When the cache is cleared, everything falls apart.

A few days ago, the parliamentary majority decided to repeal the Democratic Memory Law, which I had the honor of drafting in my final days as a member of parliament. This text enjoyed broad consensus at the time, including the support of the People's Party (PP) on many points, as had previously occurred with the Law on Mass Graves. It's hard to accept that laws that come late, but which nevertheless seek to provide truth, justice, and reparations, as the memory movement has always demanded, can be overturned so easily. I also find it difficult to accept these changes in position by parties that aspire to govern for a social majority, in less than a decade.

And indeed, in recent years, and especially after the 2020 pandemic, many things have changed in society in general. Some speak of 'polarization,' but what I see is, above all, a normalization of violence and bad manners that affects not only how debate unfolds in the public sphere but also in private conversations, such as those in WhatsApp groups that any of us have on our phones, or even a family dinner or a get-together with friends, for example.

I don't mean to say that I agree to engage in dialogue with any position (in this respect, we're more aligned with Karl Popper: unlimited tolerance can lead to the death of tolerance), but we must pause and rethink many things, especially how we do them. Authoritarian anarcho-capitalism, besides leading us toward an unnecessary world war, is the system that has put us at this crossroads: on a structural level, economic power has devoured political power, reducing democracies to a mere formality and the growing inequalities to a scenario that can only be maintained through violence. On a cultural scale—and this may be the most powerful tool—social media (and mass media in general), which are both medium and message, have not only spread worldviews, social models, and values ​​that even deny humanity (especially that of those we consider different from us)... They are also performative of the ways we communicate. In this sense, you don't need to be hooked on social media to see how what triumphs most algorithmically is hatred, rudeness, and a lack of respect for others. This way of 'communicating' has not only led us to live in a time of post-truth, where we no longer know what to believe; it has also modified our ways of conversing, dialoguing, and relating to one another. To simplify, we have assimilated the style ofhaterof many influencersWithout realizing it.

Clearly, our capacity for action is also affected by the way the social, economic, and political structure conditions us, and by the way the virtual world shapes our way of thinking and acting. From our individualism, through consumerism, sexism, and internalized racism, which lead us to undervalue the lives of those we consider inferior, just as we undervalue our own, these are all part of this cultural 'triumph' of the times we live in.

This analysis, complex but greatly simplified in this article, is what I cling to when I see how most of us look the other way while civilians continue to be murdered with impunity in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine. Or when hundreds die trying to reach the shores of the Balearic Islands. Or when thousands (yes, thousands) of families from that tourist powerhouse live in a sad room. Or in the old Palma prison. Or in Can Misses. Or before that, in Can Rova. And we normalize it, as if it didn't concern us.

Returning to the infamy of repealing the Democratic Memory Law—the literal wording of the phrase is already chilling—I can only think of the more than twenty concentration camps that existed in the Balearic Islands after 1936. How many islanders know that? How many know, for example, that concentration camps were also invented by a Mallorcan, General Weyler, who was responsible for the deaths of almost a third of Cubans at the end of the 19th century?

Speaking of Cuba, those Caribbean lands that we colonized in the past seem to only interest us now as long as they generate profits for 'our' tourism corporations. Nor do I understand how one can travel to the Greater Antilles at a time when the United States—not communism—is subjecting the Cuban people to hunger and extreme hardship, and when our president, however much she may disagree with the island's political model, has not a single word or gesture for the Balearic and Pitiusan islands. Memory is also about this. When it is stolen from us, we lose what little humanity we have left.