The Red and the Black The end of the myth of the Spanish Civil War

Weekly Standard ^ | July 16, 2001 | Stephen Schwartz

[blackeagle]

bump

[metesky]

I proudly defend Franco, who defeated the communists in Spain, and then declined to join the Axis in WW2.

Franco was a Nationalist and not a fascist and did what he thought was best for Spain.

[Rodney King]

Wow, great story.

[metesky]

bttt

[Thorin]

>>>>>>The Spanish Civil War is probably the most misrepresented event of the 20th century. It is usually portrayed as a conflict between "democracy" and "fascism," but it was in fact a conflict between authoritarian, conservative Catholic monarchism and totalitarian communism (notwithstanding the anarchist presence).<<<<<<

You are exactly right. And the good guys won!

[snopercod]

The two sentences beginning with periods?

I guess you must be having your period. ba-dum-dum-dump!

[ken21]

For Hemingway, Stalinism was a form of masculine affirmation, comparable to bull-fighting, big-game hunting, or deep-sea fishing.

meanwhile the peasants endure the fashions of their leaders and "intellectuals".

[3AngelaD]

Thank you for that graphic. It is exquisite.

[Billthedrill]

I've read his stuff, but the more I learn about Hemingway the more I can't stand the phony, posing SOB.

Let's start a rumor he was gay.

[nina0113]

ping for later

[baseball_fan]

Thank you for posting this article. I had not appreciated how Franco was able to defeat both Stalin's communists and avoid joining Hitler and Mussolini's Axis powers. Quite a feat.

As a result of the post I read the chapter on Hemingway in Paul Johnson's book, "Intellectuals." It is a very shocking and indicting portrait of Hemingway's involvement with the Spanish Civil War for someone who, like so many others I presume, had read Hemingway as an adolescent and felt his realism imparted a new honesty.

I received the impression from then reading Johnson's last chapter, "The Flight of Reason," from "Intellectuals" that Normal Mailer continued in the intellectual left tradition and radicalized it further by attempting to "legitimize personal violence" in his thesis published in 1957, "The White Negro," thereby becoming one of the most corrupting influences of American society in the 60's and 70's. Johnson says in the chapter that "Norman Podhoretz attacked it as 'one of the most morally gruesome ideas I have ever come across' which showed 'where the ideology of hipsterism can lead'." I daresay not one American in 10,000 had any idea what was at stake from these corrupting influences that gained a glamor from just being in the media spotlight.

Thank goodness Ronald Reagan was able to come along and reverse dramatically for a while this cultural illness.

Robert Kaplan points to a pious and sanctimonious image and attitude effecting an irresponsible moral absolutist frame of mind - not unlike that of the Grand Inquisitors of medieval times - characterizing much of the 1960's in America. (Intellectuals are a kind of secular priesthood according to Paul Johnson.)

Kaplan sees this as an ongoing danger by some in the global media which can terrorize by its ability to expose and destroy personal reputations or make careers (and celebrities) overnight. Even politicians are cowed by this power. (See his essay "The Media and Medievalism" in Hoover Institute's Policy Review Online http://www.policyreview.org/dec04/kaplan_print.html).

I then read Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter in "The Brothers Karamazov" which I take in a first reading to be discussing the theme of moral absolutism and the demoralization and reactionary danger that can result. (The "Grand Inquisitor" was a clue.) All of this seems part of an effort such as Nietzche was struggling with (unsuccessfully and incompletely from what I can tell) to overcome the paralysis and fundamental ineffectivenss of moral perfectionism, utopianism and elitism (also Dostoevsky's book, "The Idiot") as some read into Christianity and find a warrior ethics (an ethics that can deal with the war aspect of life) that can, in all conscience, live with itself. (There is obviously much self-deception danger possible here.)

Kaplan says mature judgment sees that instead of moral absolutism, one has to choose between imperfect alternatives or even if one chooses correctly that the outcomes can be imperfect such that anyone can be "exposed." (Even not choosing is a decision. The ancient Greeks recognized that decisions had to be taken with imperfect knowledge, thus the sense of tragedy and fate.)

So if the spotlight is shown brightly enough, anyone can be "exposed" and the process can be made highly selective and political. The danger is that this will inhibit risk taking (Kaplan) which is necessary to maintain our freedom. [Without risk taking our freedom deteriorates until all that is left is impulsiveness and violent action.] Leaders therefore are able to proceed without paralyzing moral anguish by knowing they are doing the best they can under the circumstances, and where they fall short take responsibility without being judged by the false standards of the moralistically pious.

Here the mature Christian message would seem to lend support by recognizing this fallability and the need to decide, recognizing too the courage it takes to make moral choices and the sacrifice needed to see them through, judging the situation within the overall context using the standard that "love is the fulfillment of the law," and forgiving and redeeming accordingly given the context. Hopefully our political and media culture can get out of this moralistically pious tone of absolutism and not hold infallability as the standard.

This moral indignation and exposure is key to how much power is gained and held and may also explain the growing litigious society. Ronald Reagan was able to stand up to it by not buying into it. Because the truth cannot be told for fear of this Grand Inquisitor attitude, the truth gets bent to political ends, soon it is all spin and hypocrasy and real risk taking is avoided such that problems do not get solved. Future leaders will only step forward if they feel they are not going to be the victims of a high-tech lynching. Franco I'm assuming could have been exposed for many "lesser of two evils" actions, but would Spain have been better off if he had declined leadership? From the new book, "Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War," the answer sounds like it is a resounding "No."

[First_Salute]

Bump.

[royalcello]

Franco ping

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

"The Spanish Civil War . . . is often described as the last purely idealistic cause of the twentieth century."

I agree

Viva Don Francisco Franco, General de los heroicos ejercitos y Caudillo de España por la gracia de Dios.

[B-Chan]

I'm with you, Rodney. Franco's heroism is all the more meaningful for the fact hat he sought no personal gain or glory from his fight with the communist bandits who had murdered both the Church and the State in Spain. On the contrary, he knew the leftist Western press, from Norman Corwin on down, would make it their personal quest to drag his name down through history as a pirate and a Nazi. To this day he is regarded as the fascist par excellence in the historical literature, with Hemingway and his saintly crew of bourgeois "freedom fighters" as the eternal Good Guys, just because the communist government of the so-called Spanish Republic was voted into power and Franco was not.

This is not a notion confined to liberals alone; the idea that democracy trumps everything is common among even so-called conservatives. Even here on FR you will hear the bleats of the democracy-worshippers who truly believe that any government is okay as long as its is an expression of the all-important will of the people. "Well, if the people of Spain voted for communism, that's what they should have gotten.," they claim. "Franco had no right to overthrow a government established by the will of the people!" Yeah? Well, my question for these folks is: what if the will of the people chooses evil? Should a soldier stand back and watch satanic madmen turn his country into a hell on Earth just because 51% of the idiots out there voted for it?

No. The will of the people is not the final arbiter of good and evil. Vox populi is not vox dei. Soldiers have the duty to defend their country from all enemies, internal or external, elected or not. An evil government in a gven country should be overthrown by the defenders of that country — the military — even if 51%, 75%, or 99% of the people want that government to be in power. It is the duty of the military to defend the nation against ALL enemies — even if the enemy is the will of the people.

Francisco Franco was a soldier of Spain and he knew his duty. There are more important things in this world than one's historical reputation. Someday he will be recognized as the hero he truly was. Someday, when the web or its sucessor technologies have smashed the global media/historical monopoly once and for all, the real truth of the Spanish Civil war will be revealed: that it was the opening battle of World War III, the so-called "cold War" against global communism.

Viva España, Viva Franco and Viva Cristo Rey.

[Guelph4ever]

Thanks for the ping, this was a refreshing read. I'm glad to see there are some people still around who havn't swallowed the lie that Franco was the very bogey man. Was he pure as the driven snow? I don't think so, and frankly he most likely would not have been as successful if he had been.

My favorite analogy to use with Franco is Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men". Franco was a military man, which meant he didn't do politics, he destroyed threats, he found the enemy and he killed them. The liberals might not like that, they may be sickened by the death he unleashed, they may be offended by his autocratic style and Roman salutes, but at the end of the day, the whole world 'wanted Franco on that wall; we needed him on that wall'.

[jimfree]

I've read his stuff, but the more I learn about Hemingway the more I can't stand the phony, posing SOB.

Totally agree. But I still love his writing.