It should also be noted that Merkel is a woman, and that hatred for women – the disdain in which they, right alongside the Jews, were regarded by the racist theoreticians of the 1920s and 1930s – has been an essential dimension of every expression of fascism. Likewise, the slogans slung about in Valencia in October 2012 – with demonstrators urged to chant at the chancellor’s effigy, “You will love money above all else” and “You will honor the banks and the Bank” – had the unmistakably foul odor of the old mantras about “the golden calf” and the “cosmopolitan plutocracy.”