'I regret that intellectuals are overshadowed by the levity of the networks'

Next year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of Patria, a novel that placed Fernando Aramburu at the pinnacle of Spanish literature and impacted millions of readers around the world with its intimate, yet stark, approach to the human dimension of the Basque conflict and the actions of the terrorist organization ETA. Patria was not only a literary success, but also a phenomenal wake-up call to action against ideological extremism and the dehumanization to which fanaticism often leads. Almost a decade later, the Basque Country breathes an atmosphere of peace, but the world grapples with other dangers, other wars, and other threats.

He speaks of "intellectuals" without including himself. However, he has a lucid and committed perspective on the complexities of today's world. "I don't believe in the attitude of the hermit who retreats to his walled garden. I look every day at what's happening in my country and in the world. And there are days when my spirits drop," he confesses.

Although he has always kept a keen eye on the Basque geography where he was born and lived until his early youth, the writer has lived in Hanover (Germany) for forty years. He taught for years, and this leads him to feel close to young people. He warns, however, of a disturbing nuance: "They were born and always lived in democracy, and so they don't know what a dictatorship is. Youth has a natural tendency toward change and leaving their own mark. But would change today mean suppressing democracy? That would lead us to totalitarianism," he warns.

Yes, of course. This is a fundamental theme, not only in my literature but in my life as a citizen who coexists with others based on moral criteria. I am very grateful to a book I read during my youth, The Rebel by Camus, to whom I owe the moral foundation that not only informs my literature but also helps me in my daily life on a private level. And from there comes the rejection of ideology as a justification for aggression. Fortunately, I perceived this from a young age, when, like so many young people, I was exposed to propaganda in a conflict-ridden society where attacks were committed nonstop. What saved me from falling into violence was a moral notion. That is, a set of practical norms that promote peaceful coexistence and demand respect for others. And I have seen that ideology, which does not consist of ideas generated by those who cultivate them, but rather acquired ideas, is often used as a justification to clear one's conscience and free one's hands to do harm. And for me this is unacceptable.

When I write literature, I don't theorize, as I'm doing now in an interview, but I try to convey this in my novels and short stories. Sometimes I use stark descriptions of violence, secretly hoping that injustice and abuse will be unpleasant; even risking my books becoming what some consider excessively harsh. That's why I'm so grateful to Camus for teaching me to value the individual human being more than political, religious, or any other kind of conviction.

I'm not sure we learn. Perhaps we do learn some things, but there's no machine capable of measuring the learning we can do. But I do have an optimistic point on this matter: I believe the history of humanity is one of a civilizing path that begins with the original brute ape, who ignored justice and peace and operated exclusively by the laws of nature, which favor the strongest, to traverse centuries and millennia that have led us, little by little, to societies based not on natural law but on law. And in that sense, it's undeniable that human beings, through wars, tragedies, and massacres, have evolved into literate beings who understand justice, peace, and law. All of these are human inventions, after all. Nature doesn't care whether we kill each other or not. But we want to form egalitarian, democratic societies, with all their flaws. We want to walk down the street without anyone attacking us and take our children to school. All of this represents impressive progress, although there are sometimes setbacks, of course.

I think there's a self-serving use of the concept of hate by those in power or those who aspire to it. They seem to be seeking to justify some kind of repression or censorship, labeling those they disagree with as hate speech. In fact, it sounds like a verdict. I frequently perceived this when I was using social media, which I recently left for mental health reasons. I believe hate requires a very thick cultural ingredient to govern it, to master it, to prevent it from being translated into action.

As a novelist, I feel compelled to explore every corner and meet as many people as possible. Back then, I didn't want to be left out of the currents of the time, and I was on Facebook, Instagram, and even more active on Twitter, before I changed my name... until I got tired of it. It took up a lot of my time. Also, at one point, after Patria, I was exposed to many unknown people operating under pseudonyms who would insult me ​​for no reason, simply because I wasn't part of their mental wave. So, once I knew how that world worked, I left.

I regret that intellectuals, and in general, people who intelligently observe and examine collective life, are missing or at least overshadowed by the flippancy of social media. Those intellectual references we had in past decades are now largely ignored; we must seek them out, we must turn to their books to understand their opinions and analyses. Their work seems fundamental to me. This doesn't mean we have to agree with them. But even if we don't share their conclusions, they will always help us place problems in a certain context, to name certain phenomena that we may perceive, but only partially, or that we don't know how to name. These voices, which once had a very powerful social influence, have now been replaced by the incessant gossip of the networks. Since there is also a constant stream of information, anyone can have an opinion on anything, without data, without an intellectual basis. I miss that voice of intellectuals.

Indeed, I was an immigrant once upon a time. But I wasn't one in the same way as someone who arrived in a German city with a cardboard suitcase and spent the next 30 or 40 years of their life in a factory. In that sense, I'm not representative of anything or anyone. I moved to the Federal Republic of Germany at a very young age because I met a German citizen with whom, fortunately, I still live. Furthermore, I had a university degree and got a job relatively quickly. It would be shameless, then, to compare myself to the immigrant who arrives from another culture, and from countries with serious problems, with the desire to survive and provide a better future for their children.

But the fact that I settled in a country other than the one where I was born, spent my childhood, and my adolescence has been decisive in my literary work and also in my outlook on things. I'm a centrifugal man; I'm not a man who clings to a set of identity traits and refuses to leave them. Rather, with every book I read, every trip I made, and every movie I saw, I somehow questioned that identity I acquired, largely through osmosis, by virtue of having been born in a certain place. I think, from the perspective of time, it was positive to change places and observe my native country from a somewhat distant perspective.

European society in recent decades has achieved an incredible feat in the history of humanity: creating a common space with a very high degree of civilization. European citizens have come to encounter one another: it's wonderful to move from one country to another without having to go through customs, to pay with the same currency in Spanish bakeries and Italian cafes, to see our children going to school in one country to the other. The problem, if I may say so, is that we have grown accustomed to well-being. In fact, we have armies that are "mere and simple," as they say, while other nations have armed themselves and, in many cases, exercise a kind of tyranny that imposes iron discipline on their populations. We Europeans have dedicated ourselves to cultivating culture, gastronomy, and peace, after centuries of war. All of this is simply magnificent. What's the problem? That all of this has weakened us, both militarily and economically. This is what happens when you live well and have your needs met: you get fat, you get drowsy. And this also happens in our literature, in our cinema. We don't have battlefields. There is poverty, yes, but very little. And, in addition, those who are unprotected receive state aid. Hence, we've lost a bit of creative vitality. What are we going to break, if things work out? And now that we're surrounded by wars, like the one in Ukraine or Syria, all of this has found us a little slow to react, a little clumsy.

Of course, but there's another thing: in the European Union, everything is by consensus, and that usually takes a long time. It's very civilized, because we don't want to impose anything on anyone, but then we're a little bewildered by abuses like Russia's, for example. Now Mr. Trump comes along and says we need to invest more money in defense, when we were all at peace. Instead of investing in cannons, we were investing in schools, in roads, but the world is going in a different direction...

It is, without a doubt, a general phenomenon that deserves to be studied very carefully; it cannot be dismissed with a few terms, such as fascism, Nazism, etc. I think it must be studied in depth to try to understand why there is a growing number of citizens today who support these positions in democratic societies. I think there is a certain weariness with democracy, particularly among young people, although I don't like attacking youth at all. But let's say that there is a sector of society that is a little dissatisfied with the system, precisely because they perceive a certain weakness compared to countries like China, India, and Russia itself, which in some respects seem to be ahead. If we look at the production of technology or the expansion of electric cars, for example, it would seem that we are falling a little behind. That, on the one hand. But on the other hand, those of us who experienced the dictatorship, I believe, are in a better position to appreciate democracy than those who were born into it, didn't fight for it, and don't really know what it means to live under the heel of a tyrant.

Because that's the other element that explains these populist phenomena: there's a kind of reaction to globalization. I'm no specialist, but I am a witness of my time. There's a segment of the population that feels its identity is being questioned, that doesn't see the breaking down of borders and the merging of nations with other nations as a renewal of its identity. So there's a reactionary movement to close in on what's considered genuine or pure. And a growing portion of the population sees that everything they consider an essential part of their identity is in danger with the arrival of human beings from other parts of the planet with different skin colors, other religions, other cultures. Populist parties exploit this to increase their clientele. And the fact that these populist tendencies are present in almost every country shows that there are underlying reasons that we must try to understand better. These aren't isolated phenomena, but rather there is something there that will surely determine global politics in the 21st century.

The Nation (Argentina) - GDA