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Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942)

147 points by dpflan 6y ago

joejohnson 6y ago
George Orwell’s memoir about his time in Spain during the war (“An Homage to Catalonia”) is a great book. He has a wonderful mind for seeing the politics behind all of the confusion and propaganda from all the factions that formed after the revolution. I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists. Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes.
- leftyted 6y ago
  > I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship often sided with the fascists. Is that really your takeaway from Homage to Catalonia? The lesson that I take is the silliness of thinking that your political perspective has absolute validity. All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic. Meanwhile, in the USSR, other leftists were acting as tyrants. The USSR used its influence in Spain to declare various factions illegal (including POUM, the faction that Orwell was aligned with). The Soviets insisted on the absolute validity of their perspective and started persecuting anyone who was skeptical of Stalin in the midst of a civil war against fascists. > Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes. Yeah, it's almost as if human beings care about concrete, meaningful changes that affect their lives and not some all-encompassing, abstract class struggle. edit - It's interesting that, in the linked article, Orwell says that Franco's victory was not due to disunity but rather the fact that the fascists were well-supplied (by the Italians and Germans) whereas the republicans had much less assistance.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    >All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic. Not really. It was not a war between democracy and fascism, it was a war between communism and fascism. The war started when a communist militia killed the democratically elected José Calvo Sotelo after a communist deputy publicly threatened him in the parliament.
    - meerita 6y ago
      Exactly, but leftists can't understand this and they think it was a war between capitalism vs communism. Everything solves by reading.
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        So maybe read a bit more then. The spanish civil war was a very complex struggle. A bit more complex, than OP you agree with.
        meerita 6y ago
        I'm Spanish.
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        So? I am german. I know people who lived through Hitler and still have no understanding about it all. If you believe that the spanish civil war was merely "a war between communism and fascism" than I add you to that category of people. I mean, have you ever heard of feudalism, for example?
        meerita 6y ago
        Well, I have it and I have read the entire story many times. Many family members died thanks to the communists, the house of my grandfather was burn to ashes because he didn't agree with the socialists. My family never liked the fascists too and fascism has nothing to do with capitalism. Fascism was all about corporativism. And yes, I know what feudalism was and has nothing to do also with socialism, capitalism.
- kibwen 6y ago
  > I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists. No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against Fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreoever they can be bribed – for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals."
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    >No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. Correct; not all of the Vichy government was actually pro-Germany/pro-Nazi per se.[1] I'm not sure it was defeatism, per se, for a lot of those involved. I'd describe it as "Welp, the Nazis are obviously the masters of Europe and will probably defeat Britain soon. We fought them and lost. Given that, here is my chance to get insert pet theory here implemented during the formation of a new French society and government". Vichy was basically what life would be like if the Klan, neo-Nazis, the Upper West Side of Manhattan/San Francisco, BLM, antifa, /r/politics, and /r/worldnews all got together to form their own country. [1] But when they were pro-Nazi they were really pro-Nazi. My "favorite" example of this is that the Vichy government was so enthusiastic about sending French Jews to their deaths in Germany that the occupying German forces had to ask Vichy to slow down! Vichy consistently went above and beyond what Berlin requested it do in terms of anti-Semitic laws.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists." When siding with the people's revolution means, loosing all you property and siding with the fascits means, keeping your property, one could allmost understand it, without declaring all burgeois as hidden fascists.
  - sascha_sl 6y ago
    I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal. The means to reach them are vastly different, and indeed the soviets had their own anarchist factions eliminated after the revolution. Property also refers to such property that requires workers to be productive (farm land, factories), not personal property (e.g. a house you live in). The fascists might not have cared about your property being under worker control, but they sure cared about the output being under their control, so I don't see too much of an advantage.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      "I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal" The idea that the factories and farms should belong to the workers and that the workers should take the factories by force, is not a parallel and shared goal?
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        That's exactly what GP is saying. Their stated end goal is the same, a multicultural, multiethnic, classless society. Beyond that, Marxism-Léninisme (Classic Marxism much less so) and Anarchism/Anarcho-Syndicalism do not have much in common.
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        "That's exactly what GP is saying" No, it is not. As the shared end-goal of marxism and anarchism is the egalitarian stateless society. I was talking about the concrete steps before that. Like those that happened in spain. Communalisation of farmland and factories with guns in hand. This action was done side by side from anarchists in spain as well in russia. The fact that the marxists later stabbed the anarchists in the back, does not change that.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  Homage to Catalonia (1938) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt Worth reading
  - zzv 6y ago
    One of the best books i've ever read.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Haven't studied this war, but I assume that in 1936, the expected result of a leftist revolution was a Stalinist regime. At the time Stalin was busy slaughtering his people in the Great Terror: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
  - dgb23 6y ago
    A large part of the revolutionaries were anarcho-syndicalists. So a very different thing that directly opposes totalitarian regimes. These types of movements were rather common in europe and have been brutally oppressed by both authoritarian socialists in Russia and China and fascists in Italy, Spain and Germany. Orwell‘s works are an expression of that. He was opposed of authoritarian socialism, fascism and so on, but supported democratic and libertarian socialist movements.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      Of course. A lot of the original Russian revolutionaries were the same. They were easily disposed of by the more ruthless bolsheviks. I expect the same would have happened in Spain.
- yiyus 6y ago
  The choice was not that. Well, actually, it was, kind of, but it was not presented like that at the time. A Russian-style revolution was not the best perspective for the bourgeoisie, who wanted to keep their properties and their heads. The influence of the catholic church on this people was also huge, and the opposition of the republic to the church quite extreme (even violent sometimes). On the other hand, the plan never was to start a military dictatorship, but to restore monarchy. At that time, nobody could predict what Franco would do. Even now, we have no idea what would have happened if there had been no war or the other side had won, so it obviously was not easy to foresee it in 1936. Unamuno is a good example of this. He was a republican, but initially supported the revolt because he did not agree with some actions of the government, in particular their radical anti-clericalism. But when he saw what was really going on, he fought Franco's side (with words, as was his style) and finished his days under arrest. Wikipedia tells the story, but if someone prefer to watch it, there is a recent film: While at War.
- refurb 6y ago
  Given the track record of “people’s revolutions” can you blame them?
- neves 6y ago
  Wikipedia has a nice page about foreign involvement: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24961571&goto=item%3Fid%3D24961407%2324961571 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24961571&goto=item%3Fi... A lot of US companies supported the fascists: Some American businesses supported Franco. The automakers Ford, Studebaker and General Motors sold a total of 12,000 trucks to the Nationalists. The American-owned Vacuum Oil Company in Tangier refused to sell to Republican ships and at the outbreak of the war. The Texas Oil Company rerouted oil tankers headed for the Republic to the Nationalist-controlled port of Tenerife and illegally supplied gasoline on credit to Franco.[70] Despite being fined $20,000, the company continued its credit arrangement until the war ended. The Nationalist spent almost $1 million a month on tires, cars and machine tools from American companies between 1937 and 1938.[71] After the war had ended, José María Doussinague, an undersecretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, stated that "without American petroleum and American trucks, and American credit, we could never have won the Civil War
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_iyig 6y ago
Orwell wasn’t the only Englishman to write of his time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War. British soldier Peter Kemp fought on behalf of Franco’s Nationalists (i.e. the side with the fascists) and documented his experience in the autobiographical “Mine Were of Trouble.” Although he had sided with Franco’s quasi-fascists* in Spain, Kemp would later fight the Nazis as a British commando in WW2. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Spectator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kemp_(writer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kemp_(writer) https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account/dp/B08673MBF1 https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account... *While Franco’s authoritarian conservative coalition include the fascist Falange, it also included monarchists, Catholics, and other social conservatives who Franco balanced against one another while in power.
- kibwen 6y ago
  ...Why on earth would this be downvoted? Would anyone care to elaborate?
  - _iyig 6y ago
    I‘d guess it’s due to the humanization of anyone ever associated with Franco’s Nationalists, however critically and impermanently. Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users, apparently. Personally I favor open minds and paths to redemption.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      You can still be pro-Fascist and not want foreign Fascists invading and bombing your country, given the intrinsic link between Fascism and Nationalism.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      "Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users" Well, fighting Nazis alone, does not make you a saint. Stalin fought the Nazis, too. From the skimming of wikipedia, he really does not sound like a nice guy to me. But still, thanks for the suggestion, I like reading other sides of view.
sega_sai 6y ago
This is an excellent read, and I find this quote "But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." very relevant to the current world/politics and how people interpret the facts/news.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  I read is as a pretake on 1984. The concept of double-think etc. Basically, people want to believe facts that align with their ideology and reject facts that do not. This keeps people focused and less distracted by doubts. In 1984 this gets exploited in a regular manner.
  - thrur484 6y ago
    In 1984 normal person has no access to facts and ideology. In totalitarian society ideology becomes embedded into fabric of society. It forms new equilibrium and replaces social contract.
    - jariel 6y ago
      This is a really subtle and correct point that's I think really difficult to grasp for High School students studying Orwell. I think this frankly is hard to understand until you're somewhere past 30. It's hard to understand, when you're young, that basically everyone in the press is lying to you in little ways, even though they're 'mostly telling the truth' - that there is a huge game behind it. I'm reminded of when E. Germany had to be re-integrated into the West, the problem was that the vocabulary relating to politics and democracy had been erased in the East. Several generations of people grew up without even thinking about various aspects of politics. There literally was no language for the W. Germans to use to re-introduce E. Germans to political dialogue. You can erase democracy by suppressing language, and therefore by suppressing thought. It doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it. The idea is to enforce the rules through the daily rituals, language, constructs that people use - there's no need for facts or ideology then. The beginning of this I think happens more or less out in the open with certain subjects now in 2020, when we see language and culture shifting - but it shifts slow enough that it's not noticed. Go ahead and look at episodes of '30 Rock' - a brilliant, first rate, amazing production from literally just 10 years ago --> it's couldn't be made today, or rather, it would have to be 'heavily censored' today because so many of those jokes are just a little to un PC (jokes about women's pay, harassment in the workplace). But today, it wouldn't be 'network censorship' - it would be a kind of 'thought and behaviour censorship' right from the writers room and producers edict. When I look at '30 Rock' from a 2020 communications perspective I'm actually very, very concerned - the level of suppression that has slowly been sinking in is alarming.
seagullz 6y ago
The following part from [0] seems relevant a bit too: In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her 'Triumph of the Will' that reputedly cast Hitler's spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the "messages" in her films were dependent not on "orders from above" but on a "submissive void" in the German population. "Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked. "Everyone," she replied, "and of course the intelligentsia." [0] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwell-and-big-brothers-war-on-palestine-ukraine-and-truth http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwell-a...
robocat 6y ago
Interesting foreshadowing of many themes in 1984. For example: “There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.”
- kazen44 6y ago
  the politification of science has happenend in the past aswell.With disasterous results[0][1][2] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
  - bgilroy26 6y ago
    Science cannot be abstracted from language. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert all operated under the idea that you might one day and you really can't. The movie Arrival (2016) explores a truly inter cultural exchange and they convincingly envisioned it being very experiential, very tactile and detailed, concrete and lived. A truly intercultural dialogue would be very personal and particular Abstractions are very useful, but mostly as a shorthand or a design framework for ourselves. That's why we speak English here instead of Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Left vs. Right is not the right juxtaposition. Rather it should be Authoritarianism vs. Democracy. Authoritarianism denies objective science while Democracy can only exist with it. Authoritarianism doesn't count the votes correctly because it is opposed to democracy in the first place.
- danoloan 6y ago
  Republican Spain had quite the Authoritarian cut at the time. The radical left was pretty much willing to purge anyone that was anything to their right, and they were the strongarm of the Republic.
  - ozborn 6y ago
    The radical left in Spain (including even the Anarchists who were a significant poltical force at the time) supported the Republican government. The purges that took place on the left, were the purge of the POUM (Trotskyist, the group Orwell fought with) and then the CNT-FAI (anarchist) by the Communist party (Stalin/USSR). Both purged groups were considered to be to the Left of Stalin by all sides in the conflict, the purged groups certainly were definitely less authoritarian.
    - danoloan 6y ago
      i was talking more about things like the "paseos". https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paseo_(fusilamiento) https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paseo_(fusilamiento) surely the purging of the right wing was not that big in numbers, given that most of it was in the other side of the war.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    The incumbents always look more authoritarian than the revolutionaries, who are by definition trying to overthrow some of the institutions that the first guys control. I think you're correct that with the right interpretation of history, either side could be made to look like the authoritarians.
- 6y ago
danoloan 6y ago
while this is most interesting in terms of the topics of orwell's works, it is quite a partisan view of the war. the reality in Spain was not as simple as foreigners thought, namely "fascism" vs "democracy". in fact, the coup was done by a coalition of many different right wing factions, and amongst them there were right wing republicans and traditional absolutists, not just falangists (spanish catholic fascists). also, they were not the first, as the left already tried a coup just a few years earlier against the right wing government, but failed. the social and political factors that lead to the war are very, very complicated AND interesting; they can be even more revealing than the history of the Weimar republic and its consequences. here is a very interesting, neutral and historical insight in what happened in Spain in an informational format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3sqkplGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3sqkplGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AvQjCcih4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AvQjCcih4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYE-kSbgZnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYE-kSbgZnU
- zzv 6y ago
  Orwell was there. His "Homage to Catalonia" is a very sober look at factionism, complexities and absurdities of the conflict. Not a very partisan look at all if you ask me.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    danoloan knows that Orwell was there; the article mentions Homage to Catalonia. His point, which I agree with, is that he is (somewhat, but noticeably) softer on the Republican side than on the Franco side than in Homage. After reading that book the only way to come away with being substantially more sympathetic to the Republican side than Franco's is because Orwell, the protagonist, fights for the former. It's clear that Orwell believes that had the Republicans won, there would inevitably have been another war between POUM, Communists, socialists, and anarchists. In particular, it seems to me that he substantially softens here the odds of a Soviet victory in said struggle versus what he writes in Homage. Is it because by 1942 the USSR was ally to the West's life-or-death struggle against fascism? I don't know.
superflit 6y ago
Great text for greater lies `I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines'. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues – namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain.` My gran grandfather died 15 years ago. And there is no week without he screams in his dreams about his sisters and mother being raped by the "bolsheviks." Then once all his family were killed, he escaped, went to the port, and decided to work as a maritime merchant. It wasn't a war between "left" or right as we have with partisan politics. But it was war between: a) Foreign and revolutionary ideologies b) Foreign and adversarial powers; c) No rules Several countries later fall to the communist regime and USRR influence, causing misery and death. This was not your neighbor discussing or putting signs from your opposite candidate. It was war, with blood, rape, and destruction. Because we live and more "prosperous" and civil we can't really understand how evil people can and derive pleasure from being able to be evil without any limits (order) or restrictions (moral). Note: The embassy of Spain once offered him a travel to Spain because he was one of the oldest on the local community. He declined because his Spain was "dead" and he wanted to keep the things still alive in his mind.
Ericson2314 6y ago
> "yogis of California" Did not know that was a meme before the end of WWII.
vmh1928 6y ago
Sound familiar? Nothing new under the sun. "The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (vide the Catholic Herald or the Daily Mail – but these were child’s play compared with the continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point – the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. " ..... "Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention, at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their ‘legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level. This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. "

147 points by dpflan 6y ago

George Orwell’s memoir about his time in Spain during the war (“An Homage to Catalonia”) is a great book. He has a wonderful mind for seeing the politics behind all of the confusion and propaganda from all the factions that formed after the revolution. I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists. Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes.

leftyted 6y ago
> I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship often sided with the fascists. Is that really your takeaway from Homage to Catalonia? The lesson that I take is the silliness of thinking that your political perspective has absolute validity. All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic. Meanwhile, in the USSR, other leftists were acting as tyrants. The USSR used its influence in Spain to declare various factions illegal (including POUM, the faction that Orwell was aligned with). The Soviets insisted on the absolute validity of their perspective and started persecuting anyone who was skeptical of Stalin in the midst of a civil war against fascists. > Those given just enough improvements to their own material conditions no longer saw themselves as exploited by capitalism and largely ignored the working classes. Yeah, it's almost as if human beings care about concrete, meaningful changes that affect their lives and not some all-encompassing, abstract class struggle. edit - It's interesting that, in the linked article, Orwell says that Franco's victory was not due to disunity but rather the fact that the fascists were well-supplied (by the Italians and Germans) whereas the republicans had much less assistance.
- eznzt 6y ago
  >All of the leftist factions resisting fascism in Spain were doing something heroic. Not really. It was not a war between democracy and fascism, it was a war between communism and fascism. The war started when a communist militia killed the democratically elected José Calvo Sotelo after a communist deputy publicly threatened him in the parliament.
  - meerita 6y ago
    Exactly, but leftists can't understand this and they think it was a war between capitalism vs communism. Everything solves by reading.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      So maybe read a bit more then. The spanish civil war was a very complex struggle. A bit more complex, than OP you agree with.
      - meerita 6y ago
        I'm Spanish.
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        So? I am german. I know people who lived through Hitler and still have no understanding about it all. If you believe that the spanish civil war was merely "a war between communism and fascism" than I add you to that category of people. I mean, have you ever heard of feudalism, for example?
        meerita 6y ago
        Well, I have it and I have read the entire story many times. Many family members died thanks to the communists, the house of my grandfather was burn to ashes because he didn't agree with the socialists. My family never liked the fascists too and fascism has nothing to do with capitalism. Fascism was all about corporativism. And yes, I know what feudalism was and has nothing to do also with socialism, capitalism.
kibwen 6y ago
> I have thought about this a lot this year, especially how the bourgeois liberals, who when faced with a choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists. No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against Fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreoever they can be bribed – for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals."
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >No need to refer to a third source, you seem to be paraphrasing a quote from the above submission here: "One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. Correct; not all of the Vichy government was actually pro-Germany/pro-Nazi per se.[1] I'm not sure it was defeatism, per se, for a lot of those involved. I'd describe it as "Welp, the Nazis are obviously the masters of Europe and will probably defeat Britain soon. We fought them and lost. Given that, here is my chance to get insert pet theory here implemented during the formation of a new French society and government". Vichy was basically what life would be like if the Klan, neo-Nazis, the Upper West Side of Manhattan/San Francisco, BLM, antifa, /r/politics, and /r/worldnews all got together to form their own country. [1] But when they were pro-Nazi they were really pro-Nazi. My "favorite" example of this is that the Vichy government was so enthusiastic about sending French Jews to their deaths in Germany that the occupying German forces had to ask Vichy to slow down! Vichy consistently went above and beyond what Berlin requested it do in terms of anti-Semitic laws.
hutzlibu 6y ago
"choice between a people’s revolution (only half realized when the fascists began to take over) and a fascist military dictatorship, often sided with the fascists." When siding with the people's revolution means, loosing all you property and siding with the fascits means, keeping your property, one could allmost understand it, without declaring all burgeois as hidden fascists.
- sascha_sl 6y ago
  I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal. The means to reach them are vastly different, and indeed the soviets had their own anarchist factions eliminated after the revolution. Property also refers to such property that requires workers to be productive (farm land, factories), not personal property (e.g. a house you live in). The fascists might not have cared about your property being under worker control, but they sure cared about the output being under their control, so I don't see too much of an advantage.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "I hope you're not drawing a parallel between Russian revolutionaries, later soviets and CNT/FAI, these ideologies have exactly one thing in common: their stated end goal" The idea that the factories and farms should belong to the workers and that the workers should take the factories by force, is not a parallel and shared goal?
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      That's exactly what GP is saying. Their stated end goal is the same, a multicultural, multiethnic, classless society. Beyond that, Marxism-Léninisme (Classic Marxism much less so) and Anarchism/Anarcho-Syndicalism do not have much in common.
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        "That's exactly what GP is saying" No, it is not. As the shared end-goal of marxism and anarchism is the egalitarian stateless society. I was talking about the concrete steps before that. Like those that happened in spain. Communalisation of farmland and factories with guns in hand. This action was done side by side from anarchists in spain as well in russia. The fact that the marxists later stabbed the anarchists in the back, does not change that.
h2odragon 6y ago
Homage to Catalonia (1938) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt Worth reading
- zzv 6y ago
  One of the best books i've ever read.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Haven't studied this war, but I assume that in 1936, the expected result of a leftist revolution was a Stalinist regime. At the time Stalin was busy slaughtering his people in the Great Terror: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
- dgb23 6y ago
  A large part of the revolutionaries were anarcho-syndicalists. So a very different thing that directly opposes totalitarian regimes. These types of movements were rather common in europe and have been brutally oppressed by both authoritarian socialists in Russia and China and fascists in Italy, Spain and Germany. Orwell‘s works are an expression of that. He was opposed of authoritarian socialism, fascism and so on, but supported democratic and libertarian socialist movements.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Of course. A lot of the original Russian revolutionaries were the same. They were easily disposed of by the more ruthless bolsheviks. I expect the same would have happened in Spain.
yiyus 6y ago
The choice was not that. Well, actually, it was, kind of, but it was not presented like that at the time. A Russian-style revolution was not the best perspective for the bourgeoisie, who wanted to keep their properties and their heads. The influence of the catholic church on this people was also huge, and the opposition of the republic to the church quite extreme (even violent sometimes). On the other hand, the plan never was to start a military dictatorship, but to restore monarchy. At that time, nobody could predict what Franco would do. Even now, we have no idea what would have happened if there had been no war or the other side had won, so it obviously was not easy to foresee it in 1936. Unamuno is a good example of this. He was a republican, but initially supported the revolt because he did not agree with some actions of the government, in particular their radical anti-clericalism. But when he saw what was really going on, he fought Franco's side (with words, as was his style) and finished his days under arrest. Wikipedia tells the story, but if someone prefer to watch it, there is a recent film: While at War.
refurb 6y ago
Given the track record of “people’s revolutions” can you blame them?
neves 6y ago
Wikipedia has a nice page about foreign involvement: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24961571&goto=item%3Fid%3D24961407%2324961571 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24961571&goto=item%3Fi... A lot of US companies supported the fascists: Some American businesses supported Franco. The automakers Ford, Studebaker and General Motors sold a total of 12,000 trucks to the Nationalists. The American-owned Vacuum Oil Company in Tangier refused to sell to Republican ships and at the outbreak of the war. The Texas Oil Company rerouted oil tankers headed for the Republic to the Nationalist-controlled port of Tenerife and illegally supplied gasoline on credit to Franco.[70] Despite being fined $20,000, the company continued its credit arrangement until the war ended. The Nationalist spent almost $1 million a month on tires, cars and machine tools from American companies between 1937 and 1938.[71] After the war had ended, José María Doussinague, an undersecretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, stated that "without American petroleum and American trucks, and American credit, we could never have won the Civil War

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_iyig 6y ago

Orwell wasn’t the only Englishman to write of his time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War. British soldier Peter Kemp fought on behalf of Franco’s Nationalists (i.e. the side with the fascists) and documented his experience in the autobiographical “Mine Were of Trouble.” Although he had sided with Franco’s quasi-fascists* in Spain, Kemp would later fight the Nazis as a British commando in WW2. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Spectator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kemp_(writer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kemp_(writer) https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account/dp/B08673MBF1 https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account... *While Franco’s authoritarian conservative coalition include the fascist Falange, it also included monarchists, Catholics, and other social conservatives who Franco balanced against one another while in power.

kibwen 6y ago
...Why on earth would this be downvoted? Would anyone care to elaborate?
- _iyig 6y ago
  I‘d guess it’s due to the humanization of anyone ever associated with Franco’s Nationalists, however critically and impermanently. Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users, apparently. Personally I favor open minds and paths to redemption.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    You can still be pro-Fascist and not want foreign Fascists invading and bombing your country, given the intrinsic link between Fascism and Nationalism.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users" Well, fighting Nazis alone, does not make you a saint. Stalin fought the Nazis, too. From the skimming of wikipedia, he really does not sound like a nice guy to me. But still, thanks for the suggestion, I like reading other sides of view.

sega_sai 6y ago

This is an excellent read, and I find this quote "But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." very relevant to the current world/politics and how people interpret the facts/news.

hutzlibu 6y ago
I read is as a pretake on 1984. The concept of double-think etc. Basically, people want to believe facts that align with their ideology and reject facts that do not. This keeps people focused and less distracted by doubts. In 1984 this gets exploited in a regular manner.
- thrur484 6y ago
  In 1984 normal person has no access to facts and ideology. In totalitarian society ideology becomes embedded into fabric of society. It forms new equilibrium and replaces social contract.
  - jariel 6y ago
    This is a really subtle and correct point that's I think really difficult to grasp for High School students studying Orwell. I think this frankly is hard to understand until you're somewhere past 30. It's hard to understand, when you're young, that basically everyone in the press is lying to you in little ways, even though they're 'mostly telling the truth' - that there is a huge game behind it. I'm reminded of when E. Germany had to be re-integrated into the West, the problem was that the vocabulary relating to politics and democracy had been erased in the East. Several generations of people grew up without even thinking about various aspects of politics. There literally was no language for the W. Germans to use to re-introduce E. Germans to political dialogue. You can erase democracy by suppressing language, and therefore by suppressing thought. It doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it. The idea is to enforce the rules through the daily rituals, language, constructs that people use - there's no need for facts or ideology then. The beginning of this I think happens more or less out in the open with certain subjects now in 2020, when we see language and culture shifting - but it shifts slow enough that it's not noticed. Go ahead and look at episodes of '30 Rock' - a brilliant, first rate, amazing production from literally just 10 years ago --> it's couldn't be made today, or rather, it would have to be 'heavily censored' today because so many of those jokes are just a little to un PC (jokes about women's pay, harassment in the workplace). But today, it wouldn't be 'network censorship' - it would be a kind of 'thought and behaviour censorship' right from the writers room and producers edict. When I look at '30 Rock' from a 2020 communications perspective I'm actually very, very concerned - the level of suppression that has slowly been sinking in is alarming.

seagullz 6y ago

The following part from [0] seems relevant a bit too: In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her 'Triumph of the Will' that reputedly cast Hitler's spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the "messages" in her films were dependent not on "orders from above" but on a "submissive void" in the German population. "Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked. "Everyone," she replied, "and of course the intelligentsia." [0] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwell-and-big-brothers-war-on-palestine-ukraine-and-truth http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwell-a...

robocat 6y ago

Interesting foreshadowing of many themes in 1984. For example: “There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.”

kazen44 6y ago
the politification of science has happenend in the past aswell.With disasterous results[0][1][2] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
- bgilroy26 6y ago
  Science cannot be abstracted from language. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert all operated under the idea that you might one day and you really can't. The movie Arrival (2016) explores a truly inter cultural exchange and they convincingly envisioned it being very experiential, very tactile and detailed, concrete and lived. A truly intercultural dialogue would be very personal and particular Abstractions are very useful, but mostly as a shorthand or a design framework for ourselves. That's why we speak English here instead of Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program

amadeuspagel 6y ago

> If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

Left vs. Right is not the right juxtaposition. Rather it should be Authoritarianism vs. Democracy. Authoritarianism denies objective science while Democracy can only exist with it. Authoritarianism doesn't count the votes correctly because it is opposed to democracy in the first place.

danoloan 6y ago
Republican Spain had quite the Authoritarian cut at the time. The radical left was pretty much willing to purge anyone that was anything to their right, and they were the strongarm of the Republic.
- ozborn 6y ago
  The radical left in Spain (including even the Anarchists who were a significant poltical force at the time) supported the Republican government. The purges that took place on the left, were the purge of the POUM (Trotskyist, the group Orwell fought with) and then the CNT-FAI (anarchist) by the Communist party (Stalin/USSR). Both purged groups were considered to be to the Left of Stalin by all sides in the conflict, the purged groups certainly were definitely less authoritarian.
  - danoloan 6y ago
    i was talking more about things like the "paseos". https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paseo_(fusilamiento) https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paseo_(fusilamiento) surely the purging of the right wing was not that big in numbers, given that most of it was in the other side of the war.
- dmurray 6y ago
  The incumbents always look more authoritarian than the revolutionaries, who are by definition trying to overthrow some of the institutions that the first guys control. I think you're correct that with the right interpretation of history, either side could be made to look like the authoritarians.
6y ago

danoloan 6y ago

while this is most interesting in terms of the topics of orwell's works, it is quite a partisan view of the war. the reality in Spain was not as simple as foreigners thought, namely "fascism" vs "democracy". in fact, the coup was done by a coalition of many different right wing factions, and amongst them there were right wing republicans and traditional absolutists, not just falangists (spanish catholic fascists). also, they were not the first, as the left already tried a coup just a few years earlier against the right wing government, but failed. the social and political factors that lead to the war are very, very complicated AND interesting; they can be even more revealing than the history of the Weimar republic and its consequences. here is a very interesting, neutral and historical insight in what happened in Spain in an informational format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3sqkplGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3sqkplGm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AvQjCcih4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AvQjCcih4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYE-kSbgZnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYE-kSbgZnU

zzv 6y ago
Orwell was there. His "Homage to Catalonia" is a very sober look at factionism, complexities and absurdities of the conflict. Not a very partisan look at all if you ask me.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  danoloan knows that Orwell was there; the article mentions Homage to Catalonia. His point, which I agree with, is that he is (somewhat, but noticeably) softer on the Republican side than on the Franco side than in Homage. After reading that book the only way to come away with being substantially more sympathetic to the Republican side than Franco's is because Orwell, the protagonist, fights for the former. It's clear that Orwell believes that had the Republicans won, there would inevitably have been another war between POUM, Communists, socialists, and anarchists. In particular, it seems to me that he substantially softens here the odds of a Soviet victory in said struggle versus what he writes in Homage. Is it because by 1942 the USSR was ally to the West's life-or-death struggle against fascism? I don't know.

superflit 6y ago

Great text for greater lies `I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines'. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues – namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain.` My gran grandfather died 15 years ago. And there is no week without he screams in his dreams about his sisters and mother being raped by the "bolsheviks." Then once all his family were killed, he escaped, went to the port, and decided to work as a maritime merchant. It wasn't a war between "left" or right as we have with partisan politics. But it was war between: a) Foreign and revolutionary ideologies b) Foreign and adversarial powers; c) No rules Several countries later fall to the communist regime and USRR influence, causing misery and death. This was not your neighbor discussing or putting signs from your opposite candidate. It was war, with blood, rape, and destruction. Because we live and more "prosperous" and civil we can't really understand how evil people can and derive pleasure from being able to be evil without any limits (order) or restrictions (moral). Note: The embassy of Spain once offered him a travel to Spain because he was one of the oldest on the local community. He declined because his Spain was "dead" and he wanted to keep the things still alive in his mind.

Ericson2314 6y ago

> "yogis of California" Did not know that was a meme before the end of WWII.

vmh1928 6y ago

Sound familiar? Nothing new under the sun. "The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (vide the Catholic Herald or the Daily Mail – but these were child’s play compared with the continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point – the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. " ..... "Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention, at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their ‘legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level. This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. "