One of the most recurrent ideas of the European far right is that immigration has as its goal or more or less desired effect the consummation of a certain demographic replacement, which would lead us to a supposed Islamization of Europe. Needless to say, this right draws on the rhetoric and fears of an old Anglo-Saxon right, but also on certain populist slogans that fueled, among other horrible things, Nazism. Because that's what was called "de-Jewishness." This same right that fears demographic replacement, however, uses demography and internal immigration to erase the state's other languages.
They are afraid of the very thing they practice, perhaps because they are well aware of its effectiveness. Without demographic replacement, it would not have been so easy to make Catalan residual in Mallorca, often by a political class that is the offspring or clean of those who, claiming they came to escape the misery of other parts of the state, in addition to prospering, have become happy and satisfied pawns in a game of cultural replacement. They like to displace, but not to be displaced.
They believe that a Mallorcan or Catalan who wants to preserve their language is opposing a certain historical fate, a natural process, unrelated to policies, thoughtful decisions, and public budgets. For a certain left, moreover, anyone who clings to certain essences—a landscape, a language—only gives credence to the extremists who will also seek to expel immigrants or force them to renounce their religion. They play at confusing people in a nasty way. It's only the conservatism of others that is the prelude to fascism, never one's own, because they often speak from the privilege of those who have everything guaranteed in terms of identity. But when they see—rather out of paranoia—that it's their language and culture that could be erased by the new immigration, then all they do is fuss and demand mass expulsion. Racism, for all these reasons, is becoming normalized.
Things are being said out loud that weren't previously said even after two drinks too many. The center-right, if it ever existed in Spain, has had to compete with the far right in such an uninhibited manner that it's even more frightening than what it was doing, especially considering that, at the end of the day, it's all about grimaces and verbal violence, but not much about healthy politics, much less laws that can be passed.
The poor immigrant is less frightening than the fascist; to say that the immigrant doesn't want to integrate, on the part of someone who hasn't learned Catalan after living among us for decades, is a little embarrassing. Ultimately, this image of the immigrant is merely an ideological metaphor for themselves: they fear what they are, a textbook Freudian projection. They fear that immigrants will do to themselves what they themselves have done to the Mallorcans, for example, without a guilty conscience. Clearly, our fears were or are unfounded, stupid, and provincial, but theirs are not, despite being identical.
