Pedro Sánchez made it clear in his inauguration speech that parliamentary arithmetic forced us to make a virtue out of necessity. And today Congress approves the Amnesty law agreed with the pro-independence parties. But the stoic maxim also applies to the return of media blows. After turning the Sanxe dog into a political asset, in this weekend’s interview with La Vanguardia, the president institutionalized the fathosfera. Sánchez’s definition comes to be: “It is said of the group of people who polarize and insult in order to demobilize the electorate and defeat the Government”.
The term is not new. In the networks, the invention is attributed to Idafe Martín, who turned it into a brand for his articles last summer and later into a book: Libre de Estilo. Tales of the Fachosphere. His avowed and reiterated objective in X is to identify malpractice, fraud, inventions and “point out” with names and surnames. “It’s not about stepping on cockroaches. It’s about, as Kapuscinski said, turning on the light so that people can see how the cockroaches run to hide.”
The journalist explains that he turned the thesis of the book by French researchers Dominic Albertini and David Doucet, Fachosphère, into a brand, where they define “the nebula of YouTubers, tiktokers, bloggers and other influencers of the far right”. The term is no frivolity, it even appears in the conclusions of a commission of inquiry of the French Assembly of June 2019 on extreme right-wing groups in France. Fachosphère, réacosphère, réinfosphère, patriosphère…
Like Idafe Martín; the Carne cruda podcast delved into the baked homeland in its chapter Fachosfera: youtubers heteros blancos cabreados. Minister Óscar Puente paved the way for X a few weeks ago when the Sánchez Government saved the vote on decrees in Congress at the last minute: “I go into the (newspapers) of the fathosfera, and the coffee, of blow, it tastes like whiskey”. And now Sánchez is definitively putting the concept into circulation.
The word is dissected looking to the right: for Francisco Marhuenda, “propagandistic filth”; for Carlos Herrera, “the cool version of the wall”; for Rubén Amón, “a media alibi to preserve the impunity of his aberrations bigger policies”. The barons of the PP add: “sectarianism”, “ideological discrimination”, “Sánchez indecently attacks a good part of the Spanish”… Isabel Díaz Ayuso ends: “Let him stay in his fatxomón as long as he wants”. And Sánchez stays. In La Moncloa, satisfied to have done it again.
