Pablo Iglesias, former Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, founder of the Podemos political party and researcher with the UOC's IN3 CNSC group (2021-2022)
Last year, Pablo Iglesias completed his period as a researcher at the UOC. The former Spanish deputy prime minister and leader of Podemos analysed the far-right ideas that circulate on social media, how they reach and impact users, and how they define political discourse. Iglesias argues that lies have become an established way to catalyse certain forms of political activism, emphasising that desire and pleasure play an important role in driving political ideology and generating hate speech. Social networks were initially welcomed as a tool that could democratize public participation in the way information is controlled and disseminated, but they have turned into a forum where hatred and fake news proliferate. What can we do to combat them? Iglesias believes the only way is through education. In this interview, we discussed the conclusions of his research with him.
Last year, Pablo Iglesias completed his period as a researcher at the UOC. The former Spanish deputy prime minister and leader of Podemos analysed the far-right ideas that circulate on social media, how they reach and impact users, and how they define political discourse. Iglesias argues that lies have become an established way to catalyse certain forms of political activism, emphasising that desire and pleasure play an important role in driving political ideology and generating hate speech. Social networks were initially welcomed as a tool that could democratize public participation in the way information is controlled and disseminated, but they have turned into a forum where hatred and fake news proliferate. What can we do to combat them? Iglesias believes the only way is through education. In this interview, we discussed the conclusions of his research with him.
What has it meant for you to work with the CNSC research group at the UOC's Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)?
It's been a fascinating, fruitful and enriching professional opportunity. I've got to know a different type of university, where I have carried out my own research project as part of a group with a high level of understanding of the role of new technologies in politics and sociology.
In your doctoral research, you referred to social networks and the internet as "a great hope for democratization", an opportunity for citizen participation to compete with the major media powers for control of information. The 2012 Arab Spring and, closer to home, the 15-M Movement (the anti-austerity movement) in 2011 relied precisely on these new channels to spread certain anti-system messages. At that time, were social media better at ensuring truthfulness and controlling fake news and hate speech than they are today?
Back then, some researchers, including me, felt very optimistic about the social network concept. In my PhD thesis I studied, for example, the demonstrations that took place outside the headquarters of the People's Party (Partido Popular, PP) the day after the 11 March attacks in Madrid. The buzzword among the researchers studying social mobilization and collective action was the tactic known as swarming. We were intrigued by how a text message (there was no WhatsApp or Telegram in those days) could produce what we call a hot connection, and a major political protest could be mobilized with no hierarchical structure to direct it. I compared that demonstration with the one that took place at the Directorate-General of Security after the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Spain, Santiago Carrillo, was arrested during the Spanish transition to democracy. But in that case it was a political party that, from above, instructed its cells to mobilize to call for the release of their leader. What happened on 13 March 2004 at the PP's headquarters was different: a well-designed message was put out, each recipient had to decide if they could trust the sender of that message and whether to forward it on, putting their own credibility and prestige on the line to spread the message.
This made us think that in the future new technologies would be able to democratize spaces that had previously been monopolized by the mass media or by structures such as political parties. What has happened is that there has, indeed, been a certain amount of democratization, but the internet has, at the same time, become a deeply toxic place where lies proliferate. But watch out! Fake news is not only found in social media, it is also on television and in newspapers. Though we must acknowledge that social networks such as Twitter, which has been the subject of much discussion following its acquisition by Elon Musk, have turned into a kind of repository for hatred. And that optimism for democracy that researchers had fifteen years ago has not been matched by events.
What effective control mechanisms would you suggest to prevent the spread of hate speech and fake news?
The only viable mechanism is media education. People must be given sufficient cultural, political and media training to be able to protect themselves against lies. A trained researcher can identify junk and propaganda and knows how to detect sources that are really useful for research. In the same way, we must educate society so people are alert and know how to relate to the media and social networks and protect themselves. That is why in my more, let's say, militant work, I have always emphasized that the media are an object of research in themselves. And I have seen that, indeed, they are an issue that is becoming increasingly important to the research community.
In your research you also conclude that the targets and spreaders of fake news and the arguments favoured by the far right include officials of the state.
The fact that they are not mere citizens, but judges, military or police officers, raises a very important issue. It must be borne in mind that media socialization is the basis of how we all form our views, however unconsciously. We all believe we are individuals, free, that we know our own minds, making us impervious to any type of manipulation. If over Christmas dinner we find our views of life and relationships differ from our father's or grandparents', it does not mean that we are more or less intelligent than them, but that we have been socialized differently.
But there are people who wield enormous power, whose opinions have been shaped by the pervasive influence of media and social networks that spread hate speech and anti-democratic messages, and this is really dangerous.
The focus of your research was the analysis of far-right discourse on social networks, from which you concluded that democracy is suffering a crisis of prestige. What do you mean by this?
The far right is being normalized as a perfectly viable way of governing, damaging the prestige of the democratic approaches that have dominated the public sphere for many years, but which are currently in crisis, and this is really worrying. This analysis of social networks has shown how discourses that subsequently come to power are normalized. One example is so recent that I couldn't cover it in my research: how the successors of fascism are now in government in Italy.
In your work, from a political theory perspective, you draw attention to the important role you attribute to desire as a driver of ideology and, therefore, a generator of hate speech. What is the effect of the emotional component of constructing these discourses?
When I was exploring the theoretical frameworks of the research, I found that the approach of the theorists whose ideas I had worked with and used in my PhD thesis was too narrow. Ideology is problematic in that many theorists trained in the Marxist tradition have had to recognize that Marxism cannot help us to understand how ideology works. They also question the notion, erroneously attributed to Marxism, that ideology is a mechanism that simply serves to reinforce certain material relationships, a false cultural construct determined by our role in the production process.
History shows that it is all more complicated than this. Some Marxists have had to turn to Lacan, who was not a Marxist but probably the greatest contributor to psychoanalysis after Freud, to understand that desire is one of the mechanisms in constructing ideology, even shaping the somewhat libidinal relationship between political leaders and the subjects of ideological discourses, discourses which are often overtly anti-rational. Can Donald Trump's success be explained without understanding that there is a libidinal and to some extent "nasty" relationship with many in his target audience? Trump supporters don't necessarily think Donald Trump is telling the truth or that what he says is rational, but they get a form of pleasure from his politically incorrect persona, something psychoanalysis has studied in great detail.
I had to turn to some of these theorists to understand this ideological mechanism that often works by confirming perverse intuitions. When a news story comes out, for example, against a left-wing politician, particularly a woman, which is fake news and is intended to shame that woman, it is not that the recipients believe it is true, but that this news confirms their ideological intuitions and gives them pleasure. And they give greater political weight to things that give them pleasure than to determining whether they are true or not. My own political experience includes cases very close to home, in the tactics that have been used to attack the Spanish Minister of Equality, Irene Montero. They have nothing to do with criticising her politics, rather they are about giving a thrill to an audience that openly hates her. I have experienced these things for myself, leading me to realize, later, from an academic perspective, that desire was not only a determining factor in the fascism of the 1930s, but that, alongside new technologies, it remains key to understanding today's new forms of fascism.
You argue that right-wing culture wars use a niche logic leading to a radical antagonism that ties in perfectly with the peculiar nature of social media. As social networks are ultimately run by multinational corporations, major entrepreneurs, and so on, are you optimistic that a new order could develop with an internet based on decentralized open source social networks?
No, I'm not. I cannot see grounds for optimism regarding anything that is in the hands of big corporations that are openly motivated by profit. What is happening with Elon Musk and Twitter is a clear example of what can happen. The issue of niches is very important because it redefines the terms of politics. There is a superb film, Brexit: The Uncivil War, which explains how the big data segmentation technique created by Cambridge Analytica was first used in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
What does it mean? It means the campaign did not have to be organized around two or three messages for an entire audience of potential voters, but, based on information extracted from social networks' algorithms, it was possible to send precise messages to every voter's home, tailored according to their preferences, what they have clicked on, how they move their mouse... there are technological mechanisms that make it possible to control a whole set of citizens. That's why it's hard to be optimistic. Again, the only vaccine against all this is media education.
You have chosen formats outside the media to communicate your ideas. Do you think this is the only way to have independent debate? Doesn't it also encourage these niches to proliferate?
Niches are part of the new reality. In developed countries in the 1980s, the whole family sat in front of the TV. So my generation shares sentimental memories about television programmes. If I meet someone my age, we can have a conversation about Sesame Street, the programme presented by Júlia Otero, the cartoons we watched, Heidi and Marco… We even remember the same sporting events. We all watched the same TV.
I sat there on the sofa and channel flicking meant granny telling you to get up and put the other channel on. Today, every family member has their own audiovisual communication devices. Granny might have a radio, or she might be on social media too. But the younger members of the family, the adolescents, will of course be using their own devices to access social networks such as TikTok, which their parents neither control nor understand. Mum and dad probably use Facebook, but to kids Facebook is totally retro, something for the oldies.
So, evidently, consumption has become segmented. At the same time, the volume of cultural production means there is much more content available than there was to us in the 1980s. That is why societies are less and less unified, and a commercial, apolitical approach that targets the average viewer and the average voter no longer make sense. The average viewer and the average voter no longer exist. Now ideological and cultural content is being produced to appeal to all kinds of sectors. It's a battleground for everyone. This is where you need to be! We must understand that there will no longer be, let's say, universal cultural leaders.
In your research, you stress that political communication is becoming more important even than politics itself. Is political communication consciously moving away from reflective debate towards more polarized forms of ideological or cultural conflict?
Political communication does not work on the basis of rational debate. The 1960 television debate between Kennedy and Nixon is often used as an exercise for students of political communication, who view it without sound so they just watch the two candidates. You can see who won it without hearing anything at all. Kennedy's use of non-verbal communication shows him to be an excellent communicator, while Nixon lacks these skills. And this is an example from many decades ago. The key to political communication is emotional. This means that the principles of the Enlightenment, grounded in rationality, are at odds with something that great communicators in entertainment television have long understood.
Political behaviour is ultimately dominated by emotion. There was a time when the left believed people voted for their economic interests. I blush at how naive we were. People vote in response to their feelings. The struggle in an election campaign is to define the issue and then find out how each sector feels about this issue. What has been the key to the growth of the far right in Spain? The backlash against Catalan independence, based on pure emotion. In Spain, the far right doesn't feed on fear aimed at migrants, as in other European countries. Here the keys are anti-Catalan and anti-independence sentiments, which are entirely irrational. People ask themselves: why should we in Madrid vote for a woman who is always going on about Catalonia, when you look at the state of our healthcare and education? Because that's how politics works.
Twitter used to be your favourite network. Is it still?
I must confess that when speculation began about the demise of Twitter, I did think how happy I would be if Twitter didn't exist. The problem is that, because of the work I do, I can't afford not to use Twitter. Someone who writes articles in the press, appears in the media or makes podcasts cannot give up using a social network even though it is really nasty and really toxic. Despite this, it wouldn't be good if it just disappeared, because the problem isn't just Twitter. It's true that Twitter is full of junk, lies and fake news, but they're on television too.
One of the criticisms you get on Twitter is your tendency to block certain users. Why do you do that? Doesn't that reinforce the niche logic we were talking about?
For my mental health. I don't just block people who insult me, I also block those who make me feel bad emotionally. I probably wouldn't be able to do this if I were a politician, but since I'm not, I have the right to apply the saying "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over". I think I have the right not to see people who I find unpleasant, and I do that on social media by blocking them. Don't take it badly! It is true that I put people who insult me and those that just say things I don't like in the same box. But luckily, I'm no longer a political figure, I can do what I want, and I have the right to engage with whomever I want to. Politicians can't. They must engage with everyone they come across. I'm not obliged to engage with anyone. When I see my former colleagues having to debate in parliamentary sessions with the far-right Vox deputies, I say to myself: "I'm so lucky, I don't have to discuss anything with them and I can, democratically, block them!" And I also invite them to block me. Plenty of people on Twitter say to me: "I'm not interested in your life!" So block me! Don't follow me! I don't have the slightest interest in making you put up with me.
Finally, apart from being a spectator, analyst and active narrator of what is going on in politics, do you feel that in the future you could take on a role involving a greater personal commitment to social change?
If you're asking me if I would ever return to institutional politics, the answer is no. That stage is in the past, I have three children and I would not want to expose them again to the level of violence and aggressiveness that I experienced when I worked in party politics and institutional politics. I continue to do politics, I am still committed in some way, but in a different field, that of communication. But that other place I came from, I wouldn't go back there.
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