Mexican liaison. She has denied it.
None of Europe’s other socialist heads of government attended Sánchez’s summit, although the U.K. and Germany sent their finance ministers.
There was a special appearance by U.S. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who took time off from dealing with the massive child care fraud scandal embroiling his state government, to go to Barcelona and attack Trump as a “feeble-minded, trigger-happy president who has dragged us into a war with Iran, which presents no threat to us.” (RELATED: The Inevitable Result of Government’s Addiction to Spending Other People’s Money)
He praised Sánchez for his “leadership and vision” and for “proving that you can pursue progressive policies and still get re-elected.” In the 2023 elections, Sánchez received less than a third of the votes PSOE tallied in the 2019 elections. Support for the conservative Popular Party and the right-wing VOX was already surging.
He has managed to maintain a shaky, razor-thin parliamentary majority insufficient to even pass a budget, with the unbending support of a handful of representatives from the radical Basque separatist Bildu party formed by supporters of the terrorist group ETA, obtaining the release of their imprisoned gunmen in exchange.
Sheinbaum pushed for a declaration “against U.S. military intervention in Cuba” while Lula called on the world to oppose “Trump’s attack on Iran.” Brazil’s leader, who hosted Iranian warships on a 2023 naval visit to Rio de Janeiro, insisted that Iran is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon, citing his discussions with successive Iranian presidents coming to Brazil on state visits.
Sánchez has recently withdrawn Spain’s ambassador from Israel while reopening the Spanish embassy in Tehran, blocked the use of U.S. military bases in Spain for operations against Iran, and lobbied the rest of the EU to take similar steps, which, if adopted, would effectively cut the Pentagon’s logistical chain to the Middle East. The IRGC has officially thanked him and even pasted his picture on missiles directed against Israel.
He told cheering leftist militants at the Summit, which assumed the characteristics of a political rally, that “the use of force has always failed in the Middle East,” seeming to ignore that Israel has managed to pacify Gaza with its war on Hamas and that a pro-Western Islamic government recently has taken power in Syria following a decade-long civil war against the IRGC-supported Assad regime.
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