Doorstep protests “pure Nazism,” says Popular Party secretary

A leading member of the ruling Popular Party (PP) has compared the protests by anti-foreclosure activists outside politicians’ homes to Nazism, and said they reflect the same totalitarian spirit seen in the pre-Civil War days.

María Dolores de Cospedal, party secretary and regional premier of Castilla-La Mancha, is one of a growing number of government officials to call protestors Nazis for taking their demands straight to lawmakers’ homes and workplaces. The so-called escrache demos, a term borrowed from Argentinean human rights campaigners, so far enjoy significant social support.

Prominent politicians who have suffered escraches in recent weeks include Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría.

At the close of a party rally on Saturday, De Cospedal called the method “pure Nazism” and a reflection of “a totalitarian, sectarian spirit” reminiscent of 1930s Spain. She said that even though the protestors’ demands may be “very respectable and defendable, everything loses its meaning when they use violence to obtain it.”

Following government attempts to portray protestors as violent, anti-foreclosure activists have been careful to call in the press to act as witnesses to their demonstrations. The protests have been led by the Mortgage Victims Platform, a group that recently collected 1.5 million signatures in favor of mortgage law reform.