The state is slovenly in its dealings with the citizen, permitting him, on occasion, to evade compliance with its laws; or vice versa, the state itself applies the laws fraudulently and makes them a means of deceiving the citizen.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

In Spain, the dictatorship of Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera began in September 1923, with a military coup supported by the king. This would prove a temporary solution to an intractable problem. Primo de Rivera governed under the motto “Country, Religion, Monarchy.” To appease the left, he taxed the rich to pay for public works. When the rich complained, he tried to borrow money from banks. When currency inflation resulted, the army refused to support him. In January 1930 Primo de Rivera left Spain a broken man.

Conservatives looked on helplessly as King Alfonso XIII fled the country. The left established Spain’s Second Republic. Unlike America’s Founding Fathers, Spain’s leaders did not envision a republic along classical Roman lines. While the center left talked “reform,” the far left talked “revolution.” Having lost their bearings and their sense of history, the leftist parties partook in what Jose Ortega y Gasset called “The Revolt of the Masses.” This revolt was based on one fact “of utmost importance in the public life of Europe….” That fact was “the accession of the masses to complete social power.” [Revolt of the Masses, p. 11] The “masses,” of course, were the common people. Ortega pointed out that the masses of the twentieth century were too simple to maintain a civilization based on complex classical traditions. He warned that politics was bound to become the province of low-quality individuals. The management of the country, he lamented, would fall into the hands of people who were “pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable, and, by their very mental texture, disqualified.” [Revolt of the Masses, p. 16] It didn’t matter if these persons were from the nobility or the working class. Every class possesses persons of excellence, he said; only now, the excellent would be elbowed aside by people having no excellence whatsoever.

“I cannot disguise my grave doubt that there exists,” said Ortega, “on this day, any group capable of achieving the reform of the state, or … the university.” It was remarkably prescient for Ortega to associate the state with the university in this matter, as both institutions were then sowing the seeds of socialist revolution (under the guise of “reform”). Yet, as Ortega suggested, no group within the state or university was likely to achieve anything positive. In fact, they were sowing the wind only to reap the whirlwind of civil war in a few years’ time.

If the Spanish socialists and leftists believed they were building a utopia, they were bound for disappointment (just as the American left is bound for disappointment today). Oh yes, the Spanish socialists had the will to attempt their own “great reset.” But Ortega warned them: Will is nothing. It is mere obstinacy. As for the left’s passionate belief in the future of man, Ortega warned them yet again: Passion is nothing, penetrating intelligence is everything. With the exception of Lenin and his disciples, intellectual depth is what the left has always lacked. There is a saying, among the bourgeoisie, that “a fool and his money are soon parted”; the Leninists might say, in their turn, that “a Menshevik and his political power are [also] soon parted.” (Lenin asked, regarding the Menshevik program of 1907, “Could you possibly imagine anything more diffuse, vague and empty?”)

In 1930, with everything readied for a leftist republic in Spain, we find nothing but diffuse, vague and empty ideas. The root problem behind all this, said Ortega, was slovenliness. According to Ortega, slovenliness “penetrates our whole national life from top to bottom, directing … its actions.” The slovenliness of the left grew out of the complacency of the urban bourgeoisie, nurtured in the cocoon of “Country, Religion, Monarchy.” The agents of the conservative dictatorship, he hinted, were also slovenly – nonentities who did not understand the very slogan they were obligated to support. The vulgar and banal of the left could not be placated by their mirror image on the right; for it turns out that timeserving mediocrities are no bulwark against ambitious mediocrities.

Ortega told the Federation of University Students, “You have seen for yourselves a petulant effort to reform the country, on the part of a group of people who had not given a moment’s thought to the question of first providing themselves with the minimum of necessary equipment. Such has been the Dictatorship. All it has achieved … has been to carry our national slovenliness to the point of madness.”

Ortega further said, in connection with the dictatorship’s “fraudulent” application of the law, that “this conduct of the government is a crime, an intolerable abuse, a betrayal of public trust.” He said that it was so stupid “that one feels ashamed to call it a crime.” Actual violent crime, he explained, is something respectable by comparison, because it engenders an immediate reaction. And oh, how wrong he was; for little did Ortega know, the left was about to initiate a violent string of crimes with almost no immediate reaction from the right.

The Second Republic began on 14 April 1931. Spanish historian Javier Tusell has described it as an “undemocratic democracy.” From the outset, leftist mobs were unleashed. In one instance more than 100 buildings were burned in Madrid – including Churches. The army restored order, but the government was not interested in punishing insurrectionists from the left. It sometimes happened that the government would round up “right-wing extremists” in the wake of left-wing violence.

Conservatives reacted by forming the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightists (CEDA); also known as the Catholic party, which became the country’s largest political party. As historian Stanley Payne noted, conservatives hadn’t needed a political organization under Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship; but now they were living under a hostile regime, persecuted and subjected to lawless violence. Their rights were restricted by the government, which regarded them as second-class citizens. To give only one indication of the violence unleashed against conservatives by the Spanish left, Activists of the Anarchist Federation committed twenty-three political murders in the first weeks of the Second Republic.

On the far right there were also stirrings; but the Falange Espanola – a fascist organization – did not amount to much. In fact, the Catholic party was accused of being fascist (which it was not). When conservatives won the 1933 Spanish general election, the left worked to cancel the result by changing the rules ex post facto. According to Payne, “the left contended that the Catholic party could not be permitted to win elections – because the CEDA proposed fundamental changes in the Republican system.”

Leftist leaders, determined to suppress the Catholics, asked President Zamora to cancel the conservative electoral victory. Zamora’s refusal resulted in a leftist insurrection which began in December of 1933. Nearly 100 people were killed. Large bombs were detonated in Barcelona. Riots raged in eight cities; trains were derailed, a bridge was destroyed, army outposts mutinied. Zamora allowed a center-right government to form, but decided to exclude the Catholics – even though they had won the most votes of any party.

This new center-right government was unacceptable to the left. A socialist insurrection therefore took place in 1934.  The Spanish left defended this insurrection as “defensive.” According to historian Stanley Payne, the socialist insurrection of 1934 was a carefully planned aggression that had been “in gestation for more than a year and tactically in preparation for nine months.” Meanwhile, the left Republicans under Manuel Azaña importuned President Zamora to appoint a minority government, barring the majority right parties from power altogether. Using the threat of a socialist-supported “general strike,” which was certain to involve widespread violence, Azaña blustered, “Before the Republic is converted into a fascist or monarchist hangman … we prefer any other catastrophe, even if we are defeated.”

President Zamora refused to make Azaña prime minister and, however briefly, a conservative majority ruled Spain – which finally included three Catholic party ministers. This was too much for the Socialist Party which began another insurrection on 4 October 1934. Likening the Catholics to Hitler and Mussolini, the Socialists justified arson, looting and rioting. Veteran socialist politician Julian Besteiro ironically noted, Spain’s Socialist Party “had more characteristics of a fascist organization than did the CEDA [Catholic party].”

The violent October 1934 insurrection included an abortive revolt of the Catalan government in Barcelona, revolution in fifteen of Spain’s fifty provinces, the murder of nearly 100 clergymen, widespread destruction and arson, the looting of banks, with 1,500 people killed and 15,000 arrested. Please note: The Spanish conservative government, like Trump’s government in the summer of 2020, was surprisingly lenient toward the insurrectionists. The Socialist Party, despite its sedition, was never outlawed. Only a few harsh sentences were carried out.

The country limped along for almost another year until the government broke down in September 1935 after two petty financial scandals. President Zamora then appointed a personal crony as prime minister, arguing that the majority conservatives were “too far to the right.” New elections were called for February 1936. Spain was now completely polarized as the left continued to ramp up its violence. The path was now open for socialist revolution. The conservatives and Catholics had shown themselves weak in the face of leftist violence while President Zamora ignored the right’s majority standing.

There was a great deal at stake in the 1936 February election. The Socialist Party declared their readiness for civil war if the left lost the vote. At the same time, the left promised to purge the government of all conservative employees to create an “all left regime.” The left also wanted full amnesty for all those jailed during the October 1934 insurrection. They talked of punishment, as well, for police and security officials who had put down the insurrection.

Tensions were high when the voting began on 16 February 1936. Leftist mobs took to the streets and interfered with the balloting. In some districts voting was stopped. In other areas ballots were destroyed. Rightist poll-watchers were bullied, voting officials resigned in disgust. Repeat voting sessions were carried out and additional votes were harvested for the left. Provincial governors resigned; yet the prime minister would not declare martial law. The Chief of the Army General Staff, Francisco Franco, urged the minister of war and the commander of the civil guard to intervene, but they refused. Then, the entire government resigned. A new Republican left minority government took power. Electoral commissions annulled the elections in Cuenca and Granada – where the right had won. Elsewhere seats were simply assigned to the left’s Popular Front. The Spanish General Election of 1936 was a sham.

Harking back to Ortega’s 1930 diagnosis, this is how Spain’s “slovenliness” played out. The left was lawless. The government was lawless. Only the Catholics and conservatives remained true to civil order and right behavior. But these were the very people targeted for suppression. Civil war was on everyone’s lips. Previously moderate Catholic youth contemplated armed resistance. The army’s loyalty was examined by the government. All the generals in Spain were considered reliable except one. General Franco was removed from his senior position and sent to command the Canary Islands. On leaving Spain Franco began studying English, joking to his family that language study would give him something to do in jail.

Then a shockingly brutal murder took place. Calvo Sotelo, a leading right-wing politician, was kidnapped and murdered by the bodyguard of Socialist party leader Indalecio Prieto. Worse yet, the government took no effective action against the killers. The murder had an electrifying effect on the conservatives. As historian Stanley Payne explained, “It now seemed more dangerous not to rebel than to rebel.” [P. 70]

On 18 July 1936 a military insurrection began. Spain was engulfed in a bloody civil war. As Payne recounts, “the left had about half the army, two-thirds of the navy, the bulk of the air force, and nearly two-thirds of the security forces.” At first the odds favored the left. In fact, the revolt should have been smashed as the government rapidly mobilized “the people” for war. The right was saved by two things: (1) Steadfastness in combat and (2) the rapacity of the left. Instead of fighting, most leftist formations indulged in what Payne described as “an orgy of arrests, attacks on churches, murders en masse, and arson and pillage in general.” [P. 79]

An impromptu and brutal socialist revolution began in the wake of the military uprising. As Payne noted, “the revolution helped save the [right wing] insurgent cause because its fixation on atrocity and pillage massively diverted energy from the military conflict, while the horrors of violent revolution on the march swung the sympathies of most of the middle and lower-middle classes, and nearly all of Catholic society, to the side of the insurgents, giving them mass support….” [P. 79]

The Spanish Civil War raged for almost three years, ending on 1 April 1939. A leftist coalition of anarchists, communists and syndicalists was defeated by a right-wing coalition of nationalists, monarchists, conservatives and Falangists led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Between 500,000 and a million people were killed out of a population of 23.8 million.

In terms of what this means today, the runup to the Spanish Civil War offers insights into the dynamics of left/right polarization. We see by what means the left, at first, gained the upper hand. We see how the right was initially helpless because of its respect for law and order. We see the gradual acceleration of violence against the right, combined with official injustice and the government’s double standard. We see state tyranny bolstered by anarchy from below. And in the end, we see the inevitable catalyzing event which galvanized the right into open war.    

As a final note: Jose Ortega y Gasset – the famous Spanish philosopher quoted above – stayed true to his liberal/aristocratic beliefs. Elected as deputy for the Province of Leon in the constituent assembly of the Second Republic, he became the leader of Agrupación al Servicio de la República – intellectuals who supported the platform of the Socialist Republicans. Disillusioned by parliamentary government, Ortega quickly abandoned politics. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he fled to Argentina. He wrote several clever books of no real depth, continuing the theme of lament begun in The Revolt of the Masses. Of course, the rise he lamented most of all was that of Gen. Franco.  

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Links and Notes

(1) Jose Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University (Princeton University Press, 1944), pp. 14 -21.

(2) Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1932), pp. 11-16.

(3) Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 12-23.

(4) Francisco Franco: The Rise of the Generalisimo – Bing video

46 thoughts on “The Road to Civil War: A Spanish Analogy”

  2. For those readers who wish to learn more about the Spanish Civil War, there is an excellent six-part series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5f9hp0IP4

    I watched these documentary episodes last year as the riots began to consume our cities, and was struck by the many similarities between what was occurring in Spain just before the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and our current state of affairs in America. Anarchists, Leftists, the burning of churches and the destruction of cultural icons….these things happened in Spain just before the war, and are occurring now in America.

    Get ready people. I expect the riots to resume and intensify when the weather breaks this Spring.

    This time there will be no General Franco coming to save us from the Communists: the Leftists in Congress are already combing through our officer corps and purging any and all they deem as a threat to their machinations. The only thing standing in the way of Communists herding us into the Gulags or forcing another Holodomor upon us will be YOU and your neighbors. Prepare yourselves in every way to defend your family and loved ones. It is much closer than you think.

    1. “We see by what means the left, at first, gained the upper hand. We see how the right was initially helpless because of its respect for law and order.”

      George, you are exactly correct about “YOU” and neighbors and compatriots being totally on our own.
      Our respect for Law and Order is indeed one of our weakest links.
      My concern is not as much about the lawless “brown shirts” of BLM or Antifa, but when we actually will see them escalate to the paramilitary “technicals” phase, perhaps riding around in new Toyota pickup trucks with belt feed machine guns and even grenade launchers. Surely this group will not have the protection/support of Law Enforcement but if they do, then our target list has increased substantially.

      For this “phase” automatic rifles, suppressors, wireless comms, optics, and night vision will be essential to even basic survival.

  3. A very good summary of the events that led up to the Spanish Civil War, something that we too may be facing due to the polarization of the different political factions in the country.
    What did not become common knowledge until well into the Spanish Civil War, was that strong influences from the Bolsheviks was disguised to mislead many into believing that they were supporting a Democratic/nationalist side, and not one of Communism. When some found out and tried to leave, they were shot. The same thing happened to many Americans who had joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and after being in Spain for a while found they were fighting for the Communists. When they tried to leave many were shot.
    Not a fan of Fascism, although Franco at least played it smart in many ways; once the Civil War was over, he declared Spain a neutral country, and kept the Communists on the run until he died in 1975.
    The bad aspects were that Franco continued to maintain behind the scenes ties with Hitler and Mussolini.
    If Mussolini had been smart and continued to see Hitler as someone not worth bothering with, and done what Franco did, declaring Italy a neutral country, he may have been able to keep Italy from the devastation it got from it’s role in WWII.
    I have mentioned in a previous thread, that those of you that may not have seen a movie from 2012 called For Greater Glory, about the Cristero revolt in Mexico in the late 1920s when the soft-Communist government in Mexico outlawed the Catholic church and started to persecute and kill Catholics and Catholic clergy. Another good look at what may be coming our way down the road.

  4. The Federalists, perhaps sought a Roman system, but the the Christian Anti-federalists, held to Common Law. Lincoln commissioned, Francis Lieber, to draft Draconian regulations to be imposed under Martial Law, a Roman system. As Martial Law was never rescinded, the notorious Lieber Code, remains the law of the land, today. The US Constitution and Bill Of Rights, are only followed as convenience permits. Since the United States Of America was never intended to be divided by an districts other than states, Federal Judges, except for those of the Supreme Court, are unconstitutional. They might well be considered as, Marshalls in the field.

    The Field Marshall’s Guide
    https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.asp

  5. Wow, I never had this perspective about the origins of the Spanish Civil War. It was always inferred that Spain was living happily under a bona fide republican government when the evil Franco rebelled and established a military dictatorship — although I was aware of the republicans’ slaughter of Catholic priests.

    What strikes me is that the truth of the Socialists’ illegitimate rise to power must have been obscured by the newspapers and other media in the 1930s, inasmuch as a lot of well-meaning but deluded Americans were stirred to travel to Spain to fight Franco.

    History rhymes again.

    1. “The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down”. A. Whitney Brown.

  6. For another example of rhyming history, may I suggest the article “the Thirty Tyrants” by Lee Smith in “Tablet.” Tag line: “The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta.” For me, the article leads me to ask: To what extent would China actively intervene on the side of the left in the event of a kinetic civil war?

      1. They seem to be getting away with more and more, and are reaching the brazen phase of not carrying who knows what they are going because the Dhimmicrats/Communists in the US are covering for the CCP.

  7. Als die Sowjetunion in den spanischen Bürgerkrieg zwischen Franco und der Volksfronregierung eingreift, werden nicht nur die kommunistischen Internationalen Brigaden nach Spanien geschickt, sondern Moskau entsendet auch ein Sonderkommando des NKWD, das das sowjetische System von Mordkommandos und Folterlagern auf den kommunistisch beherrschten Teil Spaniens ausdehnt. Da sich Spanien im Bürgerkrieg befindet, wird sowohl Staats- wie Bandenterror von Moskau dorthin exportiert und zwar einschließlich von Desinformationskampagnen. Als Andres Nin vom NKWD in Spanien ermordet wird, werden deutsche Mitglieder der Internationalen Brigaden als Gestapoleute verkleidet, und es wird behauptet, Hitler habe Nin entführen lassen.
    Bereits vor Beginn des spanischen Bürgerkrieges, in den 4 Monaten seit den spanischen Wahlen am 1.2.1936 wütet der kommunistische und sozialistische Terror in Spanien: 160 Kirchen werden niedergebrannt, 113 Generalstreiks und 228 Einzelstreiks finden statt, 1287 politische Attentate und 269 Morde werden verübt, 69 Parteibüros und 10 Zeitungsredaktionen werden gestürmt und zerstört. Kommunisten und Sozialisten überbieten einander gegenseitig: Die deutschstämmige sozialistische Abgeordnete in den spanischen Cortes Margarita Nelken wütet im spanischen Parlament: „Wir wollen die Revolution, aber die russische Revolution genügt uns nicht als Vorbild. Es müssen gewaltige Flammen lodern, die man in der ganzen Welt sehen kann, und die Ströme von Blut müssen die Meere rot färben.
    Offiziell hält sich die Sowjetunion scheinbar zurück und unterschreibt am 23.8.1936 das Internationale Nichteinmischungsprotokoll. Der Kreml erlässt sogar eine Verordnung, die Waffen- und Munitionslieferungen an die kriegsführenden Parteien untersagt. Als sich in Großbritannien eine Kommission bildet, um Verstöße gegen das Nichteinmischungsabkommen zu untersuchen, sorgt die KpdSU dafür, dass das Sekretariat dieser Kommission von den beiden kommunistischen britischen Parteimitgliedern Geoffrey Bing und John Langdon-Davies gestellt wird. Während die Sowjetunion nach außen hin Zurückhaltung übt, bereitet sich der sowjetische General Kriwitzki, der von Den Haag aus die sowjetische Spionagetätigkeit in Westeuropa leitet, den Transport sowjetischen Kriegsmaterials für die spanische Volksfrontregierung vor. Nach sowjetischem Muster werden in der republikanischen spanischen Armee politische Kommissare eingesetzt, die nahezu alle kommunistischen Kadern entstammen. Sie werden ach sowjetischem Muster von „Miguel Martinez“, einem sowjetischen Offizier, der wahrscheinlich mit dem späteren Sowjetmarschall Rokossowskij identisch ist, organisiert. Auch der Leiter der Transportabteilung des sowjetischen Geheimdienstes NKWD , Alexander Orlow und eine große Anzahl sowjetischer Berater werden von Moskau nach Spanien entsandt, um den Terror zu organisieren. Dies geschieht nicht umsonst: Als Danz für die Organisation des Staatsterrors und für die sowjetischen Waffenlieferungen schickt die spanische Volksfrontregierung die Goldreserven der spanischen Staatsbank im Wert von 1 ½ Milliarden Peseten am 25.10.1936 in die Sowjetunion. Die Kommunisten funktionieren den militärischen Abwehrdienst SIM in ein Terrorinstrument nach dem Muster der sowjetischen Tscheka um. Der kommunistische General Enrique Lister überträgt den Terror auch auf die Front: Offiziere, die Rückzugsbefehle geben, sollen von ihren eigenen Mannschaften erschossen werden. Wie in jedem Bürgerkrieg gibt es auch in Spanien Unrecht und Erschießungen auf beiden Seiten. Aber sowohl an Zahl der Opfer als auch an Grausamkeit stehr der von Moskau organisierte Terror auf Seiten der Roten weit an der Spitze:
    Der britische Historiker Hugh Thomas kommt in einer äußerst zurückhaltenden Berechnung auf 75.000 Erschießungen durch die Republikaner, darunter nahezu 8.000 Opfer aus dem Klerus mit 12 Bischöfen und 283 Nonnen. Fast alle Nonnen wurden vergewaltigt und fast alle Geistlichen aufs Grausamste gefoltert, bevor sie ermordet wurden.

    Hans Graf Hyun
    „Sieg ohne Krieg – Moskaus Griff nach der Weltherrschaft“ (Seiten 123–125)

    1. Dreadful atrocities by the left in Spain showed a definite Soviet hand. Funny how they popped up when needed, while seemingly uninvolved before.

      1. The Bolsheviks realized very early on that they needed to spread the evil of their revolution across Europe, and across the world if possible, to take advantage of any country that was weak, or just plain unaware of what the Bolsheviks were trying to do.
        In a very cautious and “treading on thin ice” kind of way we have to be thankful that Franco stopped the Bolsheviks in Spain. Too bad Mussolini didn’t have the foresight to do the same in Italy.

    2. English translation of Heike’s German language post above:

      When the Soviet Union intervened in the Spanish civil war between Franco and the People’s Front Government, not only were the Communist International Brigades sent to Spain, but Moscow also sent a special NKVD unit to extend the Soviet system of murder squads and torture camps to the communist-ruled part of Spain. Since Spain is in the middle of a civil war, both state and gang terror are being exported there from Moscow, including disinformation campaigns. When Andres Nin is murdered by the NKVD in Spain, German members of the International Brigades are disguised as Gestapo people and it is alleged that Hitler had Nin kidnapped.

      Even before the start of the Spanish civil war, in the 4 months since the Spanish elections on February 1, 1936, the communist and socialist terror rages in Spain: 160 churches are burned down, 113 general strikes and 228 individual strikes take place, 1287 political assassinations and 269 murders are carried out, 69 party offices and 10 newspaper offices are stormed and destroyed. Communists and socialists outbid each other: The German-born socialist MP in the Spanish Cortes Margarita Nelken rages in the Spanish parliament: “We want the revolution, but the Russian revolution is not enough for us as a model. There must be great flames that can be seen all over the world, and the rivers of blood must color the seas red.

      Officially, the Soviet Union is apparently holding back and signs the International Non-Interference Protocol on August 23, 1936. The Kremlin even passed an ordinance prohibiting the supply of arms and ammunition to the warring parties. When a commission was formed in Great Britain to investigate violations of the non-interference agreement, the KpdSU ensured that the secretariat of this commission was provided by the two British Communist party members Geoffrey Bing and John Langdon-Davies. While the Soviet Union is exercising restraint towards the outside world, the Soviet General Kriwitzki, who directs Soviet espionage activities in Western Europe from The Hague, is preparing to transport Soviet war material for the Spanish Popular Front government. According to the Soviet model, political commissioners from almost all communist cadres are installed in the Spanish republican army. They are organized according to the Soviet pattern by “Miguel Martinez”, a Soviet officer who is probably identical with the later Soviet Marshal Rokossovsky. The head of the transport department of the Soviet secret service NKVD, Alexander Orlov and a large number of Soviet advisors are also sent from Moscow to Spain to organize the terror. This does not happen in vain: As Danz for the organization of the state terror and for the Soviet arms deliveries, the Spanish Popular Front government sends the gold reserves of the Spanish State Bank worth 1½ billion pesetas to the Soviet Union on October 25, 1936. The communists are converting the SIM military counterintelligence into a terrorist instrument modeled on the Soviet Cheka. The communist general Enrique Lister also transfers the terror to the front: officers who give orders to withdraw should be shot by their own men. As in any civil war, there is injustice and shootings on both sides in Spain. But both in terms of the number of victims and of cruelty, the terror organized by Moscow on the part of the Reds ranks far ahead:

      The British historian Hugh Thomas comes in an extremely cautious calculation to 75,000 shootings by the Republicans, including almost 8,000 victims from the clergy with 12 bishops and 283 nuns. Almost all of the nuns were raped and almost all of the clergy were brutally tortured before they were murdered.

      Hans Count Hyun
      “Victory Without War – Moscow’s Reach for World Domination” (pages 123–125)

      1. Was this translation done with Google Translate? Anybody fact-checked it?
        JUST KIDDING, VC, thanks, I was just about to run it through the translator myself.

        I hope Jeff comments on the TIME article about how they did “fortify” the election.
        Have the Soviets ever used that word?

      2. Danke!
        Ich finde, dass Deepl.com besser als Google übersetzt. Und es ist anonym!

        Thank you!
        I find that Deepl.com translates better than Google. And it is anonymous!

    3. When the Soviet Union intervened in the Spanish civil war between Franco and the People’s Front Government, not only were the Communist International Brigades sent to Spain, but Moscow also sent a special NKVD unit to extend the Soviet system of murder squads and torture camps to the communist-ruled part of Spain. Since Spain is in the middle of a civil war, both state and gang terror are being exported there from Moscow, including disinformation campaigns. When Andres Nin is murdered by the NKVD in Spain, German members of the International Brigades are disguised as Gestapo people and it is alleged that Hitler had Nin kidnapped.
      Even before the beginning of the Spanish civil war, in the 4 months since the Spanish elections on February 1, 1936, the communist and socialist terror raged in Spain: 160 churches were burned down, 113 general strikes and 228 individual strikes took place, 1,287 political assassinations and 269 murders were carried out, 69 party offices and 10 newspaper offices are stormed and destroyed. Communists and socialists outbid each other: The German-born socialist MP in the Spanish Cortes Margarita Nelken rages in the Spanish parliament: “We want the revolution, but the Russian revolution is not enough for us as a model. There must be great flames that can be seen all over the world, and the rivers of blood must color the seas red.
      Officially, the Soviet Union is apparently holding back and signs the International Non-Interference Protocol on August 23, 1936. The Kremlin even passed an ordinance prohibiting the supply of arms and ammunition to the warring parties. When a commission was formed in Great Britain to investigate violations of the non-intervention agreement, the KpdSU ensured that the secretariat of this commission was provided by the two British Communist party members Geoffrey Bing and John Langdon-Davies. While the Soviet Union is exerting restraint towards the outside world, the Soviet General Kriwitzki, who heads Soviet espionage activities in Western Europe from The Hague, is preparing to transport Soviet war material for the Spanish Popular Front government. Following the Soviet pattern, political commissars from almost all communist cadres are installed in the Spanish republican army. They are organized according to the Soviet pattern by “Miguel Martinez”, a Soviet officer who is probably identical with the later Soviet Marshal Rokossovsky. The head of the transport department of the Soviet secret service NKVD, Alexander Orlov and a large number of Soviet advisors are also sent from Moscow to Spain to organize the terror. This does not happen in vain: As Danz for the organization of the state terror and for the Soviet arms deliveries, the Spanish Popular Front government sends the gold reserves of the Spanish State Bank worth 1½ billion pesetas to the Soviet Union on October 25, 1936. The communists are converting the SIM military counterintelligence into a terrorist instrument modeled on the Soviet Cheka. The communist general Enrique Lister also transfers the terror to the front: officers who give orders to withdraw are to be shot by their own men. As in any civil war, there is injustice and shootings on both sides in Spain. But both in number of victims and in cruelty, the terror organized by Moscow ranks far ahead on the part of the Reds:
      The British historian Hugh Thomas comes in an extremely cautious calculation to 75,000 shootings by the Republicans, including almost 8,000 victims from the clergy with 12 bishops and 283 nuns. Almost all of the nuns were raped and most of the clergy were cruelly tortured before they were murdered.

      Hans Count Hyun
      “Victory Without War – Moscow’s Reach for World Domination” (pages 123–125)

      Reply

      2. In general, censorship is real though. Try to go to president trump’s twitter page or for that matter michael flynn’s twitter page and see what comes up.

      3. Private social media companies are allowed to filter their platforms at their will. Are you saying the government should dictate what private companies do? Anyone with a problem is welcome to file a lawsuit against them.

    1. Arnold, nice video. It is almost as if Patrick follows Jeff’s work. Maybe he does ! Or maybe just great minds think alike.

  12. The bit about our respect for law and order being a weakness reminds me of a line from The Talented Mr. Ripley. Near the beginning of the novel, Ripley is congratulating himself for behaving “just right” with Mr. Greenleaf and nabbing for himself an all expense paid trip to Italy. Ripley, of course, was a deceitful conman.

    Anyway, Ripley, while congratulating himself, notes that “Mr. Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everyone else in the world was decent, too.”

    I think that’s a part of our weakness, really. We’re slow to act because it takes us a long time to finally acknowledge that our enemies are satanically evil. Until we get to that point, we have no passion for fighting or even resisting that much.

    1. Yes, let us convince ourselves that our neighbors are “satanically evil” so that we may work up the motivation to kill them. This is healthy and normal thinking.

      1. “neighbors”– I didn’t say neighbors, but, then again, the new term for Trump supporters amongst your leftwing neighbors is “Magats,” and they’re eating up a full dosage of “Trump supporters are satantically evil” propaganda right now without a single one of them feeling shame about it.

        That way of thinking is coming for you whether it’s healthy or not.

      2. You see all these “satanic” enemies around you. Who are you seeing if not your neighbors? If not your countrymen? You have convinced yourself of your own righteousness and are now ready to kill to satiate your paranoia. Nothing is “coming for me” except bloodthirsty maniacs who think like you. You are the problem.

      3. “ready to kill to satiate your paranoia”–

        You’re just projecting. It’s not Conservatives on TV talking about “deprogramming Trump cultists” possibly with the use of camps (CNN), comparing Trump to Saddam and discussing using tactics used in Iraq/Afghanistan to put down resistance (NPR), talking about using bombs to get rid of Trump supporters (MSNBC), and comparing Trump supporters to “Domestic terrorists” (CNN/NPR/MSNBC/NBC/ABC/FOX).

        Conservatives aren’t doing any of the above, but I sure as hell hope we’re taking it seriously.

  15. One thing that stands out for me is that both sides in that war were led by Marxists. From an American viewpoint, both were leftists. Franco was just as much a Marxist as were the “Republicans”. The example that war shows me that the Marxists are so full of hate, that they even hate each other. The only reasons Franco was able to get much popular support during the war as he did were because of the excesses of the “Republicans” and because he claimed to be other than what he was.

    For me, the realization that the Fascists were merely a branch of Marxism came as a surprise. While living in Germany, I learned that the Nazis hated Christians—the first person I personally me who had a number tattooed on his arm was a German Lutheran pastor—so I, being Lutheran myself, set out to learn why for that hatred. When I looked deeper, I found Marxism. Just a different flavor of Marxism. But Marxism nonetheless. A Marxism very similar to that found in China today.

    After the civil war, Franco acted like a typical Marxist. But he realized that his country was too shattered that it could not make a significant contribution to World War II, so he stayed “neutral”. In later life apparently he mellowed on a personal level.

    1. Franco was not a Marxist. I don’t know where you got this idea from; probably from reductionist Libertarian ideology. Franco and his followers were mostly Catholics. He was not a fascist, but a monarchist. Catholic monarchism is not fascism. It may be authoritarian, anti-democratic, etc., but it is NOT Marxism.

      1. In the exact same way, Austria’s shortlived Catholic “Ständestaat” from 1934 till 1938 under, first Engelbert Dollfuß, then Kurt Schuschnigg, has been perfidiously misrepresented by our Socialist rewriters of history as a period of “Austrofascism”, while in fact it was a conservarive dictatorship desperately fighting National Socialism and Marxism at the same time. Dollfuß was assassinated by National Socialists in 1934; Schuschnigg was overthrown by Hitler in 1938 in what became known as the “Anschluss” and spent the war years under “protective custody” in various concentration camps. After the war, Schuschnigg emigrated to the United States in 1947, where he taught political science at (Jesuit) St. Louis University, Missouri for almost twenty years. He became a United States citizen in 1956.

  17. I am newcomer to this wonderful blog. How you blend history and current politics is very thought provoking. We always have to be careful with the strands of history that we examine and liken to our own time. You seem to do that with a faithfulness to the truth.

    In 1943, our War Department produced Don’t Be a Sucker, a short movie (22 minutes) about how the communists divided people and isolated them so they can be easily manipulated and controlled. Everyone concerned about divisive politics and critical race theory being taught in our schools should watch. It would be great for a larger audience to know about this.

    Paste in this link. https://youtu.be/vGAqYNFQdZ4

    1. This movie is actually focused on educating the viewer about Nazi subversion. In 1943 America was actually allied with the Soviet Union fighting the Axis powers. Notice the racist nature of the subversive “American American” speaker. Totalitarian ideologies share hostility toward American values, yet each attacks from a different angle.

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