The Socialist party in Spain is
taking power and it appears that high on its agenda is to interrupt the eternal
slumber of General Francisco Franco in his gothic mausoleum, Valle de los Caidos. With the shifting tectonic
plates of Spanish politics his posthumous eviction appears to be on the near
horizon, a savory morsel of venganza for the Spanish left over the Franquistas.
Forty-three years after his death
and the restoration of the Spanish monarchy and almost eighty years since his civil
war victory over the Spanish Republicans the hatred of the Spanish left for the
dead Caudillo continues unabated. In the long run Franco abjectly failed in
Spain to stem the modern, secularizing tides of change that were washing over the
rest of Europe. Unforgettable and unforgiveable, however, is that he was on the
wrong side of history, opposed by the “progressives” of his time, and thus, not
supposed to win in 1939. That he did with the help of Hitler and Mussolini makes
his memory an unrelenting abomination.
Whenever progressives lose they
think and act as if they stand on the brink of an apocalypse, as was in stark
evidence recently in the reaction of the American left to the improbable defeat
of Hillary Clinton who sneered at Trump as a Fascist of sorts whose supporters
were “irredeemable.” Trump, like Franco, was declared to be on the wrong side
of history and not supposed to win. For the progeny of the communists,
socialists and anarchists who succumbed to Franco’s Nationalists, his victory and
subsequent dictatorship must be rendered a political and moral cataclysm fit
only for execration. Revenge is to be
vented symbolically upon his tomb and his memory.
A recent article in the New York Times on the planned demolition
of Franco’s crypt quotes Paul Preston, who has written prolifically on Franco
and the Spanish Civil War.
“Paul Preston, a
British historian and biographer of Franco, said that Spain was an anomaly in
Europe in keeping a ‘place of pilgrimage for its fascist dictator’ — there are
no monuments to Adolf Hitler in Germany or in Austria, nor to Benito Mussolini
in Italy. Among the more than 250,000 visitors to the Valle de los Caídos each
year, Mr. Preston said, many are devotees of Franco ‘brought up to believe that
he was a benefactor for Spain.’”
Preston does not bother to speculate as to what sort of considerations
might move these misguided “devotees” of the Generalissimo. Certainly, they
would be nothing that would make any sense to the normal, rational sorts of
people who read the New York Times
and reflect thoughtfully on all matters of politics. You see, Preston, while
nominally a historian, is really a high functioning, sophisticated member of that
school of moralists whose theorizing is firmly anchored to the ghost of Adolf
Hitler, the ne plus ultra of wickedness and depravity who seems to be always
busy reincarnating himself as Trump, Putin, Bush II or whoever is the current menace
of right-thinking people said to be “strangling democracy” somewhere. For
moralizing purposes, this “Hitlerizing” approach works very well leaving no
moral ambiguity to contend with; those who are good and those who are evil are
clearly distinguishable. Those who are evil are supremely and unequivocally so,
which by contrast makes those who are good paragons of virtue and moral rectitude.
When a brand new Hitler comes to town, no need for further conversation, debate
or compromise; taking to the streets, brandishing anti-Fascist bona fides, and active
resistance is the only moral option. Franco, for Preston, was just an Iberian
cutout of the Austrian Corporal, and so anyone who might even attempt to offer
an attenuating perspective on his life and career, would have to be castigated
as a Brownshirt apologist, drooling away on the fringes. (See: Fosterspeak:
Santiago Carrillo, the Last Stalinist)
For historical understanding, however, Preston’s work will
not be especially helpful. He remains invincibly oblivious to the reasons that
explain why, unlike the absence of monuments for Hitler and Mussolini in
contemporary Germany and Italy, there were and are monuments to Franco in Spain.
Franco died of natural causes in his old age having prudently kept his country
out of World War II (refusing Hitler’s entreaties to draw Spain into an
alliance) and having prepared for a peaceful succession of power to a
constitutional order. This was in stark contrast to the dramatic, violent exits
of Hitler and Mussolini that capped the epic destruction and ruin that their
reigns brought to large portions of the planet. The Germans after Hitler’s
demise got the Nuremberg Trials; Spain upon Franco’s death got King Juan
Carlos, a decent and benevolent man. Spain was never occupied by conquering foreign
armies (no Spanish women by the tens of thousands raped and murdered by Red
Army soldiers), its citizens never forced or bribed to behave in ways deemed
“appropriate” by their Soviet, British, French and American occupiers. Finally,
Spanish Catholics might well consider Franco a “benefactor” of sorts given the
fate of religious people in communist governed lands throughout the twentieth
century. Catholics fared better in mid-twentieth century Spain, then they did
in, let us say, Poland.
The Socialists in Spain have been
in the Franco decommissioning mode for some time. In 2007 they passed the Law of Historical Memory (Yes, that is
not a parody) and commenced the renaming of streets and buildings and the
removal of monuments and statues having anything to do with Franco. The Valle de los Caidos has, of course, always been their grand prize. Historical
“memory” in contemporary western Europe is a state monopolized enterprise and
incorrect thinking about touchy subjects is subject to punishment. To make
certain Hitler reigns historically supreme and unchallenged as the Avatar of Evil,
historians who depart from the officially sanctioned narratives about German
iniquities and culpability are labeled as “holocaust deniers,” their morally
opprobrious opinions deemed sufficient to subject them to criminal prosecution.
When the state resorts to the criminalizing of unpopular opinions, however, one
has to wonder what defects or limitations there might be with the orthodox
version that require persecution of the sceptics. Since the dissenters are so
obviously deluded and/or ignorant that no normal person would pay them
attention, why do they need to be threatened with prison?
The American left has no Franco
statues upon which to vent their anti-Fascist fury, but the 2016 Presidential
surprise election of Donald Trump was immediately followed by his predictable
Hitlerization. Statues and monuments signaling “white supremacy” are now the
targets of our very own antifas and Black Lives Matters gangs who seem to
resemble the church-burning, priest-murdering, nun-raping, anti-Fascist Spanish
anarchists of the 1930s. The attempted mass-murder last year by Bernie Sanders
supporter, James Hodgkinson, of dozens of Republican Congressmen and the
encouragement by national Democrat leaders for their supporters to engage in the
harassment and physical intimidation of Trump administration officials portends
an escalation to unprecedented levels of violent political conflict.
Just
recently, the NAACP called for the sandblasting away of Confederate carvings on
Stone Mountain Georgia. The north face of Stone Mountain depicts three
Confederate figures — Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and generals Robert
E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Work on the carving began in 1923, according
to the park’s
website. It is 400 feet above ground and
the entire carved surface covers about three acres. It is larger than Mount
Rushmore.
A protest march on July 4th included Black
Panthers armed with AK-47s and AR-15s.
“Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams called for the removal of the giant carving that depicts three
Confederate war leaders on the face of state-owned Stone Mountain, saying it
“remains a blight on our state and should be removed.’”
The left in Spain and the U.S are set on
destroying the symbols of a past that make them feel bad. In Spain the memory of
Franco seems to poison their waking moments even though he has been long dead
and widely forgotten in most of the world. In the U.S. the memory of slavery
and Jim Crow, though ancient history, continues to arouses their resentment.
Purging Franco from public spaces and tearing
down Confederate statues, however, is not going to make the moralists on the
left feel better because feeling bad (angry, resentful, vengeful) is the high
octane emotional fuel that runs the engines of cultural Marxism. Left-wing
ideologues and activists gain political traction by leveraging the grievances
of victim classes, by churning up their anger and turning it against the
oppressor classes. Victims who don’t realize that they are victims and feel bad
about it are of no use, and without self-conscious, agitated victims, cultural
Marxism is like a fast car with no wheels; it goes nowhere.
What helps to keep the bad feelings fresh,
invigorating and thus efficacious for members of the victim class is a
demonizing vocabulary at their disposal that enables them to portray the
oppressors as malignant cretins who have no place in a modern, progressive
society. Which is why “Fascist” remains one of the favorites in the left’s lexicon
of abuse and why Hitler keeps reappearing whenever progressives experience some
resistance to their planned march to perfect equality. The logic is obvious and
primitive. “Hitler would be against ‘x’ (‘x’ being the latest progressive fashion);
therefore, your opposition to ‘x’ means you must be like Hitler.” “Fascism” has the ideal, goose-stepping imagery
and historical connotations from the 1930s that make it the perfect, all-purpose
smear – the Gestapo, concentration camps, racial persecution, cult-worship of
the leader.
Real flesh and blood Fascists were extinguished
by WWII Allied armies, and those few today who imitate the originals occupy the
only the far reaches of the social fringe. Thus, the curious irony: while
neo-Nazis and Klansmen are few and far between, and while no one in their right
mind today wants to be connected with anything resembling Fascism, for the left,
it seems, a sizeable portion of the U.S. is made up of them, including our President.
The overreach should seem silly and obvious to all but the most deranged fringe
of the left. But the smear will persist widely because the left needs Fascists to
affirm their own virtue and rationalize their escalating assaults on free
speech, religious freedom and historical symbols that offend them. Without the
specters of Hitler, Franco, the Klan, sandblasting monuments and renaming
streets might seem like a waste of time and effort.
