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Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. What's Francisco and My Francoes? Yeah, fuzz,
Speaker 1: there we go. We introduced it. It's not as not
Speaker 1: as big in an MS Hitler like, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: honest with you, not not doesn't have the kind of
Speaker 1: star power like if Hitler. Hitler's like like Ben Affleck
Speaker 1: right uh and and we're doing like the Matt Damon
Speaker 1: of fascism today. He's just just not the same. That
Speaker 1: is not accurate. You are completely wrong. You just like
Speaker 1: his tattoo. Come on, I love I love his trashy, gigantic,
Speaker 1: fullback phoenix tattoo. Pretty funny, It's right, Okay, Well I
Speaker 1: think of somebody. It's like a deep He's it's more
Speaker 1: famous than Ben Affleck will say. It's more like a
Speaker 1: Scottie Pippen, you know what I'm saying, Like Scottie Pippen
Speaker 1: to Hitler's the Michael Jordan of fascism. It is like
Speaker 1: scott Pippen. We're talking to Scottie Pippen and Scottie Pippen.
Speaker 1: Francisco Yeah he's a yeah, yeah, Francisco is underrated. You know,
Speaker 1: he's good. He's not good. He's a monster. Quite a
Speaker 1: Pippen at a shoe exactly exactly Pippin's. Like we're talking about,
Speaker 1: like like Franco's, which would be Jack boots almost as
Speaker 1: tall as the Hitler Jack boots and not quite as
Speaker 1: shiny coast, but still jack boots and they're little sheep jack.
Speaker 1: Yeah for the fascist on a budget. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: we're trying to talk about the tattoo again. I did.
Speaker 1: I always want to talk and how hilarious and how
Speaker 1: sad Ben Affleck looks every time he's captured in the wild.
Speaker 1: Just looks like he's been dying for the last twenty
Speaker 1: straight years. And I'm here for it. Love Jack in
Speaker 1: the Box. It's incredible. He's just so miserable all the time.
Speaker 1: It just feels like he spent so much time being
Speaker 1: attractive that he just got tired of it. It was
Speaker 1: just like, speaking of fascism, you've heard of the fewer principle,
Speaker 1: the idea that like a single man can embody the
Speaker 1: spirit of a people, which is you know what Hitler
Speaker 1: used to rise to power. I never believed in it
Speaker 1: until Ben Affleck, because Ben Affleck is the spiritual embodiment
Speaker 1: of Boston. He's yeah, he's perfect. Yeah, he's really really is.
Speaker 1: I Yeah, Like, if the Southeast weren't so damn racist,
Speaker 1: I would really like that area, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But yeah, oh yeah about the Celtics. But I know
Speaker 1: a bit about fascism, and proper fascism is a little
Speaker 1: bit different in every country. It's kind of like um,
Speaker 1: kind of like skittles, you know, different flavors ships, Yeah, yeah, yeah, milk, chocolate,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the dark. You know, this is part
Speaker 1: of why scholars and theorists have such a damnable time
Speaker 1: defining what fascism is. In the first place, there's a
Speaker 1: dictionary definition, right, There's gonna be a dictionary definition in
Speaker 1: any dictionary you open. But it's not really useful, in
Speaker 1: part because a lot of dictionary definitions of fascism apply
Speaker 1: almost as well to like communist regimes, any any authoritarian regime,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, there's there's some points there, which
Speaker 1: is that whenever you have a totalitarian system, similar bad
Speaker 1: things often do happen. But fascism is unique for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, including its ability to subvert healthy democracies. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when you have historians of fascism, people whose
Speaker 1: whole life is studying this thing, this amorphous thing that
Speaker 1: we're still kind getting grips on, all of them kind
Speaker 1: of tend to have their own definitions of it. Um.
Speaker 1: And often those definitions don't contrast. They just different ways
Speaker 1: of kind of wording the same things. I tend to
Speaker 1: be feel confident that Umberto Echo has done the best
Speaker 1: job of defining it in his his essay on Earth Fascism.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the way Echo talked about fascism,
Speaker 1: and I think that Echo would have named Trump as
Speaker 1: a fascist straightaway. Um, in part because in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: when he wrote his essay on Earth Fascism, he predicted
Speaker 1: that the Internet and like the way that it allowed
Speaker 1: would allow people to spread messages and crowdsource activism, would
Speaker 1: lead to the rise of a of a unique kind
Speaker 1: of fascists. And I think that Trump embodied that in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and I think Echo would have
Speaker 1: seen it right away. Now, on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: think I may know where you're where echoes going out.
Speaker 1: Haven't read the thing, but like, I have this theory
Speaker 1: about the type of fascist that Trump is, but I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear what this guy says. Yeah, I mean Echo,
Speaker 1: Echo kind of outlined a number of different things that
Speaker 1: are like that are when you have a mix of
Speaker 1: these things and sort of a constellation that is what
Speaker 1: fascism is. So there's a mix of like, you know,
Speaker 1: popular resentment against the left, like a sense of machismo,
Speaker 1: of of misogyny, um, a cult of action for action's sake, uh, syncretism,
Speaker 1: the ability to like pull other things in and kind
Speaker 1: of attached them to itself under like aspects of spirituality
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Um, there were a bunch of different things
Speaker 1: that that Echo noted as kind of key aspects of fascism. Um, Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: you know what we're saying, because I was gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: it was so interesting about like what I feel, like,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna hear as history nerds for the next
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred years, about the unique the what
Speaker 1: Trump symbolizes and it might just be a new type
Speaker 1: of fascism for the rest of our life. But just
Speaker 1: this fascism that doesn't have a foreseeable goal, like except
Speaker 1: for just being in power, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That was so that's what was so interesting to me
Speaker 1: about the uniqueness about Trump's fascism is like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: what's your endgame here? Like what do you what are
Speaker 1: you doing? You know what I'm saying. Whereas like we
Speaker 1: knew what Mussolini was doing, we know what you know definitely,
Speaker 1: and we knew yeah he did it, Like we knew
Speaker 1: what you were doing. This was your goal, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And I'm just like what you're like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Dude? You know his lack of
Speaker 1: a plan, right, singles dot com. Yeah, apparently Trump saying
Speaker 1: that because I think that did I think threw some
Speaker 1: people off, is that he clearly didn't have as much
Speaker 1: of it like Mussolini. I do think it's more similar
Speaker 1: to Trump than Hitler's and the kind of fascist that
Speaker 1: he was and in his goals. But Mussolini had a
Speaker 1: plan to take and hold power, and I guess one
Speaker 1: of the things that's been revealed is that like Trump
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to take and hold power, but he did
Speaker 1: not have much of a plan. Not yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1: your goal is to reach a goal, which is yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: your goal was just almost like yeah, He's there's a
Speaker 1: lot to be said, and I don't know, you just
Speaker 1: want to keep being right, you know, And I'm like
Speaker 1: about what, Yeah, anyway, it It's interesting and a number
Speaker 1: of like, there are other scholars of fascism who took
Speaker 1: a lot longer to kind of decide that that Trump
Speaker 1: fit their definition of fascism. I'm thinking about Robert Paxton here,
Speaker 1: and Paxton is a very well respected scholar of fascism.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called The Anatomy of Fascism that's
Speaker 1: a very good book, Um, and he only felt comfortable
Speaker 1: declaring Trump a fascist after January six and he was like,
Speaker 1: that was the line, Like it was. Paxtons been consistent,
Speaker 1: he's an authoritarian, there's fascist elements and what he does,
Speaker 1: but he didn't kind of name him a fascist until
Speaker 1: after the sixth And I like, I'm not slamming Paxton.
Speaker 1: I think there's a room for intellectual debate on toism.
Speaker 1: And I understand kind of why he, like, like you said,
Speaker 1: Trump's a different kind of one, right, and where I
Speaker 1: fascism changes based on the country and based on the
Speaker 1: time period, you know, um, And I do think kind
Speaker 1: of one of the things that Echo was was sort
Speaker 1: of peering around the edges of when he was talking
Speaker 1: about how he thought we were going to see an
Speaker 1: internet based fascism in the future, was the idea that
Speaker 1: like another aspect of fascism, And he didn't define this
Speaker 1: as a key aspect of fascism, but I think that
Speaker 1: it is is the fascist is the city to find
Speaker 1: a way to utilize new media technology in a way
Speaker 1: that no one else understands yet, which Trump did right.
Speaker 1: No other politician understood how to use social media in
Speaker 1: the way that Trump did when Trump came onto the scene. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a big part of his success anyway. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate over what is a fascist. And
Speaker 1: as a result of this debate, there's actually quite a
Speaker 1: lot of argument on whether or not the regime of
Speaker 1: Francisco Franco in Spain was truly fascist. And you'll find
Speaker 1: a lot of argument about this about whether or not
Speaker 1: Franco was a fascist. There were fascists in Spain, absolutely,
Speaker 1: whether or not Franco and his regime really counts, um.
Speaker 1: And what's not up for debate is that many elements
Speaker 1: of the Spanish right leading up to enduring the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War were fascists in that Fascist powers Italy and
Speaker 1: uh in Germany intervened in that civil war because they
Speaker 1: saw what was happening there as a battle between fascism
Speaker 1: and socialism largely um and more to the point, whatever
Speaker 1: you can say about Franco himself, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: him more in Part two, the Battle over Spain in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties absolutely ranks as the first open
Speaker 1: military conflict between fascism and democracy and fascism and socialism.
Speaker 1: To write like all of that was kind of in
Speaker 1: the mix. And on the Spanish side, the Republican side,
Speaker 1: you had like the Spanish republic who were you know,
Speaker 1: liberals more or less people who supported like a constitutional democracy,
Speaker 1: and you had anarchists and communists and socialists, Severian kind
Speaker 1: of lesser strains. Trotsky Is too, who were It's a
Speaker 1: very complicated civil war. It's more like Syria than than
Speaker 1: a lot of other conflicts because there's so much going on,
Speaker 1: so many different different kind of corners to it. It's
Speaker 1: interesting real quick before you get into this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, in a past life, I was like a
Speaker 1: history and social science like high school teacher, and I
Speaker 1: went through the entire credentialing process all the way up
Speaker 1: to masters, and at no point in any of our
Speaker 1: California standards was it ever required to talk about this.
Speaker 1: And which is so antio seemed to me to win,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm trying to set up, you know, because
Speaker 1: since I wasn't a direct history I was more like
Speaker 1: a social science teacher, trying to set up how cultures
Speaker 1: get where they get and like why it was so
Speaker 1: weird around World War two and why we got so
Speaker 1: like we was already itchy, why a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of us was like, man, we really don't want
Speaker 1: to go over there. It's because we was I was like, well,
Speaker 1: because of the Spanish Civil War, like we kind of
Speaker 1: you know, who's kind of going back and forth about
Speaker 1: sending troops over there like it was. And the students
Speaker 1: were like, wait what and I'm like, yeah, the space. Yes,
Speaker 1: Spain had a civil war like this happened, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. This was like it was right
Speaker 1: before World War Two, like this happened. It was like
Speaker 1: this whole big thing. That's like it's a big thing,
Speaker 1: and we were involved, like we almost you know I'm saying,
Speaker 1: but just like that's like in no, thousands of Americans volunteered. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I'm like it's not required to talk about And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, this is You're missing this.
Speaker 1: You're missing a lot of the story if you don't
Speaker 1: understand why even World War Two was so touchy for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part of it was this anyway, go on. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons people don't like to talk about this
Speaker 1: is that it is it's very complicated, and it is
Speaker 1: not as much of a cut and dried story as
Speaker 1: makes it easy to sort of summarize, right, once the
Speaker 1: fighting starts, once the Civil war starts, it is a
Speaker 1: bit easier. But even then, it's a very fucking messy war.
Speaker 1: And there are really shitty people um on on the
Speaker 1: good guys side too, right, Like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like very ugly stuff that happens because it's a war.
Speaker 1: You know. The same is true of World War Two.
Speaker 1: It's just been heavily whitewashed, and the Nazis were so
Speaker 1: fucking bad that it makes it a lot easier to
Speaker 1: make your side seem like the good dudes. Um Now,
Speaker 1: in some ways, like because of how complicated it is,
Speaker 1: and we're going this whole episode is about the birth
Speaker 1: of Spanish fascism, and we're gonna do some pretty deep
Speaker 1: history here, um and in in some ways, the story
Speaker 1: of how fascism evolves in Spain bears a lot less
Speaker 1: resemblance to what's happened in America than either of the
Speaker 1: two stories we've discussed so far. But while they're the
Speaker 1: similarities are a lot less direct. I actually think there's
Speaker 1: a lot here that's valuable because we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of lay out how this evolved over time and how
Speaker 1: the birth of fascism in Spain was woven into the
Speaker 1: birth of democracy itself. And I think that's a really
Speaker 1: important story. Um, but we're gonna need a lot of context.
Speaker 1: So Spain is unique, fairly unique among European nations, and
Speaker 1: that it has not had a sense of nationalism from
Speaker 1: most of modern history. Um, not in nearly the same
Speaker 1: way that you got with England, or with France or
Speaker 1: with Germany once you know, eighteen seventy whatever rolls around. Um,
Speaker 1: the Spanish state does go back very far to fourteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight when Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, the Columbus folks,
Speaker 1: right when they decided to yeah South America, Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And before that they were the ones, like Spain, they
Speaker 1: kick out the Moors, you know, the Muslims who had
Speaker 1: kind of taken over a chunk of Iberia as a
Speaker 1: result of the counter into anyway, they take back Spain
Speaker 1: for Christendom. That would be the way they would have
Speaker 1: framed it, um. But they don't actually make a nation,
Speaker 1: not in any modern sense. Spain is a bunch of
Speaker 1: independent kingdom, and those independent kingdoms up until fairly recently
Speaker 1: never really melded together. You've got the Aragonese, and you've
Speaker 1: got Catalans, and you've got the Basque and they all
Speaker 1: of their and there's there's more than that, right and
Speaker 1: this but don't pretend I'm not going to pretend this
Speaker 1: is Spanish history is incredibly complicated. I am very far
Speaker 1: from an expert, um. And there are still issues with
Speaker 1: like a lot of Catalans and a lot of Basque
Speaker 1: still want like some at least some degree of independence
Speaker 1: from the Spanish state. Yeah, recognition from the Yeah. And
Speaker 1: they all of their own languages and cultural traditions. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I learned that's interesting actually
Speaker 1: is that, um, the the the like Spanish, what we
Speaker 1: know is Spanish comes from the chunk of like the
Speaker 1: the language group that was kind of most dominant in Iberia.
Speaker 1: But they actually stole the word for the country from
Speaker 1: I think it was the Catalans. So like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's very anyway, very complicated history, um. And from most
Speaker 1: of Spanish history, the only unifying factors of all these
Speaker 1: very disparate groups of people were the crown, the king,
Speaker 1: and the Catholic Church. Um, and mainly the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: Right now, in the eighteen hundreds, Spain was dominated by
Speaker 1: a revolution, or Spain was kind of overtaken. Spanish thought
Speaker 1: was overtaken by a revolution in classical liberalism, right, that
Speaker 1: sort of takes over a lot of parts of Europe
Speaker 1: at this point in time. In Spain is included in that.
Speaker 1: But in Spain, this kind of new liberal wave largely
Speaker 1: failed to push for any kind of mass Spanish identity.
Speaker 1: It didn't like and this is where you start to
Speaker 1: get like French identity, right and like, but you don't
Speaker 1: really get that, um, I mean France, it starts earlier
Speaker 1: than the eighteen hundreds, but like, you don't really get
Speaker 1: that in a big way in Spain. And part of
Speaker 1: the reason is that kind of the cultural elites failed
Speaker 1: to institute any meaningful education reforms for the majority of
Speaker 1: the population. UM Like France in the same period, establishes
Speaker 1: a functional education system, and by contrast, Spain's failure to
Speaker 1: do this means that education remained the purview of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. They do most of the educating and it's
Speaker 1: only for the wealthy. Um and the country would deal
Speaker 1: with why spread a literacy well into the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and when you don't have mass public education one of
Speaker 1: the things you don't have is a widespread idea of
Speaker 1: the history and like what your nation is. And like, right,
Speaker 1: that's part of why anyway, there's not Nationalism is not
Speaker 1: really much of a thing in Spain. Um as a
Speaker 1: result of this, they're too busy killing off Americans and
Speaker 1: they're absolutely that's one of the things. That's where they're
Speaker 1: a huge imperial power and someone's there the first world power. Um,
Speaker 1: like the first power that's like on the on the
Speaker 1: level of like what the US was earlier in our lifetimes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: knowing like being being a Californian married to a Mexican woman,
Speaker 1: like you know, you you have to somehow kind of
Speaker 1: know a little Spanish history as to why these why
Speaker 1: these Mayans are speaking Spanish, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and like and uh, you know, because the part of
Speaker 1: Mexico she's from there, from southern Mexican Mexico, so like
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of Mayan, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And um, but yeah, this like weird, like how they
Speaker 1: imp exported this like colorism and just this weird. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, Kano, body in your country
Speaker 1: read you know, so it's just this weird like thing
Speaker 1: happening with Spain. Yeah, it's it's very weird and like,
Speaker 1: if we're going to be completely fair, like if you
Speaker 1: look at the system of sort of slavery that was
Speaker 1: instituted in what we now call Latin America, Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the few systems of slavery and history
Speaker 1: that's like on the same level as what we had
Speaker 1: in the American South, like absolutely, and and and and
Speaker 1: genocides of it. So I'm not trying to like whitewash
Speaker 1: Spanish history. What I'm saying. They don't have nationalism. It's
Speaker 1: just not it's not the same as it is with
Speaker 1: all and that's what I'm saying. But that's I'm adding
Speaker 1: to it, like that it's peculiar that they had such
Speaker 1: an imperialistic power without this like national identity. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's very odd. Like Spain is an interesting country to study. Now.
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church was a major force in Spain for
Speaker 1: pushing against the development of a modern liberal state. Right
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds. You don't really have nations anywhere
Speaker 1: up until like it started, like that concept kind of
Speaker 1: starts like in the seventeen hundreds like things shifts a
Speaker 1: lot less. The idea of like a nation the way
Speaker 1: that we conceive of one is kind of born in
Speaker 1: this period seventeen hundreds, and the Catholic Church in Spain
Speaker 1: really pushes against the modern liberal state. Um. This was
Speaker 1: largely due to the fact that liberalism had an anti
Speaker 1: clerical bias. Right. The Catholic Church for the medieval period
Speaker 1: is like the most power, the big power in the world. Right,
Speaker 1: they have influence everywhere in Christendom, and they start to
Speaker 1: lose it in this period because governments are like, well,
Speaker 1: where we gonna let a church in Italy tell our
Speaker 1: government like, we're England. I don't like, I don't give
Speaker 1: a ship what you said, yeah, um, And the you know,
Speaker 1: Catholic Catholicism is huge in Spain and the church is like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want any of this ship going on. So
Speaker 1: Spain the Church pushes against kind of a lot of
Speaker 1: of modernizing ideas. And one of those things is that
Speaker 1: Spain failed to develop a modern military system. And while
Speaker 1: it was again a massive military power, they never do
Speaker 1: like what France does. Where you you start this idea
Speaker 1: of a nation under arms and a modern professional style
Speaker 1: of the military that takes a lot longer to develop
Speaker 1: in Spain, and it's part of why they don't do
Speaker 1: so well when everyone else develops a modern military right
Speaker 1: and they start losing their empire, both to a combination
Speaker 1: of European powers taking their ship from them and from
Speaker 1: a lot of revolutions in places they had controlled that
Speaker 1: overthrows them um. And so the seventeen hundreds and eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds see a rapid decline in Spanish power. It had
Speaker 1: been declining before then, but yeah, now the ultimate collapse
Speaker 1: of Spanish imperialism um really comes in eighteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: when the United States goes to war with Spain for
Speaker 1: no reason really and takes over Cuba and the Philippine
Speaker 1: just because like it's a just randomly just like hey,
Speaker 1: you want a new imperial power, we could be there
Speaker 1: and there. You know, Spain is an unbelievably brutal particularly
Speaker 1: in the Philippines, and then we take over and we're
Speaker 1: unbelievably brutal in the Philippines, and the people they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys, so are we going to have a democracy now?
Speaker 1: And we're like no, no, no, oh no, we want
Speaker 1: your ship, like we want your ship. You know, she's
Speaker 1: setting you free so we can own you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't understand kind of freedom. It's that kind of
Speaker 1: it's that kind of freedom. Yeah, Like we don't even
Speaker 1: let women in our country vote. You think we're gonna
Speaker 1: let you vote? What are you? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: It's motherfucker's so interesting. Yea, nothing changes, it's just your
Speaker 1: leaders speak English now. I mean, our guns are better.
Speaker 1: Our guns are a lot better than Spanish guns. They're
Speaker 1: guns sucked. That's why we're in charge now. Colonialism. So
Speaker 1: so one of the things that's interesting about Spain is
Speaker 1: Lady Late nine. That's like the height of colonialism right
Speaker 1: before World War One starts like like murders a lot
Speaker 1: of the great powers that controlled the whole world. So
Speaker 1: like they are they are writing high. Africa's just been like,
Speaker 1: you know, murdered, like in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 1: colonize this avel for Africa's like at its height. You know,
Speaker 1: Belgium owns the Congo. It's that period. So everyone else
Speaker 1: who's doing imperialism is doing gang busters, and Spain's empire collapses.
Speaker 1: So what happens to everyone else in like the fifties, sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: UM really happens to Spain like sixty, a couple of
Speaker 1: generations earlier. So they actually go through the they're an
Speaker 1: empire who goes through the collapse of colonialism while everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing great at colonialism, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things that makes them very interesting. So some of
Speaker 1: the things that happen in colonial powers when their empires collapse,
Speaker 1: these things that we've seen in Germany and France and
Speaker 1: England and that we're seeing now in the United States
Speaker 1: happen in Spain in the late eighteen nineties. Because it's
Speaker 1: just the stuff that happens when you're an empire that fails.
Speaker 1: I find that really interesting. Historian Stanley pain Uh calls
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety eight the first modern post colonial trauma in
Speaker 1: Western Europe UM, and I think you do have to
Speaker 1: view it as a trauma for the people in Spain,
Speaker 1: and probably the best equivalent to our own society would
Speaker 1: be the ongoing trauma that a lot of a mayor
Speaker 1: organs have faced in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to minimize the traumas faced in those
Speaker 1: countries as a result of US action, which are commensurately greater.
Speaker 1: But we've seen in the MAGA movement, right and all
Speaker 1: of these like that, it's that have come home and
Speaker 1: stormed the capital and ship like. It is a trauma.
Speaker 1: It's a trauma where you were an empire that fails.
Speaker 1: It fox people up who were used to being the empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that yeah, that's that's that. I'll find that part, like,
Speaker 1: you know, as being a black dude being like, you know,
Speaker 1: we the saying, you know that like a qualities oppression
Speaker 1: if all you know is privileged, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like when if you're just you're so used to
Speaker 1: the system working for you, the second it doesn't, you're
Speaker 1: like something must be broken. You're like, well, no, it
Speaker 1: was broke. That's why it only worked for you, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, it was always broken.
Speaker 1: It was always one of the people it worked for.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Spain deals with this postcolonial trauma very early,
Speaker 1: right before the rest before the rest of the Western world, right,
Speaker 1: really does because it fails for them. They were the
Speaker 1: first for it to work, and they were the first
Speaker 1: that it failed for, which I guess makes sense now
Speaker 1: Like in the US, all those failing colonial ventures that
Speaker 1: we had flooded the United States with disaffected veterans debt,
Speaker 1: and it fueled the rise of a resentful right wing
Speaker 1: as well as feeling the rise of a dissident left
Speaker 1: wing right. Both of all of that stuff was really
Speaker 1: um incited in a lot of ways by UH. And
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not calling the dissident left a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Um But like those horrible colonial wars, we had really
Speaker 1: fueled a lot of that, And the situation in Spain
Speaker 1: after eight nine is not all that different. Now, with
Speaker 1: her years as a great power seemingly behind her, Spanish
Speaker 1: intellectuals begin to wonder if the sense of exceptionalism that
Speaker 1: they'd always taken for granted had been based on false premises.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from historian Stanley Pain here. I know, right, interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Symptomatic of the dismay of the nationalist military was an
Speaker 1: editorial in El Heraldo Militar on twenty three November nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight, entitled worst in Anywhere. It declared, wherever we look,
Speaker 1: we find greater virility than in our own people. In Turkey, Persia, China,
Speaker 1: the Balkan States, everywhere we find life and energy even
Speaker 1: in Russia. In Spain there was only apathy and submission.
Speaker 1: How sad it is to think about the situation in Spain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like us in the coronavirus. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Americans can identify with a lot of Wait,
Speaker 1: they're hearing here, even if you don't feel it bad
Speaker 1: you you know the intellectuals in our own society who
Speaker 1: are saying the same ship, right, yes, yes, Now. The
Speaker 1: Spanish political system was not at all stable domestically during
Speaker 1: the period after like while her empire was in free fall,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why the empire didn't last. From
Speaker 1: eighteen o three to the early nineteen hundreds, there were
Speaker 1: more than a dozen military coups. Between eighteen thirty three
Speaker 1: and eighteen seventy six, Spain was racked by three civil wars,
Speaker 1: the Carlist wars, which were not battles against everybody's favorite
Speaker 1: tertiary Simpson's character, but we're instead members of a conservative,
Speaker 1: pro church political movement. The car Lists were the violent,
Speaker 1: armed wing of Catholics right there were the embodiment of
Speaker 1: clerical resentment against liberal Spain. They were religious extremists who
Speaker 1: didn't want the country to modernize UM, and I found
Speaker 1: a very detailed right up for students on a Lyman
Speaker 1: dot uk that notes the Carlist wars quote where fought
Speaker 1: with a fervor and brutality derived from deep divisions within Spain.
Speaker 1: They also lasted longer than national wars and were more
Speaker 1: difficult to resolve. They anticipated the Spanish Civil War in
Speaker 1: a number of respects. There was a strong element of
Speaker 1: different and conflicting beliefs within the country, profound traditional Catholicism
Speaker 1: against modern liberal thought, regional independence against traditional central control,
Speaker 1: political liberalism against deep conservative monarchism. So this is all
Speaker 1: the stuff that's been cooking up in the background of
Speaker 1: Spanish politics at the turn of the twentieth century. Now
Speaker 1: partly as a result of the car List Wars. Spain
Speaker 1: had a relatively underdeveloped right wing in this period because
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of them gotten killed in wars
Speaker 1: UM and they been very tied to the Church, So
Speaker 1: there wasn't as much like a nationalist right wing. It
Speaker 1: was a Catholic right wing. Now, Spanish nationalism, as I said,
Speaker 1: was kind of nascent and didn't really start to erupt
Speaker 1: into the street until after World War One. In Spain
Speaker 1: was neutral in World War One, so you think they
Speaker 1: might be in a better position because they don't really
Speaker 1: get involved in this ship um and it does delay
Speaker 1: a lot of political extremism in the country. It's why
Speaker 1: they don't have, like, you know, a communist movement that's
Speaker 1: really a big deal until after the war. The first
Speaker 1: big street fight in Spain between radical political groups actually
Speaker 1: happened between two opposed groups of nationalists in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Radical Catalanists, which are like big like advocates of Catalan separatism,
Speaker 1: had been holding peaceful nightly demonstrations in favor of independence
Speaker 1: throughout nineteen eighteen. In January of nineteen nineteen, a group
Speaker 1: of right wing Espaniolistas, who are like nationalists violent Spanish
Speaker 1: nationalists assaulted this gathering of peaceful Catalanists. Both groups battled
Speaker 1: it out in the streets of Barcelona and what would
Speaker 1: soon become a familiar display. The Espaniolistas were a mix
Speaker 1: of local army officers and men from a group calling
Speaker 1: itself the Lega Patriotica Espaniola. This violence was soon superseded
Speaker 1: by a spree of organized political murders by anarcho syndicalists
Speaker 1: from a labor federation called the C and T. And
Speaker 1: this is like unrelated to the national separatism. There's also
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about anarchism in a second, but a
Speaker 1: bunch of anarchists extremists start murdering people based on like like,
Speaker 1: based on class really, um and that brings us a
Speaker 1: temporary stop to all of the street fighting because the
Speaker 1: murders bring the cops out against all sorts of what
Speaker 1: are considered to be political extremists, and it briefly claims
Speaker 1: it's what we're about to see in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it briefly clamps down on all political organization in
Speaker 1: the streets. Yeah. Now, in most of Western Europe, anarchists
Speaker 1: tended to be smaller like they weren't fairly rare for
Speaker 1: anarchists to make a large percentage of political radicals in
Speaker 1: the European country. Um. And it's much more common for
Speaker 1: like socialists and communists to be a significant like force,
Speaker 1: a significant like sized force. Ukraine would be an exist
Speaker 1: an exception to the we talked about Nestor mcnow on
Speaker 1: our our Christmas episodes. UM. And part of why Ukraine
Speaker 1: had a large and organized anarchist movement is that Ukraine
Speaker 1: was largely agrarian. And one of the things we see
Speaker 1: in in like Europe in this period of time is
Speaker 1: that nations that have a large industrial base and a
Speaker 1: lot of industrial workers have a huge communist movement. Nations
Speaker 1: that are primarily rural and agricultural have a large anarchist
Speaker 1: movement because anarchists are more common kind of come out
Speaker 1: of agrarian, rural communities more often than common, because communism
Speaker 1: is a workers movement. Marks early on in his career
Speaker 1: was very much like you like kind of wrote off
Speaker 1: for a long time rural people. Was like, no, it's
Speaker 1: all about the workers. It's about industrial like them. You
Speaker 1: can organize and you can use them to take you know,
Speaker 1: take over the system basically, and like rural people are
Speaker 1: kind of a lost cause. And he did change on
Speaker 1: that later in his life install but like, that's part
Speaker 1: of why you don't really see communism erupt out of
Speaker 1: rural areas in this period. You see anarchism when you
Speaker 1: see left wing experience. Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna quote it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting, right, I didn't actually thought of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's part of why when I think about ways
Speaker 1: in which to pull people in rural America away from
Speaker 1: right wing extremism. I think of more systems like democratic
Speaker 1: confederalism or libertary municipalism like book chin Um that are
Speaker 1: kind of more of an out of a more anarchist
Speaker 1: view because like a lot of these libertarians, I do
Speaker 1: think you can pull into a more reasonable system that's
Speaker 1: not right wing extremism, because a lot of their basic
Speaker 1: ideology is I want to be left alone. And I
Speaker 1: think you could be like, well, we we want to
Speaker 1: leave you alone. We just also would like to be
Speaker 1: left alone. Can we figure out a way to like yes, yes, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna quote from Lemon dot Uk again on
Speaker 1: kind of politics and Spain in this period quote capitalist
Speaker 1: industry had not developed in the same ways that had
Speaker 1: in Germany, Britain and America, and Spain had little in
Speaker 1: the way of organized labor. After small scale beginnings in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight, anarchism came to be a major revolutionary
Speaker 1: influence of the twentieth century, and was more widely embraced
Speaker 1: in Spain than other left wing ideas. The movement first
Speaker 1: gained notice in the eighteen seventies after a violent incident
Speaker 1: at the town of Alcoy in eighteen seventy three, when
Speaker 1: anarchists took advantage of a strike to spread radical ideas,
Speaker 1: causing the police to fire on the gathered populace. A
Speaker 1: clampdown was enforced that sent the movement underground. Consequently, it
Speaker 1: became largely based in rural areas, which were more difficult
Speaker 1: to police. Anarchism was reduced to individual acts of terrorism,
Speaker 1: which in turn were met by repression and torture by
Speaker 1: the state throughout the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. By
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, terrorism had given way to a
Speaker 1: belief in anarcho syndicalism. This was the theory that the
Speaker 1: state could be challenged by cooperative action by the workers
Speaker 1: and strikes. The Federation of Workers Societies and the of
Speaker 1: the Spanish Region was formed in nineteen hundred. This movement
Speaker 1: organized strikes to exercise political power and was again suppressed.
Speaker 1: Wage cuts and closures of factories in Barcelona in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine, together with a call up of men for
Speaker 1: a colonial war in Morocco, led to a general strike
Speaker 1: in the city on twenty six of July. This turned
Speaker 1: out to be a major event, with seventeen hundred arrests,
Speaker 1: attacks on railway lines, and anti claire Colism, hostility to
Speaker 1: the church. Eighty churches and monasteries were attacked. The government
Speaker 1: response was swift and merciless, and five leaders were executed.
Speaker 1: And this is a big thing with like a particularly
Speaker 1: anarchist in Spain. They burn a lot of churches down,
Speaker 1: and they kill a lot of Catholic priests, um and
Speaker 1: some of that, a lot of that is them murdering
Speaker 1: people who didn't deserve it, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: is that is them murdering people who did because the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church is also terrible, like kind of why yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for like a pure good guy or
Speaker 1: a peer victim, you will rarely find it in this
Speaker 1: Like there are right like obviously I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: like there's nuns and ship they get murdered. That's not chill.
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church is also responsible for horrible repression. It's
Speaker 1: very messy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're yeah, they
Speaker 1: you know, they have their own you know, both versions
Speaker 1: of like bastard episode of like the like the Good
Speaker 1: Christmas one that's like, oh we Indian North vantages. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying it's like, oh, that's actually great, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's then there's this, and the Catholic Church is
Speaker 1: so big because you can also you could obviously we
Speaker 1: could do multiple episodes and we probably will at some
Speaker 1: point about the massive and pervasive sexual abuse of children
Speaker 1: that was enabled by the Catholic Church. We could could
Speaker 1: and should also do a Christmas episode on the significant
Speaker 1: number of priests and nuns in Latin America who were
Speaker 1: like dogged and constant enemies of US imperialism and writing
Speaker 1: extremism during like the period when the US was doing
Speaker 1: most of its fucking around Latin America. All of that's
Speaker 1: part of the Church's history of that. Like a couple
Speaker 1: of our hospital bids are actually Catholic. Yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like weird mixed yeah. I I'm not a person who
Speaker 1: wants to like simplify all this. It's very messy, and
Speaker 1: this is a messy episode mess by this point, when
Speaker 1: you've got these anarcho syndicalists organizing and like and and
Speaker 1: in some cases carrying out not all of them, but
Speaker 1: some of them carrying out terrorist attacks, and some of
Speaker 1: those attacks are on shitty people, and some of those
Speaker 1: attacks are on people who don't deserve it, like it's
Speaker 1: very messy. And at the same period of time, you've
Speaker 1: got Gabrielle de Nunzio in Italy occupying well, I guess,
Speaker 1: in Yugoslavia occupying the city of Fume. And you've got
Speaker 1: Mussolini in the early stages of forming his black Shirts
Speaker 1: and sicking them on left wing newspapers. This is happening
Speaker 1: contemporaneously to that. You're gonna to like, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to release with this one a vocabulary list. You introduced,
Speaker 1: some new names, some new words. We talked about de
Speaker 1: Nunzio and few and I'm not talking about him. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the different factions in Spain. Yeah, you said,
Speaker 1: you said a narco syndicalism. Yeah, anarco. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, darn O claydo master this bug. Anarcho syndicalists.
Speaker 1: The basic idea is that workers need workers who work
Speaker 1: for like different factories or whatever, who work and farms
Speaker 1: even need to form syndicates together, to organize kind of
Speaker 1: like unions, to organize and have syndicates that work together
Speaker 1: against the state and against capital in order to in
Speaker 1: some cases just gain better wages for workers in some
Speaker 1: cases in order to old against the system. But like
Speaker 1: it's this idea that different groups of workers need to
Speaker 1: organize themselves and then work with other organizations of workers
Speaker 1: rather than having bosses in a strict hierarchy. And they
Speaker 1: totally need to sell drugs. That's why they call a narcos. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The good thing about this period is that drugs are
Speaker 1: all legal everywhere. Um. So by this point, like I said,
Speaker 1: de Nunzio is occupying Fume and Mussolini's in the early
Speaker 1: stages of like forming the black Shirts, Fascism is getting
Speaker 1: started in Italy um. And in Spain, though anarchists are
Speaker 1: by far the largest and best organized group of political
Speaker 1: radicals in the country, the communists aren't really a big factor,
Speaker 1: and the right wing isn't really a big factor. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of the anarchist fighting the government a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, and the Catholic Church, you know, is
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of their like supporters are kind
Speaker 1: of taking the part of right wing organizing, but the
Speaker 1: car List wars kind of drained them, so it's not
Speaker 1: a big deal there. Um, And this is not really
Speaker 1: the case anywhere else that you could think of it,
Speaker 1: It's part of why I find Spain so interesting. Fascism,
Speaker 1: by contrast, had a much slow were time starting off
Speaker 1: in Spain. Portugal actually beat Spain to the punch when
Speaker 1: it came to like having fascists um. And it was
Speaker 1: because a proto nationalist group called Nationalismo Lusitano was formed
Speaker 1: in Lisbon in nineteen twenty three, and it was directly
Speaker 1: inspired by Mussolini's Italian fascism. Now a number of other
Speaker 1: Mussolini want to be sprang up in Europe during this period.
Speaker 1: You could even call Hitler at the time of the
Speaker 1: Beer Hall Putsch kind of like a Mussolini imitator um.
Speaker 1: But the idea didn't really catch on in Spain, not yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spanish intellectuals were, however, watching Vincent Italy, and one of them,
Speaker 1: a guy named Fla, suggested that this new political system
Speaker 1: might just be the thing to help rebuild Spain's failing empire.
Speaker 1: He wrote a Fascism as a social movement. It gave
Speaker 1: voice to a vein of mysticism and idealism that exalted
Speaker 1: the concept of the patria and its full realization the
Speaker 1: concept of the fatherland. Yeah. Coffee shop in Compton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with some troubling. Yeah. So the name of the game
Speaker 1: for FUA was national restoration. But Mussolini's fun idea was
Speaker 1: popular outside of right wing circles too. There was actually
Speaker 1: a left wing cattle and separatist movement that found themselves
Speaker 1: drawn to Italian fascism, particularly it's emphasis on militia based
Speaker 1: direct action. And they weren't fascists. They didn't embrace, for example,
Speaker 1: Mussolini's doctrine of therapeutic violence, you know, the cult of
Speaker 1: violence for violence's sake. Um. They just liked, number one,
Speaker 1: the imagery of this non state group of armed people
Speaker 1: marching in order to take power for themselves, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to do that. So, like the left is when
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our first episode, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who are just kind of hate the system
Speaker 1: play with both fascist and anarchists and left and right
Speaker 1: wing ideas throughout this period of time. Um. Also, I
Speaker 1: like that you brought up Portugal because I feel like
Speaker 1: they always fly on it a radar. They do. They
Speaker 1: just everybody just not notice and they could just exist
Speaker 1: in the shadows. They was the first in Africa, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So yeah, like nobody like how
Speaker 1: do why I talk about portable? And they're also the
Speaker 1: case of a country that was incredibly powerful and want
Speaker 1: I is to funckload of the world and then collapsed
Speaker 1: before the rest of colonialism did. And you see the
Speaker 1: same thing happened in Portugal where all these authoritarians start
Speaker 1: coming into power because there's the sense of like, we
Speaker 1: need a strong man. And this is like intellectuals in
Speaker 1: Spain will be like, we have to or in Portugal
Speaker 1: will be like, we can't have a republic for a while.
Speaker 1: We have to have basically a dictator come in because
Speaker 1: he needs to fix everything. Like we have all these problems,
Speaker 1: we can't argue we just need one visionary to come
Speaker 1: And it's not quite fascism, but it's it has a
Speaker 1: lot of elements of that, right, So um, Robert, can
Speaker 1: you hit ad Rick real quick? You know what else
Speaker 1: has elements of fascism? Sophie no nois aspects. Yeah, here's
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Speaker 1: from sorry. If by strong man you mean a strong
Speaker 1: Sophie that keeps us in and placed in, yes, these
Speaker 1: ads have elements of fascism, but it's a good fascism.
Speaker 1: It's a fast it's a fast ship, fashion fashion, fashionist,
Speaker 1: which is fine. Fine, it's fine, it's fine, and we
Speaker 1: we appreciate our podcast Dictators, So our podcast rules with
Speaker 1: an iron fist. Uh. It does operate a system of
Speaker 1: political re education camps, but that is a story for
Speaker 1: another episode. So in late nine, Spain gained its first
Speaker 1: real fascist party, the Tresistas. They wore a blue uniform
Speaker 1: because blue is the color of the working class for
Speaker 1: the right wing red as the colors the working class
Speaker 1: for the left wing right. Like, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. Uh, and we got it backwards here, which
Speaker 1: is weird, right. Um. Yeah, they wore a blue uniform
Speaker 1: and they hope to spread throughout the country. But the
Speaker 1: organization fizzle. There just wasn't any real interest in fascism
Speaker 1: in Spain in this period. Now, while political fascism failed
Speaker 1: to gain meaningful purchase in Spain, during this time, fascist
Speaker 1: thought and inclinations were spreading among a lot of influential
Speaker 1: Spanish thought leaders and particularly within the military and military officers.
Speaker 1: Much of this had to do with the rise of
Speaker 1: the revolutionary left in the eighteen nineties, these anarchists that
Speaker 1: I was talking about. In his landmark book Fascism in Spain,
Speaker 1: scholar Stanley Pain notes that the military resistance to the
Speaker 1: left had less to do with politics than you might expect.
Speaker 1: Officers largely accepted moderate left wing social and economic aims,
Speaker 1: and there was even a strong strain of anti capitalist
Speaker 1: thought among Spanish military leaders. Despite this, pain rights army
Speaker 1: officers demanded suppression of the left, disorder, violence and subversion
Speaker 1: of national unity. Again, it's this The military's big problem
Speaker 1: with the left is they're disordered right there, trying to
Speaker 1: tear down this system, and we're we're doing pretty well
Speaker 1: in this system. And it's the thing that is always
Speaker 1: the case, right um. The military itself was also heavily
Speaker 1: divided in this time, not a political lines, but between
Speaker 1: bureaucratic officers on the peninsula itself and combat officers who
Speaker 1: had spent time fighting in Spain's last colonial possession, Northern Morocco. So,
Speaker 1: Spain's most of its empires has collapsed right now, but
Speaker 1: they have Northern Morocco, and Spain had gotten Morocco basically
Speaker 1: during the last stages of the scramble for Africa, and
Speaker 1: it was it was given to them by France and England,
Speaker 1: who you might notice don't have the right to give
Speaker 1: Morocco to any but they did, and it was due
Speaker 1: to like diplomatic support that Spain gave them, Like it
Speaker 1: was literally like it was them the way that like
Speaker 1: a normal person be like, hey man, i'll help you
Speaker 1: move if you help me set up my sound system
Speaker 1: this week. Like that's how Spain got Morocco. It's very yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's a bullshit. It's also a
Speaker 1: beautiful country, gorgeous yeah. Um. Now, so they were given
Speaker 1: the right to occupy the land by France and England
Speaker 1: and nineteen o six and exchange for diplomatic support. And
Speaker 1: Spain's conquest of Morocco was kind of like the first
Speaker 1: one night stand you have after a breakup. They just
Speaker 1: had like a big you know, they needed something to
Speaker 1: boost their confidence after losing to the United States. UM
Speaker 1: and Spain turned out to be pretty bad at conquering Morocco.
Speaker 1: Their control never amounted to much more than a few towns, cities,
Speaker 1: and roads on the coast. Much of the territory and
Speaker 1: its people refused to yield, and in nineteen one, a
Speaker 1: charismatic Moroccan leader named Abdul Kareem rose an army and
Speaker 1: launched what became known as the Riffy Insurrection. For a time,
Speaker 1: it was the strongest rebellion against colonialism anywhere in the
Speaker 1: Afro Asian world. Like, these guys actually do great um
Speaker 1: for a while, you know, uh. Now, the war attracted
Speaker 1: ambitious young Spanish officers eager to make a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: One of these guys was a fellow named Francisco Franco,
Speaker 1: who rose to the rank of colonel fighting the insurgents. Now,
Speaker 1: Francisco and a lot of young officers were very frustrated
Speaker 1: by the corrupt and bureaucratic nature of the military, which
Speaker 1: had not seen a major reorganization or modernization in decades.
Speaker 1: It was a lot in a lot of ways like
Speaker 1: an Napoleonic army with somewhat better guns, which is why
Speaker 1: part of the way they're getting their asses kicked now.
Speaker 1: Franco and a number of other officers formed military councils
Speaker 1: of like minded officers and lobbied for reforms, and some
Speaker 1: of those reforms were successful, but nothing they did was
Speaker 1: enough to write the inertia. In early nineteen one, the
Speaker 1: Spanish army launched an offensive into northern Morocco from the
Speaker 1: coastal territories they held. Now, because the people in charge
Speaker 1: were idiots, they didn't properly prepare lines of communication, and
Speaker 1: they almost immediately advanced beyond their supply lines. No defensible
Speaker 1: forts were left behind to secure supply routes or water,
Speaker 1: and on July twenty, after five days of skirmish is,
Speaker 1: a force of five thousand Spanish troops were attacked by
Speaker 1: three thousand riff fighters. This should have been an easy
Speaker 1: win for a European military, but the Spanish had poor
Speaker 1: organization and we're basically out of AMMO because they'd outrun
Speaker 1: their supply lines. So the Riffs, the riffy like overrun
Speaker 1: the Spanish army and they advanced like several hundred miles,
Speaker 1: slaughtering Spanish soldiers, taking over supply depots and positions as
Speaker 1: they go. The Spanish army shot entirely. They lose more
Speaker 1: than thirteen thousand men wounded in a matter of days,
Speaker 1: and the Riffs suffer around eight hundred casualties. This is
Speaker 1: like a like one of the worst defeats suffered by
Speaker 1: any colonial power in Africa. It is they get their
Speaker 1: assets handed to m hmm. The defeat was so extensive
Speaker 1: and so shameful that the Spanish general committed suicide in
Speaker 1: the field and his remains were never found. Um, like
Speaker 1: it is they it is yeah, and the riff. This
Speaker 1: whole instruction is fascinating to read about because like these
Speaker 1: guys fucking have it on lockdown, you know. Um, it
Speaker 1: is hard to imagine how shattering this was to the
Speaker 1: people of Spain and their image of themselves, and how
Speaker 1: much it disrupted Spanish politics. The military was, of course enraged,
Speaker 1: and even though the failures were entirely their own, they
Speaker 1: blame their failures on the support of the civilian government.
Speaker 1: It's y'all's fault. Well, we're bad at war. Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: I didn't lose this war. Yeah, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: see it on the right here where it's like it
Speaker 1: was the liberals and like the left that lost us
Speaker 1: the wars and no, you were we suck at this.
Speaker 1: We're bad at it. Look make it okay. We're bad
Speaker 1: at it and it's bad it was you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been at the first place. Yeah, if we fucking stopped
Speaker 1: this ship in like I don't know, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: we'd still be like, you know, what we're good at
Speaker 1: is war. Don't have to do it often, you're good
Speaker 1: at it. We saw uh now again, Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: fox up a lot in Spain at this period of time.
Speaker 1: Um and obviously the Liberal government is also enraged, largely
Speaker 1: at the cost in Spanish life and treasure in this
Speaker 1: colonial adventure. And in early September ninety three Liberal ministers
Speaker 1: resign in protests because the military draws up plans for
Speaker 1: a new offensive and Morocco and they're like, come on, guys,
Speaker 1: like you just got your asses kicked. This isn't terrible fellas.
Speaker 1: He can not take the message. It's bad, bad catalysts
Speaker 1: who didn't even really want to be part of Spain,
Speaker 1: let alone send their sons to die and fucking Morocco.
Speaker 1: For Spain held a huge rally in Barcelona where the
Speaker 1: Spanish flag was dragged through the ground. This really pisses
Speaker 1: off the military, and it pisses off a bunch of
Speaker 1: senior generals, most prominently a career military man from a
Speaker 1: career military family named Miguel Primo de Rivera, now as
Speaker 1: the Captain General of Barcelona, the guy in charge of
Speaker 1: the military in Barcelona. De Rivera was a desk officer,
Speaker 1: not an African veteran, and that's kind of like the
Speaker 1: break between the army. But he sides with the African veterans,
Speaker 1: and he sees this liberal government as having failed his
Speaker 1: illustrious Spanish army. He also had seen Mussolini's March on
Speaker 1: Rome in ninety two, and while he is not a fascist,
Speaker 1: he really likes Mussolini, and the BArch on Rome convinces
Speaker 1: him that with the army behind him, he could force
Speaker 1: an into the parliamentary politics that he that felt were
Speaker 1: holding the military back. And I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: a book called Fascism in Spain about like this revolt
Speaker 1: that de Rivera leads. The revolt began in Barcelona as
Speaker 1: a classic pronounca miento, I'm sorry, space um, with a
Speaker 1: local takeover in the Catalan capital by its captain general,
Speaker 1: who called upon the rest of the army and other
Speaker 1: patriotic Spaniards to rally round. In fact, also in the
Speaker 1: traditional style, all but one of the other captains general
Speaker 1: at first sat on their fence. The pronunca miento h
Speaker 1: succeeded above all because the Liberal government did almost nothing
Speaker 1: to defend itself. The issue was finally decided two days
Speaker 1: later by the crown as Alfonso the Eight, without invoking
Speaker 1: constitutional limits or procedures transferred power to what would become
Speaker 1: the first direct military dictatorship in Spanish history. Primo de
Speaker 1: Rivera gave no evidence of any explicit theory or plan.
Speaker 1: His assumption of power was at first predicated on a
Speaker 1: ninety day emergency military directory to deal with such problems
Speaker 1: as attempted subversion, the stalemate, and Morocco administrative corruption and
Speaker 1: political reform. In fact, his only professed ideology was constitutional liberalism.
Speaker 1: He insisted that the Constitution of eighteen seventy six remained
Speaker 1: the law of the land, and initially denied that he
Speaker 1: was a dictator in any genuine sense, insisting in his
Speaker 1: first public statement, no one can with justice apply that
Speaker 1: term to me. Of course everyone since has called him
Speaker 1: a dictator. Yeah, the years of yeah, what is it about?
Speaker 1: I have two questions about this, Like I forget what figure,
Speaker 1: what what history? And I heard to say it, but
Speaker 1: he was just talking about like just generals, like they
Speaker 1: all kind of have this like diva gene, like just
Speaker 1: just kind of Diva's you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to like what is that? So
Speaker 1: that's like my first thing. It's very deep in in
Speaker 1: Western civilization particularly right, Like you have to look back
Speaker 1: to Rome at this stuff. So the way generals in
Speaker 1: Rome were treated. Number one, if you were general in
Speaker 1: Rome and you had a major military victory, the Senate
Speaker 1: would vote for you to have what was called a
Speaker 1: try mp, which is where you were all but in
Speaker 1: all but named king for a day of Rome, and
Speaker 1: there was the whole city had this huge party for you,
Speaker 1: and all of your trophies of war were dragged through
Speaker 1: the streets and like, because you were so powerful and
Speaker 1: so like basically worshiped that day. It was that one
Speaker 1: guy's whole job to stand next to you the whole
Speaker 1: time and throughout the day whisper to you you will
Speaker 1: die at one point, like you're going to die someday.
Speaker 1: Like that was like like that that, like, and Rome
Speaker 1: constantly had civil wars that were the result of generals
Speaker 1: taking their armies and taking power. It happened all of
Speaker 1: the fucking time. It's why you got Caesar. It's why
Speaker 1: it stopped being a republic. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the United States military is organized the way
Speaker 1: it is and why there's such if you look at
Speaker 1: like some of the ship the military was saying at
Speaker 1: the end of Trump's time, like, why they had so
Speaker 1: many statements about the military having no role in the
Speaker 1: elections is because from the beginning the founders of this
Speaker 1: country were like, that's going to be a problems. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have military. That's gonna be And at first a
Speaker 1: lot of them were like, we shouldn't have a military.
Speaker 1: Why would you, like it always is a problem. Let's
Speaker 1: just have a bunch of militias, you know, which there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for that. M Yeah, anyway, but like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are Diva's Like, if you're going to take the
Speaker 1: responsibility for the lives of tens of thousands of men
Speaker 1: into your own personal control, you've got to be a
Speaker 1: little bit of a diva. Yeah, it seemed like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so obviously everyone today calls Primo de Rivera a dictatorship.
Speaker 1: The years of his leadership are generally known in Spanish
Speaker 1: history as la dictadura uh and this was met like
Speaker 1: his his coming to power was met by a lot
Speaker 1: less resistance than you might guess. Spain was exhausted by
Speaker 1: years of political bickering, foreign policy setbacks, in economic frustration.
Speaker 1: Several years earlier, political theorists in Portugal had talked about
Speaker 1: the need to bring in a temporary dictator, what they
Speaker 1: called an iron surgeon, to solve intractable problems. And Primo
Speaker 1: de Rivere was one of a lot of strong men
Speaker 1: who came to power throughout Europe in this period who
Speaker 1: weren't fascists, although they often admired fascists and took some
Speaker 1: ideas from them. Um. But de Rivera doesn't really have
Speaker 1: an ideology. He's just wants to like fix things and
Speaker 1: figures is enough of a narcissist that he's like, I
Speaker 1: know how to do this. Um. And while dear Vera
Speaker 1: wasn't a fascist, his brief reign would help further lay
Speaker 1: the groundwork for fascism in Spain, and the war that
Speaker 1: he brought to Morocco was in many ways a prelude
Speaker 1: of fascist wars of extermination to come, only it was
Speaker 1: waged with the help of his allies the French. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: after the Spanish army broke an annual which is that
Speaker 1: big battle where they lose thirteen thousand dudes. The Abdel Kareem,
Speaker 1: who was the guy in charge of the reef um
Speaker 1: and his his his like, I don't know what you
Speaker 1: wanna call them, I'll call them revolutionaries established a republic. Now, France,
Speaker 1: who just fought a whole war, you know, World War One,
Speaker 1: was the right of national self determination, and who were
Speaker 1: a republic themselves, did not like that Abdel Kareem and
Speaker 1: his reriff had established a republican Morocco because they're afraid
Speaker 1: they own a bunch of Africa. They own a bunch
Speaker 1: of Africa near Morocco. People are going to hear that
Speaker 1: there's a republic that isn't run by Europe and they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're they're not gonna want to have us in
Speaker 1: charge anymore. Like, wait, this is an option, yeah option, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't have a democracy and not you yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like that. Yeah. France is like, no, that's
Speaker 1: not that's not gonna happen at an option, not an option,
Speaker 1: Not an option. So they decide to enter the war
Speaker 1: against the Riff on Spain's side to crush the rebels.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, France and de Rivera's reformed Spanish
Speaker 1: army begin a counter offensive against the Riff. Now leading
Speaker 1: things on the French side was a fellow named Marshall Patain,
Speaker 1: hero of the Battle of Verdun during World War One,
Speaker 1: and the guy who would become the leader of vich
Speaker 1: France during World War Two. He's the guy who collaborates
Speaker 1: with the Nazis. Um now, but tell you at this point, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, he's a real piece of Shitmpkins didn't kill
Speaker 1: this guy. He's a He's a war hero at this
Speaker 1: point too, though, because he he led France through the
Speaker 1: Battle over Dune. Is. If you're making a shortlist of
Speaker 1: the very worst battles in the entire history of human warfare,
Speaker 1: for Done might be number one, you know, Stred. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of other like, but it's it is, It's in,
Speaker 1: It's in the running. You know. It's horrible, like a
Speaker 1: million people die. It's a terrible, terrible battle. So he's
Speaker 1: a big war hero. And when he decides he wants
Speaker 1: to go to Morocco, the French government is going to
Speaker 1: give him everything he asks for. So he puts together
Speaker 1: a force of a hundred and fifty thousand men to
Speaker 1: face abdel Kareem's tribesmen, who were very well organized and
Speaker 1: good fighters, but they numbered just twenty thousand. The offensive
Speaker 1: started with one of the first Yeah, amphibious landings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no like Gandalf showing up and helping. No, we don't,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't get a Gandolf in this story.
Speaker 1: So you are outgunned and outman. Yeah, you guys are
Speaker 1: just like you're fucked. It's it's a bummer um. And
Speaker 1: this amphibious landing is started spearheaded by young colonel named
Speaker 1: Francisco Franco, who led the soldiers of the Spanish Foreign
Speaker 1: Legion into battle. Now you have seen the Spanish Foreign lead. Um.
Speaker 1: Everyone in America pretty much did. Because at the start
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus lockdown, when Spain had a lockdown and
Speaker 1: brought in the military to help, there were pictures of
Speaker 1: a bunch of very jacked and very handsome Spanish soldiers
Speaker 1: and incredibly tight fitting uniforms marching down the streets of Barcelona,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of US liberals were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: they're so hot. Why can't we have those soldiers here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you the backstory of those soldiers because
Speaker 1: those were the men of the Spanish Foreign Legion, and
Speaker 1: it's not a great back story. So it's crazy. It
Speaker 1: was crazy about like the geography right now, like I
Speaker 1: don't noticed backstory that you're about to say, but I'm
Speaker 1: just picturing the geography because off the Costa del Soul
Speaker 1: at the edge of of the edge of Spain to
Speaker 1: the tip of Tangiers in Morocco, it's just the Merediterranean.
Speaker 1: See it's a ninety minute boat ride. Yeah, it's so far.
Speaker 1: It's not far. You it's almost like you could sit
Speaker 1: in Morocco and watch him, like, yeah, he'd come to Spanish.
Speaker 1: You can get Spain to Africa in the time you
Speaker 1: would get a quarter of the way across Texas, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's nothing, it really is. Yeah, do they know
Speaker 1: who designed the uniforms. We're going to talk about why
Speaker 1: the uniforms look the way they do. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: Spanish Foreign Legion were founded. He's not a pointy motherfucker. No, No,
Speaker 1: they're hot. They're hot. They're hot. They're they're they're like
Speaker 1: a nice they are they are, but they are they
Speaker 1: are hot. Nobody's arguing that they're not hot subjectively way
Speaker 1: too tight. Yeah, no, one is arguing that they're not
Speaker 1: good looking men. We're not going to disagree about this,
Speaker 1: but problematic. So they're found the Spanish Foreign Legion was
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen nineteen in mimicry of the French Foreign Legion,
Speaker 1: since Spain was also mimicking French ambitions in North Africa
Speaker 1: at this point. The founder of the Legion was a
Speaker 1: guy named Milan Astray, a veteran of Spain's brutal war
Speaker 1: in the Philippines and of the fighting in Morocco, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to create a colonial army for Spain that
Speaker 1: they used to regain some of their lost glory. He
Speaker 1: created an interlocking series as he founded, like when he
Speaker 1: founded the Foreign Legion, he wanted them to be brutal,
Speaker 1: because if you're going to keep a colonial possession, you
Speaker 1: have to murder a lot of people, right, that's how
Speaker 1: colonialism where you have to kill a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And so your soldiers have to be soulless, broken men
Speaker 1: in order to gun down the proper number of children
Speaker 1: to keep an empire. Um, these he wanted his shock troops.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean in fine as hell, Um she
Speaker 1: just sent me. That's why it's good. God, God, I know,
Speaker 1: I know. Like the reaction is like the Spanish Foreign
Speaker 1: Legion today look like characters in like they look like
Speaker 1: characters in a pornography, like they don't look like soldiers,
Speaker 1: they look like fake soldiers from a sleazy porn yes, um, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they kind of did then, so stray in order
Speaker 1: to make sure these guys are as brutal as possible,
Speaker 1: creates for them an interlocking series of hazing rituals with
Speaker 1: goal with like shattering these men's souls. And he wants
Speaker 1: to explicitly is like, I want to separate these men
Speaker 1: from their past lives and unify them in quote brotherhood
Speaker 1: and death. Now, Milan Australia was a big fan of
Speaker 1: the Bushido code of the Samurai. Yeah, I know, I
Speaker 1: know all of these fucking guys, and he cribs from
Speaker 1: Bushido um to write his own Legionary creed. What's emphasized
Speaker 1: tireless duty, bodily hardness, which is why they're all jacked,
Speaker 1: unconditional brotherhood and fighting to the death. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from a write up and Prospect magazine on the
Speaker 1: Foreign Legion here. Many of these themes were common across
Speaker 1: fascist movements and the military's they influenced, but others were
Speaker 1: distinct to the Legion. Legionary swore to become bride grooms
Speaker 1: of Death, from the title of a popular song about
Speaker 1: a legionnaire's sacrifice in the roof, renouncing familial and romantic
Speaker 1: bonds and sublimating them into loyalty to each other and
Speaker 1: the Legion's flag. You are married to death. Death is
Speaker 1: your wife. She's like, I'm married to the streets. You're
Speaker 1: not married to the game. You're married to death. So
Speaker 1: if you think these guys are hot, I have bad
Speaker 1: news for you. They're fucking the Grim Reaper. Yeah, they're sorry.
Speaker 1: You don't. You don't attract him. You are to a
Speaker 1: laugh at me. That's not my type. Yeah. Um, so
Speaker 1: these these guys, the reason why they have these shirts
Speaker 1: with like really open weird necklines, um, is that I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need you to rephrase that. What's week about that?
Speaker 1: They're showing it off. They are showing it off. It's
Speaker 1: also meant to emphasize their willingness to fight in the
Speaker 1: hot desert air. Um. And the green is from like
Speaker 1: the color it's like early camouflage. Yeah, this is what
Speaker 1: I wish was normal, Sophie. They are married to the
Speaker 1: concept of murdering children. I'm sorry, I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: here for that, but the old dog like right said,
Speaker 1: the pants are subjectively too tight, but like, go ahead,
Speaker 1: this is not functional. It's a nice pastel mint color.
Speaker 1: You know. No today this uniforms like functional? Yeah. Not.
Speaker 1: You have to be married to death because nothing about
Speaker 1: this says you ready to survive. Like kind of look
Speaker 1: like if the tin man from The Wizard of Oz
Speaker 1: worked at Baskin Robbins and had to go do a
Speaker 1: porno shoot later. So Franco and his Franco and his
Speaker 1: foreign legionman were the tip of the spear of the
Speaker 1: French and Spanish governments thrust into the heart of Morocco.
Speaker 1: You did, Yeah, I know, I know, Sophie. But we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about genocide. Okay, okay, but you don't
Speaker 1: know what you just did there. You know what, we
Speaker 1: need to take a break. The spear doesn't just mean
Speaker 1: to take a break, Robert, alright, we're gonna go to ads.
Speaker 1: Are gonna go to ads, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a colonial genocide. Yes, hi, I'm Robert lamp
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And where the hosts of the
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Speaker 1: Force Service and the AD Council. Alright, alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: and we are no longer talking about hot guys. Were
Speaker 1: talking about the genocide those hot guys helped commit. Well
Speaker 1: kind of brought it up like that. You know what
Speaker 1: you're doing, bro, I don't. I'm trying to emphasize that
Speaker 1: sometimes things that look nice are also fashy as hell,
Speaker 1: and sometimes sometimes the good looks will stick it to you.
Speaker 1: So the overwhelming force, well overwhelming force now anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just thrust their goddamn damn it. Okay, what you're doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know I'm trying to talk about the use of
Speaker 1: chemical war weapons upon civilians. But I've never wished Jamie
Speaker 1: Loftus was here more. I am fairly glad she would
Speaker 1: completely She's a professional at this. The French in the
Speaker 1: Spanish have so many soldiers in so much high grade
Speaker 1: military hardware that there is no chance the riff are
Speaker 1: going to actually win. Victory was only a matter of time.
Speaker 1: But de Rivera and Marshall Pattaine were not willing to wait,
Speaker 1: and so they started using chemical weapons to slaughter tribes
Speaker 1: people in mass and they're not using them on military forces.
Speaker 1: They first start bombarding the city of Tangier with fos
Speaker 1: gene gas, which is a deadly chemical weapon. It's what
Speaker 1: they used in the trenches. It chokes people to death
Speaker 1: on their own, rotting lungs um. It's horrific stuff. The
Speaker 1: Spanish army began pounding the outskirts of the town uh
Speaker 1: and as soon as Spanish forces started gassing tribes people,
Speaker 1: other commanders in the country begged to be able to
Speaker 1: do the same. One Spanish general wrote his desire to
Speaker 1: use them, them being chemical weapons with delight. This was
Speaker 1: all very good for France, who profited not just from
Speaker 1: stidity in northern Africa, but because they were willing they
Speaker 1: were selling Spain the gas, they also profited financially. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from an article on the website r S
Speaker 1: twenty one here. It was in fact a French business Schneider,
Speaker 1: which in nineteen twenty two helped to open a plant
Speaker 1: for the production of toxic shells in Malila, and indeed
Speaker 1: the French made an official one. French General leout Lee
Speaker 1: made an official request to his supervisors for provisions of
Speaker 1: chemical weapons in June ninet, justifying that the use of
Speaker 1: these munitions with their toxic power allows us to spare
Speaker 1: human lives during our attacks. In face of these bombs
Speaker 1: dropped the most populated regions of the territories controlled by
Speaker 1: Abdel Cream, the Riffians tried to fight back with non
Speaker 1: explosive projectiles as well as making shells charged with pepper power,
Speaker 1: with little success. Right up to the end of the
Speaker 1: Rift War, the Spanish army would continue to use these
Speaker 1: lethal gases with the support of the French forces with
Speaker 1: martial patain at their head. In Morocco, so spare human life.
Speaker 1: They attacked civilian targets with chemical weapons. They like. So,
Speaker 1: look hear me out. I didn't shoot him, I gassed
Speaker 1: him and his family. He just he died from the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's some real We had to destroy the village to
Speaker 1: save it vibes. Yeah, So Victory and Morocco started the
Speaker 1: dictator's time and power off. We're talking about de Rivera here.
Speaker 1: With widespread popular support, he created a political party, the UP,
Speaker 1: the Patriotic Union, whose motto was monarchy, fatherland, and religion.
Speaker 1: His mouthpieces at the UP declared that the de Rivery
Speaker 1: dictatorship was only a transitional thing, and that the military
Speaker 1: dictatorship would eventually be replaced with a civil dictatorship. So
Speaker 1: this military dictatorship just temporary. We got a civil dictator.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fine. It's great to be a different, good,
Speaker 1: totally reasonable kind of dictatorships. It's cool. Yeah, yeah, now
Speaker 1: this would be different. Yeah. So, the Patriotic Union or
Speaker 1: the UP was mostly composed of middle class conservative Catholic Spaniards,
Speaker 1: and historian Stanley Pain notes that in some provinces, sectors
Speaker 1: of the old political elite did join and dominate, but
Speaker 1: the organization also incorporated ordinary middle class people who had
Speaker 1: not previously been politically active, so in spite of the
Speaker 1: fact that electoral politics didn't exist during de Riveriaus dictatorship,
Speaker 1: it served a purpose of rallying and in some ways
Speaker 1: activating the middle class as a political entity. The up's
Speaker 1: goal was to ensure some form of right wing dictatorship
Speaker 1: remained the permanent government of Spain, and much of their
Speaker 1: support came from their victory in Morocco and their success
Speaker 1: in for the first time igniting widespread nationalism among the
Speaker 1: Spanish population. The UP held the country's first mass rallies
Speaker 1: and for a while De Rivera and his party were popular,
Speaker 1: but by nineteen twenty nine, the worldwide economic crash had
Speaker 1: started to hit Spain as well. The wealthy financiers who
Speaker 1: backed his regime started to sour on him and some
Speaker 1: of his interventionalist economic policies. At the same time, De
Speaker 1: Rivera faced growing resistance from students, who were a political
Speaker 1: factor for the first time in Spain due to the
Speaker 1: fact that the dictatorship had reformed the education system. In
Speaker 1: his last years in power, Rivera sought to stay dickt
Speaker 1: Hater by taking a leaf from the Book of a Man.
Speaker 1: He idolized Benito Mussolini. And this is the first time
Speaker 1: de Riveri actually kind of goes fascist. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the history of Spanish Fascism here. Italian diplomatic correspondence
Speaker 1: from Madrid in the final days of nineteen twenty nine
Speaker 1: reported that Primo de Rivera was indicating that he would
Speaker 1: soon begin a fundamental reorganization of the up along the
Speaker 1: lines of the Fascist Party. This reorganization never got started,
Speaker 1: as Javier to Sell and Ismael Sas have written with
Speaker 1: the Spanish dictator felt for Mussolini was considerably more than
Speaker 1: platonic admiration. He was pathetically incapable of transferring Italian institutions
Speaker 1: to Spain, and was often infantile in his effusive expressions
Speaker 1: to Mussolini. So he wants to be a fascist by
Speaker 1: this point, and he's like, he's kind of simping on
Speaker 1: on Mussolini. Yeah, just like you're so good. I just
Speaker 1: want to do what you do. Why can't I be
Speaker 1: as cool as you? Um, it's it's kind of saying
Speaker 1: he's an old man too. At this point, he's not
Speaker 1: doing great. Um. It is very weird. He's a Mussoli
Speaker 1: need stand hardcore, but he just doesn't have what it
Speaker 1: takes to be a fascist dictator. He just he's only
Speaker 1: a normal dictator. You know, you hate to see it.
Speaker 1: In January of ninety this dictator was ship canned by
Speaker 1: his king, who followed him out the door. About a
Speaker 1: year or so later, because popular support for the monarchy
Speaker 1: collapsed as a result of the dictatorship, for a brief,
Speaker 1: awkward period, Spain lacked any kind of legitimate government. It's
Speaker 1: king in parliament were gone. A short succession of strong
Speaker 1: men held powers that national political elite struggled to cobble
Speaker 1: together some kind of functional government. The whole experience further
Speaker 1: radicalized the middle class, this time activating large numbers of
Speaker 1: Spanish liberals who advocated in the streets for a republican government.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, the Spanish Republic was born. Now,
Speaker 1: this did not thrill a lot of people, like it
Speaker 1: thrilled people a lot of people, but it also kind
Speaker 1: of piste off a lot of people, particularly young military
Speaker 1: officers who had supported the dictatorship. Um Francisco Fraco was
Speaker 1: one of these frustrated men. He'd been a close student
Speaker 1: of Primo de Rivera and had liked his unofficial title
Speaker 1: of national boss, like hefe nationalism, yeah, that's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hefe nacionale is kind of what they And he was like,
Speaker 1: I like that idea. I like me and everybody's boss. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All the years of dictatorship proved to Franco that a
Speaker 1: strong man could unify Spain, bring law and order in
Speaker 1: military victory. The only error that de Rivera had made
Speaker 1: in Franco's mind was that he didn't have any kind
Speaker 1: of ideology. Franco didn't really believe in anything other than like,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who can fix Spain. And when you
Speaker 1: don't have that concerted kind of ideology, you can't hold
Speaker 1: together a dictatorship very long unless you're willing to be
Speaker 1: brutal and promote. You know, he was not a great guy,
Speaker 1: very brutal in Morocco, but was not willing to be
Speaker 1: brutal in Spain. Not really not compared to any other dictator,
Speaker 1: you know, Franco. Franco was with him in Spain, I
Speaker 1: mean was with him in Morocco, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Franco was like he was a colonel in Morocco, and
Speaker 1: so and one of the like. People will say that
Speaker 1: like de Rivera was a bloodless dictator, which again looking
Speaker 1: at what happened in Morocco, not true. But if you're
Speaker 1: living in Spain, he's not mass executing people. He's not
Speaker 1: even mass imprisoning people. He's not hosting huge executions of
Speaker 1: his political enemies. He's a pretty if you're in Spain,
Speaker 1: a pretty mild dictator, about as mild as they get
Speaker 1: this century, you know, which is not to like whitewashing anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like part of why he doesn't stay in
Speaker 1: power along. You know, you've got to be more brutal
Speaker 1: than he is if you're going to hold power as
Speaker 1: a dictator. Now, Primo de Rivera's fall from power was
Speaker 1: also a lesson to Benito Mussolini. It convinced him that
Speaker 1: his regime could not afford to compromise its power at
Speaker 1: all with an elected parliament. This was in Mussolini saw
Speaker 1: basically like, ah, the only option I have to become
Speaker 1: so authoritarian that no one can push me out. And
Speaker 1: as a result, de Rivera's fall was a major It
Speaker 1: pushes Mussolini to spring towards more radical authoritarian policy. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, um, all of this stuff is interconnected,
Speaker 1: you know, just like everything, just like just like the
Speaker 1: Syrian Civil War is directly connected to White president Donald
Speaker 1: Trump became the press it, you know, like it's all
Speaker 1: everything always is connected. That's the way the world works.
Speaker 1: The Spanish Republic would have just five years of pre
Speaker 1: war existence. For its first two years, the socialists dominated
Speaker 1: the government, so not like hardcore communists, but definitely like
Speaker 1: left wing. Um the first two years, the left is
Speaker 1: dominating the Republic. For the next to a center right
Speaker 1: counter reformation pushes back against the gains of the left.
Speaker 1: The tug of war was largely in politics between socialists,
Speaker 1: Republican centrists, and Catholic conservatives, and the Catholic Conservatives, starting
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, were represented by Spain's first mass
Speaker 1: Catholic political party and first really powerful right wing political party,
Speaker 1: the c E d A. And' not even gonna try
Speaker 1: to tell you what it stands, what we're calling CEDA,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the that's the that's the birth of
Speaker 1: like the organized political right in Spain in a way
Speaker 1: that actually is able to take some power. The SEDA
Speaker 1: was the primary home for the conservative middle class who
Speaker 1: had been radicalized first by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and
Speaker 1: next by the early years of left wing power in
Speaker 1: the Republic. And they're being radicalized both by the fact
Speaker 1: that the socialist or in power and they're doing the
Speaker 1: things socialists do, which is in part to say the
Speaker 1: church is not going to have power, like we're not
Speaker 1: going to like let the Catholic church run things, but
Speaker 1: also by the like the anarchists who are still fucking
Speaker 1: up churches and stuff in this period of time. So
Speaker 1: it's it's the same it is here you've got kind
Speaker 1: of these more moderate people on the left, and then
Speaker 1: you've got people on the left in the streets doing
Speaker 1: things that scare these religious conservatives and make them decide
Speaker 1: like we have to take back our country. That happens
Speaker 1: in Spain too. It's a familiar story again to everyone
Speaker 1: listening um Now. A number of socialist laws were passed
Speaker 1: that clamped down on the power and prestige of the
Speaker 1: church in this period, and obviously they were again widespread,
Speaker 1: like there were anarchists attacked fifty convicts in Madrid in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, and again this helps energize the right.
Speaker 1: It's also if you're a Spanish anarchist who grew up
Speaker 1: living under a Catholic church that did all of the
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up ship we know the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: to do. Nobody's again, nobody is a monster here. While
Speaker 1: there are sponsors, we're about to tell about them. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this enraged fundamentalists and the c e d
Speaker 1: a like because of how angry they were at the left.
Speaker 1: The SITA is never a party that accepts the necessity
Speaker 1: of democracy, right. They want to take power and institute
Speaker 1: a Catholic state. They don't believe the Republic that they're
Speaker 1: participating in is legitimate, which also sounds familiar to her dominions.
Speaker 1: Yeah the dominionists. Okay, yeah, yeah, Now again, while this
Speaker 1: is all going on, the radical left in Spain tried
Speaker 1: several times to carry out insurrections against the republic. So
Speaker 1: the anarchists, because they're anarchists, do try to overthrow the
Speaker 1: republic because they don't like the republic either for different
Speaker 1: reasons than the c E d a UM. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they even fought alongside communists. Communists and anarchists are pretty
Speaker 1: good at working together in this period, compared to how
Speaker 1: they'll be later. Uh they attack police stations, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four they succeed in taking over large chunks
Speaker 1: of the state of a Sturius. This insurrection got far
Speaker 1: enough that the Republic called in their Imperial Shock troops
Speaker 1: the Foreign Legion, who rutally suppressed the revolt by massacurring
Speaker 1: basically everybody they could, um just gunning people down in
Speaker 1: huge numbers. The thing, the only thing that they do.
Speaker 1: You know, That's why you have these guys to murder everybody,
Speaker 1: to put everybody down. Everybody shut up when I get there.
Speaker 1: Everybody airbody sitting down. We do not have machine guns
Speaker 1: because we're good at being like a discriminating with our violence.
Speaker 1: We have machine guns because it makes it faster. You know.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Stephanie, she just come in and everything.
Speaker 1: I'm not asking who did what, whites is broke? Everybody
Speaker 1: sitting down? Your aunt who comes in with the fucking
Speaker 1: sandal and just started like you need to saying. She
Speaker 1: called in with the check blasts. Everbody getting it? I
Speaker 1: don't got no, I don't want to hear nothing. Everybody
Speaker 1: getting up the CNT. Who's that? Anarcho Syndicalist party launches
Speaker 1: constant strikes in this period, largely because they're angry that
Speaker 1: the Republic had failed to rest it. So when the
Speaker 1: Republic comes to power, the far left is like, because
Speaker 1: the far left our anarchists, and they're agricultural right there,
Speaker 1: primarily in rural areas, and most of Spain's agricultural land
Speaker 1: like more is owned by just like rich assholes who
Speaker 1: make the people who are actually farming it pay them
Speaker 1: unreasonable rent and it like keeps them impoverished. And the
Speaker 1: radical left is like, we should the land should belong
Speaker 1: to the people who farm it. Yeah, maybe, why why
Speaker 1: don't we do that? But I understand we got a
Speaker 1: lot of radical thoughts. This don't feel radical, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't like it isn't the time, it shouldn't be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this really shouldn't be a radical't um. The Republic being
Speaker 1: a republic, gave them some of what they want, but
Speaker 1: not much. They redistribute about ten percent of Spain's uncultivated
Speaker 1: land of the peasants, and that really pisses off the anarchists,
Speaker 1: so they launch a bunch of In addition to these
Speaker 1: insurrections that other anarchists are doing, the C and T
Speaker 1: is doing like strikes and stuff in this period, as protests.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, a peasant protests was suppressed by
Speaker 1: Republican police who shot nineteen of them dead. Um. So
Speaker 1: this government, which is broadly speaking we'll call it a
Speaker 1: liberal government, is a government they still you know, gunn
Speaker 1: people down when you funk up, right, Like yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the constant unrest damaged the left middle class support, and
Speaker 1: the in fighting between communists, anarchists and Republicans hurt the
Speaker 1: broadly speaking liberal and left ability to keep control of
Speaker 1: the government from the right. In nineteen thirty four, the
Speaker 1: c E d A, led by Jose Marie gil Robles,
Speaker 1: became the dominant power in government um, or at least
Speaker 1: gained a lot of power in government. This provoked outrage
Speaker 1: from the span like they weren't in control or anything,
Speaker 1: but they had power for the first time. This really
Speaker 1: piste off the Spanish left because in the rest of
Speaker 1: Europe at the same time, Hitler has just consolidated all
Speaker 1: of his power and destroyed by our democracy. Italy is
Speaker 1: completely fascist now, um and there's dictators all throughout Europe.
Speaker 1: So the left sees the c E d A gain
Speaker 1: some power and they're like this is the start of
Speaker 1: what we're seeing happen. The fascists are going to take over.
Speaker 1: They're not wrong to be terrified that way, because it
Speaker 1: is what happens, you know, like it's happening. That's because
Speaker 1: it's going to happen. It's happening here, they say, and
Speaker 1: they're not wrong. Yeah. Um So again, the left in Spain,
Speaker 1: and when I say the left in this sense, I
Speaker 1: mean both like the liberals, the anarchists, the communists, socialists,
Speaker 1: like all of them, start to get really panicked. And
Speaker 1: this fear is reinforced by the fact that Gil Roblez
Speaker 1: consistently gave speeches ranting against democracy and in favor of
Speaker 1: what he called a totalitarian concept of the state. Uh
Speaker 1: Stanley payin rights quote, it seems fairly clear that the
Speaker 1: c e d as basic intentions were to win decisive
Speaker 1: political power through legal means, the exception being an ill
Speaker 1: defined emergency situation, and then to enact fundamental revisions to
Speaker 1: the new Republican Constitution which restricted Catholic rights in order
Speaker 1: to protect religion and property and alter the basic political system.
Speaker 1: So again, they're not out of line to be afraid
Speaker 1: of what is going to happen by the c e
Speaker 1: d A gaining power. Left wing fear that the c
Speaker 1: e d A would be bring fascism to Spain were
Speaker 1: further stoked by the fact that c E d A
Speaker 1: magazines kelpt running huge, loving articles about how good fascism was.
Speaker 1: They would have like these huge spreads about fascist Italy
Speaker 1: and what a perfect state it was. There were articles
Speaker 1: about the Nazi regime in Germany. Now, broadly speaking, the
Speaker 1: Spanish far right is more Italian fascists than German. For
Speaker 1: one thing, they don't really get the anti Semitism, like
Speaker 1: like everyone in Europe, they're kind of anti Semitic, but
Speaker 1: it's not organizing principle for them. Um and the Nazis
Speaker 1: they see. It's like kind of weird, but like still,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're they're better than the left. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I get what y'all going for. I really
Speaker 1: understand this part, but I don't know this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we kicked out the Muslims. I mean, I guess just
Speaker 1: the same, but I don't know anyway. Yeah, so Robles
Speaker 1: even visit The guy in charge of the c E
Speaker 1: d A even visited Germany in nineteen thirty three to
Speaker 1: attend the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. So again
Speaker 1: the c E d A is not entirely a fascist party,
Speaker 1: but the left in Spain, and this time calls them
Speaker 1: objectively fascist. And you can see why. Now. For his part,
Speaker 1: Robs only really rejected fascism because he saw it as foreign.
Speaker 1: During a speech in nineteen thirty three, he said, we
Speaker 1: want a totalitarian Patria, but it is strange that we're
Speaker 1: invited to look for novelties abroad when we find a
Speaker 1: unitary in totalitarian policy in our own tradition. So he's
Speaker 1: like fascism, like, I like it, but it's foreign, and
Speaker 1: we in Spain have our own totalitarian tradition that we
Speaker 1: should be embracing. And when he said this, he was
Speaker 1: actually referencing Ferdinand and Isabella, the first Spanish monarchs who
Speaker 1: were not totalitarian. It wasn't you couldn't be back then,
Speaker 1: you just like, yeah, exists, but yeah, yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: silly and very a historical um. In the same speech,
Speaker 1: Robles continued, for us power must be integral for the
Speaker 1: realization of our ideal. We shall not be held back
Speaker 1: by archaic forms. When the time comes, Parliament where I
Speaker 1: will either submit or disappear. Democracy must be a means,
Speaker 1: not an end. We are going to liquidate the revolution, liquidate, liquidate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, in addition to the c D e D
Speaker 1: A who if you don't want to call him fascists,
Speaker 1: they're at least pretty close low sodium yes, yeah, low
Speaker 1: sodium fascist like that. They're like diet mountain dew, like
Speaker 1: you don't want to go all the way, but on
Speaker 1: the spectrum. Now, Spain also had its own explicitly fascist
Speaker 1: political parties. And when I don't call the c E
Speaker 1: D A fascist, it's because I do want to differentiate
Speaker 1: between the people who are like, we're fascists, you know,
Speaker 1: like it is important to do that. Um that grew
Speaker 1: involved throughout the yearly nineteen thirties. Now, the founding father
Speaker 1: of Spanish fascism was a guy named Ramiro Ledesmo Ramos Ramos,
Speaker 1: and like most fascist intellectuals, he wanted to be a
Speaker 1: novelist before he got into politics, and he wrote a
Speaker 1: fake memoir of it, like he's it's very been Shapiro. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote a fiction novel which was a fake memoir
Speaker 1: about a depressed intellectual who commits sue aside um, which
Speaker 1: seems like it was very self pitying, and nobody will
Speaker 1: He writes it when he's eighteen, nobody's willing to take it,
Speaker 1: and his rich uncle pays to publish it, which tells
Speaker 1: you all you need to know about the Desma, the fascist,
Speaker 1: the father of Spanish fascism. So as the pseudo intellectual,
Speaker 1: Le Desma's greatest concern was that Spanish culture had not
Speaker 1: given the world a truly dominant political ideology. He complained,
Speaker 1: we are the only great people who have still not
Speaker 1: borne the philosophical scepter, and who therefore have not projected
Speaker 1: in an intellectual dictatorship over the world. And so as
Speaker 1: a result of this, he decided to steal a political
Speaker 1: system from Italy and become a fascist. He eventually formed
Speaker 1: the Junta's Dealfensiva Nacional Sinde Calista or John's and his
Speaker 1: followers are called the john Sistas, which is silly, but
Speaker 1: that's what they're called. Yeah. Le Desma and his fellow
Speaker 1: john Cistas refused to call themselves fascists, but they were.
Speaker 1: They talked lovingly of Italian fascism and they wanted the
Speaker 1: same things. One of Le Desma's first followers was the
Speaker 1: Spanish translator for Hitler's mind comp But to his credit,
Speaker 1: Ledesma did try to find ways to make Spanish fascism unique.
Speaker 1: In part, he attempted to do this by marrying it
Speaker 1: to Spanish anarcho syndicalism. Ledesma adopted syndicalism, the idea of
Speaker 1: worker councils governing themselves and striking to make their demands
Speaker 1: mets or adopted aspects of that, and he kind of
Speaker 1: awkwardly welded it to Spanish revolutionary nationalism. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that is odd that characterizes Spanish fascists in
Speaker 1: this period is they really reach out to the anarchists.
Speaker 1: They're trying to convert anarchists, um, in part because the
Speaker 1: anarchists are like the most vital anti government movement in
Speaker 1: this period. Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, it was reading the
Speaker 1: tea leaves of being like, you know, I think you
Speaker 1: don't like the same ship we don't like. Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: and it happens for some of them, right. Like that
Speaker 1: is a story that's very uncomfortable about anarchist history is
Speaker 1: that during the period of time when fascism rises and
Speaker 1: a number of anarchists in different countries, and an uncomfortable
Speaker 1: number of them decide, now, you know what, I'm a fascist,
Speaker 1: which is not. Yeah, and it's it's important, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever you believe to be honest about its history, and
Speaker 1: that includes the ugly parts um so Ledesma and his
Speaker 1: fellow John Ceasta has refused to call them. And also
Speaker 1: we're going to talk in part two about the fact
Speaker 1: that a funkload of anarchists died fighting fascism in Spain.
Speaker 1: And we're a lot of the very first people who
Speaker 1: were willing to put their lives on the line to
Speaker 1: fight global fascism before the United States was willing to
Speaker 1: fight the Nazis. A funkload of anarchists died fighting fascism,
Speaker 1: and I like, I'm not trying to to say that
Speaker 1: that like, and that's much more dominant a part of
Speaker 1: anarchist history totally than the ones who went fashion, but
Speaker 1: a number of them do go fascists, and it's something
Speaker 1: the fascists directly try to encourage. Um it's like the
Speaker 1: like the like the black Trump Yeah exactly exactly. Look,
Speaker 1: there's there's still that's still na and it doesn't erase
Speaker 1: the fact that Biden only won the election because of
Speaker 1: a funkload of organized black voters, you know, yes, yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like the left wing of the Nazi Party had done,
Speaker 1: Ledesma sought to make fascism collectivists, stressing that the individual
Speaker 1: has died and that the collectivest state is all that matters.
Speaker 1: This was not an initially successful line of propaganda, and
Speaker 1: by the end of nineteen thirty two there were barely
Speaker 1: any John Ceasta's Uh. Spanish fascism might not have taken
Speaker 1: off at all if it had not been for a
Speaker 1: fellow named Jose Antonio de Rivera, the son of the
Speaker 1: now dead dictator um So de Rivera's kid becomes like
Speaker 1: really the first prominent Spanish fascist. And one of the things,
Speaker 1: this guy is such a figure in Spanish history that
Speaker 1: he's one of the only people from this period of
Speaker 1: Spanish history who's known by his first names. He's Jose Antonio.
Speaker 1: They don't call it like they call his dad de Rivera.
Speaker 1: He's Jose Antonio, which is like kind of a mark
Speaker 1: of how significant this guy was. Now, Jose was a
Speaker 1: weird fascist, and we'll talk more about him in part two.
Speaker 1: He is not like other He's not nearly. For one thing,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really like violence in the same way that
Speaker 1: a lot of fascists do. And he's like weird friendly
Speaker 1: with a lot of socialists, like in government, like like
Speaker 1: he's he's like like and not in a I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a very weird fascist. His background, though,
Speaker 1: makes complete sense. He's the rich son of a military
Speaker 1: family whose father took almost absolute power in order to
Speaker 1: murder foreigners and steal their ship. So it's not weird
Speaker 1: that he becomes a fascist. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: you know, it's like representation matters, Like you have to
Speaker 1: see something to believe that it's possible. So he's, yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad took over the country. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: bet I can too. Yeah. Yeah, And you can see
Speaker 1: him as like kind of what I'm sure one of
Speaker 1: the Trump kids will try to do, although I would
Speaker 1: argue he's a better person thanity of the Trump kids. Yea.
Speaker 1: So he creates his own fascist party based on the
Speaker 1: idea of bringing in another dictator like his dad, but
Speaker 1: not sucking at it this time, right, Like we need
Speaker 1: a dictator. My dad had the right idea, but he
Speaker 1: didn't have an ideology I'm going to bring in an ideology,
Speaker 1: and both Jose Antonio's party and the john Sistas receive
Speaker 1: a shot in the arm. On January three, when Hitler
Speaker 1: takes power in Germany, a magazine l Fashion, which is
Speaker 1: a very subtle name. Yeah, dug it. So Hitler takes
Speaker 1: power in Germany and El Fascio gets launched in Spain
Speaker 1: and the government shuts that ship down right away and
Speaker 1: bands publication the future editions, which is like when did
Speaker 1: do Outlook? You want to you need you need your
Speaker 1: brand to be clear, Yeah, you need to be clear.
Speaker 1: So com We're talking a lot in the United States
Speaker 1: now about the value of d platforming fascists, about the
Speaker 1: and I'm an advocate for aspects of that, about the
Speaker 1: value of of taking away these people's ability to reach
Speaker 1: a mass audience. They do a harder, much harder core
Speaker 1: version of that. In Spain. You get in. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's unique about Spain is the police in
Speaker 1: this period cracked down on the fascists more than they
Speaker 1: do on the left. Um, which is weird. Um, It's
Speaker 1: a unique historically everywhere else it is the opposite um.
Speaker 1: And part of why is because the republic is very
Speaker 1: scared of these ashes for good reason. And if we're
Speaker 1: looking at like the effectiveness of de platforming to what
Speaker 1: extent it works, Spain shows us that it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: stop them from gaining power because they d platform the fascists.
Speaker 1: They try hard to d platform the fascists in the
Speaker 1: Spanish Republic, it doesn't do the trick. Um. So again,
Speaker 1: useful historical context here, which is not to say there's
Speaker 1: no value in d platforming, but we should be paying
Speaker 1: attention to what happened in Spain U and the d
Speaker 1: platform against Spain is being done by the government, you know, um,
Speaker 1: by cops and ship Now, the Law for the Defense
Speaker 1: of the Republic gave the Spanish Republic power to ban
Speaker 1: anything that threatened the republic's existence. Banning fascist propaganda, though,
Speaker 1: was not enough to stop the contagious excitement over fascism
Speaker 1: and the broader right wing reaction against the recent victories
Speaker 1: of the left. The john Sistas and Jose Antonio's movement grew.
Speaker 1: Jose Antonio was noted as not being particularly charismatic, but
Speaker 1: he was good with words, and he was a successful lawyer,
Speaker 1: so he had money. He entered into frequent public debates
Speaker 1: with left wing intellectuals where he would say off like this,
Speaker 1: so again he's a big kind of like Richard Spencer.
Speaker 1: I will go down and sit down and talk with
Speaker 1: all of your I'll be very nice, We'll be very polite,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about fascism in that way. He's that
Speaker 1: kind of fascist. Um quote this is this is Jose
Speaker 1: Antonio from a debate he had with kind of a
Speaker 1: more liberal guy. The liberal state believes in nothing, not
Speaker 1: even in itself. It watches with folded arms, is all
Speaker 1: sorts of experiments, even those aimed at the destruction of
Speaker 1: the state itself. Fascism was born to light of faith.
Speaker 1: Neither of the right, which at the bottom aspires to
Speaker 1: preserve everything, even the unjust, nor of the left, which
Speaker 1: at the bottom aspires to destroy everything, even the just,
Speaker 1: but a collective, integral national faith. And you can see
Speaker 1: why people would be appealed to as for things like
Speaker 1: we're not right when we're not left wing, they're both bad.
Speaker 1: Were something different. And he also the thing that all
Speaker 1: fascists have to do in order to succeed is point
Speaker 1: out things that are true and problems with the system,
Speaker 1: and he does. The liberal state believes in nothing, not
Speaker 1: even in itself. You know, that's a good, true statement. Aod,
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah, yeah, and that's part of why again,
Speaker 1: that's part of what he does. Succeed in bringing in
Speaker 1: some people from the left to the fascists and converting people, um,
Speaker 1: and at least in getting a lot of them to
Speaker 1: be like, well, he's not that, he's not as bad
Speaker 1: as the state. You know, a lot of people will
Speaker 1: say that in July of night, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't. By the way, anarchists murder eight we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this bart to murder a funkload of fascists in
Speaker 1: this period. So when I say a number of people
Speaker 1: on the left are like, well, he's not as bad
Speaker 1: as the state, a lot of people not like no,
Speaker 1: they're bad and we have to start shooting them to
Speaker 1: death now, So like, yeah, let's not. It's a lot
Speaker 1: lots going on. Um, you said in the beginning, this
Speaker 1: is messy. Yeah. Yeah. In July of nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: the John Ceast has launched an attack on the Madrid
Speaker 1: offices of the Friends of the USS are damaging the
Speaker 1: offices and threatening people with pistols. This caused a government
Speaker 1: crackdown both on the fascists and on the anarchists, arresting
Speaker 1: some three thousand people nationwide. Again, like we'll probably about
Speaker 1: to see this is what the government does, like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean in fairness, like right now, the anarchists are
Speaker 1: not doing much other than standing outside of buildings and
Speaker 1: breaking windows and this they were gunning people down. So yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I don't want to like try to make
Speaker 1: the case that Spanish history is exactly, but like you,
Speaker 1: I think there are useful parallels. So one of the
Speaker 1: things again, Spanish police did arrest more fascists and more willing,
Speaker 1: were more willing to um than other members of the
Speaker 1: left or the members of the left at this point. Um.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the first two years of Jose Antonio's movement,
Speaker 1: anarchists assassinated and gunned down and stabbed a funkload of
Speaker 1: fascists and brawls and outside of speeches. Um. Now, Jose
Speaker 1: Antonio was fairly unique among fascists, both in that he
Speaker 1: had genuinely warm and respectful relationships with a lot of
Speaker 1: left wing politicians and that he seemed to a poor violence. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a problem for his young party and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that more in part two now. In October
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty four, Jose Antonio traveled to Spain for
Speaker 1: a brief meeting with Mussolini and to tour a fascist state.
Speaker 1: He found it inspiring, and he wrote, Fascism is not
Speaker 1: just in a Talian movement. It is a total universal
Speaker 1: sense of life. Italy was the first to apply it.
Speaker 1: But it is not the concept of the state as
Speaker 1: an instrument in the service of a permanent historical mission
Speaker 1: valid outside of Italy. Who can say that such goals
Speaker 1: are only valuable for Italians. He returned from Italy eager
Speaker 1: to make and so again the John Ceased is the
Speaker 1: other chunk of the fascist movement. Are like, we don't
Speaker 1: want to do it a fascism, Italian fascism because we
Speaker 1: were Spanish Spain. Yeah. Jose Antonio is like, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Fascism is a global thing and it appeals to all
Speaker 1: of us. And he returns from Spain eager to make
Speaker 1: a deal with the Jones Ceistas in order to emerge
Speaker 1: both movements. He recognizes, your propaganda is better. I have
Speaker 1: more people, I've got I'm better at like organizing the
Speaker 1: street movement. If we work together, we can bring fascism
Speaker 1: to Spain. In early November, both groups of fascists came
Speaker 1: to an agreement. They initially wanted to use the name
Speaker 1: Fascismo espaniol but decided to change this to Falange Espaniola,
Speaker 1: which means Spanish fay links. The Phalanges would in time
Speaker 1: go on to earn a terrible and bloody reputation in
Speaker 1: Spanish history, but that it's going to be in Part
Speaker 1: two A lot of history. Oh man, this is dope. One.
Speaker 1: It's like for every uh, I love the like for
Speaker 1: every kid that you know, either it's set next to
Speaker 1: or was the little stoner kid that was like drawing
Speaker 1: the anarchist a on their folder in high school. That
Speaker 1: was just like no rules, Like no, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. It's yeah, it's an ideology. It's not
Speaker 1: just you not getting suspended for you know, slapping a kid.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing. It's a way to organize the
Speaker 1: world in society. That in a bunch of different ideas, right,
Speaker 1: the anarchist syndicalists have one. There's a lot of different
Speaker 1: added and there are also anarchists like an arco primitivists
Speaker 1: and stuff. Who don't want to or who like want
Speaker 1: to go back to them. More like there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of ship within anarchy. Yeah, but it's not you with
Speaker 1: your little drawing, your little a on your skateboard, you know,
Speaker 1: a little shits. That's how it starts. And I will
Speaker 1: say I've seen a lot of people in Portland do
Speaker 1: very interesting things with skateboards, a lot of teenage anarchists
Speaker 1: this year. That's that's how it starts for some people,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, okay, okay, that's if that's if that's
Speaker 1: the entry. It's deeper than that. There's a lot going on,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's just like, this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you never have to read again. You have to. You
Speaker 1: have to read a lot, okay, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I named him Chad. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I think we could stand to convert more
Speaker 1: of the Chad's um. Anyway. This has been part one,
Speaker 1: the birth of Spanish Fascism. In part two, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the Spanish Civil War, which is one
Speaker 1: of the most fascinating and important pieces of history that
Speaker 1: almost no one knows a goddamn thing about. Um talkingrustrating,
Speaker 1: it's very so frustrating. People don't know about this. You know,
Speaker 1: so many few people know that, like the author of
Speaker 1: George Orwell traveled to Spain on the premise that every
Speaker 1: single decent person should kill one fascist, and then it
Speaker 1: killed a punch of fascists with grenades. George Orwell was
Speaker 1: incredible with grenades. He all the different kinds of grenades.
Speaker 1: He killed a lot of people with grenades. He got
Speaker 1: shot in the throat. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you this as another piece of trivia that has
Speaker 1: to do with the another hip hop trivia. Um that
Speaker 1: you this good Easter egg for your listener and then
Speaker 1: for you just I think you might find this interesting
Speaker 1: and pull this out one day when you're drinking with friends.
Speaker 1: Um iced tea, the not the drink. But yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Rapper became the actor in Law and Order, the guy
Speaker 1: that made an album called cop Killer and became a
Speaker 1: cop on TV. Yeah, you greatest hustle ever. Anyway, there's
Speaker 1: this story he tells that about when he was getting
Speaker 1: his record deal and he the as as the legend goes,
Speaker 1: he never played one song for the people he that
Speaker 1: signed him for his first record deal, right, and they
Speaker 1: were like, how are you going to do this? How
Speaker 1: are we gonna Why would you sign if we haven't
Speaker 1: heard any music. He goes, hey, if you're selling a
Speaker 1: box of grenades, if I blow up a grenade, I
Speaker 1: need to blow up a grenade for you to see,
Speaker 1: for you to know that they're good. Like, I can't
Speaker 1: blow it up because then you won't buy them. They
Speaker 1: already done. And then the guy was like, man, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: so I see. And the guy was like, it's actually
Speaker 1: a good point. And then he goes, what made you
Speaker 1: think of that? He goes, why I used to sell grenades?
Speaker 1: And I totally believe that he was around South Central
Speaker 1: selling your nates. I would never call iced Te a
Speaker 1: liar for saying that he sold grenades. Absolutely not. He
Speaker 1: comes from a you know, you've got your eras of
Speaker 1: gangster rap where they're just talking, and then you've got
Speaker 1: your era of gangs rappords like, no, you did all
Speaker 1: of the things you're talking about. This. This is why
Speaker 1: you're not in jails, because there was a period of
Speaker 1: time for you where you were like, it was a
Speaker 1: good day because I didn't have to use my These
Speaker 1: are stories, y'all. Yeah, yeah, that's why most of them
Speaker 1: didn't make it very long. Y Yeah, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: in preparation for the Spanish Civil War, which is pretty gangster, listen,
Speaker 1: listen to some old school iced tea, you know, and
Speaker 1: then watch the Law and Order, you know, really embrace
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy that we all embody at some point. At
Speaker 1: some point, you don't need to watch the iced Tea
Speaker 1: and cocoa reality show though I am not recommending that,
Speaker 1: but a little bit of Law in Order. You know,
Speaker 1: it's whatever it's on literally at all times. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot like it's a lot like Heroin. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: it's probably not going to kill you, um, but it's
Speaker 1: bad for you. Every episode of Laundered Spue, I'm not
Speaker 1: ashamed at all every episode because it's on at any
Speaker 1: given time of a day. Yeah, exactly. My mom's nospel.
Speaker 1: We watched every episode because it was always on every episode.
Speaker 1: There's a belief in some Aboriginal Australian cultures and this
Speaker 1: is kind of where the um, what is the long
Speaker 1: tube that they blow? Ever? No, no, no, the the
Speaker 1: did you reid? That the dig red ties into this
Speaker 1: that like you always have to be someone always has
Speaker 1: to be playing music because you sing the world into being,
Speaker 1: and if the music stops, the world ends. And I
Speaker 1: have adopted as a religious belief that with law and
Speaker 1: order SVU where it's playing somewhere, the world can continue.
Speaker 1: I think that's how we ended up with Trump. Everybody
Speaker 1: turned off the TV one day in order to stop
Speaker 1: playing one hour without law and order and everything. Which
Speaker 1: ship all right? Well, this this has been a part
Speaker 1: one of our two partner of Behind the Insurrections on
Speaker 1: the Spanish Fascist Franko Civil War. We're we'll talk about
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War in part two, and then next week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Fascists who failed UM,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about we're gonna get a little
Speaker 1: overview of some anti fascist history you might not know.
Speaker 1: We're gonna close out with antifa UM and some fun
Speaker 1: stuff like the the idolist pirates UM, which we're a
Speaker 1: little kids who murdered Nazis is great fucking rad Alright,
Speaker 1: here we go listen to some iced tea. That's the episode.
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