The Birth of Spanish Fascism, Part 1

Episode Transcript
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(00:43):
wherever you get your podcasts. What's Francisco and My Francoes? Yeah, fuzz,
there we go. We introduced it. It's not as not
as big in an MS Hitler like, I'm gonna be
honest with you, not not doesn't have the kind of
star power like if Hitler. Hitler's like like Ben Affleck

(01:07):
right uh and and we're doing like the Matt Damon
of fascism today. He's just just not the same. That
is not accurate. You are completely wrong. You just like
his tattoo. Come on, I love I love his trashy, gigantic,
fullback phoenix tattoo. Pretty funny, It's right, Okay, Well I
think of somebody. It's like a deep He's it's more
famous than Ben Affleck will say. It's more like a

(01:30):
Scottie Pippen, you know what I'm saying, Like Scottie Pippen
to Hitler's the Michael Jordan of fascism. It is like
scott Pippen. We're talking to Scottie Pippen and Scottie Pippen.
Francisco Yeah he's a yeah, yeah, Francisco is underrated. You know,
he's good. He's not good. He's a monster. Quite a
Pippen at a shoe exactly exactly Pippin's. Like we're talking about,

(01:52):
like like Franco's, which would be Jack boots almost as
tall as the Hitler Jack boots and not quite as
shiny coast, but still jack boots and they're little sheep jack.
Yeah for the fascist on a budget. You know. Um,
we're trying to talk about the tattoo again. I did.
I always want to talk and how hilarious and how
sad Ben Affleck looks every time he's captured in the wild.

(02:15):
Just looks like he's been dying for the last twenty
straight years. And I'm here for it. Love Jack in
the Box. It's incredible. He's just so miserable all the time.
It just feels like he spent so much time being
attractive that he just got tired of it. It was
just like, speaking of fascism, you've heard of the fewer principle,

(02:35):
the idea that like a single man can embody the
spirit of a people, which is you know what Hitler
used to rise to power. I never believed in it
until Ben Affleck, because Ben Affleck is the spiritual embodiment
of Boston. He's yeah, he's perfect. Yeah, he's really really is.
I Yeah, Like, if the Southeast weren't so damn racist,

(02:56):
I would really like that area, you know what I'm saying.
But yeah, oh yeah about the Celtics. But I know
a bit about fascism, and proper fascism is a little
bit different in every country. It's kind of like um,
kind of like skittles, you know, different flavors ships, Yeah, yeah, yeah, milk, chocolate,

(03:18):
as opposed to the dark. You know, this is part
of why scholars and theorists have such a damnable time
defining what fascism is. In the first place, there's a
dictionary definition, right, There's gonna be a dictionary definition in
any dictionary you open. But it's not really useful, in
part because a lot of dictionary definitions of fascism apply
almost as well to like communist regimes, any any authoritarian regime,

(03:40):
which is, you know, there's there's some points there, which
is that whenever you have a totalitarian system, similar bad
things often do happen. But fascism is unique for a
number of reasons, including its ability to subvert healthy democracies. Um.
And so when you have historians of fascism, people whose
whole life is studying this thing, this amorphous thing that
we're still kind getting grips on, all of them kind

(04:01):
of tend to have their own definitions of it. Um.
And often those definitions don't contrast. They just different ways
of kind of wording the same things. I tend to
be feel confident that Umberto Echo has done the best
job of defining it in his his essay on Earth Fascism.
I'm a big fan of the way Echo talked about fascism,
and I think that Echo would have named Trump as
a fascist straightaway. Um, in part because in the mid nineties,

(04:24):
when he wrote his essay on Earth Fascism, he predicted
that the Internet and like the way that it allowed
would allow people to spread messages and crowdsource activism, would
lead to the rise of a of a unique kind
of fascists. And I think that Trump embodied that in
a lot of ways, and I think Echo would have
seen it right away. Now, on the other hand, I
think I may know where you're where echoes going out.
Haven't read the thing, but like, I have this theory

(04:45):
about the type of fascist that Trump is, but I'd
love to hear what this guy says. Yeah, I mean Echo,
Echo kind of outlined a number of different things that
are like that are when you have a mix of
these things and sort of a constellation that is what
fascism is. So there's a mix of like, you know,
popular resentment against the left, like a sense of machismo,
of of misogyny, um, a cult of action for action's sake, uh, syncretism,

(05:10):
the ability to like pull other things in and kind
of attached them to itself under like aspects of spirituality
and whatnot. Um, there were a bunch of different things
that that Echo noted as kind of key aspects of fascism. Um, Okay, sorry,
you know what we're saying, because I was gonna say, well,
it was so interesting about like what I feel, like,

(05:30):
what we're gonna hear as history nerds for the next
you know, a hundred years, about the unique the what
Trump symbolizes and it might just be a new type
of fascism for the rest of our life. But just
this fascism that doesn't have a foreseeable goal, like except
for just being in power, you know what I'm saying.

(05:50):
That was so that's what was so interesting to me
about the uniqueness about Trump's fascism is like, yeah, but
what's your endgame here? Like what do you what are
you doing? You know what I'm saying. Whereas like we
knew what Mussolini was doing, we know what you know definitely,
and we knew yeah he did it, Like we knew
what you were doing. This was your goal, you know
what I'm saying. And I'm just like what you're like, Yeah,

(06:13):
what are you doing? Dude? You know his lack of
a plan, right, singles dot com. Yeah, apparently Trump saying
that because I think that did I think threw some
people off, is that he clearly didn't have as much
of it like Mussolini. I do think it's more similar
to Trump than Hitler's and the kind of fascist that
he was and in his goals. But Mussolini had a

(06:34):
plan to take and hold power, and I guess one
of the things that's been revealed is that like Trump
definitely wanted to take and hold power, but he did
not have much of a plan. Not yeah. I was like,
your goal is to reach a goal, which is yeah, yeah,
your goal was just almost like yeah, He's there's a
lot to be said, and I don't know, you just

(06:55):
want to keep being right, you know, And I'm like
about what, Yeah, anyway, it It's interesting and a number
of like, there are other scholars of fascism who took
a lot longer to kind of decide that that Trump
fit their definition of fascism. I'm thinking about Robert Paxton here,
and Paxton is a very well respected scholar of fascism.
He wrote a book called The Anatomy of Fascism that's
a very good book, Um, and he only felt comfortable

(07:16):
declaring Trump a fascist after January six and he was like,
that was the line, Like it was. Paxtons been consistent,
he's an authoritarian, there's fascist elements and what he does,
but he didn't kind of name him a fascist until
after the sixth And I like, I'm not slamming Paxton.
I think there's a room for intellectual debate on toism.
And I understand kind of why he, like, like you said,
Trump's a different kind of one, right, and where I

(07:37):
fascism changes based on the country and based on the
time period, you know, um, And I do think kind
of one of the things that Echo was was sort
of peering around the edges of when he was talking
about how he thought we were going to see an
internet based fascism in the future, was the idea that
like another aspect of fascism, And he didn't define this
as a key aspect of fascism, but I think that
it is is the fascist is the city to find

(08:01):
a way to utilize new media technology in a way
that no one else understands yet, which Trump did right.
No other politician understood how to use social media in
the way that Trump did when Trump came onto the scene. Um,
it's a big part of his success anyway. So there's
a lot of debate over what is a fascist. And
as a result of this debate, there's actually quite a

(08:21):
lot of argument on whether or not the regime of
Francisco Franco in Spain was truly fascist. And you'll find
a lot of argument about this about whether or not
Franco was a fascist. There were fascists in Spain, absolutely,
whether or not Franco and his regime really counts, um.
And what's not up for debate is that many elements
of the Spanish right leading up to enduring the Spanish

(08:41):
Civil War were fascists in that Fascist powers Italy and
uh in Germany intervened in that civil war because they
saw what was happening there as a battle between fascism
and socialism largely um and more to the point, whatever
you can say about Franco himself, and we'll talk about
him more in Part two, the Battle over Spain in
the late nineteen thirties absolutely ranks as the first open

(09:03):
military conflict between fascism and democracy and fascism and socialism.
To write like all of that was kind of in
the mix. And on the Spanish side, the Republican side,
you had like the Spanish republic who were you know,
liberals more or less people who supported like a constitutional democracy,
and you had anarchists and communists and socialists, Severian kind
of lesser strains. Trotsky Is too, who were It's a

(09:26):
very complicated civil war. It's more like Syria than than
a lot of other conflicts because there's so much going on,
so many different different kind of corners to it. It's
interesting real quick before you get into this is like,
you know, in a past life, I was like a
history and social science like high school teacher, and I
went through the entire credentialing process all the way up

(09:48):
to masters, and at no point in any of our
California standards was it ever required to talk about this.
And which is so antio seemed to me to win,
especially when I'm trying to set up, you know, because
since I wasn't a direct history I was more like
a social science teacher, trying to set up how cultures

(10:10):
get where they get and like why it was so
weird around World War two and why we got so
like we was already itchy, why a lot of a
lot of us was like, man, we really don't want
to go over there. It's because we was I was like, well,
because of the Spanish Civil War, like we kind of
you know, who's kind of going back and forth about
sending troops over there like it was. And the students
were like, wait what and I'm like, yeah, the space. Yes,

(10:32):
Spain had a civil war like this happened, like you
know what I'm saying. This was like it was right
before World War Two, like this happened. It was like
this whole big thing. That's like it's a big thing,
and we were involved, like we almost you know I'm saying,
but just like that's like in no, thousands of Americans volunteered. Yeah. Yes,
And I'm like it's not required to talk about And
I'm like, oh my god, this is You're missing this.

(10:54):
You're missing a lot of the story if you don't
understand why even World War Two was so touchy for us. Yeah,
and part of it was this anyway, go on. One
of the reasons people don't like to talk about this
is that it is it's very complicated, and it is
not as much of a cut and dried story as
makes it easy to sort of summarize, right, once the
fighting starts, once the Civil war starts, it is a

(11:15):
bit easier. But even then, it's a very fucking messy war.
And there are really shitty people um on on the
good guys side too, right, Like there's a lot of
like very ugly stuff that happens because it's a war.
You know. The same is true of World War Two.
It's just been heavily whitewashed, and the Nazis were so
fucking bad that it makes it a lot easier to
make your side seem like the good dudes. Um Now,

(11:37):
in some ways, like because of how complicated it is,
and we're going this whole episode is about the birth
of Spanish fascism, and we're gonna do some pretty deep
history here, um and in in some ways, the story
of how fascism evolves in Spain bears a lot less
resemblance to what's happened in America than either of the
two stories we've discussed so far. But while they're the
similarities are a lot less direct. I actually think there's

(11:58):
a lot here that's valuable because we're going to kind
of lay out how this evolved over time and how
the birth of fascism in Spain was woven into the
birth of democracy itself. And I think that's a really
important story. Um, but we're gonna need a lot of context.
So Spain is unique, fairly unique among European nations, and
that it has not had a sense of nationalism from

(12:19):
most of modern history. Um, not in nearly the same
way that you got with England, or with France or
with Germany once you know, eighteen seventy whatever rolls around. Um,
the Spanish state does go back very far to fourteen
seventy eight when Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, the Columbus folks,
right when they decided to yeah South America, Yeah yeah, yeah.

(12:39):
And before that they were the ones, like Spain, they
kick out the Moors, you know, the Muslims who had
kind of taken over a chunk of Iberia as a
result of the counter into anyway, they take back Spain
for Christendom. That would be the way they would have
framed it, um. But they don't actually make a nation,
not in any modern sense. Spain is a bunch of
independent kingdom, and those independent kingdoms up until fairly recently

(13:03):
never really melded together. You've got the Aragonese, and you've
got Catalans, and you've got the Basque and they all
of their and there's there's more than that, right and
this but don't pretend I'm not going to pretend this
is Spanish history is incredibly complicated. I am very far
from an expert, um. And there are still issues with
like a lot of Catalans and a lot of Basque
still want like some at least some degree of independence

(13:25):
from the Spanish state. Yeah, recognition from the Yeah. And
they all of their own languages and cultural traditions. And
one of the things that I learned that's interesting actually
is that, um, the the the like Spanish, what we
know is Spanish comes from the chunk of like the
the language group that was kind of most dominant in Iberia.
But they actually stole the word for the country from

(13:48):
I think it was the Catalans. So like it's it's
it's very anyway, very complicated history, um. And from most
of Spanish history, the only unifying factors of all these
very disparate groups of people were the crown, the king,
and the Catholic Church. Um, and mainly the Catholic Church.
Right now, in the eighteen hundreds, Spain was dominated by

(14:08):
a revolution, or Spain was kind of overtaken. Spanish thought
was overtaken by a revolution in classical liberalism, right, that
sort of takes over a lot of parts of Europe
at this point in time. In Spain is included in that.
But in Spain, this kind of new liberal wave largely
failed to push for any kind of mass Spanish identity.
It didn't like and this is where you start to
get like French identity, right and like, but you don't

(14:31):
really get that, um, I mean France, it starts earlier
than the eighteen hundreds, but like, you don't really get
that in a big way in Spain. And part of
the reason is that kind of the cultural elites failed
to institute any meaningful education reforms for the majority of
the population. UM Like France in the same period, establishes
a functional education system, and by contrast, Spain's failure to

(14:52):
do this means that education remained the purview of the
Catholic Church. They do most of the educating and it's
only for the wealthy. Um and the country would deal
with why spread a literacy well into the nineteen hundreds,
and when you don't have mass public education one of
the things you don't have is a widespread idea of
the history and like what your nation is. And like, right,
that's part of why anyway, there's not Nationalism is not

(15:15):
really much of a thing in Spain. Um as a
result of this, they're too busy killing off Americans and
they're absolutely that's one of the things. That's where they're
a huge imperial power and someone's there the first world power. Um,
like the first power that's like on the on the
level of like what the US was earlier in our lifetimes. Yeah, yeah,
knowing like being being a Californian married to a Mexican woman,

(15:37):
like you know, you you have to somehow kind of
know a little Spanish history as to why these why
these Mayans are speaking Spanish, you know what I'm saying,
and like and uh, you know, because the part of
Mexico she's from there, from southern Mexican Mexico, so like
they're they're kind of Mayan, you know what I mean.
And um, but yeah, this like weird, like how they

(15:59):
imp exported this like colorism and just this weird. Yeah.
But at the same time, Kano, body in your country
read you know, so it's just this weird like thing
happening with Spain. Yeah, it's it's very weird and like,
if we're going to be completely fair, like if you
look at the system of sort of slavery that was
instituted in what we now call Latin America, Um, it's

(16:22):
it's one of the few systems of slavery and history
that's like on the same level as what we had
in the American South, like absolutely, and and and and
genocides of it. So I'm not trying to like whitewash
Spanish history. What I'm saying. They don't have nationalism. It's
just not it's not the same as it is with
all and that's what I'm saying. But that's I'm adding
to it, like that it's peculiar that they had such
an imperialistic power without this like national identity. Yeah, it is.

(16:46):
It's very odd. Like Spain is an interesting country to study. Now.
The Catholic Church was a major force in Spain for
pushing against the development of a modern liberal state. Right
in the eighteen hundreds. You don't really have nations anywhere
up until like it started, like that concept kind of
starts like in the seventeen hundreds like things shifts a
lot less. The idea of like a nation the way

(17:09):
that we conceive of one is kind of born in
this period seventeen hundreds, and the Catholic Church in Spain
really pushes against the modern liberal state. Um. This was
largely due to the fact that liberalism had an anti
clerical bias. Right. The Catholic Church for the medieval period
is like the most power, the big power in the world. Right,
they have influence everywhere in Christendom, and they start to

(17:29):
lose it in this period because governments are like, well,
where we gonna let a church in Italy tell our
government like, we're England. I don't like, I don't give
a ship what you said, yeah, um, And the you know,
Catholic Catholicism is huge in Spain and the church is like, well,
we don't want any of this ship going on. So
Spain the Church pushes against kind of a lot of

(17:50):
of modernizing ideas. And one of those things is that
Spain failed to develop a modern military system. And while
it was again a massive military power, they never do
like what France does. Where you you start this idea
of a nation under arms and a modern professional style
of the military that takes a lot longer to develop
in Spain, and it's part of why they don't do

(18:10):
so well when everyone else develops a modern military right
and they start losing their empire, both to a combination
of European powers taking their ship from them and from
a lot of revolutions in places they had controlled that
overthrows them um. And so the seventeen hundreds and eighteen
hundreds see a rapid decline in Spanish power. It had
been declining before then, but yeah, now the ultimate collapse
of Spanish imperialism um really comes in eighteen ninety eight

(18:34):
when the United States goes to war with Spain for
no reason really and takes over Cuba and the Philippine
just because like it's a just randomly just like hey,
you want a new imperial power, we could be there
and there. You know, Spain is an unbelievably brutal particularly
in the Philippines, and then we take over and we're
unbelievably brutal in the Philippines, and the people they're like, oh,

(18:56):
you guys, so are we going to have a democracy now?
And we're like no, no, no, oh no, we want
your ship, like we want your ship. You know, she's
setting you free so we can own you. I mean,
I don't understand kind of freedom. It's that kind of
it's that kind of freedom. Yeah, Like we don't even
let women in our country vote. You think we're gonna

(19:16):
let you vote? What are you? What are you talking about?
It's motherfucker's so interesting. Yea, nothing changes, it's just your
leaders speak English now. I mean, our guns are better.
Our guns are a lot better than Spanish guns. They're
guns sucked. That's why we're in charge now. Colonialism. So

(19:40):
so one of the things that's interesting about Spain is
Lady Late nine. That's like the height of colonialism right
before World War One starts like like murders a lot
of the great powers that controlled the whole world. So
like they are they are writing high. Africa's just been like,
you know, murdered, like in a lot of ways, like
colonize this avel for Africa's like at its height. You know,

(20:01):
Belgium owns the Congo. It's that period. So everyone else
who's doing imperialism is doing gang busters, and Spain's empire collapses.
So what happens to everyone else in like the fifties, sixties, seventies,
UM really happens to Spain like sixty, a couple of
generations earlier. So they actually go through the they're an
empire who goes through the collapse of colonialism while everyone

(20:24):
else is doing great at colonialism, which is one of
the things that makes them very interesting. So some of
the things that happen in colonial powers when their empires collapse,
these things that we've seen in Germany and France and
England and that we're seeing now in the United States
happen in Spain in the late eighteen nineties. Because it's
just the stuff that happens when you're an empire that fails.
I find that really interesting. Historian Stanley pain Uh calls

(20:47):
eighteen ninety eight the first modern post colonial trauma in
Western Europe UM, and I think you do have to
view it as a trauma for the people in Spain,
and probably the best equivalent to our own society would
be the ongoing trauma that a lot of a mayor
organs have faced in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And
I'm not trying to minimize the traumas faced in those
countries as a result of US action, which are commensurately greater.

(21:08):
But we've seen in the MAGA movement, right and all
of these like that, it's that have come home and
stormed the capital and ship like. It is a trauma.
It's a trauma where you were an empire that fails.
It fox people up who were used to being the empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that yeah, that's that's that. I'll find that part, like,
you know, as being a black dude being like, you know,

(21:29):
we the saying, you know that like a qualities oppression
if all you know is privileged, you know what I'm saying.
So like when if you're just you're so used to
the system working for you, the second it doesn't, you're
like something must be broken. You're like, well, no, it
was broke. That's why it only worked for you, you
know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, it was always broken.
It was always one of the people it worked for.

(21:52):
So yeah, Spain deals with this postcolonial trauma very early,
right before the rest before the rest of the Western world, right,
really does because it fails for them. They were the
first for it to work, and they were the first
that it failed for, which I guess makes sense now
Like in the US, all those failing colonial ventures that
we had flooded the United States with disaffected veterans debt,

(22:14):
and it fueled the rise of a resentful right wing
as well as feeling the rise of a dissident left
wing right. Both of all of that stuff was really
um incited in a lot of ways by UH. And
obviously I'm not calling the dissident left a bad thing.
Um But like those horrible colonial wars, we had really
fueled a lot of that, And the situation in Spain
after eight nine is not all that different. Now, with

(22:37):
her years as a great power seemingly behind her, Spanish
intellectuals begin to wonder if the sense of exceptionalism that
they'd always taken for granted had been based on false premises.
And I'm gonna quote from historian Stanley Pain here. I know, right, interesting, Yeah.
Symptomatic of the dismay of the nationalist military was an
editorial in El Heraldo Militar on twenty three November nineteen

(22:58):
o eight, entitled worst in Anywhere. It declared, wherever we look,
we find greater virility than in our own people. In Turkey, Persia, China,
the Balkan States, everywhere we find life and energy even
in Russia. In Spain there was only apathy and submission.
How sad it is to think about the situation in Spain. Yeah,

(23:19):
it kind of feels like us in the coronavirus. We're like, yeah,
I think Americans can identify with a lot of Wait,
they're hearing here, even if you don't feel it bad
you you know the intellectuals in our own society who
are saying the same ship, right, yes, yes, Now. The
Spanish political system was not at all stable domestically during

(23:40):
the period after like while her empire was in free fall,
and that's part of why the empire didn't last. From
eighteen o three to the early nineteen hundreds, there were
more than a dozen military coups. Between eighteen thirty three
and eighteen seventy six, Spain was racked by three civil wars,
the Carlist wars, which were not battles against everybody's favorite
tertiary Simpson's character, but we're instead members of a conservative,

(24:01):
pro church political movement. The car Lists were the violent,
armed wing of Catholics right there were the embodiment of
clerical resentment against liberal Spain. They were religious extremists who
didn't want the country to modernize UM, and I found
a very detailed right up for students on a Lyman
dot uk that notes the Carlist wars quote where fought
with a fervor and brutality derived from deep divisions within Spain.

(24:24):
They also lasted longer than national wars and were more
difficult to resolve. They anticipated the Spanish Civil War in
a number of respects. There was a strong element of
different and conflicting beliefs within the country, profound traditional Catholicism
against modern liberal thought, regional independence against traditional central control,
political liberalism against deep conservative monarchism. So this is all

(24:45):
the stuff that's been cooking up in the background of
Spanish politics at the turn of the twentieth century. Now
partly as a result of the car List Wars. Spain
had a relatively underdeveloped right wing in this period because
you know, a lot of them gotten killed in wars
UM and they been very tied to the Church, So
there wasn't as much like a nationalist right wing. It
was a Catholic right wing. Now, Spanish nationalism, as I said,

(25:07):
was kind of nascent and didn't really start to erupt
into the street until after World War One. In Spain
was neutral in World War One, so you think they
might be in a better position because they don't really
get involved in this ship um and it does delay
a lot of political extremism in the country. It's why
they don't have, like, you know, a communist movement that's
really a big deal until after the war. The first
big street fight in Spain between radical political groups actually

(25:30):
happened between two opposed groups of nationalists in nineteen nineteen.
Radical Catalanists, which are like big like advocates of Catalan separatism,
had been holding peaceful nightly demonstrations in favor of independence
throughout nineteen eighteen. In January of nineteen nineteen, a group
of right wing Espaniolistas, who are like nationalists violent Spanish
nationalists assaulted this gathering of peaceful Catalanists. Both groups battled

(25:54):
it out in the streets of Barcelona and what would
soon become a familiar display. The Espaniolistas were a mix
of local army officers and men from a group calling
itself the Lega Patriotica Espaniola. This violence was soon superseded
by a spree of organized political murders by anarcho syndicalists
from a labor federation called the C and T. And
this is like unrelated to the national separatism. There's also

(26:15):
and we'll talk about anarchism in a second, but a
bunch of anarchists extremists start murdering people based on like like,
based on class really, um and that brings us a
temporary stop to all of the street fighting because the
murders bring the cops out against all sorts of what
are considered to be political extremists, and it briefly claims
it's what we're about to see in the United States,
and it briefly clamps down on all political organization in

(26:37):
the streets. Yeah. Now, in most of Western Europe, anarchists
tended to be smaller like they weren't fairly rare for
anarchists to make a large percentage of political radicals in
the European country. Um. And it's much more common for
like socialists and communists to be a significant like force,
a significant like sized force. Ukraine would be an exist

(26:59):
an exception to the we talked about Nestor mcnow on
our our Christmas episodes. UM. And part of why Ukraine
had a large and organized anarchist movement is that Ukraine
was largely agrarian. And one of the things we see
in in like Europe in this period of time is
that nations that have a large industrial base and a
lot of industrial workers have a huge communist movement. Nations

(27:20):
that are primarily rural and agricultural have a large anarchist
movement because anarchists are more common kind of come out
of agrarian, rural communities more often than common, because communism
is a workers movement. Marks early on in his career
was very much like you like kind of wrote off
for a long time rural people. Was like, no, it's
all about the workers. It's about industrial like them. You

(27:41):
can organize and you can use them to take you know,
take over the system basically, and like rural people are
kind of a lost cause. And he did change on
that later in his life install but like, that's part
of why you don't really see communism erupt out of
rural areas in this period. You see anarchism when you
see left wing experience. Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna quote it. Yeah,

(28:02):
it's it's interesting, right, I didn't actually thought of that. Yeah,
And that's part of why when I think about ways
in which to pull people in rural America away from
right wing extremism. I think of more systems like democratic
confederalism or libertary municipalism like book chin Um that are
kind of more of an out of a more anarchist
view because like a lot of these libertarians, I do

(28:24):
think you can pull into a more reasonable system that's
not right wing extremism, because a lot of their basic
ideology is I want to be left alone. And I
think you could be like, well, we we want to
leave you alone. We just also would like to be
left alone. Can we figure out a way to like yes, yes, yeah. Um.
So I'm gonna quote from Lemon dot Uk again on
kind of politics and Spain in this period quote capitalist

(28:46):
industry had not developed in the same ways that had
in Germany, Britain and America, and Spain had little in
the way of organized labor. After small scale beginnings in
eighteen sixty eight, anarchism came to be a major revolutionary
influence of the twentieth century, and was more widely embraced
in Spain than other left wing ideas. The movement first
gained notice in the eighteen seventies after a violent incident
at the town of Alcoy in eighteen seventy three, when

(29:08):
anarchists took advantage of a strike to spread radical ideas,
causing the police to fire on the gathered populace. A
clampdown was enforced that sent the movement underground. Consequently, it
became largely based in rural areas, which were more difficult
to police. Anarchism was reduced to individual acts of terrorism,
which in turn were met by repression and torture by
the state throughout the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. By

(29:28):
the early twentieth century, terrorism had given way to a
belief in anarcho syndicalism. This was the theory that the
state could be challenged by cooperative action by the workers
and strikes. The Federation of Workers Societies and the of
the Spanish Region was formed in nineteen hundred. This movement
organized strikes to exercise political power and was again suppressed.
Wage cuts and closures of factories in Barcelona in nineteen

(29:48):
o nine, together with a call up of men for
a colonial war in Morocco, led to a general strike
in the city on twenty six of July. This turned
out to be a major event, with seventeen hundred arrests,
attacks on railway lines, and anti claire Colism, hostility to
the church. Eighty churches and monasteries were attacked. The government
response was swift and merciless, and five leaders were executed.
And this is a big thing with like a particularly

(30:10):
anarchist in Spain. They burn a lot of churches down,
and they kill a lot of Catholic priests, um and
some of that, a lot of that is them murdering
people who didn't deserve it, and a lot of them
is that is them murdering people who did because the
Catholic Church is also terrible, like kind of why yeah,
if you're looking for like a pure good guy or

(30:32):
a peer victim, you will rarely find it in this
Like there are right like obviously I'm not saying like
like there's nuns and ship they get murdered. That's not chill.
The Catholic Church is also responsible for horrible repression. It's
very messy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're yeah, they
you know, they have their own you know, both versions
of like bastard episode of like the like the Good

(30:55):
Christmas one that's like, oh we Indian North vantages. You know,
I'm saying it's like, oh, that's actually great, you know. Yeah,
and there's then there's this, and the Catholic Church is
so big because you can also you could obviously we
could do multiple episodes and we probably will at some
point about the massive and pervasive sexual abuse of children
that was enabled by the Catholic Church. We could could
and should also do a Christmas episode on the significant

(31:17):
number of priests and nuns in Latin America who were
like dogged and constant enemies of US imperialism and writing
extremism during like the period when the US was doing
most of its fucking around Latin America. All of that's
part of the Church's history of that. Like a couple
of our hospital bids are actually Catholic. Yeah, yeah, there's
like weird mixed yeah. I I'm not a person who

(31:39):
wants to like simplify all this. It's very messy, and
this is a messy episode mess by this point, when
you've got these anarcho syndicalists organizing and like and and
in some cases carrying out not all of them, but
some of them carrying out terrorist attacks, and some of
those attacks are on shitty people, and some of those
attacks are on people who don't deserve it, like it's
very messy. And at the same period of time, you've

(32:01):
got Gabrielle de Nunzio in Italy occupying well, I guess,
in Yugoslavia occupying the city of Fume. And you've got
Mussolini in the early stages of forming his black Shirts
and sicking them on left wing newspapers. This is happening
contemporaneously to that. You're gonna to like, you're gonna have
to release with this one a vocabulary list. You introduced,
some new names, some new words. We talked about de

(32:22):
Nunzio and few and I'm not talking about him. I'm
talking about the different factions in Spain. Yeah, you said,
you said a narco syndicalism. Yeah, anarco. You know what
I'm saying, darn O claydo master this bug. Anarcho syndicalists.
The basic idea is that workers need workers who work
for like different factories or whatever, who work and farms

(32:45):
even need to form syndicates together, to organize kind of
like unions, to organize and have syndicates that work together
against the state and against capital in order to in
some cases just gain better wages for workers in some
cases in order to old against the system. But like
it's this idea that different groups of workers need to
organize themselves and then work with other organizations of workers

(33:07):
rather than having bosses in a strict hierarchy. And they
totally need to sell drugs. That's why they call a narcos. Yeah.
The good thing about this period is that drugs are
all legal everywhere. Um. So by this point, like I said,
de Nunzio is occupying Fume and Mussolini's in the early
stages of like forming the black Shirts, Fascism is getting

(33:28):
started in Italy um. And in Spain, though anarchists are
by far the largest and best organized group of political
radicals in the country, the communists aren't really a big factor,
and the right wing isn't really a big factor. It's
just kind of the anarchist fighting the government a lot
of the time, and the Catholic Church, you know, is
kind of a lot of their like supporters are kind
of taking the part of right wing organizing, but the

(33:49):
car List wars kind of drained them, so it's not
a big deal there. Um, And this is not really
the case anywhere else that you could think of it,
It's part of why I find Spain so interesting. Fascism,
by contrast, had a much slow were time starting off
in Spain. Portugal actually beat Spain to the punch when
it came to like having fascists um. And it was
because a proto nationalist group called Nationalismo Lusitano was formed

(34:11):
in Lisbon in nineteen twenty three, and it was directly
inspired by Mussolini's Italian fascism. Now a number of other
Mussolini want to be sprang up in Europe during this period.
You could even call Hitler at the time of the
Beer Hall Putsch kind of like a Mussolini imitator um.
But the idea didn't really catch on in Spain, not yet. Uh.
Spanish intellectuals were, however, watching Vincent Italy, and one of them,

(34:32):
a guy named Fla, suggested that this new political system
might just be the thing to help rebuild Spain's failing empire.
He wrote a Fascism as a social movement. It gave
voice to a vein of mysticism and idealism that exalted
the concept of the patria and its full realization the
concept of the fatherland. Yeah. Coffee shop in Compton. Yeah,

(34:54):
with some troubling. Yeah. So the name of the game
for FUA was national restoration. But Mussolini's fun idea was
popular outside of right wing circles too. There was actually
a left wing cattle and separatist movement that found themselves
drawn to Italian fascism, particularly it's emphasis on militia based
direct action. And they weren't fascists. They didn't embrace, for example,

(35:15):
Mussolini's doctrine of therapeutic violence, you know, the cult of
violence for violence's sake. Um. They just liked, number one,
the imagery of this non state group of armed people
marching in order to take power for themselves, and they
wanted to do that. So, like the left is when
we talked about this in our first episode, a lot
of folks who are just kind of hate the system
play with both fascist and anarchists and left and right

(35:37):
wing ideas throughout this period of time. Um. Also, I
like that you brought up Portugal because I feel like
they always fly on it a radar. They do. They
just everybody just not notice and they could just exist
in the shadows. They was the first in Africa, you
know what I'm saying. So yeah, like nobody like how
do why I talk about portable? And they're also the
case of a country that was incredibly powerful and want

(36:00):
I is to funckload of the world and then collapsed
before the rest of colonialism did. And you see the
same thing happened in Portugal where all these authoritarians start
coming into power because there's the sense of like, we
need a strong man. And this is like intellectuals in
Spain will be like, we have to or in Portugal
will be like, we can't have a republic for a while.
We have to have basically a dictator come in because
he needs to fix everything. Like we have all these problems,

(36:21):
we can't argue we just need one visionary to come
And it's not quite fascism, but it's it has a
lot of elements of that, right, So um, Robert, can
you hit ad Rick real quick? You know what else
has elements of fascism? Sophie no nois aspects. Yeah, here's

(36:50):
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(38:15):
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Plus each week you'll hear hilarious stories like this at
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(38:36):
believe that. I feel like I did. I'm not on
a thousand percent. I want to say that was I
tossed that one out. Listen to the Welcome to Our
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from sorry. If by strong man you mean a strong
Sophie that keeps us in and placed in, yes, these

(39:00):
ads have elements of fascism, but it's a good fascism.
It's a fast it's a fast ship, fashion fashion, fashionist,
which is fine. Fine, it's fine, it's fine, and we
we appreciate our podcast Dictators, So our podcast rules with

(39:22):
an iron fist. Uh. It does operate a system of
political re education camps, but that is a story for
another episode. So in late nine, Spain gained its first
real fascist party, the Tresistas. They wore a blue uniform
because blue is the color of the working class for
the right wing red as the colors the working class

(39:43):
for the left wing right. Like, I know, I know,
it's yeah. Uh, and we got it backwards here, which
is weird, right. Um. Yeah, they wore a blue uniform
and they hope to spread throughout the country. But the
organization fizzle. There just wasn't any real interest in fascism
in Spain in this period. Now, while political fascism failed
to gain meaningful purchase in Spain, during this time, fascist

(40:04):
thought and inclinations were spreading among a lot of influential
Spanish thought leaders and particularly within the military and military officers.
Much of this had to do with the rise of
the revolutionary left in the eighteen nineties, these anarchists that
I was talking about. In his landmark book Fascism in Spain,
scholar Stanley Pain notes that the military resistance to the
left had less to do with politics than you might expect.

(40:26):
Officers largely accepted moderate left wing social and economic aims,
and there was even a strong strain of anti capitalist
thought among Spanish military leaders. Despite this, pain rights army
officers demanded suppression of the left, disorder, violence and subversion
of national unity. Again, it's this The military's big problem

(40:47):
with the left is they're disordered right there, trying to
tear down this system, and we're we're doing pretty well
in this system. And it's the thing that is always
the case, right um. The military itself was also heavily
divided in this time, not a political lines, but between
bureaucratic officers on the peninsula itself and combat officers who
had spent time fighting in Spain's last colonial possession, Northern Morocco. So,

(41:10):
Spain's most of its empires has collapsed right now, but
they have Northern Morocco, and Spain had gotten Morocco basically
during the last stages of the scramble for Africa, and
it was it was given to them by France and England,
who you might notice don't have the right to give
Morocco to any but they did, and it was due
to like diplomatic support that Spain gave them, Like it

(41:31):
was literally like it was them the way that like
a normal person be like, hey man, i'll help you
move if you help me set up my sound system
this week. Like that's how Spain got Morocco. It's very yeah,
it's you know, it's it's a bullshit. It's also a
beautiful country, gorgeous yeah. Um. Now, so they were given
the right to occupy the land by France and England

(41:52):
and nineteen o six and exchange for diplomatic support. And
Spain's conquest of Morocco was kind of like the first
one night stand you have after a breakup. They just
had like a big you know, they needed something to
boost their confidence after losing to the United States. UM
and Spain turned out to be pretty bad at conquering Morocco.
Their control never amounted to much more than a few towns, cities,

(42:14):
and roads on the coast. Much of the territory and
its people refused to yield, and in nineteen one, a
charismatic Moroccan leader named Abdul Kareem rose an army and
launched what became known as the Riffy Insurrection. For a time,
it was the strongest rebellion against colonialism anywhere in the
Afro Asian world. Like, these guys actually do great um

(42:35):
for a while, you know, uh. Now, the war attracted
ambitious young Spanish officers eager to make a name for themselves.
One of these guys was a fellow named Francisco Franco,
who rose to the rank of colonel fighting the insurgents. Now,
Francisco and a lot of young officers were very frustrated
by the corrupt and bureaucratic nature of the military, which
had not seen a major reorganization or modernization in decades.

(42:57):
It was a lot in a lot of ways like
an Napoleonic army with somewhat better guns, which is why
part of the way they're getting their asses kicked now.
Franco and a number of other officers formed military councils
of like minded officers and lobbied for reforms, and some
of those reforms were successful, but nothing they did was
enough to write the inertia. In early nineteen one, the
Spanish army launched an offensive into northern Morocco from the

(43:19):
coastal territories they held. Now, because the people in charge
were idiots, they didn't properly prepare lines of communication, and
they almost immediately advanced beyond their supply lines. No defensible
forts were left behind to secure supply routes or water,
and on July twenty, after five days of skirmish is,
a force of five thousand Spanish troops were attacked by
three thousand riff fighters. This should have been an easy

(43:40):
win for a European military, but the Spanish had poor
organization and we're basically out of AMMO because they'd outrun
their supply lines. So the Riffs, the riffy like overrun
the Spanish army and they advanced like several hundred miles,
slaughtering Spanish soldiers, taking over supply depots and positions as
they go. The Spanish army shot entirely. They lose more

(44:01):
than thirteen thousand men wounded in a matter of days,
and the Riffs suffer around eight hundred casualties. This is
like a like one of the worst defeats suffered by
any colonial power in Africa. It is they get their
assets handed to m hmm. The defeat was so extensive
and so shameful that the Spanish general committed suicide in

(44:23):
the field and his remains were never found. Um, like
it is they it is yeah, and the riff. This
whole instruction is fascinating to read about because like these
guys fucking have it on lockdown, you know. Um, it
is hard to imagine how shattering this was to the
people of Spain and their image of themselves, and how
much it disrupted Spanish politics. The military was, of course enraged,

(44:45):
and even though the failures were entirely their own, they
blame their failures on the support of the civilian government.
It's y'all's fault. Well, we're bad at war. Yeah, Well
I didn't lose this war. Yeah, yeah, I mean you
see it on the right here where it's like it

(45:05):
was the liberals and like the left that lost us
the wars and no, you were we suck at this.
We're bad at it. Look make it okay. We're bad
at it and it's bad it was you shouldn't have
been at the first place. Yeah, if we fucking stopped
this ship in like I don't know, nineteen forty five,
we'd still be like, you know, what we're good at
is war. Don't have to do it often, you're good

(45:27):
at it. We saw uh now again, Yeah, it really
fox up a lot in Spain at this period of time.
Um and obviously the Liberal government is also enraged, largely
at the cost in Spanish life and treasure in this
colonial adventure. And in early September ninety three Liberal ministers

(45:49):
resign in protests because the military draws up plans for
a new offensive and Morocco and they're like, come on, guys,
like you just got your asses kicked. This isn't terrible fellas.
He can not take the message. It's bad, bad catalysts

(46:10):
who didn't even really want to be part of Spain,
let alone send their sons to die and fucking Morocco.
For Spain held a huge rally in Barcelona where the
Spanish flag was dragged through the ground. This really pisses
off the military, and it pisses off a bunch of
senior generals, most prominently a career military man from a
career military family named Miguel Primo de Rivera, now as

(46:32):
the Captain General of Barcelona, the guy in charge of
the military in Barcelona. De Rivera was a desk officer,
not an African veteran, and that's kind of like the
break between the army. But he sides with the African veterans,
and he sees this liberal government as having failed his
illustrious Spanish army. He also had seen Mussolini's March on
Rome in ninety two, and while he is not a fascist,

(46:54):
he really likes Mussolini, and the BArch on Rome convinces
him that with the army behind him, he could force
an into the parliamentary politics that he that felt were
holding the military back. And I'm gonna quote now from
a book called Fascism in Spain about like this revolt
that de Rivera leads. The revolt began in Barcelona as
a classic pronounca miento, I'm sorry, space um, with a

(47:16):
local takeover in the Catalan capital by its captain general,
who called upon the rest of the army and other
patriotic Spaniards to rally round. In fact, also in the
traditional style, all but one of the other captains general
at first sat on their fence. The pronunca miento h
succeeded above all because the Liberal government did almost nothing
to defend itself. The issue was finally decided two days
later by the crown as Alfonso the Eight, without invoking

(47:39):
constitutional limits or procedures transferred power to what would become
the first direct military dictatorship in Spanish history. Primo de
Rivera gave no evidence of any explicit theory or plan.
His assumption of power was at first predicated on a
ninety day emergency military directory to deal with such problems
as attempted subversion, the stalemate, and Morocco administrative corruption and

(48:00):
political reform. In fact, his only professed ideology was constitutional liberalism.
He insisted that the Constitution of eighteen seventy six remained
the law of the land, and initially denied that he
was a dictator in any genuine sense, insisting in his
first public statement, no one can with justice apply that
term to me. Of course everyone since has called him
a dictator. Yeah, the years of yeah, what is it about?

(48:24):
I have two questions about this, Like I forget what figure,
what what history? And I heard to say it, but
he was just talking about like just generals, like they
all kind of have this like diva gene, like just
just kind of Diva's you know what I'm saying, Like
it's kind of hard to like what is that? So
that's like my first thing. It's very deep in in

(48:46):
Western civilization particularly right, Like you have to look back
to Rome at this stuff. So the way generals in
Rome were treated. Number one, if you were general in
Rome and you had a major military victory, the Senate
would vote for you to have what was called a
try mp, which is where you were all but in
all but named king for a day of Rome, and
there was the whole city had this huge party for you,

(49:07):
and all of your trophies of war were dragged through
the streets and like, because you were so powerful and
so like basically worshiped that day. It was that one
guy's whole job to stand next to you the whole
time and throughout the day whisper to you you will
die at one point, like you're going to die someday.
Like that was like like that that, like, and Rome
constantly had civil wars that were the result of generals

(49:29):
taking their armies and taking power. It happened all of
the fucking time. It's why you got Caesar. It's why
it stopped being a republic. You know. One of the
reasons why the United States military is organized the way
it is and why there's such if you look at
like some of the ship the military was saying at
the end of Trump's time, like, why they had so
many statements about the military having no role in the
elections is because from the beginning the founders of this

(49:52):
country were like, that's going to be a problems. We're
gonna have military. That's gonna be And at first a
lot of them were like, we shouldn't have a military.
Why would you, like it always is a problem. Let's
just have a bunch of militias, you know, which there's
something to be said for that. M Yeah, anyway, but like, yeah, yeah,
they are Diva's Like, if you're going to take the
responsibility for the lives of tens of thousands of men

(50:12):
into your own personal control, you've got to be a
little bit of a diva. Yeah, it seemed like, yeah,
so obviously everyone today calls Primo de Rivera a dictatorship.
The years of his leadership are generally known in Spanish
history as la dictadura uh and this was met like
his his coming to power was met by a lot
less resistance than you might guess. Spain was exhausted by

(50:35):
years of political bickering, foreign policy setbacks, in economic frustration.
Several years earlier, political theorists in Portugal had talked about
the need to bring in a temporary dictator, what they
called an iron surgeon, to solve intractable problems. And Primo
de Rivere was one of a lot of strong men
who came to power throughout Europe in this period who
weren't fascists, although they often admired fascists and took some

(50:56):
ideas from them. Um. But de Rivera doesn't really have
an ideology. He's just wants to like fix things and
figures is enough of a narcissist that he's like, I
know how to do this. Um. And while dear Vera
wasn't a fascist, his brief reign would help further lay
the groundwork for fascism in Spain, and the war that
he brought to Morocco was in many ways a prelude
of fascist wars of extermination to come, only it was

(51:18):
waged with the help of his allies the French. Oh yeah,
after the Spanish army broke an annual which is that
big battle where they lose thirteen thousand dudes. The Abdel Kareem,
who was the guy in charge of the reef um
and his his his like, I don't know what you
wanna call them, I'll call them revolutionaries established a republic. Now, France,

(51:41):
who just fought a whole war, you know, World War One,
was the right of national self determination, and who were
a republic themselves, did not like that Abdel Kareem and
his reriff had established a republican Morocco because they're afraid
they own a bunch of Africa. They own a bunch
of Africa near Morocco. People are going to hear that
there's a republic that isn't run by Europe and they're

(52:04):
gonna they're they're not gonna want to have us in
charge anymore. Like, wait, this is an option, yeah option, Yeah, yeah,
you can't have a democracy and not you yeah yeah,
kind of like that. Yeah. France is like, no, that's
not that's not gonna happen at an option, not an option,
Not an option. So they decide to enter the war

(52:26):
against the Riff on Spain's side to crush the rebels.
In nineteen twenty five, France and de Rivera's reformed Spanish
army begin a counter offensive against the Riff. Now leading
things on the French side was a fellow named Marshall Patain,
hero of the Battle of Verdun during World War One,
and the guy who would become the leader of vich
France during World War Two. He's the guy who collaborates

(52:46):
with the Nazis. Um now, but tell you at this point, yeah,
I know, he's a real piece of Shitmpkins didn't kill
this guy. He's a He's a war hero at this
point too, though, because he he led France through the
Battle over Dune. Is. If you're making a shortlist of
the very worst battles in the entire history of human warfare,
for Done might be number one, you know, Stred. There's

(53:06):
a couple of other like, but it's it is, It's in,
It's in the running. You know. It's horrible, like a
million people die. It's a terrible, terrible battle. So he's
a big war hero. And when he decides he wants
to go to Morocco, the French government is going to
give him everything he asks for. So he puts together
a force of a hundred and fifty thousand men to
face abdel Kareem's tribesmen, who were very well organized and

(53:28):
good fighters, but they numbered just twenty thousand. The offensive
started with one of the first Yeah, amphibious landings. Yeah,
there's no like Gandalf showing up and helping. No, we don't,
we don't. We don't get a Gandolf in this story.
So you are outgunned and outman. Yeah, you guys are
just like you're fucked. It's it's a bummer um. And

(53:48):
this amphibious landing is started spearheaded by young colonel named
Francisco Franco, who led the soldiers of the Spanish Foreign
Legion into battle. Now you have seen the Spanish Foreign lead. Um.
Everyone in America pretty much did. Because at the start
of the coronavirus lockdown, when Spain had a lockdown and
brought in the military to help, there were pictures of
a bunch of very jacked and very handsome Spanish soldiers

(54:11):
and incredibly tight fitting uniforms marching down the streets of Barcelona,
and a bunch of US liberals were like, oh my god,
they're so hot. Why can't we have those soldiers here.
I'm gonna tell you the backstory of those soldiers because
those were the men of the Spanish Foreign Legion, and
it's not a great back story. So it's crazy. It
was crazy about like the geography right now, like I

(54:34):
don't noticed backstory that you're about to say, but I'm
just picturing the geography because off the Costa del Soul
at the edge of of the edge of Spain to
the tip of Tangiers in Morocco, it's just the Merediterranean.
See it's a ninety minute boat ride. Yeah, it's so far.
It's not far. You it's almost like you could sit
in Morocco and watch him, like, yeah, he'd come to Spanish.

(54:56):
You can get Spain to Africa in the time you
would get a quarter of the way across Texas, right,
Like it's nothing, it really is. Yeah, do they know
who designed the uniforms. We're going to talk about why
the uniforms look the way they do. Yeah, So the
Spanish Foreign Legion were founded. He's not a pointy motherfucker. No, No,

(55:19):
they're hot. They're hot. They're hot. They're they're they're like
a nice they are they are, but they are they
are hot. Nobody's arguing that they're not hot subjectively way
too tight. Yeah, no, one is arguing that they're not
good looking men. We're not going to disagree about this,
but problematic. So they're found the Spanish Foreign Legion was

(55:42):
founded in nineteen nineteen in mimicry of the French Foreign Legion,
since Spain was also mimicking French ambitions in North Africa
at this point. The founder of the Legion was a
guy named Milan Astray, a veteran of Spain's brutal war
in the Philippines and of the fighting in Morocco, and
he wanted to create a colonial army for Spain that
they used to regain some of their lost glory. He

(56:03):
created an interlocking series as he founded, like when he
founded the Foreign Legion, he wanted them to be brutal,
because if you're going to keep a colonial possession, you
have to murder a lot of people, right, that's how
colonialism where you have to kill a lot of people.
And so your soldiers have to be soulless, broken men
in order to gun down the proper number of children
to keep an empire. Um, these he wanted his shock troops.

(56:26):
And yeah, I mean in fine as hell, Um she
just sent me. That's why it's good. God, God, I know,
I know. Like the reaction is like the Spanish Foreign
Legion today look like characters in like they look like
characters in a pornography, like they don't look like soldiers,

(56:46):
they look like fake soldiers from a sleazy porn yes, um, yes, yeah,
and they kind of did then, so stray in order
to make sure these guys are as brutal as possible,
creates for them an interlocking series of hazing rituals with
goal with like shattering these men's souls. And he wants
to explicitly is like, I want to separate these men
from their past lives and unify them in quote brotherhood

(57:09):
and death. Now, Milan Australia was a big fan of
the Bushido code of the Samurai. Yeah, I know, I
know all of these fucking guys, and he cribs from
Bushido um to write his own Legionary creed. What's emphasized
tireless duty, bodily hardness, which is why they're all jacked,
unconditional brotherhood and fighting to the death. And I'm gonna

(57:32):
quote from a write up and Prospect magazine on the
Foreign Legion here. Many of these themes were common across
fascist movements and the military's they influenced, but others were
distinct to the Legion. Legionary swore to become bride grooms
of Death, from the title of a popular song about
a legionnaire's sacrifice in the roof, renouncing familial and romantic
bonds and sublimating them into loyalty to each other and

(57:54):
the Legion's flag. You are married to death. Death is
your wife. She's like, I'm married to the streets. You're
not married to the game. You're married to death. So
if you think these guys are hot, I have bad
news for you. They're fucking the Grim Reaper. Yeah, they're sorry.
You don't. You don't attract him. You are to a

(58:15):
laugh at me. That's not my type. Yeah. Um, so
these these guys, the reason why they have these shirts
with like really open weird necklines, um, is that I'm sorry,
I'm gonna need you to rephrase that. What's week about that?
They're showing it off. They are showing it off. It's

(58:37):
also meant to emphasize their willingness to fight in the
hot desert air. Um. And the green is from like
the color it's like early camouflage. Yeah, this is what
I wish was normal, Sophie. They are married to the
concept of murdering children. I'm sorry, I mean, I'm not
here for that, but the old dog like right said,

(59:03):
the pants are subjectively too tight, but like, go ahead,
this is not functional. It's a nice pastel mint color.
You know. No today this uniforms like functional? Yeah. Not.
You have to be married to death because nothing about
this says you ready to survive. Like kind of look

(59:26):
like if the tin man from The Wizard of Oz
worked at Baskin Robbins and had to go do a
porno shoot later. So Franco and his Franco and his
foreign legionman were the tip of the spear of the
French and Spanish governments thrust into the heart of Morocco.
You did, Yeah, I know, I know, Sophie. But we're

(59:50):
about to talk about genocide. Okay, okay, but you don't
know what you just did there. You know what, we
need to take a break. The spear doesn't just mean
to take a break, Robert, alright, we're gonna go to ads.
Are gonna go to ads, and then we're going to
talk about a colonial genocide. Yes, hi, I'm Robert lamp

(01:00:11):
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(01:01:18):
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Force Service and the AD Council. Alright, alright, we're back,
and we are no longer talking about hot guys. Were
talking about the genocide those hot guys helped commit. Well
kind of brought it up like that. You know what

(01:02:25):
you're doing, bro, I don't. I'm trying to emphasize that
sometimes things that look nice are also fashy as hell,
and sometimes sometimes the good looks will stick it to you.
So the overwhelming force, well overwhelming force now anyway, Yeah,
they just thrust their goddamn damn it. Okay, what you're doing. Okay,

(01:02:50):
I know I'm trying to talk about the use of
chemical war weapons upon civilians. But I've never wished Jamie
Loftus was here more. I am fairly glad she would
completely She's a professional at this. The French in the

(01:03:10):
Spanish have so many soldiers in so much high grade
military hardware that there is no chance the riff are
going to actually win. Victory was only a matter of time.
But de Rivera and Marshall Pattaine were not willing to wait,
and so they started using chemical weapons to slaughter tribes
people in mass and they're not using them on military forces.
They first start bombarding the city of Tangier with fos

(01:03:33):
gene gas, which is a deadly chemical weapon. It's what
they used in the trenches. It chokes people to death
on their own, rotting lungs um. It's horrific stuff. The
Spanish army began pounding the outskirts of the town uh
and as soon as Spanish forces started gassing tribes people,
other commanders in the country begged to be able to
do the same. One Spanish general wrote his desire to

(01:03:53):
use them, them being chemical weapons with delight. This was
all very good for France, who profited not just from
stidity in northern Africa, but because they were willing they
were selling Spain the gas, they also profited financially. I'm
gonna quote from an article on the website r S
twenty one here. It was in fact a French business Schneider,
which in nineteen twenty two helped to open a plant

(01:04:14):
for the production of toxic shells in Malila, and indeed
the French made an official one. French General leout Lee
made an official request to his supervisors for provisions of
chemical weapons in June ninet, justifying that the use of
these munitions with their toxic power allows us to spare
human lives during our attacks. In face of these bombs
dropped the most populated regions of the territories controlled by

(01:04:36):
Abdel Cream, the Riffians tried to fight back with non
explosive projectiles as well as making shells charged with pepper power,
with little success. Right up to the end of the
Rift War, the Spanish army would continue to use these
lethal gases with the support of the French forces with
martial patain at their head. In Morocco, so spare human life.
They attacked civilian targets with chemical weapons. They like. So,

(01:04:59):
look hear me out. I didn't shoot him, I gassed
him and his family. He just he died from the air. Yeah,
it's some real We had to destroy the village to
save it vibes. Yeah, So Victory and Morocco started the
dictator's time and power off. We're talking about de Rivera here.
With widespread popular support, he created a political party, the UP,

(01:05:20):
the Patriotic Union, whose motto was monarchy, fatherland, and religion.
His mouthpieces at the UP declared that the de Rivery
dictatorship was only a transitional thing, and that the military
dictatorship would eventually be replaced with a civil dictatorship. So
this military dictatorship just temporary. We got a civil dictator.
It's gonna be fine. It's great to be a different, good,
totally reasonable kind of dictatorships. It's cool. Yeah, yeah, now

(01:05:47):
this would be different. Yeah. So, the Patriotic Union or
the UP was mostly composed of middle class conservative Catholic Spaniards,
and historian Stanley Pain notes that in some provinces, sectors
of the old political elite did join and dominate, but
the organization also incorporated ordinary middle class people who had
not previously been politically active, so in spite of the

(01:06:07):
fact that electoral politics didn't exist during de Riveriaus dictatorship,
it served a purpose of rallying and in some ways
activating the middle class as a political entity. The up's
goal was to ensure some form of right wing dictatorship
remained the permanent government of Spain, and much of their
support came from their victory in Morocco and their success
in for the first time igniting widespread nationalism among the

(01:06:29):
Spanish population. The UP held the country's first mass rallies
and for a while De Rivera and his party were popular,
but by nineteen twenty nine, the worldwide economic crash had
started to hit Spain as well. The wealthy financiers who
backed his regime started to sour on him and some
of his interventionalist economic policies. At the same time, De
Rivera faced growing resistance from students, who were a political

(01:06:51):
factor for the first time in Spain due to the
fact that the dictatorship had reformed the education system. In
his last years in power, Rivera sought to stay dickt
Hater by taking a leaf from the Book of a Man.
He idolized Benito Mussolini. And this is the first time
de Riveri actually kind of goes fascist. I'm gonna quote
from the history of Spanish Fascism here. Italian diplomatic correspondence

(01:07:12):
from Madrid in the final days of nineteen twenty nine
reported that Primo de Rivera was indicating that he would
soon begin a fundamental reorganization of the up along the
lines of the Fascist Party. This reorganization never got started,
as Javier to Sell and Ismael Sas have written with
the Spanish dictator felt for Mussolini was considerably more than
platonic admiration. He was pathetically incapable of transferring Italian institutions

(01:07:34):
to Spain, and was often infantile in his effusive expressions
to Mussolini. So he wants to be a fascist by
this point, and he's like, he's kind of simping on
on Mussolini. Yeah, just like you're so good. I just
want to do what you do. Why can't I be
as cool as you? Um, it's it's kind of saying

(01:07:54):
he's an old man too. At this point, he's not
doing great. Um. It is very weird. He's a Mussoli
need stand hardcore, but he just doesn't have what it
takes to be a fascist dictator. He just he's only
a normal dictator. You know, you hate to see it.
In January of ninety this dictator was ship canned by
his king, who followed him out the door. About a
year or so later, because popular support for the monarchy

(01:08:16):
collapsed as a result of the dictatorship, for a brief,
awkward period, Spain lacked any kind of legitimate government. It's
king in parliament were gone. A short succession of strong
men held powers that national political elite struggled to cobble
together some kind of functional government. The whole experience further
radicalized the middle class, this time activating large numbers of
Spanish liberals who advocated in the streets for a republican government.

(01:08:39):
In nineteen thirty one, the Spanish Republic was born. Now,
this did not thrill a lot of people, like it
thrilled people a lot of people, but it also kind
of piste off a lot of people, particularly young military
officers who had supported the dictatorship. Um Francisco Fraco was
one of these frustrated men. He'd been a close student
of Primo de Rivera and had liked his unofficial title

(01:09:00):
of national boss, like hefe nationalism, yeah, that's yeah, yeah,
hefe nacionale is kind of what they And he was like,
I like that idea. I like me and everybody's boss. Yeah.
All the years of dictatorship proved to Franco that a
strong man could unify Spain, bring law and order in
military victory. The only error that de Rivera had made

(01:09:22):
in Franco's mind was that he didn't have any kind
of ideology. Franco didn't really believe in anything other than like,
I'm the guy who can fix Spain. And when you
don't have that concerted kind of ideology, you can't hold
together a dictatorship very long unless you're willing to be
brutal and promote. You know, he was not a great guy,
very brutal in Morocco, but was not willing to be

(01:09:43):
brutal in Spain. Not really not compared to any other dictator,
you know, Franco. Franco was with him in Spain, I
mean was with him in Morocco, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Franco was like he was a colonel in Morocco, and
so and one of the like. People will say that
like de Rivera was a bloodless dictator, which again looking
at what happened in Morocco, not true. But if you're

(01:10:03):
living in Spain, he's not mass executing people. He's not
even mass imprisoning people. He's not hosting huge executions of
his political enemies. He's a pretty if you're in Spain,
a pretty mild dictator, about as mild as they get
this century, you know, which is not to like whitewashing anything.
It's just like part of why he doesn't stay in
power along. You know, you've got to be more brutal

(01:10:25):
than he is if you're going to hold power as
a dictator. Now, Primo de Rivera's fall from power was
also a lesson to Benito Mussolini. It convinced him that
his regime could not afford to compromise its power at
all with an elected parliament. This was in Mussolini saw
basically like, ah, the only option I have to become
so authoritarian that no one can push me out. And
as a result, de Rivera's fall was a major It

(01:10:46):
pushes Mussolini to spring towards more radical authoritarian policy. In
nineteen thirty two, um, all of this stuff is interconnected,
you know, just like everything, just like just like the
Syrian Civil War is directly connected to White president Donald
Trump became the press it, you know, like it's all
everything always is connected. That's the way the world works.
The Spanish Republic would have just five years of pre

(01:11:07):
war existence. For its first two years, the socialists dominated
the government, so not like hardcore communists, but definitely like
left wing. Um the first two years, the left is
dominating the Republic. For the next to a center right
counter reformation pushes back against the gains of the left.
The tug of war was largely in politics between socialists,

(01:11:28):
Republican centrists, and Catholic conservatives, and the Catholic Conservatives, starting
in nineteen thirty three, were represented by Spain's first mass
Catholic political party and first really powerful right wing political party,
the c E d A. And' not even gonna try
to tell you what it stands, what we're calling CEDA,
you know, that's the that's the that's the birth of
like the organized political right in Spain in a way

(01:11:48):
that actually is able to take some power. The SEDA
was the primary home for the conservative middle class who
had been radicalized first by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and
next by the early years of left wing power in
the Republic. And they're being radicalized both by the fact
that the socialist or in power and they're doing the
things socialists do, which is in part to say the
church is not going to have power, like we're not

(01:12:09):
going to like let the Catholic church run things, but
also by the like the anarchists who are still fucking
up churches and stuff in this period of time. So
it's it's the same it is here you've got kind
of these more moderate people on the left, and then
you've got people on the left in the streets doing
things that scare these religious conservatives and make them decide
like we have to take back our country. That happens
in Spain too. It's a familiar story again to everyone

(01:12:31):
listening um Now. A number of socialist laws were passed
that clamped down on the power and prestige of the
church in this period, and obviously they were again widespread,
like there were anarchists attacked fifty convicts in Madrid in
nineteen thirty one, and again this helps energize the right.
It's also if you're a Spanish anarchist who grew up
living under a Catholic church that did all of the
kind of fucked up ship we know the Catholic Church

(01:12:53):
to do. Nobody's again, nobody is a monster here. While
there are sponsors, we're about to tell about them. Um.
But yeah, this enraged fundamentalists and the c e d
a like because of how angry they were at the left.
The SITA is never a party that accepts the necessity
of democracy, right. They want to take power and institute

(01:13:14):
a Catholic state. They don't believe the Republic that they're
participating in is legitimate, which also sounds familiar to her dominions.
Yeah the dominionists. Okay, yeah, yeah, Now again, while this
is all going on, the radical left in Spain tried
several times to carry out insurrections against the republic. So
the anarchists, because they're anarchists, do try to overthrow the

(01:13:35):
republic because they don't like the republic either for different
reasons than the c E d a UM. In some cases,
they even fought alongside communists. Communists and anarchists are pretty
good at working together in this period, compared to how
they'll be later. Uh they attack police stations, and in
nineteen thirty four they succeed in taking over large chunks
of the state of a Sturius. This insurrection got far

(01:13:55):
enough that the Republic called in their Imperial Shock troops
the Foreign Legion, who rutally suppressed the revolt by massacurring
basically everybody they could, um just gunning people down in
huge numbers. The thing, the only thing that they do.
You know, That's why you have these guys to murder everybody,
to put everybody down. Everybody shut up when I get there.

(01:14:15):
Everybody airbody sitting down. We do not have machine guns
because we're good at being like a discriminating with our violence.
We have machine guns because it makes it faster. You know.
It sounds like Stephanie, she just come in and everything.
I'm not asking who did what, whites is broke? Everybody
sitting down? Your aunt who comes in with the fucking

(01:14:37):
sandal and just started like you need to saying. She
called in with the check blasts. Everbody getting it? I
don't got no, I don't want to hear nothing. Everybody
getting up the CNT. Who's that? Anarcho Syndicalist party launches
constant strikes in this period, largely because they're angry that

(01:14:59):
the Republic had failed to rest it. So when the
Republic comes to power, the far left is like, because
the far left our anarchists, and they're agricultural right there,
primarily in rural areas, and most of Spain's agricultural land
like more is owned by just like rich assholes who
make the people who are actually farming it pay them
unreasonable rent and it like keeps them impoverished. And the

(01:15:19):
radical left is like, we should the land should belong
to the people who farm it. Yeah, maybe, why why
don't we do that? But I understand we got a
lot of radical thoughts. This don't feel radical, Yeah, it
doesn't like it isn't the time, it shouldn't be. Yeah,
this really shouldn't be a radical't um. The Republic being

(01:15:40):
a republic, gave them some of what they want, but
not much. They redistribute about ten percent of Spain's uncultivated
land of the peasants, and that really pisses off the anarchists,
so they launch a bunch of In addition to these
insurrections that other anarchists are doing, the C and T
is doing like strikes and stuff in this period, as protests.
In nineteen thirty three, a peasant protests was suppressed by

(01:16:00):
Republican police who shot nineteen of them dead. Um. So
this government, which is broadly speaking we'll call it a
liberal government, is a government they still you know, gunn
people down when you funk up, right, Like yeah. Now,
the constant unrest damaged the left middle class support, and
the in fighting between communists, anarchists and Republicans hurt the
broadly speaking liberal and left ability to keep control of

(01:16:23):
the government from the right. In nineteen thirty four, the
c E d A, led by Jose Marie gil Robles,
became the dominant power in government um, or at least
gained a lot of power in government. This provoked outrage
from the span like they weren't in control or anything,
but they had power for the first time. This really
piste off the Spanish left because in the rest of
Europe at the same time, Hitler has just consolidated all

(01:16:45):
of his power and destroyed by our democracy. Italy is
completely fascist now, um and there's dictators all throughout Europe.
So the left sees the c E d A gain
some power and they're like this is the start of
what we're seeing happen. The fascists are going to take over.
They're not wrong to be terrified that way, because it
is what happens, you know, like it's happening. That's because

(01:17:05):
it's going to happen. It's happening here, they say, and
they're not wrong. Yeah. Um So again, the left in Spain,
and when I say the left in this sense, I
mean both like the liberals, the anarchists, the communists, socialists,
like all of them, start to get really panicked. And
this fear is reinforced by the fact that Gil Roblez
consistently gave speeches ranting against democracy and in favor of

(01:17:28):
what he called a totalitarian concept of the state. Uh
Stanley payin rights quote, it seems fairly clear that the
c e d as basic intentions were to win decisive
political power through legal means, the exception being an ill
defined emergency situation, and then to enact fundamental revisions to
the new Republican Constitution which restricted Catholic rights in order
to protect religion and property and alter the basic political system.

(01:17:52):
So again, they're not out of line to be afraid
of what is going to happen by the c e
d A gaining power. Left wing fear that the c
e d A would be bring fascism to Spain were
further stoked by the fact that c E d A
magazines kelpt running huge, loving articles about how good fascism was.
They would have like these huge spreads about fascist Italy
and what a perfect state it was. There were articles

(01:18:13):
about the Nazi regime in Germany. Now, broadly speaking, the
Spanish far right is more Italian fascists than German. For
one thing, they don't really get the anti Semitism, like
like everyone in Europe, they're kind of anti Semitic, but
it's not organizing principle for them. Um and the Nazis
they see. It's like kind of weird, but like still,
you know, they're they're they're better than the left. But yeah,

(01:18:35):
it's like I get what y'all going for. I really
understand this part, but I don't know this. But yeah,
we kicked out the Muslims. I mean, I guess just
the same, but I don't know anyway. Yeah, so Robles
even visit The guy in charge of the c E
d A even visited Germany in nineteen thirty three to
attend the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. So again

(01:18:57):
the c E d A is not entirely a fascist party,
but the left in Spain, and this time calls them
objectively fascist. And you can see why. Now. For his part,
Robs only really rejected fascism because he saw it as foreign.
During a speech in nineteen thirty three, he said, we
want a totalitarian Patria, but it is strange that we're
invited to look for novelties abroad when we find a

(01:19:19):
unitary in totalitarian policy in our own tradition. So he's
like fascism, like, I like it, but it's foreign, and
we in Spain have our own totalitarian tradition that we
should be embracing. And when he said this, he was
actually referencing Ferdinand and Isabella, the first Spanish monarchs who
were not totalitarian. It wasn't you couldn't be back then,
you just like, yeah, exists, but yeah, yeah, it's very

(01:19:43):
silly and very a historical um. In the same speech,
Robles continued, for us power must be integral for the
realization of our ideal. We shall not be held back
by archaic forms. When the time comes, Parliament where I
will either submit or disappear. Democracy must be a means,
not an end. We are going to liquidate the revolution, liquidate, liquidate.

(01:20:04):
So yeah, in addition to the c D e D
A who if you don't want to call him fascists,
they're at least pretty close low sodium yes, yeah, low
sodium fascist like that. They're like diet mountain dew, like
you don't want to go all the way, but on
the spectrum. Now, Spain also had its own explicitly fascist

(01:20:26):
political parties. And when I don't call the c E
D A fascist, it's because I do want to differentiate
between the people who are like, we're fascists, you know,
like it is important to do that. Um that grew
involved throughout the yearly nineteen thirties. Now, the founding father
of Spanish fascism was a guy named Ramiro Ledesmo Ramos Ramos,
and like most fascist intellectuals, he wanted to be a

(01:20:46):
novelist before he got into politics, and he wrote a
fake memoir of it, like he's it's very been Shapiro. Okay, Yeah,
he wrote a fiction novel which was a fake memoir
about a depressed intellectual who commits sue aside um, which
seems like it was very self pitying, and nobody will
He writes it when he's eighteen, nobody's willing to take it,
and his rich uncle pays to publish it, which tells

(01:21:08):
you all you need to know about the Desma, the fascist,
the father of Spanish fascism. So as the pseudo intellectual,
Le Desma's greatest concern was that Spanish culture had not
given the world a truly dominant political ideology. He complained,
we are the only great people who have still not
borne the philosophical scepter, and who therefore have not projected

(01:21:29):
in an intellectual dictatorship over the world. And so as
a result of this, he decided to steal a political
system from Italy and become a fascist. He eventually formed
the Junta's Dealfensiva Nacional Sinde Calista or John's and his
followers are called the john Sistas, which is silly, but
that's what they're called. Yeah. Le Desma and his fellow

(01:21:50):
john Cistas refused to call themselves fascists, but they were.
They talked lovingly of Italian fascism and they wanted the
same things. One of Le Desma's first followers was the
Spanish translator for Hitler's mind comp But to his credit,
Ledesma did try to find ways to make Spanish fascism unique.
In part, he attempted to do this by marrying it
to Spanish anarcho syndicalism. Ledesma adopted syndicalism, the idea of

(01:22:13):
worker councils governing themselves and striking to make their demands
mets or adopted aspects of that, and he kind of
awkwardly welded it to Spanish revolutionary nationalism. And one of
the things that is odd that characterizes Spanish fascists in
this period is they really reach out to the anarchists.
They're trying to convert anarchists, um, in part because the
anarchists are like the most vital anti government movement in

(01:22:35):
this period. Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, it was reading the
tea leaves of being like, you know, I think you
don't like the same ship we don't like. Yeah, maybe,
and it happens for some of them, right. Like that
is a story that's very uncomfortable about anarchist history is
that during the period of time when fascism rises and

(01:22:55):
a number of anarchists in different countries, and an uncomfortable
number of them decide, now, you know what, I'm a fascist,
which is not. Yeah, and it's it's important, you know, whatever,
whatever you believe to be honest about its history, and
that includes the ugly parts um so Ledesma and his
fellow John Ceasta has refused to call them. And also
we're going to talk in part two about the fact

(01:23:16):
that a funkload of anarchists died fighting fascism in Spain.
And we're a lot of the very first people who
were willing to put their lives on the line to
fight global fascism before the United States was willing to
fight the Nazis. A funkload of anarchists died fighting fascism,
and I like, I'm not trying to to say that
that like, and that's much more dominant a part of
anarchist history totally than the ones who went fashion, but

(01:23:38):
a number of them do go fascists, and it's something
the fascists directly try to encourage. Um it's like the
like the like the black Trump Yeah exactly exactly. Look,
there's there's still that's still na and it doesn't erase
the fact that Biden only won the election because of
a funkload of organized black voters, you know, yes, yeah. So,

(01:24:02):
like the left wing of the Nazi Party had done,
Ledesma sought to make fascism collectivists, stressing that the individual
has died and that the collectivest state is all that matters.
This was not an initially successful line of propaganda, and
by the end of nineteen thirty two there were barely
any John Ceasta's Uh. Spanish fascism might not have taken
off at all if it had not been for a

(01:24:22):
fellow named Jose Antonio de Rivera, the son of the
now dead dictator um So de Rivera's kid becomes like
really the first prominent Spanish fascist. And one of the things,
this guy is such a figure in Spanish history that
he's one of the only people from this period of
Spanish history who's known by his first names. He's Jose Antonio.
They don't call it like they call his dad de Rivera.

(01:24:44):
He's Jose Antonio, which is like kind of a mark
of how significant this guy was. Now, Jose was a
weird fascist, and we'll talk more about him in part two.
He is not like other He's not nearly. For one thing,
he doesn't really like violence in the same way that
a lot of fascists do. And he's like weird friendly
with a lot of socialists, like in government, like like
he's he's like like and not in a I don't know,

(01:25:05):
he's a he's a very weird fascist. His background, though,
makes complete sense. He's the rich son of a military
family whose father took almost absolute power in order to
murder foreigners and steal their ship. So it's not weird
that he becomes a fascist. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, just
you know, it's like representation matters, Like you have to
see something to believe that it's possible. So he's, yeah,
my dad took over the country. Yeah, I mean I

(01:25:26):
bet I can too. Yeah. Yeah, And you can see
him as like kind of what I'm sure one of
the Trump kids will try to do, although I would
argue he's a better person thanity of the Trump kids. Yea.
So he creates his own fascist party based on the
idea of bringing in another dictator like his dad, but
not sucking at it this time, right, Like we need
a dictator. My dad had the right idea, but he

(01:25:47):
didn't have an ideology I'm going to bring in an ideology,
and both Jose Antonio's party and the john Sistas receive
a shot in the arm. On January three, when Hitler
takes power in Germany, a magazine l Fashion, which is
a very subtle name. Yeah, dug it. So Hitler takes

(01:26:14):
power in Germany and El Fascio gets launched in Spain
and the government shuts that ship down right away and
bands publication the future editions, which is like when did
do Outlook? You want to you need you need your
brand to be clear, Yeah, you need to be clear.
So com We're talking a lot in the United States
now about the value of d platforming fascists, about the

(01:26:34):
and I'm an advocate for aspects of that, about the
value of of taking away these people's ability to reach
a mass audience. They do a harder, much harder core
version of that. In Spain. You get in. One of
the things that's unique about Spain is the police in
this period cracked down on the fascists more than they
do on the left. Um, which is weird. Um, It's
a unique historically everywhere else it is the opposite um.

(01:26:56):
And part of why is because the republic is very
scared of these ashes for good reason. And if we're
looking at like the effectiveness of de platforming to what
extent it works, Spain shows us that it doesn't necessarily
stop them from gaining power because they d platform the fascists.
They try hard to d platform the fascists in the
Spanish Republic, it doesn't do the trick. Um. So again,

(01:27:18):
useful historical context here, which is not to say there's
no value in d platforming, but we should be paying
attention to what happened in Spain U and the d
platform against Spain is being done by the government, you know, um,
by cops and ship Now, the Law for the Defense
of the Republic gave the Spanish Republic power to ban
anything that threatened the republic's existence. Banning fascist propaganda, though,

(01:27:39):
was not enough to stop the contagious excitement over fascism
and the broader right wing reaction against the recent victories
of the left. The john Sistas and Jose Antonio's movement grew.
Jose Antonio was noted as not being particularly charismatic, but
he was good with words, and he was a successful lawyer,
so he had money. He entered into frequent public debates
with left wing intellectuals where he would say off like this,

(01:28:00):
so again he's a big kind of like Richard Spencer.
I will go down and sit down and talk with
all of your I'll be very nice, We'll be very polite,
and I'll talk about fascism in that way. He's that
kind of fascist. Um quote this is this is Jose
Antonio from a debate he had with kind of a
more liberal guy. The liberal state believes in nothing, not
even in itself. It watches with folded arms, is all

(01:28:21):
sorts of experiments, even those aimed at the destruction of
the state itself. Fascism was born to light of faith.
Neither of the right, which at the bottom aspires to
preserve everything, even the unjust, nor of the left, which
at the bottom aspires to destroy everything, even the just,
but a collective, integral national faith. And you can see
why people would be appealed to as for things like

(01:28:42):
we're not right when we're not left wing, they're both bad.
Were something different. And he also the thing that all
fascists have to do in order to succeed is point
out things that are true and problems with the system,
and he does. The liberal state believes in nothing, not
even in itself. You know, that's a good, true statement. Aod,
that's good. Yeah, yeah, and that's part of why again,

(01:29:05):
that's part of what he does. Succeed in bringing in
some people from the left to the fascists and converting people, um,
and at least in getting a lot of them to
be like, well, he's not that, he's not as bad
as the state. You know, a lot of people will
say that in July of night, and a lot of
people don't. By the way, anarchists murder eight we'll talk
about this bart to murder a funkload of fascists in
this period. So when I say a number of people
on the left are like, well, he's not as bad
as the state, a lot of people not like no,

(01:29:26):
they're bad and we have to start shooting them to
death now, So like, yeah, let's not. It's a lot
lots going on. Um, you said in the beginning, this
is messy. Yeah. Yeah. In July of nineteen thirty four,
the John Ceast has launched an attack on the Madrid
offices of the Friends of the USS are damaging the
offices and threatening people with pistols. This caused a government

(01:29:48):
crackdown both on the fascists and on the anarchists, arresting
some three thousand people nationwide. Again, like we'll probably about
to see this is what the government does, like you know,
I mean in fairness, like right now, the anarchists are
not doing much other than standing outside of buildings and
breaking windows and this they were gunning people down. So yeah, yeah, um,

(01:30:09):
it's yeah. I don't want to like try to make
the case that Spanish history is exactly, but like you,
I think there are useful parallels. So one of the
things again, Spanish police did arrest more fascists and more willing,
were more willing to um than other members of the
left or the members of the left at this point. Um.
And in fact, the first two years of Jose Antonio's movement,
anarchists assassinated and gunned down and stabbed a funkload of

(01:30:30):
fascists and brawls and outside of speeches. Um. Now, Jose
Antonio was fairly unique among fascists, both in that he
had genuinely warm and respectful relationships with a lot of
left wing politicians and that he seemed to a poor violence. Uh.
This was a problem for his young party and we'll
talk about that more in part two now. In October
of nineteen thirty four, Jose Antonio traveled to Spain for

(01:30:53):
a brief meeting with Mussolini and to tour a fascist state.
He found it inspiring, and he wrote, Fascism is not
just in a Talian movement. It is a total universal
sense of life. Italy was the first to apply it.
But it is not the concept of the state as
an instrument in the service of a permanent historical mission
valid outside of Italy. Who can say that such goals
are only valuable for Italians. He returned from Italy eager

(01:31:16):
to make and so again the John Ceased is the
other chunk of the fascist movement. Are like, we don't
want to do it a fascism, Italian fascism because we
were Spanish Spain. Yeah. Jose Antonio is like, no, no, no.
Fascism is a global thing and it appeals to all
of us. And he returns from Spain eager to make
a deal with the Jones Ceistas in order to emerge
both movements. He recognizes, your propaganda is better. I have
more people, I've got I'm better at like organizing the

(01:31:38):
street movement. If we work together, we can bring fascism
to Spain. In early November, both groups of fascists came
to an agreement. They initially wanted to use the name
Fascismo espaniol but decided to change this to Falange Espaniola,
which means Spanish fay links. The Phalanges would in time
go on to earn a terrible and bloody reputation in

(01:32:00):
Spanish history, but that it's going to be in Part
two A lot of history. Oh man, this is dope. One.
It's like for every uh, I love the like for
every kid that you know, either it's set next to
or was the little stoner kid that was like drawing

(01:32:20):
the anarchist a on their folder in high school. That
was just like no rules, Like no, it's a it's
a real thing. It's yeah, it's an ideology. It's not
just you not getting suspended for you know, slapping a kid.
It's a real thing. It's a way to organize the
world in society. That in a bunch of different ideas, right,

(01:32:43):
the anarchist syndicalists have one. There's a lot of different
added and there are also anarchists like an arco primitivists
and stuff. Who don't want to or who like want
to go back to them. More like there's a bunch
of ship within anarchy. Yeah, but it's not you with
your little drawing, your little a on your skateboard, you know,
a little shits. That's how it starts. And I will

(01:33:03):
say I've seen a lot of people in Portland do
very interesting things with skateboards, a lot of teenage anarchists
this year. That's that's how it starts for some people,
you know. Okay, okay, okay, that's if that's if that's
the entry. It's deeper than that. There's a lot going on,
you know, And it's just like, this doesn't mean that
you never have to read again. You have to. You
have to read a lot, okay, you know. Yeah, yeah,

(01:33:27):
I named him Chad. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
I think I think we could stand to convert more
of the Chad's um. Anyway. This has been part one,
the birth of Spanish Fascism. In part two, we're going
to talk about the Spanish Civil War, which is one
of the most fascinating and important pieces of history that
almost no one knows a goddamn thing about. Um talkingrustrating,

(01:33:49):
it's very so frustrating. People don't know about this. You know,
so many few people know that, like the author of
George Orwell traveled to Spain on the premise that every
single decent person should kill one fascist, and then it
killed a punch of fascists with grenades. George Orwell was
incredible with grenades. He all the different kinds of grenades.

(01:34:09):
He killed a lot of people with grenades. He got
shot in the throat. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm gonna
give you this as another piece of trivia that has
to do with the another hip hop trivia. Um that
you this good Easter egg for your listener and then
for you just I think you might find this interesting
and pull this out one day when you're drinking with friends.

(01:34:31):
Um iced tea, the not the drink. But yeah, yeah yeah.
Rapper became the actor in Law and Order, the guy
that made an album called cop Killer and became a
cop on TV. Yeah, you greatest hustle ever. Anyway, there's
this story he tells that about when he was getting

(01:34:52):
his record deal and he the as as the legend goes,
he never played one song for the people he that
signed him for his first record deal, right, and they
were like, how are you going to do this? How
are we gonna Why would you sign if we haven't
heard any music. He goes, hey, if you're selling a
box of grenades, if I blow up a grenade, I

(01:35:16):
need to blow up a grenade for you to see,
for you to know that they're good. Like, I can't
blow it up because then you won't buy them. They
already done. And then the guy was like, man, that's yeah,
so I see. And the guy was like, it's actually
a good point. And then he goes, what made you
think of that? He goes, why I used to sell grenades?

(01:35:41):
And I totally believe that he was around South Central
selling your nates. I would never call iced Te a
liar for saying that he sold grenades. Absolutely not. He
comes from a you know, you've got your eras of
gangster rap where they're just talking, and then you've got
your era of gangs rappords like, no, you did all
of the things you're talking about. This. This is why

(01:36:04):
you're not in jails, because there was a period of
time for you where you were like, it was a
good day because I didn't have to use my These
are stories, y'all. Yeah, yeah, that's why most of them
didn't make it very long. Y Yeah, all right, Well,

(01:36:25):
in preparation for the Spanish Civil War, which is pretty gangster, listen,
listen to some old school iced tea, you know, and
then watch the Law and Order, you know, really embrace
the hypocrisy that we all embody at some point. At
some point, you don't need to watch the iced Tea
and cocoa reality show though I am not recommending that,

(01:36:47):
but a little bit of Law in Order. You know,
it's whatever it's on literally at all times. Yeah, it's
a lot like it's a lot like Heroin. You know, Um,
it's probably not going to kill you, um, but it's
bad for you. Every episode of Laundered Spue, I'm not
ashamed at all every episode because it's on at any

(01:37:09):
given time of a day. Yeah, exactly. My mom's nospel.
We watched every episode because it was always on every episode.
There's a belief in some Aboriginal Australian cultures and this
is kind of where the um, what is the long
tube that they blow? Ever? No, no, no, the the

(01:37:30):
did you reid? That the dig red ties into this
that like you always have to be someone always has
to be playing music because you sing the world into being,
and if the music stops, the world ends. And I
have adopted as a religious belief that with law and
order SVU where it's playing somewhere, the world can continue.
I think that's how we ended up with Trump. Everybody
turned off the TV one day in order to stop

(01:37:53):
playing one hour without law and order and everything. Which
ship all right? Well, this this has been a part
one of our two partner of Behind the Insurrections on
the Spanish Fascist Franko Civil War. We're we'll talk about

(01:38:13):
Spanish Civil War in part two, and then next week
we're going to talk about the Fascists who failed UM,
and we're gonna talk about we're gonna get a little
overview of some anti fascist history you might not know.
We're gonna close out with antifa UM and some fun
stuff like the the idolist pirates UM, which we're a
little kids who murdered Nazis is great fucking rad Alright,

(01:38:34):
here we go listen to some iced tea. That's the episode.
Look for your children's eyes and you will discover the
true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you
and start exploring it. Discover the Forest dot org brought
to you by the United States Forest Service and the

(01:38:56):
AD Council. What girls in the forest, I imagine nation
and our family bonds. The forest is closer than you think.
Find a forest near you and discover the Forest dot
Org brought to you by the United States For Service
and the AD Council. You always had the feeling that
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(01:39:17):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Birth of Spanish Fascism, Part 1