70 years ago today

[alvarezadams]

Spain's military, supported by the RW, the Church (and Mussolini and Hitler) rebelled against a democratically-elected republic, resulting in a long and bloody civil war and an even longer and equally bloody 40 year dictatorship.

Needless to say, over here there's quite a lot on the subject in the press - including a number of surveys and interviews. The surveys raise some eyebrows - on partisan political lines the "approval" of the rebellion is squarely divided. The supporters of the PP are mostly in favor... and the PP is Aznar's old party, the "center right", Dubya's ally.

As for the survivors, one thing stuck out: the political rhetoric coming from the right TODAY is similar to that of the pre-civil war right. That is to say, "catastrofista" and "tremendista", seeing and spewing fear of the enemy du jour, justifying the unjustifiable because of the possible excesses of their political enemies whom they ceaselessly (and often hypocritically) insult.

Ironically I'd spoken to my friends over here that the RW's political discourse sounds more and more like the GOP's over there and attributed it to the prevelance and internationalization of RW thinktanks (AEI has a partner over here, and in virtually every EU country).

Food for thought to add to the already clear parallels between today's RW and yesterday's fascists.

[JHB]

1. Speaking of parallels...

...it's also woth remembering that it wasn't that era's equivalent of the "101st Keyboarders" who formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade...

[alvarezadams]

2. SOME, maybe

I am consistently disappointed in the "101st keyboarders" who are, more often than not, caught in the minutia of electoral politics (AKA "expediency") and divorced from those issues that have traditionally "mattered" amongst the "left", the "illustrated" and the "socially aware".

Cue for a diatribe against the DLC and the Casper Milquetoast Dems that swallow talkingpoint issues as if they really mattered while paying little attention to core issues.

As a half-American and a half-Spaniard... with an American grandfather who was one of the first Southern Baptist ministers to have a mixed congregation in Mississippi in the 1920's (he ran for a position in the state legislature, died during the campaign, yet won...) and a Spanish grandfather who was a relative "bigwig" in Franco's "vertical trade union" (yet my father was shot in the leg in a pro-socialist manifestation in the 1950's), I am particularly "aware" ideologically.

The last time the RW pulled out the big jingoistic guns and pushed the nationalistic and fear buttons was under McCarthy. Previously is was the GOP between wars. In either case the manipulation and indoctrination was sickening - yet what happened back then is peanuts to what's happening now.

I say this because the post-Woodrow left had balls. The McCarthy opposition could count on at least SOME support from a responsible conservatism that still existed in those pre-Goldwater days (Goldwater lived to regret his own radicalism when he turned into the "moderate" center of a GOP gone apeshit).

What runs against the corporatist machine nowadays? I hesitate to name the "101st" because, by and large, it runs on emotion and lacks in ideology or even elementary recognition. Needless to say today's left has no head and hardly has a body, berift of "clean" ideals it is like a headless chicken.

Gawd knows that I've tried to elicit SOME debate on "ideology" (see my diary as an example) but it is not forthcoming. As an historian I fear that we're like sheep lead to slaughter, with the strongest moral base, a weak intellectual expression and a total lack of direction.

Today's "progressives" have been emasculated. Blair is Thatcher "lite". European socialists embrace the "third way". The DLC only differs from the most rancid proto-falangist GOP inasmuch as it plays lipservice to talkingpoint "liberal" issues...as long as they don't touch economics or foreign policy.

The "101st's" heart is in the right place, but without leadership and organization it is useless.

Useless.

I'm waiting for a movement. Not a "man on a white horse" - 'cos that is one of the things that any democracy must fear. I'm waiting for the semblance of a new "-ism" that answers to the "social libertarian" bent that most progressives have, yet do not have represented.

Our leadership fails us.

In the face of a billion-per-year indoctrination campaign (without counting campaign contributions), we have the likes of Casper Kerry... From my HPOV the best the DNC has had to offer for years was (RIP) Wellstone (with some reservations), Kucinich and, vaguely, Dean.

The rest could have easily run under a CONSERVATIVE GOP banner in the 1940's-1970's.


It's time to wake the fvck up. NOW's our time to articulate a NEW way as opposed to a DLC/Blairite "third way".

Otherwise what we're seeing now with the Islamic fundamentalists is a grain of salt to what might come soon as long as we ignore the Christian, Marxist, Anarchist and nay... even Fascist ideals of social justice.

IPSO DIXIT