Anti-Communism and the Mainstream Online Press in Spain : Criticism of Podemos as a Strategy of a Two-Party System in Crisis

The emergence of Podemos in 2016, alongside the fragmentation of the Spanish political spectrum into different ideological forces, has spearheaded a crisis for the traditional bipartisanship of the Peoples Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE). The unique circumstances in the country’s political landscape have led the mainstream newspapers to position themselves as defenders of the establishment, carrying out a critique of Podemos in which ‘anti-communism’ has been used as a key method to discredit the new party. This chapter explicates the ‘anti-communism’ filtering mechanism within Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model and applies this analysis to the case of the Spanish online press. Both political leaders and the editorial pages of mainstream newspapers have drawn comparisons between Podemos and regimes like those found in Venezuela and Cuba as a way of attacking the new political force. Explicitly or implicitly, the vocabulary flooding the pages of the newspapers has resurrected the idea of communism as the enemy of law and order. According to other filters elaborated by Herman and Chomsky, the media groups’ behaviour is rooted in the tight relationship between crisis-ridden bipartisanship and the moneyed interests of the media companies and their connections to government and business elites.