Monday 27 October 2008

Citizen Smith (Senior)?

Before he dies? It's the least that they can do, isn't it?

I'm going to make myself disliked in certain circles (imagine...) for writing this. But no. I don't think so.

"It's a pity that only one of them can lose," said Henry Kissenger of the Iran-Iraq War. The same was true of the Spanish Civil War. We need to face the fact that we had no dog in that fight, a war between those who entirely predictably went on to back the Axis while officially neutral, and those who wanted to turn Spain into a satellite of, initially, a de facto member of the Axis, as Spain would also have been if the Republicans had won.

Indeed, she would have been so even more than she was under Franco, since the Soviet Army actually fought alongside that of Nazi Germany, notably staging a joint victory parade through the streets of Brest-Litovsk. If Hitler had also had such a relationship with a Soviet-dominated Spain, then he would probably never have reneged on the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and therefore might very well have won the War.

The Spanish Civil War has always split Old Labour into its constituent subcultures. It did at the time. The Hard Left is as ardently pro-Republican as ever, because of its myopia (even now) about Stalinism, because of its anti-Catholicism, and because of the overrating of George Orwell. Meanwhile, Catholics, at least if pushed or if they know anything at all about it (as almost no younger Spaniards do, either), will still back the Falangists (whose ostensible Catholicism was a perversion defined by its reaction against other things, although there have been worse such before, at the same time, and since), at least on balance. No one else will have much, if any, view on the matter.

But we need to get real. Even if Franco was no Hitler, neither side deserves our historical sympathy. Franco, as much as anything else, maintained, and occasionally tried to press, a territorial claim to (staunchly British, staunchly Catholic) Gibraltar.

And since Soviet archives were opened up, all sorts of information has come to light. The entire Republican cause was Comintern-directed, and the Soviet intervention was in no sense parasitic as has traditionally been supposed or asserted. For example, far from being commanded by a Canadian volunteer, the International Brigade was in fact commanded by Manfred Stern, a Soviet Commissar.

But then, there never was an anti-Soviet Left in Spain in the Thirties; that myth has been astonishingly long-lasting considering its compete and utter baselessness. Take, for example, Francisco Largo Cabellero, Socialist Party Leader and Popular Front Prime Minister. Entirely typically of his party, he defined it as a revolutionary force wholly distinct from British Labour or the French Socialists, and differing "only in words" from the Communists.

The Socialist Party's 10-point programme of 1934 was wholly Leninist in form and substance, calling, among other things, for the replacement of the Army and the Civil Guard with a workers' militia, and for the dissolution of the religious orders and the expropriation of their property.

And so one could go on, and on, and on.

Stalin only loosened his grip once the Civil War was clearly lost, long after the Republicans themselves had given up what little commitment to democracy that they might ever have had. So the best that can be said about the Spanish Civil War is that the not-quite-so-bad bad guys won.

Had the even-worse bad guys (the Republicans) won, then Spain would actually have fought with the Axis just as the Soviet Union did, the Nazi-Soviet Pact would probably never have collapsed, and Hitler might therefore very well have won the War.

Meanwhile, we all need to learn far more about Portugal, our dear old friend, where they even use GMT when we do, and where they even use what we call British Summer Time when we do. Far from laying claim to any part of our territory, Portugal allowed us to use the Azores during the Falklands War.

There, a leader sometimes categorised by the lazy as a "Fascist", actually, on the border of Civil War-ravaged Spain, held the line against against both the Communists and the "National Syndicalists". That line was the Estado Novo (strikingly similar to the British tradition of morally and socially conservative economic social democracy) and exceedingly multiethnic, indeed multiracial, Lusotropicalism (strikingly similar to a patriotic allegiance to the United Kingdom and to the Commonwealth).

Yes, Salazar was authoritarian. But look at his neighbour, and look what he was up against domestically. Imagine if a Fascist putsch in the Irish Free State (and at least one was attempted) had coincided with very serious Communist and Fascist threats in Britain. The British Government of the day would have been authoritarian, too. And, while the emergency lasted, it would have been right.

Salazar was overthrown by a Maoist (yes, Maoist) insurrection, a figure from which went on to become a rabidly "free"-marketeering and pro-Bush Prime Minister before being wafted into the Presidency of the European Commission. What progress, eh?

But all is far from lost. Earlier this month, Portugal re-affirmed in law that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Not like Connecticut, which has followed Massachusetts and California, despite already having a civil partnerships law. With the lead coming from Portugal rather than from a growing number of the United States, where are "Christian America" and "secular Europe" now?

No wonder that Salazar was recently voted the Greatest Portuguese Ever in a mass television poll of his compatriots.

10 comments:

  1. "It's a pity that only one of them can lose," said Henry Kissenger of the Iran-Iraq War.

    It's like the British People's Alliance against the Labour Party.

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  2. More authoritarian and yes fascist rantings from a narcistic nobody.

    How do you justify the dictatorship post-1945? An emergency?

    Fortunately Lord Sutch in his present state has a more chance of leading Britain than you.

    You really are the most ridiculous man.

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  3. Your foundation for this is that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was an alliance. It wasn't, it was an agreement to be neutral while putting a sharp dividing line between them.

    What else should or even could Stalin have done?

    The British & French (mainly the British & mainly Chamberlain) had specificly refused Russia's offer of alliance & made no offer of their own. If we were not going to allow them to be on our side then we should be glad they picked staying out.

    Russia, sensibly, feared we wanted to get them in a war with Germany with our government cheering for Germany. Stalin's, or any national leader's first duty is the security of their own people & Hitler's intention was openly the genocide of most of these people. Stalin's duty therefore was to do whatever was required to prevent it. If he was to be prevented from supporting us, by us, then he mase the correct decision & the responsibility for the horrors to follow lie on the souls of those leaders who had the choice.

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  4. "How do you justify the dictatorship post-1945? An emergency?"

    What "dictatorship"? Still, I know what you mean. And yes. The fact that it was eventually overthrwon by a Maoist coup proves that the emergency remained very real for thirty years after the War. Rather a lot of Portuguese seem to agree with me, given the reverence in which Salazar is still held.

    He was also a good ally of the Attlee Government and the Truman Administration, so it is no wonder that you old Trots hate him.

    Neil, I'm sorry, but I just can't see this. They actually fought together at the start of the War. They even held that joint victory parade through the streets of Brest-Litovsk. They were allies, and Spain would also have been part of the Axis if the Civil War had gone the other way.

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  5. "the Estado Novo (strikingly similar to the British tradition of morally and socially conservative economic social democracy) and exceedingly multiethnic, indeed multiracial, Lusotropicalism (strikingly similar to a patriotic allegiance to the United Kingdom and to the Commonwealth)"

    Yes, it really is no wonder that Break Dancing Jesus and all his NuLab lot hate you, David.

    You are wasting your time with "the Attlee Government and the Truman Administration". He has never heard of either of them. He thinks that The Truman Administration starred Jim Carey.

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  6. I doubt that he saw it. He'd have had no one to go with.

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  7. Will there ever be a Break Dancing Jesus Appreciation Society on Facebook? Somehow I doubt it.

    It is of course BDJ who is an admirer of Tony Blair, himself so admired by the late Joerg Haider, also sexually ambivalent. Sexual ambivalence brings us back to BDJ.

    NuLab was a classic Fascist movement, the takeover of a left-wing party by a totalitarian personality cult appealing to all the worst and none of the best features of the lower middle class.

    Mussolini all over. And Hitler, in fact.

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  8. "The fact that it was eventually overthrown by a Maoist coup proves that the emergency remained very real for thirty years after the War. Rather a lot of Portuguese seem to agree with me, given the reverence in which Salazar is still held."

    Answer, BDJ, answer. Both points.

    Come on, where are you?

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  9. I'd even put a comment answering both of those points. Not that he can. Not that anybody can.

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