31.7.1997. Analysis of July 1997 in Euskal Herria.

THE "JULIAZO". IN JULY 1997 THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT ORGANISED AGAINST THE BASQUE LEFT NATIONALIST MOVEMENT THE BIGGEST FASCIST MOBILISATION KNOWN IN EUROPE SINCE THE EXTINCTION OF NAZI GERMANY.

7. The strategic fact of the TV to have become the centralizer of the daily life of the Spaniards and the most important channel for their misinformation. The analogy to the fascist radios of Mussolini and Hitler.

They knew they could manage to make people believe their lies, not only because they know that very few Spaniards (among the already few that do read a paper) read two or more papers and that, for that reason, the couldn’t do the very elementary comparative analyse I’ve done here, which has proved enough to point out the rough contradictions going from 100,000 to 600,000 demonstrators at the same demonstration. But, most of all, because they knew they inoculate their lies via TV. Shots and shots from helicopters of crowds packing the streets, while the voice of the presenters affirmed there were more than one million (in Madrid on Monday 14) or more than half a million (in Bilbao on Saturday 12), knowing that the viewers lack the necessary training to assess those amounts, knowing that after seeing so many people they would believe the false amounts they heard. (See in this WEBSITE of the BASQUE RED NET the subchapter Television, the modern Pied Piper of Hamelin of my book La negación vasca radical del capitalismo mundial.

The crucial facts were published in EL PAÍS last 19 March: 1) 88% of Spaniards find out about what’s going on by watching news-bulletins; 2) Spaniards watch TV an average of 210 minutes per person and day and listen to the radio an average of 113 minute per person and day.

TV consumption in Spain has an important place within Europe, where according to the Yearbook of Statistics 1996 of the European Observatory for audio-visual already in 1994, there was a TV set in 96% of the houses. Also in the Basque Country, where for example in the Basque Autonomous Community, of a total amount of 633,000 families 623,600 own a colour TV and 26,500 a black and white one, and watching movies on TV is, with a big difference, the leisure activity done by the highest percentage of people in the three provinces (88% in Biscay, 86% in Gipuzkoa and 85% in Álava). (11)

Nothing about the functioning of the present society in the Spanish State can be understood if we overlook the NEW crucial fact: that TV has become the centralizer of their daily life, that in their daily life Spaniards pay attention to, watch and listen to TV infinitely much more time than to anyone else. Karl Marx wrote 126 years ago to Kugelmann extremely valid words to analyse this phenomenon (as well as the analyse of the JULIAZO I’m doing): "It was so far believed that the formation of myths under the Roman Empire had been possible because the press didn’t exist. It happens exactly the opposite. Daily press and telegraph spread their inventions all over the universe in the twinkling of an eye, by creating in a single day more myths (and the flock of bourgeois’s believes and spreads them) than before in a century".

Marx didn’t get to know the explosion of the use of radio and television. But it is imperative to remember, like Antonieta Macciocci has analysed, what Italian fascism achieved "thanks to the control and possession of what we now call the mass media: it is, in short, about the huge propaganda function that under the fascism the mass media adopted … The radio was the main way of mass communication during the 30s. In 1932, there were in Italy 305,120 radio receivers; in 1935, 530.000; in 1938, one million. But, in order to approach to the real number of listeners, that amount has to be multiplicated by five… Until July 1943 the radio of the regime brutalised millions of citizens... it is still to be researched the vast capacity of fascism and nazism to manipulate mass superstructures through the mass media and through their mass psychology ". (12) Precisely the JULIAZO has been a good example of what TV can do in the matter, when a Government like the Spanish, so-called "democratic", organises following a plan a fascist mass mobilisation.

I say that they organised it following a plan, because it is obvious that the JULIAZO is the fulfilment of a wide and thorough plan of mass mobilisation based on the use of: 1) the means that the peripheral State Administration (Government Delegations in the Autonomous Communities and their province extensions) and the town councils under the party in Government, plus the antiterrorist Agreements of Ajuria Enea, Madrid and Pamplona, plus "pacifist" groups subsidised by public administrations, and 2) the mass media, specially the televisions. A plan prepared weeks beforehand by the Spanish Government and intended for being started when (as the Ministry of the Interior estimated, hoped and was pushing) the prison official Ortega Lara were found dead. But as Lara was freed by the State Security Forces, the plan was started when the PP town councillor was kidnapped by ETA.

Government Delegations and town councils, antiterrorist Agreements and subsidised "pacifist" groups were vital to organise and call the events. But the mass media proved to be the key piece for the mobilisation plan.

The very Thursday 10 the televisions BROKE THEIR DAILY ROUTINE with special programs about the situation of the councillor. TV1 and A3 broadcast live the press conference of the Minister of the Interior and three out of the five most watched programs were news programs devoted to the issue: the Special news-bulletin on TV1 (3,8 million viewers), the news-bulletin on the second channel (3,7 million) and the special news-bulletin on Antena3 (3,6 million). Simply by interrupting the usual program planning in televisions and radios the Government plan succeeded in creating an IMMEDIATE and DISTRESSING sensation of SOCIAL ALARM.

Starting on Friday all televisions showed they are all part of the single television of the (Spanish nazisocialist) Regime, as they replaced their logos with a blue ribbon. Simple but effective measure of impact that once again BROKE THE DAILY ROUTINE of the viewers by broadcasting a continuous reminder of being in an exceptional situation. I have already mentioned the way the different televisions (flanked and redoubled by radios) did their utmost at the demonstration in Bilbao on Saturday morning and totally altered their daily routine of an ordinary week-end. "This day cannot be just another day" was the motto of the Minister of the Interior, taken to the whole front page of EL MUNDO. Televisions and radios saw about that that Saturday (and the following Sunday) were very different to any weekend.

8. The audience of 25 million viewers that followed by television the weekend programs about the town councillor was the trigger to the mobilisations.