Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Does a Spanish intelligentsiya exist, properly speaking?

Through an article by Lucía Villa published on Público's official website on Monday, February 7, 2011, a video has been presented in support of a campaign for a new Gaza flotilla, called Ship to Gaza (translated into Spanish as Rumbo a Gaza). The video shows Spanish celebrities such as Alberto San Juan, Guillermo Toledo, Wyoming, Juan Diego Boto and Melanie Olivares, among others. They mainly come from the so-called mundo de la cultura (literally, culture world), which encompasses personalities from sectors like the TV, the cinema or the literature.

In other words: celebrities. Celebrities who serve as useful idiots (as Bernard-Henri Lévy portrayed those who joined the last Gaza flotilla on behalf of the I.H.H. through an article I'll translate soon) for a cause related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, whose history and characteristics they surely don't even know (as they demonstrate by their own words, repeating myths proven historically wrong on this blog), but who don't hesitate to present themselves as a moral authority on humanitarian issues (and they're often accepted as such by the public opinion and the mainstream media).

Well, or that's what they pretend to be. Because we've been presented individuals in that video such as Spanish actor Willy Toledo, who justifies the Cuban dictatorship and portrayes a non-violent anti-Castro activist as a common criminal.

Independent documentary filmmaker Maital Guttman managed to explain all of this and more here. Why don't we the Spaniards have such an example of real (and, by the way, beautiful) intelligentsiya?

2 comments:

  1. To think that once Spanish Culture was associated with La Edad de Oro, with Cervantes, Lope, Calderon and those of that ilk. Now it´s The Golden Age of Useful Idiots . I wonder how the likes of Willy Toledo would fare under a real Communist Regime

    ReplyDelete
  2. Celebs,eh. Can't trust em. They're opportunistic characters. That's why they are celebs:)

    ReplyDelete