0:02

What's Francisco and my

0:04

franco Robert

0:07

Yeah, fuzz, there

0:10

we go. We introduced it.

0:13

It's not as not as big a name as Hitler. Like

0:15

I'm gonna be honest with you, not not doesn't

0:17

have the kind of star power like if Hitler. Hitler's

0:19

like like Ben Affleck, right

0:22

uh and and we're doing like the Matt Damon

0:24

of fascism today. He's just

0:27

just not the same. That is not

0:29

accurate. You are completely wrong. You just

0:31

like his tattoo. Come on, I

0:33

love I love his trashy, gigantic,

0:35

fullback phoenix tattoo. Pretty funny, It's

0:38

right, Okay, we gotta think of somebody. It's like a Deep

0:41

He's more famous than that. Affleck will

0:43

say, it's more like a Scottie Pippen, you know what I'm

0:45

saying, Like Scottie Pippen. To Hitler's

0:48

the Michael Jordans of fascism. It is like

0:50

Scott Pippen. We're talking to Scottie Pippen,

0:52

and like Scottie Pippen, Francisco,

0:56

yeah, he's a yeah, yeah, Francisco is underrated.

0:58

You know, he's good, He's like not good. He's a

1:00

monster at a

1:02

shoe exactly exactly Pippin's

1:05

like we're talking about like like Franco's, which

1:07

would be Jack boots almost as tall

1:09

as the Hitler Jack boots and not quite as shiny

1:12

coast, but still Jack boots. Yeah, and they're little

1:14

sheep Jack. Yeah for the fascist on

1:16

a budget. You know. Um, we're

1:20

trying to talk about the tattoo again. I

1:22

did. I always want to talk And how

1:24

hilarious and how sad Ben Affleck

1:27

looks every time he's captured in the wild.

1:29

Just looks like he's been dying for the last

1:31

twenty straight years. And I'm here

1:33

for it. Love Jack in the box. It's

1:36

incredible. He's just so miserable

1:38

all the time. It just feels like he spent

1:40

so much time being attractive that he just got

1:42

tired of it. It was just like, oh, speaking

1:45

of fascism, you've

1:48

heard of the fewer principle, the idea that like

1:50

a single man can embody the spirit of

1:52

a people, which is you know what Hitler used to rise

1:55

to power. I never believed in it until

1:57

Ben Affleck. Because Ben Affleck is

2:00

the spiritual embodiment of Boston. He's

2:02

yeah, he's perfect. Yeah, he's really really

2:05

is. I yeah,

2:08

like, if the Southeast weren't so damn

2:10

racist, I would really like that area,

2:13

you know what I'm saying. But

2:16

yeah, oh yeah about

2:19

the Celtics. But I know a bit about fascism,

2:21

and proper fascism is a little bit different

2:23

in every country. It's kind of like, um, kind

2:25

of like skittles, you know, different flavors

2:29

hips, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

2:31

milk chocolate as opposed to be dark. You know,

2:34

this is part of why scholars and theorists have

2:36

such a damnable time defining what fascism

2:38

is. In the first place. There's a dictionary definition,

2:41

right, There's gonna be a dictionary definition in any dictionary

2:43

you open. But it's not really useful,

2:45

in part because a lot of dictionary definitions

2:47

of fascism apply almost as

2:50

well to like communist regimes,

2:52

any any authoritarian regime, which

2:54

is, you know, there's there's some points there, which is

2:56

that whenever you have a totalitarian system, similar

2:59

bad things often do happen. But

3:01

fascism is unique for a number

3:03

of reasons, including its ability to subvert

3:05

healthy democracies. Um.

3:07

And so when you have historians of fascism,

3:10

people whose whole life is studying this

3:12

thing, this amorphous thing that we're still kind

3:14

of getting grips on. All of them kind

3:16

of tend to have their own definitions of it

3:18

um, and often those definitions don't contrast

3:21

that just different ways of kind of wording the same things.

3:23

I tend to be feel confident that Umberto

3:26

Echo has done the best job of

3:28

defining it in his his essay on Earth Fascism.

3:30

I'm a big fan of the way Echo talked

3:32

about fascism, and I think that Echo would

3:34

have named Trump as a fascist straight away. Um

3:37

in part because in the mid nineties, when he wrote

3:39

his essay on Earth Fascism, he predicted

3:41

that the Internet and like the way that it allowed would

3:44

allow people to spread messages and crowdsource

3:46

activism, would lead to the rise

3:48

of a of a unique kind of fascists.

3:50

And I think that Trump embodied that in a lot

3:52

of ways, and I think Echo would have seen it right away. Now,

3:54

on the other hand, I think I may know where you're where

3:56

Echoes going out. Haven't read the thing, But like, I

3:58

have this theory about a type of fascist that

4:01

Trump is, But I'd love to hear what this guy says.

4:03

Yeah, I mean Echo Echo kind of outlined

4:05

a number of different things that are

4:08

like that are when you have a mix of these

4:10

things and sort of a constellation that is what

4:12

fascism is. So there's a mix of like you

4:14

know, popular resentment against

4:16

the left, like a sense of

4:18

machinesm of of misogyny,

4:21

um, a cult of action for actions

4:23

sake, uh, syncretism, the ability

4:25

to like pull other things in and kind of attached

4:27

them to itself under like aspects of spirituality

4:30

and whatnot. Um, there were a bunch

4:32

of different things that that Echo noted

4:34

as kind of key aspects of fascism.

4:37

Um. Okay,

4:39

so sorry, you know what we're saying, no, because I was gonna say, well, so

4:41

interesting about like what I feel

4:44

like what we're gonna hear as

4:46

history nerds for the next you know, a hundred

4:48

years, about the unique the

4:51

what Trump symbolizes and it might just be a

4:53

new type of fascism for the rest of

4:55

our life. But just this fascism

4:58

that doesn't have a foreseeable goal,

5:01

like except for just being in

5:03

power. Saying that was so

5:05

that's what was so interesting to me about the uniqueness

5:07

about Trump's fascism is like, yeah,

5:09

but what's your end game here, like what do you what

5:12

are you doing? You know what I'm saying, Whereas

5:14

like we knew what Mussolini was doing,

5:17

we know what you know definitely

5:19

and we knew yeah he did it, Like we knew

5:21

what you were doing. This was your goal, you

5:24

know what I'm saying. And I'm just like what you're

5:26

like, Yeah, what are you doing?

5:28

Dude? You know his lack of a plan,

5:31

right dot com? Yeah,

5:33

apparently Trump saying that, And

5:37

you know, because I think that did I think threw some

5:39

people off is that he clearly didn't have as much

5:41

of it like Mussolini. I do think it's more similar

5:43

to Trump than Hitler's and the kind of fascist that he

5:45

was and in his goals. But Mussolini

5:48

had a plan to take and hold power,

5:50

and I guess one of the things that's been revealed is that like

5:52

Trump definitely wanted to take and hold

5:55

power, but he did not have much

5:57

of a plan. Not yeah, I was like, your

5:59

goal is to reach a goal, when

6:03

yeah, yeah, your goal was just almost

6:06

like yeah, He's there's a lot to

6:08

be said, and I don't know, you just wanted to keep being

6:10

right, you know, I'm like about what Yeah.

6:12

Anyway, it's interesting and a number

6:14

of like, there are other scholars of fascism who

6:17

took a lot longer to kind of decide

6:19

that that Trump fit their definition of fascism.

6:21

I'm thinking about Robert Paxton here. And Paxton is

6:23

a very well respected scholar

6:25

of fascism. He wrote a book called The Anatomy of Fascism.

6:28

That's a very good book. Um. And he only

6:30

felt comfortable declaring Trump a fascist after

6:32

January six, and he was like, that was the line,

6:34

Like it was. Paxton has been consistent

6:36

he's an authoritarian, there's fascist elements

6:38

and what he does, but he didn't kind of name

6:41

him a fascist until after the six And like,

6:43

I'm not slamming Paxton. I think there's

6:45

a room for intellectual debate on total and I understand

6:47

kind of why he, like, like you said, Trump's

6:50

a different kind of one, right, and where fascism

6:52

changes based on the country and based on the

6:54

time period, you know, um, And

6:57

I do think kind of one of the things that Echo was

6:59

was sort of peering around the

7:01

edges of when he was talking about how he thought we were going

7:03

to see an internet based fascism in the future,

7:05

was the idea that like another aspect

7:07

of fascism, and he didn't define this as a key aspect

7:10

of fascism, but I think that it is is

7:12

the fascist is the ability to find

7:15

a way to utilize new media

7:18

technology in a way that no one else

7:20

understands yet, which Trump did right. No other politician

7:22

understood how to use social media

7:25

in the way that Trump did when Trump came onto the

7:27

scene. Um, it's a big part of his success

7:30

anyway. So there's a lot of debate over what is

7:32

a fascist, And as a result of this debate,

7:34

there's actually quite a lot of argument on whether

7:36

or not the regime of Francisco Franco

7:39

in Spain was truly fascist. And

7:41

you'll find a lot of argument about this about

7:43

whether or not Franco was a fascist. There were fascists

7:46

in Spain, absolutely, whether or not Franco

7:48

and his regime really counts, um.

7:50

And what's not up for debate is that many elements

7:53

of the Spanish right leading up to enduring

7:55

the Spanish Civil War, we're fascists

7:57

in that Fascist powers Italy and

8:00

in Germany intervened in that

8:02

civil war because they saw what was happening there

8:04

as a battle between fascism and socialism

8:07

largely um and more to the point, whatever

8:09

you can say about Franco himself, and we'll talk

8:11

about him more in Part two. The Battle over

8:13

Spain in the late nineteen thirties absolutely

8:16

ranks as the first open military conflict

8:19

between fascism and democracy and

8:21

fascism and socialism. To write like all

8:23

of that was kind of in the mix. And on the

8:25

Spanish side, the Republican side, you had

8:27

like the Spanish Republic who were you know,

8:30

liberals more or less people who supported like

8:32

a constitutional democracy, and you had anarchists

8:35

and communists and socialists, Severian

8:37

kind of lesser strains. Trotsky Is too, who

8:39

were It's a very complicated civil war.

8:41

It's more like Syria than than

8:44

a lot of other conflicts because there's so much

8:46

going on, so many different different kind

8:49

of corners to it. It's interesting

8:51

real quick before you get into this is like you know,

8:53

in a past life, I was like a history and social

8:55

science like high school teacher, and

8:58

I went through the entire

9:01

credentialing process all the way up

9:03

to masters, and at no point

9:06

in any of our California standards

9:09

was it ever required to talk about this

9:12

and which is so interesting

9:14

to me to win, especially when

9:16

I'm trying to set up, you know, because

9:19

since I wasn't a direct history I was more like a

9:21

social science teacher trying to set

9:23

up how cultures get where they get

9:26

and like why it was so weird

9:28

around World War two and why we

9:30

got so like we was already itchy.

9:32

Why a lot of a lot of us was like, man, we really don't

9:34

want to go over there. It's because we

9:36

was. I was like, well, because of the Spanish Civil War,

9:38

like we kind of you know, who's kind of going back and forth about

9:41

sending troops over there like it was. And the

9:43

students were like, wait what and I'm

9:45

like, yeah, the space. Yes, Spain had

9:47

a civil war, like this happened, like

9:50

you know what I'm saying. This was like it was right before World

9:52

War Two, Like this happened. It was like this whole big

9:54

thing. That's like it's a big thing, and

9:56

we were involved, like we almost saying

9:59

but just like that's like no, thousands

10:01

of Americans volunteered. Yeah yes, And

10:03

I'm like it's not required to talk

10:05

about and I'm like, oh my god, this

10:07

is You're missing this. You're missing

10:09

a lot of the story if you don't understand why

10:12

even World War Two is so touchy for

10:14

us. Yeah, and part of it was this

10:17

anyway, going, one of the reasons people don't like to talk

10:19

about this is that it is it's very complicated,

10:21

and it is not as much of a cut and dried

10:23

story as makes it easy to

10:25

sort of summarize. Right, once the fighting

10:27

starts, once the Civil War starts, it is a bit easier.

10:30

But even then, it's a very fucking messy war.

10:33

And there are really shitty people um

10:35

on on the good guys side too, right,

10:37

Like there's a lot of like very ugly stuff

10:39

that happens because it's a war. You know. The same is

10:41

true of World War Two. It's just been heavily whitewashed,

10:44

and the Nazis were so fucking bad

10:46

that it makes it a lot easier to make

10:48

your side seem like the good dudes. Um

10:50

Now, in some ways, like because

10:53

of how complicated it is, And we're going this whole episode

10:55

is about the birth of Spanish fascism,

10:57

and we're gonna do some pretty deep history here,

11:00

um and in in some ways, the story

11:02

of how fascism evolves in Spain bears a lot less

11:04

resemblance to what's happened in America than

11:07

either of the two stories we've discussed so far.

11:09

But while they're the similarities are a lot less direct.

11:11

I actually think there's a lot here that's valuable because

11:14

we're going to kind of lay out how

11:16

this evolved over time and how

11:18

the birth of fascism in Spain was woven

11:20

into the birth of democracy itself. And I think that's

11:22

a really important story. Um,

11:25

but we're gonna need a lot of context. So Spain

11:27

is unique, fairly unique among European

11:30

nations, and that it has not had a sense

11:32

of nationalism from most of modern history.

11:35

Um, not in nearly the same way that you got with England,

11:37

or with France or with Germany once

11:39

you know, eighteen seventy whatever rolls around. Um,

11:42

the Spanish state does go back very far

11:44

to fourteen seventy eight when Ferdinand and Isabella,

11:47

you know, the Columbus folks, right when

11:49

they decided to yeah South

11:52

America, Yeah yeah, yeah. And before

11:54

that they were the ones, like Spain they kick

11:56

out the More's,

11:59

you know, the the Muslims who had kind of taken

12:01

over a chunk of Iberia as a

12:03

result of the counter into anyway they

12:05

take back Spain for Christendom, that would

12:07

be the way they would have framed it. Um. But

12:09

they don't actually make a nation, not in any

12:11

modern sense. Spain is a bunch of independent

12:13

kingdoms, and those independent kingdoms

12:16

up until fairly recently never really

12:18

melded together. You've got the Aragonese, and you've

12:20

got Catalans, and you've got the Basque and they all

12:22

of their and there's there's more than that, right this,

12:25

But don't pretend I'm not going to pretend this is Spanish

12:27

history is incredibly complicated. I

12:30

am very far from an expert um.

12:32

And there are still issues with like a

12:34

lot of Catalans and a lot of Basque still want

12:37

like some at least some degree of independence

12:39

from the Spanish state, yeah, recognition

12:41

from yeah, and they all of their own

12:43

languages and cultural traditions. And one of the things that

12:45

I learned that's interesting actually is that um,

12:48

the the the like

12:51

Spanish, what we know is Spanish comes

12:53

from the chunk of like

12:55

the the language group that was kind of most dominant

12:58

in Iberia. But they actually he stole

13:00

the word for the country from I

13:02

think it was the Catalan so like it's it's it's very

13:05

anyway, very complicated history. Um

13:07

and from most of Spanish history, the

13:10

only unifying factors of all these very

13:12

disparate groups of people were the crown,

13:14

the king, and the Catholic Church um

13:17

and mainly the Catholic Church. Right Now,

13:19

in the eighteen hundred, Spain was dominated

13:22

by a revolution, or Spain was kind of overtaken.

13:24

Spanish thought was overtaken by a revolution

13:26

in classical liberalism, right, that sort

13:29

of takes over a lot of parts of Europe at this point in

13:31

time. In Spain is is

13:33

is included in that. But in Spain,

13:35

this kind of new liberal wave largely failed

13:38

to push for any kind of mass Spanish identity.

13:40

It didn't like and this is where you start

13:42

to get like French identity, right and like, but

13:45

you don't really get that, um.

13:47

I mean in France it starts earlier than the eight hundreds,

13:49

but like, you don't really get that in a big way

13:51

in Spain. And part of the reason is that

13:54

kind of the cultural elites failed to institute

13:56

any meaningful education reforms for

13:58

the majority of the population ation UM

14:00

Like France in the same period establishes a

14:03

functional education system, and

14:05

by contrast, Spain's failure to do this

14:07

means that education remained the purview of the Catholic

14:09

Church. They do most of the educating and

14:11

it's only for the wealthy. Um and the country

14:13

would deal with widespread illiteracy well into

14:15

the nineteen hundreds. And when you don't have

14:18

mass public education, one of the things you don't have

14:21

is a widespread idea of the

14:23

history and like what your nation is.

14:25

And like right, that's part of why

14:27

anyway, there's not Nationalism is not really much

14:29

of a thing in Spain, um as

14:31

a result of this too busy killing

14:34

off. And

14:36

they're absolutely that's one of the things. That's where

14:38

they're a huge imperial power and someone's

14:40

there the first world power, um,

14:42

like the first power that's like on on a level

14:44

of like what the US was earlier in our lifetimes.

14:47

Yeah, yeah, knowing like being being

14:50

a Californian married to a Mexican woman, like

14:52

you know, you you have to somehow

14:54

kind of know a little Spanish history as

14:57

to why these why these Mayans

14:59

are speaking spanning you know what I'm saying, and like and

15:02

uh, you know because the part of Mexico she's

15:04

from there from southern Mexican Mexico, so like they're

15:07

they're kind of Mayan, you know what I mean. And

15:09

um, but yeah, this like weird,

15:12

like how they

15:14

exported this like colorism

15:17

and just this weird el Yeah.

15:19

But at the same time, kan nobody in your country

15:22

read you know, So it's just this weird like

15:24

thing happening with Spain.

15:26

Yeah, it's it's very weird. And like,

15:29

if we're going to be completely fair, like if you look at

15:31

the system of sort of slavery that was instituted

15:33

in what we now call Latin America,

15:36

Um, it's it's one of the few

15:38

systems of slavery and history that's like

15:40

on the same level as what we had in the American

15:42

South, like absolutely and and

15:44

and and genocides. So I'm not trying to like whitewash

15:47

Spanish history, you know what I'm saying. They don't have nationalism.

15:49

It's just not it's not the same as it is with all

15:51

and that's what I'm saying that that's I'm adding

15:53

to it, like that it's peculiar that

15:56

they had such an imperialistic power

15:58

without this like national idea. Yeah,

16:00

it is. It's uty odd like Spain

16:03

is an interesting country to study. Now,

16:05

the Catholic Church was a major force

16:07

in Spain for pushing against the

16:09

development of a modern liberal state. Right in the eighteen

16:12

hundreds. You don't really have nations anywhere

16:14

up until like it started, like that concept

16:17

kind of starts like in the seventeen hundreds,

16:19

Like things shifts a lot less.

16:21

The idea of like a nation, the way that we conceive

16:24

of one is kind of born in this period seventeen

16:26

eight hundreds, and the Catholic Church

16:28

in Spain really pushes against the modern

16:30

liberal state. Um. This was largely

16:33

due to the fact that liberalism had an

16:35

anti clerical bias. Right. The Catholic

16:37

Church for the medieval period is like the most the

16:39

big power in the world. Right, they had influence everywhere

16:42

in Christendom, and they start to lose

16:44

it in this period because governments are like, well, where

16:46

are we gonna let a church in Italy tell

16:48

our government like we're England. I don't like,

16:50

I don't give a ship what you said, yeah,

16:54

um? And the you

16:56

know, Catholic Catholicisms huge in Spain and the church

16:58

is like, we don't want any of this ship going on. So

17:01

Spain, the Church

17:03

pushes against kind of a lot of modernizing

17:05

ideas, and one of those things is that Spain fails

17:08

to develop a modern military system.

17:10

And while it was again a massive military

17:12

power, they never do like what France

17:14

does, where you you start this idea of a nation

17:17

under arms and a modern professional

17:19

style of the military, that takes a lot longer

17:21

to develop in Spain, and it's part of

17:24

why they don't do so well when

17:26

everyone else develops a modern military right,

17:28

and they start losing their empire, both to a

17:30

combination of European powers taking their

17:32

ship from them and from a lot of revolutions

17:34

in places they had controlled that overthrows

17:36

them. Um. And so the seventeen hundreds

17:39

and eighteen hundreds see a rapid decline in

17:41

Spanish power, and it had been declining before then, but

17:43

yeah, now the ultimate collapse of

17:45

Spanish imperialism um really

17:47

comes in eighteen ninety eight when the United

17:49

States goes to war with Spain for no reason

17:52

really and takes over Cuba

17:55

just because like it's a just m

17:57

just like you want

17:59

to do imperial power, we could be that ya,

18:02

And there you know, Spain is an unbelievably

18:04

brutal particularly in the Philippines and then we

18:06

take over and we're unbelievably brutal in the Philippines

18:09

and the people they are like, oh you guys, so are

18:11

we going to have a democracy now? And we're like no,

18:13

no, no, no, no no, we

18:15

want your ship, like we want your ship. You

18:17

know, she's setting you

18:20

free so we can own you. I mean,

18:23

don't that kind of freedom. It's that kind

18:25

of you. It's that kind of freedom. Yeah,

18:28

Like we don't even let women in our country vote. You think

18:30

we're gonna let you vote? What are you? What are you talking

18:32

about? It's motherfucker's

18:36

so interesting. Nothing changes,

18:39

No, it's just your leaders speak English

18:41

now. I mean, our guns are better. Our guns

18:43

are a lot better than Spanish guns. They're

18:45

guns sucked. That's why we're in charge now.

18:52

Colonialism So

18:55

so one of the things that's interesting about Spain is

18:57

lady late eighties,

18:59

early nine, that's like the height of

19:01

colonialism, right before World War One starts

19:04

like like murders a lot of the great powers

19:06

that controlled the whole world. So like they are

19:08

the they are writing high Africa

19:10

has just been like, you know, murdered, like in

19:12

a lot of ways, like colonize, the scramble for

19:14

Africa's like at its height. You know, Belgium

19:16

owns the Congo. It's that period. So

19:19

everyone else who's doing imperialism is doing

19:21

gang busters. In Spain's empire

19:24

collapses. So what happens to everyone

19:26

else in like the fifties, sixties, seventies, UM,

19:29

really happens to Spain like sixty,

19:32

a couple of generations earlier. So they actually

19:34

go through the color There an empire

19:36

who goes through the collapse of colonialism

19:38

while everyone else is doing great at colonialism,

19:41

which is one of the things that makes them very interesting. So

19:43

some of the things that happen in colonial

19:45

powers when their empires collapse, these

19:47

things that we've seen in Germany and France and

19:49

England and that we're seeing now in the United States

19:52

happen in Spain in the late eighteen nineties,

19:54

because it's just the stuff that happens when you're

19:56

an empire that fails. I

19:58

find that really interesting. The story, and Stanley

20:00

pain Uh calls eight

20:03

the first modern postcolonial trauma

20:05

in Western Europe UM, and I think

20:08

you do have to view it as a trauma for the people in

20:10

Spain, and probably the best equivalent to our own

20:12

society would be the ongoing trauma that a lot of Americans

20:14

have faced in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.

20:17

And I'm not trying to minimize the trauma's faced

20:19

in those countries as a result of US action, which

20:21

are commensurately greater. But we've seen

20:23

in the Maga movement, right and all of these like that, it's

20:26

that have come home and stormed the capital and ship

20:28

like it is a trauma. It's a trauma. We were

20:30

an empire that fails. It fox people

20:32

up who were used to being the empire.

20:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that yeah,

20:37

that's that's that. I'll find

20:39

that part, like, you know, as

20:42

being a black dude being like, you know, we the

20:45

saying you know that like a qualities oppression

20:48

if all you know is privileged, you know what I'm saying.

20:50

So like when if you're just you're so

20:52

used to the system working for you, the second

20:54

it doesn't, you're like something must

20:56

be broken. You're like, well, no, it was broke.

20:59

That's why it worked for you, you know what I'm saying.

21:01

Yeah, yeah, it was always broken. It was

21:03

always one of the people it worked for. So

21:06

yeah, Spain deals with this post

21:09

colonial trauma very early,

21:11

right before the rest, before the rest

21:13

of the Western world. Right really does because

21:15

it fails for them. They were the first for it to work,

21:18

and they were the first that it failed for which I guess

21:20

makes sense now. Like in the

21:22

US, all those failing colonial ventures

21:24

that we had flooded the United States with disaffected

21:27

veterans debt, and it fueled the rise

21:29

of a resentful right wing as well as feeling

21:31

the rise of a dissident left wing right. Both

21:33

of all of that stuff was really um

21:36

incited in a lot of ways by UH.

21:38

And obviously I'm not calling the dissident left a bad thing,

21:41

um But like those horrible

21:44

colonial wars, we had really fueled a lot

21:46

of that. And the situation in Spain after EE

21:49

is not all that different. Now, with

21:52

her years as a great power seemingly behind

21:54

her, Spanish intellectuals begin to wonder

21:56

if the sense of exceptionalism that they had always

21:58

taken for granted had been based on false

22:00

premises. And I'm gonna quote from historian Stanley

22:03

pain here. I know, right, interesting, Yeah.

22:05

Symptomatic of the dismay of the nationalist

22:08

military was an editorial in El Haraldo

22:10

Militar on twenty three November nineteen

22:12

o eight, entitled worse than anywhere,

22:15

It declared, wherever we look, we find

22:17

greater virility than in our own people. In

22:19

Turkey, Persia, China, the Balkan States,

22:22

everywhere we find life and energy, even

22:24

in Russia. In Spain there was only

22:26

apathy and submission. How sad

22:28

it is to think about the situation in Spain.

22:32

Yeah, it kind of feels

22:34

like us in the coronavirus.

22:37

We're like, yeah, I think Americans

22:39

can identify with a lot of wait

22:41

they're hearing here, even if you don't feel

22:43

it bad you, you

22:45

know the intellectuals in our own society who

22:47

are saying the same ship right, yes, yes,

22:50

Now. The Spanish political system was

22:53

not at all stable domestically during the period

22:55

after like while her empire was in free

22:57

fall, and that's part of why the empire didn't

22:59

last. Eighteen o three to the early nineteen

23:01

hundreds. There were more than a dozen military coups.

23:04

Between eighteen thirty three and eighteen seventy

23:06

six, Spain was racked by three civil wars,

23:09

the car List Wars, which were not battles

23:11

against everybody's favorite tertiary Simpson's character,

23:13

but were instead members of a conservative,

23:15

pro church political movement. The car

23:18

Lists were the violent, armed wing of Catholics

23:20

right. There were the embodiment

23:22

of clerical resentment against liberal Spain.

23:25

They were religious extremists who didn't want

23:27

the country to modernize. Um and

23:29

I found a very detailed right up for students

23:31

on a Lyman dot uk that notes

23:33

the car List wars quote where fought with a fervor

23:36

and brutality derived from deep divisions

23:38

within Spain. They also lasted longer

23:40

than national wars and were more difficult to resolve.

23:42

They anticipated the Spanish Civil War in a

23:45

number of respects. There was a strong element

23:47

of different and conflicting beliefs within the country,

23:49

profound traditional Catholicism against

23:51

modern liberal thought, regional independence

23:54

against traditional central control, political

23:56

liberalism against deep conservative monarchism.

23:59

So this is all the stuff that's been cooking up in the background

24:02

of Spanish politics at the turn of the twentieth century.

24:04

Now partly as a result of the Carlist wars,

24:07

Spain had a relatively underdeveloped right

24:09

wing in this period because you know, a lot

24:11

of them gotten killed in wars um

24:14

and they've been very tied to the Church, so there wasn't

24:16

as much like a nationalist right wing. It was a

24:18

Catholic right wing. Now, Spanish

24:21

nationalism, as I said, was kind of nascent and didn't really

24:23

start to erupt into the street until after World

24:25

War One. In Spain was neutral in World

24:27

War One, so you think they might be in a better position because they

24:29

don't really get involved in this ship um,

24:31

and it does delay a lot of political

24:34

extremism in the country. It's why they don't have, like,

24:36

you know, a communist movement that's really a big

24:38

deal until after the war. The first

24:41

big street fight in Spain between radical

24:43

political groups actually happened between

24:45

two opposed groups of nationalists in nineteen

24:48

nineteen. Radical Catalanists,

24:50

which are like big like advocates of Catalan

24:52

separatism, had been holding peaceful

24:54

nightly demonstrations in favor of independence

24:56

throughout nineteen eighteen. In January

24:58

of nineteen nineteen, a group of right wing Espaniolistas,

25:01

who are like nationalists violence Spanish nationalists

25:04

assaulted this gathering of peaceful

25:06

Catalanists. Both groups battled

25:08

it out in the streets of Barcelona, and what would soon

25:10

become a familiar display the Espaniolistas

25:13

were a mix of local army officers and men

25:15

from a group calling itself the Lega Patriotica

25:17

Espaniola. This violence was soon

25:20

superseded by a spree of organized political

25:22

murders by a narco syndicalists from a labor

25:24

federation called the C and T. And this

25:26

is like unrelated to the national separatism.

25:29

There's also and we'll talk about anarchism in a

25:31

second, but a bunch of anarchists extremists

25:33

start murdering people based on like

25:35

like, based on class really, um, and

25:38

that brings us a temporary stop

25:40

to all the street fighting, because the murders bring

25:42

the cops out against all sorts of

25:44

what are considered to be political extremists.

25:46

And it briefly claims it's what we're about to see

25:48

in the United States, and it briefly clamps

25:50

down on all political organization in the streets.

25:53

Yeah. Now, in

25:55

most of Western Europe, anarchists tended

25:57

to be smaller, Like, they weren't really

26:00

rare for anarchists to make a large percentage

26:02

of political radicals in the European country.

26:05

Um. And it's much more common for like socialists

26:07

and communists to be a significant

26:09

like force, a significant like sized

26:11

force. Ukraine would be an east An

26:13

exception to that. We talked about Nestor mcnow on

26:15

our our Christmas episodes UM And part

26:18

of why Ukraine had a large and organized

26:20

anarchist movement is that Ukraine was largely

26:22

agrarian. And one of the things we see

26:25

in in like Europe in this period

26:27

of time is that nations that have a large

26:29

industrial base and a lot of industrial

26:31

workers have a huge communist movement.

26:34

Nations that are primarily rural and agricultural

26:36

have a large anarchist movement because anarchists

26:39

are more common kind of come out of

26:41

agrarian, rural communities more often

26:43

than common, because communism is a workers

26:45

movement. Marks early on in his career

26:47

was very much like you like kind

26:49

of wrote off for a long time rural people.

26:52

Was like, no, it's all about the workers. It's about industrial

26:55

like them. You can organize and you can use them

26:57

to take you know, take over the

26:59

system basically, and like rural people

27:01

are kind of a lost cause. And he did change on that

27:03

later in his life and staff, but like, that's

27:06

part of why you don't really see communism

27:09

erupt out of rural areas in this period,

27:11

you see anarchism when you see left wing

27:13

extreme Yeah. Yeah,

27:15

so I'm gonna quote it. Yeah, it's it's interesting, right,

27:17

I didn't actually thought of that.

27:19

Yeah, And that's part

27:21

of why when I think about ways in which

27:23

to pull people in rural America

27:26

away from right wing extremism, I think

27:28

of more systems like democratic confederalism

27:31

or libertary municipalism like book chin Um

27:33

that are kind of more of an out of a more anarchist

27:36

view because like a lot of these libertarians,

27:38

I do think you can pull into a more reasonable

27:41

system that's not right wing extremism,

27:43

because a lot of their basic ideology is I want to be

27:45

left alone. And I think you could be like, well, we

27:48

we want to leave you alone. We just also would

27:50

like to be left alone. Can we figure out a way to

27:52

like yes, yes, yeah.

27:54

Um. So I'm gonna quote from Lemon dot Uk

27:57

again on kind of politics and

27:59

Spain in this period. Quote capitalist

28:01

industry had not developed in the same ways that had

28:03

in Germany, Britain and America, and Spain had

28:05

little in the way of organized labor after small

28:07

scale beginnings in eighteen sixty eight. Anarchism

28:10

came to be a major revolutionary influence of the

28:12

twentieth century and was more widely embraced

28:14

in Spain than other left wing ideas. The

28:16

movement first gained notice in the eighteen seventies

28:19

after a violent incident at the town of Alcoy

28:21

in eighteen seventy three, when anarchists took advantage

28:23

of a strike to spread radical ideas, causing the

28:25

police to fire on the gathered populace.

28:28

A clampdown was enforced that sent the movement

28:30

underground. Consequently, it became largely

28:32

based in rural areas, which were more difficult to

28:34

police. Anarchism was reduced to individual

28:37

acts of terrorism, which in turn were met by repression

28:39

and torture by the state throughout the eighteen eighties and eighteen

28:41

nineties. By the early twentieth

28:43

century, terrorism had given way to a belief in anarcho

28:46

syndicalism. This was the theory that the state

28:48

could be challenged by cooperative action by the

28:50

workers and strikes. The Federation of Workers

28:52

Societies and the of the Spanish Region was formed

28:55

in nineteen hundred. This movement organized

28:57

strikes to exercise political power and was again

28:59

suppressed wage cuts and closures of

29:01

factories in Barcelona in nineteen o nine, together

29:03

with the call up of men for a colonial war in Morocco,

29:06

led to a general strike in the city on twenty

29:08

six of July. This turned out to be a major

29:10

event, with seventeen hundred arrests, attacks

29:12

on railway lines, and anti clericalism

29:15

hostility to the church. Eighty churches

29:17

and monasteries were attacked. The government

29:19

response was swift and merciless, and five leaders

29:21

were executed. And this is a

29:23

big thing with like a particularly the anarchist in

29:25

Spain. They burned a lot of churches down,

29:27

and they kill a lot of Catholic priests, um

29:30

and some of that, a lot of that is them

29:32

murdering people who didn't deserve it, and a lot of

29:34

them that is them murdering people who did because the Catholic

29:37

Church is also terrible, like kind of why

29:39

yeah,

29:43

if you're looking for like a pure good

29:46

guy or a peer victim, you will rarely find

29:48

it in this Like there are right like obviously

29:50

I'm not saying like like there's nuns

29:52

and ship they get murdered, that's not chill. The

29:54

Catholic Church is also responsible for horrible

29:56

repression it's very messy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

29:59

yeah, yeah, they're yeah, they you know, they

30:01

have their own you know,

30:04

both versions of like bastard episode

30:07

of like the like the good

30:09

Christmas one that's like oh we or vianages,

30:12

you know, I'm saying, it's like, oh, that's actually great, you

30:14

know, yeah, and then there's then

30:16

there's this and the Catholic Church

30:18

is so big because you can also you could obviously we

30:20

could do multiple episodes and we probably will at

30:22

some point about the massive and pervasive sexual

30:24

abuse of children that was enabled by the Catholic

30:27

Church. We could could and should also

30:29

do a Christmas episode on the

30:31

significant number of priests and nuns in Latin

30:33

America who were like dogged and constant

30:36

enemies of US imperialism and writing extremism

30:39

during like the period when the US was doing most

30:41

of its fucking around Latin America. All

30:43

of that's part of the church is history that

30:46

like aup of our hospital bids are actually

30:48

Catholic, Like you know, yeah, there's

30:50

like weird mixed Yeah.

30:52

I I'm not a person who wants to like simplify

30:55

all this. It's very messy and this is

30:57

a messy episode. Messy boy

31:00

by this point, when you've got these anarcho syndicalists

31:02

organizing and like and and in some cases

31:05

carrying out not all of them, but some of them carrying

31:07

out terrorist attacks. And some of those attacks

31:09

are on shitty people, and some of those attacks are on people

31:11

who don't deserve it. Like, It's very messy.

31:13

And at the same period of time, you've got

31:15

Gabrielle de Nunzio in Italy occupying

31:17

well, I guess, in Yugoslavia occupying the city

31:20

of Fume. And you've got Mussolini in the early

31:22

stages of forming his black Shirts and sicking

31:24

them on left wing newspapers. This is happening

31:26

contemporaneously to that. You're gonna to

31:28

like, you're gonna have to release with this one a

31:31

vocabulary list. You've

31:33

introduced some new names, some new words.

31:36

We talked about de Nunzio and few and

31:38

I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the different

31:40

factions in Spain. Yeah, you said,

31:43

you said a Narco syndicalism.

31:45

Yeah, anarco. So you know what I'm saying,

31:48

darn O claydo master this bug.

31:51

Anarco cyndicalists. The basic idea

31:53

is that workers need workers

31:56

who work for like different factories or

31:58

whatever, who work and farms were and even need

32:00

to form syndicates together to organize

32:03

kind of like unions, to organize and

32:05

have syndicates that work together against

32:07

the state and against capital in order

32:09

to in some cases just gain better

32:12

wages for workers, in some cases in order

32:14

to revolt against the system. But like it's this idea

32:16

that different or groups of workers

32:18

need to organize themselves and then work with other

32:20

organizations of workers rather than having

32:23

bosses in a strict hierarchy. And they totally

32:25

need to sell drugs. That's why they call a narcos.

32:27

Yeah.

32:31

The good thing about this period is that drugs are

32:33

all legal everywhere. Um So,

32:36

by this point, like I said, de Nunzio is occupying

32:38

Fume and Mussolini's in the early stages of like

32:40

forming the black Shirts. Fascism is getting started

32:43

in Italy um and in Spain,

32:45

though anarchists are by far the largest and

32:47

best organized group of political radicals in

32:49

the country, the communists aren't really a big factor,

32:51

and the right wing isn't really a big factor. It's

32:53

just kind of the anarchist fighting the government. A lot

32:55

of the time. And the Catholic Church, you know,

32:58

is kind of a lot of their like

33:00

supporters are kind of taking the part of right wing

33:02

organizing. But the car List wars kind

33:04

of drained them, so it's not a big deal there. Um.

33:07

And this is not really the case anywhere else that you

33:09

could think of it. It's part of why I find Spain so interesting.

33:12

Fascism, by contrast, had a much slower

33:14

time starting off in Spain. Portugal

33:17

actually beat Spain to the punch when it came

33:19

to like having fascists, um. And

33:21

it was because a proto nationalist group called

33:23

Nationalismo Lusitano was formed

33:26

in Lisbon in nineteen three and it was directly

33:28

inspired by Mussolini's Italian fascism.

33:31

Now a number of other Mussolini want to be sprang

33:33

up in Europe. During this period. You could even call

33:35

Hitler at the time of the Beer Hall Putch kind of like a

33:37

Mussolini imitator. Um.

33:40

But the idea didn't really catch on in Spain,

33:42

not yet. Uh. Spanish intellectuals

33:44

were however, watching Vincent Italy,

33:46

and one of them, a guy named Fua, suggested

33:49

that this new political system might just be the

33:51

thing to help rebuild Spain's failing

33:53

empire. He wrote a fascism

33:55

as a social movement. It gave voice to a

33:57

vein of mysticism and idealism that

33:59

ext to the concept of the patria and

34:01

it's full realization the concept of the fatherland.

34:05

H Coffee shop in Compton.

34:07

Yeah, with some troubling.

34:10

Yeah. So the name of the game

34:12

for FUA was National restoration.

34:14

But Mussolini's fun idea was popular

34:16

outside of right wing circles too. There was actually

34:19

a left wing cattle and separatist movement

34:21

that found themselves drawn to Italian fascism,

34:23

particularly it's emphasis on militia

34:26

based direct action. And they weren't

34:28

fascists. They didn't embrace, for example, Mussolini's

34:30

doctrine of therapeutic violence, you know, the cult

34:33

of violence for violence's sake. Um.

34:35

They just liked, number one, the imagery of

34:37

this non state group of armed people marching

34:39

in order to take power for themselves, and

34:42

they wanted to do that. So, like the left is when

34:44

we talked about this in our first episode, a

34:46

lot of folks who are just kind of hate

34:48

the system play with both fascist

34:50

and anarchist and left and right wing ideas

34:52

throughout this period of time. Um.

34:55

Also, I like that you brought up Portugal because

34:57

I feel like they always fly on it a radar. They

35:00

do. They just everybody just not

35:02

noticing they could just exist in the shadows.

35:04

That was the first in Africa, you know what I'm saying. So

35:06

yeah, like nobody like how talking

35:08

about Portugal. And they're also

35:11

the case of a country that was incredibly

35:13

powerful and colonized a funckload of the

35:15

world and then collapsed before the rest of colonialism

35:18

did. And you see the same thing happened in Portugal

35:20

where all these authoritarians start coming into

35:22

power because there's the sense of like, we need a

35:24

strong man and this is like intellectuals and

35:26

Spain will be like we have to or in Portugal will be like,

35:28

we can't have a republic for a while, we

35:30

have to have basically a dictator come in

35:33

because he needs to fix everything, Like we have all these

35:35

problems, we can't argue, we just need one visionary

35:37

to come And it's not quite

35:40

fascism, but it's it has a lot of elements

35:42

of that, right, So, um, Robert,

35:44

can you hit ad Rick real quickly? You know

35:46

what else has elements of fascism? Sophie,

35:51

no no capitalism

35:55

aspects. Yeah,

35:57

here's we're

36:07

back. We're back from sorry

36:09

if by strong man you mean a

36:11

strong Sophie that keeps us in placed

36:14

in Yes, these ads

36:16

have elements of fascism, but

36:18

it's a good fascism. It's a fast

36:21

it's a fast shit fashion

36:24

fashion, fashionist word, which

36:26

is fine. Fine, it's

36:28

fine, it's fine. And we because

36:32

yeah, we appreciate our podcast

36:34

dictators, sofi our podcast

36:36

trus with an iron fist.

36:39

Uh. It does operate a system

36:41

of political re education camps,

36:44

but that is a story for another episode.

36:47

So in late nine, Spain

36:49

gained its first real fascist party,

36:51

the Tresistas. They wore a blue uniform

36:54

because blue is the color of the working class for

36:57

the right wing, red as the colors the working class

36:59

for the left wing. Like, I know, I know, it's

37:01

yeah. Uh and we got it backwards

37:04

here, which is weird, right. Um.

37:06

Yeah, there were a blue uniform and they hope to spread

37:09

throughout the country, but the organization fizzled.

37:11

There just wasn't any real interest in fascism in

37:13

Spain in this period. Now, while

37:15

political fascism failed to gain meaningful

37:17

purchase in Spain during this time, fascist

37:20

thought and inclinations were spreading among

37:22

a lot of influential Spanish thought leaders,

37:24

and particularly within the military

37:26

and military officers. Much

37:28

of this had to do with the rise of the revolutionary

37:30

left in the eighteen nineties, these anarchists that I

37:33

was talking about. In his landmark book

37:35

Fascism in Spain, scholar Stanley

37:37

Pain notes that the military resistance to

37:39

the left had less to do with politics than you might expect.

37:42

Officers largely accepted moderate left

37:44

wing social and economic aims, and there

37:46

was even a strong strain of anti capitalist

37:48

thought among Spanish military leaders. Despite

37:51

this, Pain rights army officers demanded

37:53

suppression of the left, disorder, violence,

37:56

and subversion of national unity.

37:59

Again, it's this the

38:01

military's being problem with the left is they're disordered

38:03

right there, trying to tear down this system, and we're

38:06

we're doing pretty well in this system. And it's the thing that

38:08

is always the case, right um.

38:12

The military itself was also heavily divided

38:14

in this time, not along political lines, but between

38:16

bureaucratic officers on the peninsula

38:18

itself and combat officers who had spent

38:21

time fighting in Spain's last colonial possession,

38:24

Northern Morocco. So Spain's

38:26

most of its empires has collapsed right now, but

38:28

they have northern Morocco. And Spain had

38:30

gotten Morocco basically during

38:32

the last stages of the scramble for Africa, and

38:34

it was it was given to them by France

38:36

and England, who you might notice don't

38:38

have the right to give Morocco to any but

38:41

they did, and

38:43

it was due to like diplomatic support that

38:45

Spain gave them. Like it was literally like it

38:47

was them the way that like a normal person be

38:49

like, hey man, I'll help you move if

38:52

you help me set up my sound system this week.

38:54

Like that's how Spain got Morocco. It's very

38:57

yeah, it's you know, it's it's a bullshit. It's

38:59

also a beautiful country, gorgeous

39:01

yeah. Um.

39:04

Now, so they were given the right to occupy

39:06

the land by France and England in nineteen o six and

39:08

exchange for diplomatic support, and Spain's conquest

39:10

of Morocco was kind of like the first one night

39:13

stand you have after a breakup. They

39:15

just had like a big you know, they

39:18

needed something to boost their confidence after losing

39:20

to the United States. Um

39:23

and Spain turned out to be pretty bad

39:25

at conquering Morocco. Their control

39:27

never amounted to much more than a few towns,

39:29

cities, and roads on the coast. Much of

39:31

the territory and its people refused to yield,

39:34

and in nineteen one, a charismatic

39:36

Moroccan leader named Abdul Kareem rose

39:38

an army and launched what became known as the

39:41

Riffy Insurrection. For a time,

39:43

it was the strongest rebellion against colonialism

39:45

anywhere in the Afro Asian world. Like, these guys

39:48

actually do great um

39:50

for a while, you know, uh Now,

39:52

The war attracted ambitious young Spanish

39:55

officers eager to make a name for themselves.

39:57

One of these guys was a fellow named Francisco

40:00

Franco, who rose to the rank of colonel fighting

40:02

the insurgents. Now,

40:04

Francisco and a lot of young officers were

40:06

very frustrated by the corrupt and bureaucratic nature

40:08

of the military, which had not seen a major reorganization

40:11

or modernization in decades. It was a lot,

40:13

in a lot of ways like an Napoleonic army with you

40:15

know, somewhat better guns, which is why part

40:17

of the way they're getting their asses kicked now Franco

40:20

and a number of other officers formed military

40:22

councils of like minded officers and

40:24

lobbied for reforms, and some of those reforms were

40:26

successful, but nothing they did was enough

40:28

to write the inertia. In early nineteen

40:31

one, the Spanish army launched an offensive

40:33

into northern Morocco from the coastal territories

40:35

they held. Now, because the people in charge

40:37

were idiots, they didn't properly prepare lines

40:39

of communication, and they almost immediately

40:42

advanced beyond their supply lines. No

40:44

defensible forts were left behind to secure

40:46

supply routes or water, and on July

40:48

twenty, after five days of skirmish

40:50

is, a force of five thousand Spanish troops were

40:52

attacked by three thousand Riff fighters.

40:55

This should have been an easy win for European

40:57

military, but the Spanish had poor organization

41:00

and we're basically out of AMMO because they'd outrun their

41:02

supply lines. So the riffs. The

41:04

riff eat like overrun the Spanish

41:06

army and they advanced like several hundred

41:09

miles, slaughtering Spanish soldiers, taking

41:11

over supply depots and positions as they

41:13

go. The Spanish army shatters

41:15

entirely. They lose more than thirteen

41:18

thousand men wounded in a matter of days, and

41:20

the Riffs suffer around eight hundred casualties.

41:22

This is like a like one

41:24

of the worst defeats suffered by any colonial

41:27

power in Africa. It is they get their assets

41:29

handed to mm

41:32

hmm. The defeat was so

41:34

extensive and so shameful that the Spanish

41:37

general committed suicide in the field and his

41:39

remains were never found. Um,

41:41

like it is they it is yeah,

41:45

and the Riff. This whole instruction is fascinating to

41:47

read about because like these guys fucking have it on

41:49

lockdown, you know. Um,

41:51

it is hard to imagine how shattering this

41:54

was to the people of Spain and their image of themselves,

41:56

and how much it disrupted Spanish politics.

41:59

The military it was, of course, enraged, and even

42:01

though the failures were entirely their own, they

42:03

blame their failures on the support of the civilian

42:06

government. It's y'all's fault. Yeah, well

42:11

we're bad at war. Wrong with

42:13

my cheese? Mo? Yeah,

42:15

well I didn't lose this war.

42:18

Yeah yeah. I mean you see it on the right here

42:20

where it's like it was the liberals and like the left that

42:22

lost us the wars and no, you were we

42:24

suck at this. We're at it. Look

42:27

man, take it on it shi, Okay, we're

42:29

bad at it and it's bad. It was

42:31

you shouldn't have been at the first place. Yeah,

42:34

if we fucking stopped this ship in like

42:36

I don't know, nineteen forty five, we'd still

42:38

be like, you know, what we're good at is war. Don't

42:41

have to do it often, you're good at it when

42:43

we show uh

42:48

now again. Yeah,

42:50

it really fox up a lot in Spain

42:53

at this period of time. Um, And

42:55

obviously the Liberal government is also enraged,

42:57

largely at the cost in Spanish life and treasure

42:59

in this colonial adventure. And in early September

43:02

nine, three Liberal ministers

43:04

resign in protests because the military draws

43:06

up plans for a new offensive and Morocco and they're

43:09

like, come on, guys, like you just got

43:11

your asses kicked. This isn't terrible ideas.

43:14

Fellas can

43:16

not take the message. It's

43:23

bad. Bad catalysts

43:26

who didn't even really want to be part of Spain, let

43:28

alone send their sons to die and fucking

43:30

Morocco. For Spain held a huge

43:32

rally in Barcelona where the Spanish flag

43:34

was dragged through the ground. This really

43:37

pisses off the military, and it pisses

43:39

off a bunch of senior generals, most prominently

43:41

a career military man from a career

43:44

military family named Miguel Primo

43:46

de Rivera, now as the Captain

43:48

General of Barcelona, the guy in charge of

43:50

the military in Barcelona. De Rivera was

43:52

a desk officer, not an African veteran,

43:55

and that's kind of like the break between

43:57

the army. But he sides with

43:59

the Africa and veterans, and he sees this liberal

44:01

government as having failed his illustrious Spanish

44:04

army. He also had seen Mussolini's

44:06

March on Rome in nineteen two, and while he

44:08

is not a fascist, he really likes

44:10

Mussolini and the BArch on Rome convinces

44:13

him that with the army behind him, he could force

44:15

an into the parliamentary politics that he that

44:17

felt were holding the military back. And

44:20

I'm gonna quote now from a book called Fascism

44:22

in Spain about

44:24

like this revolt that de Riveria leads. The

44:26

revolt began in Barcelona as a classic pronunca

44:29

meento, I'm sorry spain um

44:31

with a local takeover in the Catalan capital

44:33

by its Captain General, who called upon the rest

44:36

of the army and other patriotic Spaniards to rally

44:38

round. In fact, also in the traditional style,

44:40

all but one of the other captains general at first

44:42

sat on their fence. The pronunca miento

44:46

succeeded above all because the Liberal government

44:48

did almost nothing to defend itself. The issue

44:50

was finally decided two days later by the crown

44:52

as Alfonso the Eight, without invoking

44:54

constitutional limits or procedures, transferred

44:57

power to what would become the first direct military

44:59

dictator leadership in Spanish history. Primo

45:02

de Rivera gave no evidence of any explicit

45:04

theory or plan. His assumption of power

45:06

was at first predicated on a ninety day emergency

45:08

military directory to deal with such

45:11

problems as attempted subversion, the stalemate,

45:13

and Morocco administrative corruption and

45:15

political reform. In fact, his only

45:17

professed ideology was constitutional

45:20

liberalism. He insisted that the Constitution

45:22

of eighteen seventy six remained the law of the land,

45:24

and initially denied that he was a dictator

45:26

in any genuine sense, insisting in his

45:28

first public statement, no one can with

45:30

justice apply that term to me of

45:33

course everyone since has called him

45:35

a dictator. Yeah, the years

45:37

of Yeah, what is it about?

45:40

I have two questions about this, Like I

45:42

forget what figure? What what history? And I

45:44

heard to say it, but he was just talking about like just

45:47

generals, like they all

45:49

kind of have this like diva gene, like

45:52

just just kind of Diva's you know what I'm saying.

45:54

Like it's kind of hard to like what

45:57

is that? So that's like my first thing. It's

46:00

very deep in in Western civilization

46:03

particularly right, Like you have to look

46:05

back to Rome at this stuff. So the way generals

46:07

in Rome were treated. Number one, if

46:09

you were general in Rome and you had a major

46:11

military victory, the Senate would

46:13

vote for you to have what was called a triumph, which

46:16

is where you were all but in

46:18

all but named king for a day of Rome, and there

46:20

was the whole city had this huge

46:22

party for you, and all of your trophies

46:24

of war were dragged through the streets and like because

46:26

you were so powerful and

46:28

so like basically worshiped that day.

46:31

It was one guy's whole job to stand

46:33

next to you the whole time and throughout the day whisper

46:35

to you you will die at one point, like you're going

46:37

to die some day like that was like like

46:39

that that, like and Rome

46:42

constantly had civil wars that were the result

46:44

of generals taking their armies and taking power.

46:46

It happened all of the fucking time. It's

46:49

why you got Caesar, It's why it stopped

46:51

being a republic. You know. One

46:53

of the reasons why the United States military

46:55

is organized the way it is and why there's

46:58

such if you look at like some of the ship that you the military

47:00

was saying at the end of Trump's time, like why they had

47:02

so many statements about the military having no role

47:04

in the elections is because from the beginning,

47:07

the founders of this country were like, that's going to be a

47:09

problems. We're going to have a military. That's

47:11

gonna be And at first a lot of them were like, we shouldn't

47:13

have a military. Why would you, like it always is

47:15

a problem, Let's just have a bunch of militias, you

47:17

know, which there's something to be said for that, yeah,

47:21

anyway, but yeah,

47:23

yeah, they are diva's like, if you're going to take

47:25

the responsibility for the lives of tens of thousands

47:28

of men into your own personal control, you've

47:30

got to be a little bit of a diva. Yeah

47:32

it seemed like yeah,

47:35

yeah, so obviously everyone today

47:37

calls Primoti Rivera a dictatorship. The years

47:39

of his leadership are generally known in Spanish

47:42

history as la dictadura. Uh and

47:44

this was meant like his His coming

47:46

to power was met by a lot less resistance

47:48

than you might guess. Spain was exhausted

47:50

by years of political bickering, foreign policy

47:52

setbacks, in economic frustration. Several

47:55

years earlier, political theorists in Portugal

47:57

had talked about the need to bring in a temporary dictator,

47:59

what it called an iron surgeon, to

48:02

solve intractable problems. And Primo

48:04

de Rivere was one of a lot of strongmen who came

48:06

to power throughout Europe in this period who weren't fascists,

48:09

although they often admired fascist and

48:11

took some ideas from them. Um.

48:13

But de Rivera doesn't really have an ideology.

48:15

He's just wants to like fix things and figures

48:17

is enough of a narcissist that he's like, I know how

48:19

to do this. Um. And while de Rivera

48:22

wasn't a fascist, his brief reign would help

48:24

further lay the groundwork for fascism

48:26

in Spain. And the war that he brought

48:28

to Morocco was in many ways a prelude

48:31

of fascist wars of extermination to come,

48:33

only it was waged with the help of his allies,

48:36

the French. Oh

48:38

yeah, after the Spanish

48:41

army broke an annual which is that big battle

48:43

where they lose thirteen thousand dudes.

48:46

The Abdel Kareem, who was the guy

48:48

in charge of the reef Um and his

48:51

his his like, I don't know what you want to call them,

48:53

I'll call them revolutionaries established

48:55

a republic. Now. France, who

48:57

just fought a whole war, you know, World

48:59

War One was the

49:01

right of national self determination and

49:03

who were a republic themselves, did

49:06

not like that Abdel Creem and his riff had established

49:08

a republican Morocco because they're afraid

49:10

they own a bunch of Africa. They own a bunch of Africa

49:12

near Morocco. People

49:15

are going to hear that there's a republic that isn't

49:17

run by Europe and

49:20

they're gonna they're they're not gonna want to have

49:22

us in charge anymore. Like wait,

49:24

option yeah, option

49:28

yeah, yeah, we can't

49:30

have a democracy and not you. Yeah

49:33

kind of like that, Yeah, France is like,

49:36

No, that's not that's not gonna happen. Not

49:38

an option, Not an option. So

49:40

they decided to enter the war against the Riff

49:42

on Spain's side to crush the rebels.

49:45

In nineteen twenty five, France and de Rivera's

49:47

reformed Spanish army begin a counter

49:49

offensive against the Riff. Now leading things

49:52

on the French side was a fello named Marshall

49:54

Patain, hero of the Battle of verdund

49:56

during World War One and the guy who would

49:58

become the leader of v Ants during World

50:00

War Two. He's the guy who collaborates with the Nazis.

50:03

Um now, but tell you at this point, yeah,

50:05

I know, he's a real piece of Shitmpkins

50:07

didn't kill this guy. He's a He's

50:10

a war hero at this point too, though, because he he

50:12

led France through the battle. Ever, Dunn is,

50:14

if you're making a shortlist of the very

50:16

worst battles in the entire history

50:19

of human warfare, for Done might be number

50:21

one. You know, Stred. There's a couple of other like,

50:23

but it's it is, it's in, it's in the running.

50:26

You know, it's horrible, Like a million people

50:28

die, It's a terrible, terrible battle. So

50:30

he's a big war hero, and when he decides

50:32

he wants to go to Morocco, the French government

50:35

is going to give him everything he asks for. So he

50:37

puts together a force of a hundred and fifty

50:39

thousand men to face Abdel Kareem's

50:41

tribesmen, who were very well organized

50:43

and good fighters, but they numbered just twenty

50:45

thousand. The offensive started

50:48

with one of the first Yeah, amphibious

50:50

landings. Yeah, there's no like Gandalf

50:52

showing up and helping. No,

50:55

we don't, we don't. We don't get a Gandolf in this story.

50:58

So you are outgunned and out man.

51:00

Yeah, you guys are just like you're fucked. It's it's

51:02

a bummer, um. And this amphibious

51:05

landing is started spearheaded by young

51:07

colonel named Francisco Franco, who

51:09

led the soldiers of the Spanish Foreign Legion

51:11

into battle. Now you

51:13

have seen the Spanish Foreign Legion. Um.

51:16

Everyone in America pretty much did, because

51:18

at the start of the coronavirus lockdown, when

51:20

Spain had a lockdown and brought in the military to help,

51:22

there were pictures of a bunch of very

51:24

jacked and very handsome Spanish

51:26

soldiers and incredibly tight fitting uniforms

51:29

marching down the streets of Barcelona, and

51:31

a bunch of US liberals were like, oh my god, they're

51:33

so hot. Why can't we have those soldiers here. I'm

51:35

gonna tell you the backstory of those soldiers

51:38

because those were the men of the Spanish Foreign Legion,

51:40

and it's not a great back story.

51:44

So it was crazy. It was crazy about like

51:46

the geography

51:49

right now, I don't notice backstory that you're about

51:51

to say, but I'm just picture in the geography because

51:54

off of Costa del Soul at the edge

51:56

of of the

51:58

edge of Spain to the put Tangiers

52:00

in Morocco, it's just the Mereditraneans.

52:03

It's a ninety minute boat ride. Yeah, it's

52:06

it's not far. It's almost like you could sit in

52:08

Morocco and watch him, like, yeah, you come

52:10

to Spanish. You can get to Spain, Spain

52:14

to Africa in the time you would get a quarter of

52:16

the way across Texas, right, Like it's

52:18

nothing, it really is. Yeah, do

52:21

they know who designed the uniforms? We're

52:24

going to talk about white uniforms. Look the way

52:26

they do. Yeah. So the

52:28

Spanish Foreign Legion were founded

52:30

Sophie, he's not a pointy

52:33

motherfucker. No, No, they're hot.

52:35

They're hot. They're hot. They're they're uniforms,

52:38

they're like a nice they are they

52:41

are, but

52:43

they are, they are hot. Nobody's arguing

52:45

that they're not hot subjectively

52:47

way too tight. Yeah, no,

52:49

one is arguing that they're not good looking.

52:51

Man, We're not going to disagree

52:53

about this, but problematic, So

52:56

they're found. The Spanish Foreign Legion was founded in

52:58

nineteen nineteen and member cree of the French

53:00

Foreign Legion, since Spain was also mimicking

53:03

French ambitions in North Africa at this point.

53:05

The founder of the Legion was a guy named Milan

53:07

Astray, a veteran of Spain's brutal

53:09

war in the Philippines and of the fighting in Morocco,

53:12

and he wanted to create a colonial army

53:14

for Spain that they could use to regain some

53:16

of their lost glory. He created

53:18

an interlocking series as he founded, like

53:21

when he founded the Foreign Legion,

53:23

he wanted them to be brutal, because if you're going to

53:25

keep a colonial possession, you have to murder

53:28

a lot of people, right, That's how colonial

53:30

ism, where you have to kill a lot of people, and

53:32

so your soldiers have to be soulless,

53:35

broken men in order to gun down the proper

53:37

number of children to keep an empire. Um,

53:39

these he wanted his shock troops. And

53:42

yeah, I mean in fine as hell. Um she

53:45

just sent that. Good God,

53:47

God, I know, I know. Like

53:51

the reaction is like

53:54

the Spanish foreign Legion today

53:56

look like characters in like, they look

53:58

like characters in a pornoch GRapi. They don't

54:00

look like soldiers. They look like fake

54:03

soldiers from a sleazy porn es. Um.

54:05

Yes, yeah, and they kind of

54:07

did. Then, Solana Stray in

54:09

order to make sure these guys are as brutal as possible,

54:12

creates for them an interlocking series of hazing

54:14

rituals with the goal of like shattering

54:16

these men's souls. And he wants

54:18

to explicitly is like, I want to separate

54:21

these men from their past lives and

54:23

unify them in quote brotherhood and death.

54:26

Now, Milana STRAI

54:28

was a big fan of the Bushido code

54:30

of the Samurai. Yeah,

54:32

I know, I know all of these fucking guys, and

54:35

he cribs from Bushito um to

54:37

write his own legionary creed. What's

54:39

emphasized tireless duty, bodily

54:42

hardness which is why they're all jacked, unconditional

54:45

brotherhood, and fighting to the death.

54:47

And I'm gonna quote from a write up and Prospect magazine

54:50

on the Foreign Legion here. Many

54:52

of these themes were common across fascist movements

54:54

and the military's they influenced, but others were distinct

54:57

to the Legion. Legionary swore to become

54:59

bright grooms of death from the

55:01

title of a popular song about a legionnaire's

55:03

sacrifice in the reef, renouncing

55:05

familial and romantic bonds and sublimating

55:08

them into loyalty to each other, and the Legion's

55:10

flag. You are married to death. Death

55:13

is your wife. She's like, I'm

55:15

married to the streets. You're not married

55:18

to the game. You're married

55:20

to death. So if you think these

55:22

guys are a hot, I have bad news for you. They're

55:24

fucking the Grim Reaper. Yeah,

55:26

they're sorry. You don't. You don't attract

55:28

him. You are to a

55:30

laugh for me. That's not my type.

55:33

Yeah. Um, so these these

55:35

guys, the reason why they have these shirts with

55:37

like really open weird necklines,

55:40

Um, is that. Sorry, I'm gonna need

55:42

you to rephrase that. What's

55:45

about that, it's

55:49

they're showing it off. They are

55:51

showing it off. It's also meant to

55:53

emphasize their willingness to fight in the hot

55:55

desert air um and the green

55:58

is from like the color it's like a camouflage.

56:01

Yeah, this

56:04

is what I wish was normal,

56:08

Sophie. They are married to the concept of

56:10

murdering children. I'm sorry, I mean, I'm

56:12

not here for that, but right

56:18

said, the pants are subjectively

56:20

too tight. But like, go ahead,

56:23

this is not functional. It's a

56:26

nice pastel mint color. You

56:29

know. No, today this

56:31

uniform is like functional. Yea.

56:33

Not you have to be married to

56:35

death because nothing

56:37

about this says you ready to survive, Like

56:40

kind of like if the tin Man from

56:43

The Wizard of Oz worked at Baskin

56:45

Robbins and had to go do a porno shoot

56:47

later. So

56:50

Franco and Franco

56:53

and his foreign legionment were the tip of

56:55

the spear of the French and Spanish governments thrust

56:57

into the heart of Morocco.

57:02

Yeah, I know, I know, Sophie,

57:05

but we're about to talk about genocide. Okay,

57:07

okay, but you don't know what you just did that. You

57:09

know what we need to take a break. The

57:12

spear doesn't just mean did

57:15

Alright, we're gonna go to ads. We're

57:17

gonna go to ads, and then we're going to talk

57:19

about a colonial genocide. Yes,

57:28

alright, alright, we're back, and we

57:30

are no longer talking about hot

57:33

guys. We're talking about the genocide those

57:35

hot guys helped commit. Well

57:37

kind of brought it up like that. You

57:40

know what you're doing, bro, I don't.

57:42

I'm trying to emphasize that sometimes

57:45

things that look nice are also fashy

57:47

as hell, and sometimes

57:50

sometimes the good looks will stick it to you.

57:52

So the overwhelming force, well,

57:56

overwhelming force, No, that's anyway.

57:59

Yeah, they just rust their Okay,

58:01

goddamn, okay, Okay,

58:04

I know I'm trying to talk about the use of chemical

58:07

war weapons upon civilians. But I've

58:10

never wished Jamie Loftus was here more.

58:13

I am very glad she completely

58:18

She's a professional at this, Chris,

58:24

the French in the Spanish have so many

58:27

soldiers in so much high grade

58:29

military hardware that there is no chance

58:31

the Riff are going to actually win. Victory

58:34

was only a matter of time. But de Rivera

58:36

and Marshall Pataine were not willing to wait,

58:38

and so they started using chemical weapons to

58:40

slaughter tribes people in mass and they're not using

58:42

them on military forces. They first started

58:44

bombarding the city of Tangier with

58:47

fos gene gas, which is a

58:49

deadly chemical weapon. It's what they used

58:52

in the trenches. It chokes people to death on their own,

58:54

rotting lungs um. It's horrific

58:56

stuff. The Spanish army began pounding

58:58

the outskirts of the town uh and as

59:00

soon as Spanish forces started gassing tribespeople,

59:03

other commanders in the country begged to be able

59:05

to do the same. One Spanish general

59:07

wrote of his desire to use them, them being

59:09

chemical weapons with delight. This

59:11

was all very good for France, who profited

59:14

not just from stability in Northern Africa,

59:16

but because they were willing they were selling Spain

59:18

the gas. They also profited financially.

59:20

I'm gonna quote from an article on the website r S

59:22

twenty one here. It was in

59:25

fact a French business Schneider, which in

59:27

nineteen twenty two helped to open a plant for the production

59:29

of toxic shells in Malila, and indeed

59:32

the French made an official request. One

59:34

French General leot Lee made an official request

59:37

to his supervisors for provisions of chemical

59:39

weapons in June ninet, justifying

59:41

that the use of these munitions with their toxic

59:44

power, allows us to spare human lives

59:46

during our attacks. In face of these bombs

59:48

dropped in the most populated regions of the territories

59:51

controlled by Abdel Cream, the Riffians

59:53

tried to fight back with non explosive projectiles

59:56

as well as making shells charged with pepper power,

59:58

with little success. Right up to the end of

1:00:00

the Riff War, the Spanish army would continue

1:00:02

to use these lethal gases with the support of the

1:00:04

French forces with martial Pataine at their

1:00:06

head. In Morocco, so spare

1:00:09

human life, they attacked civilian targets

1:00:12

with chemical weapons. They're like, so, look

1:00:14

hear me out. I didn't shoot

1:00:16

him, I gassed him

1:00:18

and his family. He just he died

1:00:20

from the air. Yeah, it's some real We had

1:00:23

to destroy the village to save it. Vibes

1:00:25

yea. So victory

1:00:27

and Morocco started the dictator's time

1:00:29

and power off. We're talking about de Rivera

1:00:31

here. With widespread popular support, he

1:00:33

created a political party, the up the

1:00:35

Patriotic Union, whose motto was monarchy,

1:00:38

fatherland, and religion. His mouthpieces

1:00:40

at the UP declared that the De Riveri dictatorship

1:00:43

was only a transitional thing, and that the military

1:00:45

dictatorship would eventually be replaced

1:00:47

with a civil dictatorship. So just

1:00:49

military dictatorship, just temporary. We got

1:00:51

a civil dictator It's gonna be fine. It's

1:00:53

great to be a good, totally reasonable

1:00:55

kind of dictatorships.

1:00:58

It's cool, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah,

1:01:01

Now this would be difficult. Yeah. So the

1:01:04

Patriotic Union or the UP, was

1:01:06

mostly composed of middle class, conservative

1:01:08

Catholic Spaniards, and historian

1:01:10

Stanley Pain notes that in some provinces

1:01:13

sectors of the old political elite did join and

1:01:15

dominate, but the organization also incorporated

1:01:17

ordinary middle class people who had not previously

1:01:19

been politically active. So, in spite

1:01:22

of the fact that electoral politics didn't

1:01:24

exist during De Riverious dictatorship, it

1:01:26

served a purpose of rallying and in some ways

1:01:28

activating the middle class as a political entity.

1:01:31

The up's goal was to ensure some

1:01:33

form of right wing dictatorship remained the

1:01:36

permanent government of Spain, and much

1:01:38

of their support came from their victory in Morocco

1:01:40

and their success in for the first time, igniting

1:01:42

widespread nationalism among the Spanish

1:01:45

population. The UP held the country's

1:01:47

first mass rallies, and for a while De

1:01:49

Rivera and his party were popular, but

1:01:52

by nineteen twenty nine, the worldwide economic

1:01:54

crash had started to hit Spain as well. The

1:01:56

wealthy financiers who backed his regime

1:01:58

started to sour on him and some of his interventionalist

1:02:01

economic policies. At the same time,

1:02:03

De Rivera faced growing resistance from students,

1:02:05

who were a political factor for the first time in Spain

1:02:08

due to the fact that the dictatorship had reformed

1:02:10

the education system. In his last

1:02:12

year's in power, Rivera sought to stay dictator

1:02:15

by taking a leaf from the book of a man he idolized,

1:02:17

Benito Mussolini. And this is the first time de Rivera

1:02:20

actually kind of goes fascist. I'm

1:02:22

gonna quote from the history of Spanish fascism

1:02:24

here. Italian diplomatic correspondence

1:02:26

from Madrid in the final days of nineteen twenty nine

1:02:29

reported that Primo de Rivera was indicating that

1:02:31

he would soon begin a fundamental reorganization

1:02:33

of the UP along the lines of the Fascist

1:02:36

Party. This reorganization never got

1:02:38

started as Javier to Sell and Ismael

1:02:40

Sas have written with the Spanish dictator felt

1:02:42

for Mussolini was considerably more than platonic

1:02:44

admiration. He was pathetically incapable

1:02:47

of transferring Italian institutions to Spain

1:02:49

and was often infantile in his effusive expressions

1:02:51

to Mussolini. So he wants to

1:02:53

be a fascist by this point, and he's

1:02:55

like, he's kind of simping on on

1:02:58

Mussolini. He being, yeah,

1:03:01

just like you're so good. I just want

1:03:03

to do what you do. Why can't I be as cool

1:03:05

as you? Um, It's it's kind

1:03:07

of sad. He's an

1:03:09

old man too at this point. He's not doing great.

1:03:11

Um, it is very

1:03:13

weird. He's a Mussolini stand hardcore,

1:03:16

but he just doesn't have what it takes to be a fascist

1:03:18

dictator. He just he's only a normal dictator.

1:03:20

You know, you hate to see it. In

1:03:23

January of nineteen thirty, this dictator

1:03:25

was ship canned by his king, who followed him out

1:03:27

the door about a year or so later. Because popular

1:03:30

support for the monarchy collapsed as a result

1:03:32

of the dictatorship, for a brief awkward

1:03:34

period, Spain lacked any kind of legitimate

1:03:37

government. It's king in Parliament were gone.

1:03:39

A short succession of strong men held powers

1:03:41

that national political elite struggled to cobble

1:03:43

together some kind of functional government. The

1:03:45

whole experience further radicalized the middle

1:03:48

class, this time activating large numbers

1:03:50

of Spanish liberals who advocated in

1:03:52

the streets for a republican government. In

1:03:54

nineteen thirty one, the Spanish Republic

1:03:57

was born. Now, this did not thrill

1:03:59

a lot of people, like it throw people a

1:04:01

lot of people, but it also kind of piste off a

1:04:03

lot of people, particularly young military officers

1:04:06

who had supported the dictatorship. Um

1:04:08

Francisco Franco was one of these frustrated

1:04:10

men. He'd been a close student of Primo

1:04:13

de Rivera and had liked his unofficial title

1:04:15

of national boss, like

1:04:17

hefe nacionalism, yeah, that's

1:04:20

yeah, yeah, hefe nacionale is kind of what they

1:04:23

and he was like, I like that idea, I like me and everybody's

1:04:25

boss. Yeah.

1:04:28

The years of dictatorship proved to Franco

1:04:30

that a strong man could unify Spain,

1:04:32

bring law and order in military victory.

1:04:35

The only error that de Rivera had made

1:04:37

in Franco's mind was that he didn't have any kind of ideology.

1:04:40

Franco didn't really believe in anything other than like,

1:04:42

I'm the guy who can fix Spain. And

1:04:44

when you don't have that concerted

1:04:46

kind of ideology, you can't hold together

1:04:49

a dictatorship very long unless you're willing

1:04:51

to be brutal and promote. You

1:04:53

know, he was not a great guy, very

1:04:55

brutal in Morocco, but was not willing

1:04:57

to be brutal in Spain. Not really not paired

1:05:00

to any other dictator. You know, Franco, Franco

1:05:03

was with him in Spain, I mean was with him

1:05:05

in Morocco, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Franco was

1:05:07

like he was a colonel in Morocco and

1:05:10

so and one of the people will say that like de Rivera

1:05:13

was a bloodless dictator, which again, looking

1:05:15

at what happened in Morocco, not true.

1:05:17

But if you're living in Spain, he's not mass

1:05:20

executing people, he's not even mass imprisoning

1:05:22

people. He's not hosting huge

1:05:25

executions of his political enemies. He's

1:05:27

a pretty if you're in Spain, a

1:05:29

pretty mild dictator, about as

1:05:31

mild as they get this century, you know, which

1:05:33

is not to like whitewash him. Ready. I think it's just like

1:05:36

part of why he doesn't stay in power along. You know, you've

1:05:38

gotta be more brutal than he is

1:05:40

if you're going to hold power as a dictator. Now,

1:05:43

Primo de Rivera's fall from power was also

1:05:45

a lesson to Benito Mussolini. It convinced

1:05:47

him that his regime could not afford to compromise

1:05:50

its power at all with an elected parliament.

1:05:52

This was in Musolin. He saw basically

1:05:54

like, ah, the only option I have to become so authoritarian

1:05:57

that no one can push me out. And as a result,

1:05:59

De rivere As fall was a major It pushes

1:06:01

Mussolini to spring towards more radical authoritarian

1:06:04

policy in nineteen thirty two. Um,

1:06:08

all of this stuff is interconnected, you know, just like everything,

1:06:10

just like just like the Syrian Civil War is

1:06:12

directly connected to why President Donald Trump

1:06:14

became the president, you know, like it's

1:06:16

all everything always is connected. That's the way the world

1:06:19

works. The Spanish Republic would

1:06:21

have just five years of pre war existence.

1:06:23

For its first two years, the socialists

1:06:26

dominated the government, so not like hardcore

1:06:28

communists, but definitely like left wing.

1:06:31

Um. The first two years the left is dominating

1:06:33

the Republic for the next to a center

1:06:35

right counter reformation pushes back

1:06:37

against the gains of the left. The

1:06:39

tug of war was largely in politics between

1:06:42

socialists, Republican centrists,

1:06:44

and Catholic conservatives, and the Catholic

1:06:46

Conservatives, starting in nineteen thirty three, were

1:06:48

represented by Spain's first mass Catholic

1:06:50

political party and first really powerful

1:06:53

right wing political party, the c E d

1:06:55

A. And I'm not even gonna try to tell you what it stands

1:06:57

when we call him SEDA. You know, that's the that's

1:07:00

the that's the birth of like the organized

1:07:02

political right in Spain in a way that actually is able

1:07:04

to take some power. The SIDA

1:07:06

was the primary home for the conservative

1:07:09

middle class who had been radicalized first

1:07:11

by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and

1:07:13

next by the early years of left wing power

1:07:15

in the Republic. And they're being radicalized both by the fact

1:07:17

that the socialists or in power and they're doing

1:07:19

the things socialists do, which is in part to say

1:07:22

the church is not going to have power, like we're

1:07:24

not going to like let the Catholic Church run things,

1:07:26

but also by the like the anarchists who are

1:07:28

still fucking up churches and stuff in this period

1:07:30

of time. So it's it's the same it is here. You've

1:07:33

got kind of these more moderate people on the left,

1:07:35

and then you've got people on the left in the streets doing things

1:07:37

that scare these religious conservatives

1:07:40

and make them decide like we have to take back our

1:07:42

country. That happens in Spain too.

1:07:44

It's a familiar story again to everyone

1:07:46

listening. Um.

1:07:48

Now, a number of socialist laws

1:07:50

were passed that clamped down on the power and prestige

1:07:52

of the church in this period, and obviously they were again widespread,

1:07:55

like there were anarchists attacked fifty

1:07:57

convicts in Madrid in nineteen thirty one, and

1:07:59

again this helps energize the right.

1:08:01

It's also if you're a Spanish anarchist who

1:08:03

grew up living under a Catholic church that did

1:08:05

all of the kind of fucked up ship we know the Catholic Church

1:08:08

to do. Nobody's again, nobody

1:08:12

is a monster here. While there are sponsors, we're

1:08:14

about to talk about them, um. But

1:08:16

yeah, this enraged fundamentalists and the c e

1:08:18

d a like because of how

1:08:21

angry they were at the left. The SITA

1:08:23

is never a party that accepts the necessity

1:08:26

of democracy, right, they want to

1:08:28

take power and institute a Catholic state.

1:08:30

They don't believe the Republic that they're participating

1:08:33

in is legitimate, which also sounds familiar

1:08:35

to her dominions.

1:08:37

Yeah the dominionists. Okay, yeah,

1:08:39

yeah, Now again, while this is all

1:08:41

going on, the radical left in Spain tried

1:08:44

several times to carry out insurrections

1:08:46

against the Republic. So the anarchists, because

1:08:48

they're anarchists, do try to overthrow the Republic

1:08:50

because they don't like the Republic either for different

1:08:52

reasons than the c e d a UM.

1:08:54

In some cases they even fought alongside

1:08:57

communists. Communists and anarchists are pretty good at

1:08:59

working together in this period compared to how

1:09:01

they'll be later. Uh. They attack police

1:09:03

stations in nineteen thirty four, they succeed

1:09:05

in taking over large chunks of the state of

1:09:07

a sturious. This insurrection got

1:09:09

far enough that the Republic called in their Imperial

1:09:12

shock troops the Foreign Legion,

1:09:14

who brutally suppressed the revolt by massacring

1:09:16

basically everybody they could, um,

1:09:19

just gunning people down in huge numbers.

1:09:21

The thing the only thing that they do, you

1:09:23

know, that's why you have these guys to

1:09:25

murder everybody, to put everybody

1:09:28

down. Everybody shut up when I get there,

1:09:30

everybody air by sitting down. We

1:09:32

do not have machine guns because we're

1:09:35

good at being like a discriminating

1:09:37

with our violence. We have machine guns because

1:09:39

it makes it faster. You know. It sounds like Stephanie,

1:09:42

she just come in and everything. I'm

1:09:45

not asking who did what? Whtess

1:09:47

is broke? Everybody sitting down?

1:09:50

Your aunt who comes in with the fucking sandal

1:09:52

and just started like you need to call

1:09:55

saying, she come in with the check blast

1:09:58

air by getting it. I've got no, I

1:10:00

don't want to hear nothing. Everybody getting

1:10:05

Yeah. The

1:10:08

CNT, who's that anarcho syndicalist

1:10:10

party launches constant strikes in this period,

1:10:12

largely because they're angry that the Republic had failed

1:10:15

to rest it. So when the Republic

1:10:17

comes to power, the far left is like, because

1:10:19

the far left our anarchists, and they're agricultural

1:10:22

right there, primarily in rural areas, and most

1:10:24

of Spain's agricultural land like more

1:10:26

is owned by just like rich assholes who make

1:10:29

the people who are actually farming it pay

1:10:31

them unreasonable rent, and it like keeps them

1:10:33

impoverished, and the radical left is

1:10:35

like, we should the land should

1:10:37

belong to the people who farm it. Yeah, maybe, why

1:10:39

why don't we do that? But I understand

1:10:42

we got a lot of radical thoughts. This don't feel radical

1:10:44

though, Yeah, it doesn't like it isn't

1:10:46

the time, It shouldn't be. Yeah, this really

1:10:49

shouldn't be a radicaln't be. Um.

1:10:54

The republic being a republic, gave

1:10:56

them some of what they want, but not much. They

1:10:58

redistribute about ten per scent of Spain's

1:11:00

uncultivated land of the peasants, and that really

1:11:03

pisses off the anarchists, so they

1:11:05

launch a bunch of in addition to these insurrections that other

1:11:07

anarchists are doing, the C and T is doing

1:11:09

like strikes and stuff in this period as protests.

1:11:12

In nineteen thirty three, a peasant protest

1:11:14

was suppressed by Republican police who

1:11:17

shot nineteen of them dead. Um.

1:11:19

So this government, which is broadly speaking, we'll call

1:11:21

it a liberal government, is a government

1:11:23

they still you know, gunn people down when

1:11:25

you funk up, right, Like yeah,

1:11:27

Now, the constant unrest damaged the left,

1:11:30

middle class support, and the in fighting between

1:11:32

communists anarchists and Republicans, hurt

1:11:34

the broadly speaking liberal and left

1:11:36

ability to keep control of the government from

1:11:39

the right. In nineteen thirty four,

1:11:41

the c E d A, led by Jose Marie gil

1:11:43

Robles, became the dominant power in government

1:11:46

um or at least gained a lot of power in government.

1:11:48

This provoked outrage from the span like they weren't in control

1:11:51

or anything, but they had power for the first time.

1:11:53

This really piste off the Spanish left

1:11:56

because in the rest of Europe at the same

1:11:58

time, Hitler has just solidated all

1:12:00

of his power and destroyed by our democracy. Italy

1:12:03

is completely fascist now, um and

1:12:05

there's dictators all throughout Europe. So the left sees

1:12:07

the c E d A gain some power and they're

1:12:10

like, this is the start of what we're

1:12:12

seeing happen. The fascists are going to take

1:12:14

over. They're not wrong to be terrified

1:12:16

that way, because it is what happens, you know, like

1:12:19

like it's happening. That's because it's going to happen.

1:12:21

It's happening here, they say, and

1:12:24

they're not wrong. Yeah. Um. So

1:12:27

again the left in Spain, and when I say

1:12:29

the left in this sense, I mean both like the liberals

1:12:31

the anarchists, the communists, the socialists,

1:12:33

like all of them start to get really

1:12:36

panicked. And this fear is reinforced

1:12:38

by the fact that gil Roblez consistently

1:12:40

gave speeches ranting against democracy

1:12:43

and in favor of what he called a totalitarian

1:12:45

concept of the state. Uh Stanley

1:12:48

payin rights quote, it seems fairly clear

1:12:50

that the c e d a's basic intentions were

1:12:52

to win decisive political power through legal

1:12:54

means, the exception being an ill defined emergency

1:12:57

situation, and then to enact fundamental

1:12:59

revision to the new Republican Constitution,

1:13:01

which restricted Catholic rights, in order to

1:13:03

protect religion and property and alter the basic

1:13:06

political system. So again, they're

1:13:08

not out of line to be afraid

1:13:10

of what is going to happen by the c e d A

1:13:12

gaining power. Left Wing fears

1:13:14

that the c e d A would be bring fascism to

1:13:17

Spain were further stoked by the fact that c e

1:13:19

d A magazines kelpt running huge, loving

1:13:21

articles about how good fascism was. They

1:13:23

would have like these huge spreads about fascist itadily

1:13:26

and what a perfect state it was. There were articles

1:13:28

about the Nazi regime in Germany now

1:13:30

Broadly speaking, the Spanish far right is

1:13:32

more Italian fascists than German. For one

1:13:35

thing, they don't really get the anti semitism,

1:13:37

like like everyone in Europe. They're kind of anti

1:13:39

Semitic, but it's not organizing principle

1:13:41

for them. Um and

1:13:44

the Nazis they see. It's like kind of weird, but

1:13:46

like still, you know, they're they're they're better than the left,

1:13:49

but like yeah, it's like I get what

1:13:51

y'all going for. I really want to stand this part, but I

1:13:53

do this. But yeah, I've

1:13:55

been with you. We kicked out the Muslims.

1:13:58

I mean, I guess just the same, but I

1:14:00

don't know anyway. Yeah,

1:14:02

so Robles even visited. The guy in charge

1:14:04

of the c e d A even visited Germany in nineteen

1:14:07

thirty three to attend the annual Nazi Party

1:14:09

rally in Nuremberg. So again, the

1:14:12

c e d A is not entirely

1:14:15

a fascist party, but the left in Spain

1:14:17

and this time calls them objectively fascist,

1:14:20

and you can see why now. For his part,

1:14:22

Robs only really rejected fascism

1:14:24

because he saw it as foreign. During a speech

1:14:27

in nineteen thirty three, he said, we want

1:14:29

a totalitarian Patria. But it

1:14:31

is strange that we're invited to look for novelties

1:14:33

abroad when we find a unitary in totalitarian

1:14:36

policy in our own tradition. So

1:14:38

he's like fascism, like I like it, but it's

1:14:40

foreign, and we in Spain have our own

1:14:42

totalitarian tradition that we should be embracing.

1:14:45

And when he said this, he was actually referencing

1:14:47

Ferdinand and Isabella, the first Spanish

1:14:50

monarchs who were not totalitarian. It

1:14:52

wasn't you couldn't be back then, you just like,

1:14:55

yeah, didn't exist. But yeah,

1:14:57

it's very silly and very a historical

1:15:00

um. In the same speech, Roblest continued

1:15:02

for US power must be integral for

1:15:04

the realization of our ideal. We shall not be held

1:15:07

back by archaic forms when the time

1:15:09

comes Parliament where I will either submit or

1:15:11

disappear. Democracy must be a means,

1:15:13

not an end. We are going to liquidate

1:15:16

the revolution, liquidate,

1:15:18

liquidate. So yeah,

1:15:21

in addition to the c D E D A. Who if

1:15:23

you don't want to call them fascists, they're at least pretty

1:15:26

close. Yeah, yeah,

1:15:28

low sodium fascist. They're like they're

1:15:30

like diet mountain dew, Like

1:15:33

you don't want to go all the way, but on

1:15:36

the spectrum. Now, Spain

1:15:38

also had its own explicitly fascist

1:15:40

political parties. And when I don't call the c e D

1:15:43

a fascist, it's because I do want to differentiate

1:15:45

between the people who are like, we're fascists, you

1:15:47

know, like it is important to do that. Um

1:15:50

that grew involved throughout the yearly nineteen thirties.

1:15:52

Now, the founding father of Spanish fascism

1:15:54

was a guy named Ramiro Ledesmo Ramos

1:15:57

Ramos, and like most fascist and a actuals,

1:16:00

he wanted to be a novelist before he got into

1:16:02

politics, and he wrote a fake memoir

1:16:04

of it, like he's it's very been

1:16:07

Shapiro. Okay, Yeah,

1:16:09

he wrote a fiction novel which was a fake

1:16:12

memoir about a depressed intellectual who commits

1:16:14

suicide um, which seems like it

1:16:16

was very self pitying and nobody will

1:16:18

he writes it when he's eighteen, nobody's willing to take it,

1:16:21

and his rich uncle pays to publish it, which

1:16:23

tells you all you need to know about the Desma,

1:16:25

the fascist, the father of Spanish

1:16:27

fascism. So as

1:16:29

the pseudo intellectual, the Desma's

1:16:31

greatest concern was that Spanish culture had

1:16:34

not given the world a truly dominant political

1:16:36

ideology. He complained, we are

1:16:38

the only great people who have still not borne

1:16:41

the philosophical scepter, and who therefore

1:16:43

have not projected in an intellectual dictatorship

1:16:46

over the world. And so as a

1:16:48

result of this, he decided to steal a political

1:16:50

system from Italy and become a fascist.

1:16:53

He eventually formed the Junta's

1:16:55

Deal Fensiva Nacional Sinte Calista

1:16:58

or John's and his followers are called

1:17:00

the john Sistas, which is silly,

1:17:02

but that's pretty what they're called. Yeah. Lydsma

1:17:05

and his fellow john Cistas refused to call themselves

1:17:07

fascists, but they were. They talked

1:17:09

lovingly of Italian fascism, and they wanted

1:17:11

the same things. One of le Desma's first followers

1:17:14

was the first Spanish translator for Hitler's

1:17:16

mind comp But to his credit, Leedsma

1:17:18

did try to find ways to make Spanish fascism

1:17:21

unique. In part, he attempted to do this

1:17:23

by marrying it to Spanish anarcho syndicalism.

1:17:26

Le Desma adopted syndicalism, the idea

1:17:28

of worker councils governing themselves and striking

1:17:30

to make their demands. Mets or adopted aspects

1:17:32

of that, and he kind of awkwardly welded

1:17:34

it to Spanish revolutionary nationalism. And

1:17:37

one of the things that is odd that characterizes

1:17:39

Spanish fascists in this period is

1:17:41

they really reach out to the anarchists.

1:17:43

They're trying to convert anarchists, um

1:17:46

in part because the anarchists are like the

1:17:48

most vital anti government movement in this period.

1:17:50

Yeah, yeah,

1:17:53

yeah, it was reading the tea leaves of being like, you

1:17:55

know, I think you don't like

1:17:57

the same ship we don't like. Yeah, maybe

1:17:59

I can a way to make it fast. And

1:18:01

it happens for some of them, right, Like that is a

1:18:03

story that's very uncomfortable about anarchist

1:18:06

history is that during the period

1:18:08

of time when fascism rises and a

1:18:10

number of anarchists in different countries, and

1:18:13

an uncomfortable number of them decide, now,

1:18:15

you know what, I'm a fascist, which is not. Yeah,

1:18:18

and it's it's important, you know whatever whatever

1:18:20

you believe to be honest about its

1:18:22

history, and that includes the ugly parts um

1:18:25

so Ledesma and his fellow John Ceasta has

1:18:27

refused to call them. And also, we're going to talk

1:18:29

in part two about the fact that a funkload

1:18:32

of anarchists died fighting fascism in

1:18:34

Spain. And we're a lot of the very first people who

1:18:36

were willing to put their lives on the line to fight

1:18:38

global fascism before

1:18:41

the United States was willing to fight the Nazis.

1:18:43

A funkload of anarchists died fighting

1:18:45

fascism, and I like, I'm not trying to to

1:18:48

say that that like, and that's much more dominant

1:18:50

a part of anarchist history totally than the ones

1:18:52

who went fashion, but a number of them do go fascists,

1:18:54

and it's something the fascists directly try

1:18:56

to encourage. Um, it's

1:18:59

like the like the like the black Trump

1:19:01

Yeah exactly, exactly. Look, there's

1:19:04

there's still that's

1:19:06

still un and it doesn't

1:19:08

erase the fact that Biden only won

1:19:11

the election because of a funkload

1:19:13

of organized black voters, you know, yes,

1:19:15

yes, yeah, So, like the

1:19:17

left wing of the Nazi Party had done, Ledesma

1:19:20

sought to make fascism collectivists, stressing

1:19:22

that the individual has died and that the

1:19:24

collectivest state is all that matters.

1:19:27

This was not an initially successful line

1:19:29

of propaganda. And by the end of nineteen thirty

1:19:31

two they were barely in e John Ceasta's Uh,

1:19:34

Spanish fascism might not have taken off at all

1:19:36

if it had not been for a fellow named Jose Antonio

1:19:39

de Rivera, the son of the now dead

1:19:41

dictator um So de Rivera's

1:19:43

kid becomes like really the first

1:19:46

prominent Spanish fascist, and

1:19:48

one of the things, this guy is such a figure in

1:19:50

Spanish history that he's one

1:19:52

of the only people from this period of Spanish

1:19:54

history who's known by his first names. He's Jose

1:19:56

Antonio. They don't call like they call his dad de Rivera.

1:19:59

He's Jose Antonio, which is like kind of a

1:20:01

mark of how significant this guy was. Now,

1:20:04

Jose was a weird fascist, and we'll

1:20:06

talk more about him in part two. He is not like

1:20:08

other he's not nearly For one thing, he doesn't really

1:20:10

like violence in the same way that a lot of fascists

1:20:12

do. And he's like weirdly friendly

1:20:15

with a lot of socialists, like in government, like

1:20:17

like he's he's like like and not in a I

1:20:20

don't know, he's a He's a very weird fascist.

1:20:22

His background, though, makes complete sense. He's the rich

1:20:25

son of a military family whose father took almost

1:20:27

absolute power in order to murder foreigners and steal

1:20:29

their ship. So it's not weird that he becomes

1:20:31

a fascist. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, just

1:20:34

you know, it's like representation matters,

1:20:36

Like you have to see something to believe that it's possible.

1:20:39

So he's yeah, my dad took over the country.

1:20:41

Yeah, I mean I bet I can too. Yeah. Yeah, And you could

1:20:43

see him as like kind of what I'm sure one of the Trump

1:20:45

kids will try to do, although I would argue he's a better

1:20:47

personality of the Trump kids. Yea.

1:20:53

So he creates his own fascist party based

1:20:56

on the idea of bringing in another dictator

1:20:58

like his dad, but not sucking at it this time, right,

1:21:00

Like we need a dictator. My dad had the right idea, but he

1:21:02

didn't have an ideology. I'm going to bring in an ideology.

1:21:05

And both Jose Antonio's party and the john

1:21:07

Sistas receive a shot in the arm. On January

1:21:10

ninety three, when Hitler takes power in Germany,

1:21:13

a magazine El Fascio, which

1:21:15

is a very subtle name. Yeah,

1:21:26

dug it. So Hitler

1:21:28

takes power in Germany and El Fascio gets

1:21:30

launched in Spain, and the government shuts that

1:21:33

ship down right away and bands publication

1:21:35

the future editions, which is like when

1:21:37

in doubtlook you want to you need you need your brand

1:21:39

to be clear. Yeah, you need to be clear. Com.

1:21:43

We're talking a lot in the United States now about

1:21:45

the value of d platforming fascists,

1:21:48

about the and I'm an advocate for aspects of

1:21:50

that, about the value of of taking away these people's

1:21:53

ability to reach a mass audience. They do

1:21:55

a harder, much harder core version of that in

1:21:57

Spain. You get in One of the things

1:21:59

that's unique about Spain is the police in this period

1:22:01

cracked down on the fascists more than they do on the left.

1:22:04

Um, which is weird. Um. It's

1:22:06

a unique historically everywhere else

1:22:09

it is the opposite, um. And

1:22:12

part of why is because the republic is very scared

1:22:14

of these fascists for good reason. And if

1:22:16

we're looking at like the effectiveness of the platforming

1:22:19

to what extent it works, Spain shows

1:22:21

us that it doesn't necessarily stop

1:22:24

them from gaining power. Because they d platform

1:22:26

the fascists. They try hard to d platform

1:22:28

the fascist in the Spanish Republic. It doesn't

1:22:31

do the trick um. So again,

1:22:33

useful historical context here, which

1:22:35

is not to say there's no value in d platforming, but we

1:22:38

should be paying attention to what happened in Spain.

1:22:40

Um, and the d platform against Spain is being done by the government,

1:22:43

you know, um, by cops and ship.

1:22:45

Now, the Law for the Defense of the Republic

1:22:48

gave the Spanish Republic power to ban

1:22:50

anything that threatened the Republic's existence.

1:22:52

Banning fascist propaganda, though, was not enough

1:22:54

to stop the contagious excitement over fascism

1:22:57

and the broader right wing reaction against the

1:22:59

recent victims of the left, the john Sistas

1:23:01

and Jose Antonio's movement grew. Jose

1:23:04

Antonio was noted as not being particularly

1:23:06

charismatic, but he was good with words, and he

1:23:08

was a successful lawyer, so he had money. He

1:23:11

entered into frequent public debates with left wing

1:23:13

intellectuals where he would say stuff like this. So

1:23:15

again, he's a big like kind of like Richard Spencer.

1:23:18

I will go down and sit down and talk with all of your I'll

1:23:20

be very nice, we'll be very polite, and I'll talk

1:23:22

about fascism in that way. He's that kind

1:23:24

of fascist. Um quote,

1:23:27

this is uh This is Jose Antonio from a debate

1:23:29

he had with kind of a more liberal guy.

1:23:32

The liberal state believes in nothing, not even

1:23:34

in itself. It watches with folded arms

1:23:36

as all sorts of experiments, even those aimed at

1:23:38

the destruction of the state itself. Fascism

1:23:40

was born to light of faith. Neither of the

1:23:43

right, which at the bottom aspires to preserve everything,

1:23:45

even the unjust, nor of the left, which

1:23:47

at the bottom aspires to destroy everything,

1:23:49

even the just, but a collective, integral,

1:23:52

national faith. And you can see

1:23:54

why people would be appealed to as four

1:23:56

things like we're not right when we're not left wing, they're both bad.

1:23:59

Were something different. And he also the

1:24:02

thing that all fascists have to do in order to

1:24:04

succeed is point out things that are

1:24:06

true and problems with the system, and he does. The

1:24:08

liberal state believes in nothing, not even

1:24:11

in itself. You know, that's a good

1:24:13

that's a true state. But it's good. That's good. Yeah,

1:24:17

yeah, And that's part of why again,

1:24:20

that's part of why he does succeed in bringing in some people

1:24:22

from the left to the fascists and converting people um

1:24:25

and at least in getting a lot of them to be like, well he's

1:24:27

not that, he's not as bad as the state. You know, a lot of people

1:24:29

will say that in July of night, and a lot

1:24:31

of people don't. By the way, anarchists murder eight we'll talk

1:24:33

about this part to murder a funkload of fascists

1:24:35

in this period. So when I say a number of people on the

1:24:37

left are like, well, he's not as bad as the state, a lot

1:24:39

of people on nothing like, no, they're bad and we have to

1:24:42

start shooting them to death now. So

1:24:44

like, yeah, let's not. It's a lot lots

1:24:46

going on. Um, you said

1:24:48

in beginning, this is messy. Yeah.

1:24:52

In July of nineteen thirty four, the John Ceast

1:24:54

has launched an attack on the Madrid offices

1:24:56

of the Friends of the USS are damaging

1:24:58

the offices and threatening people with pistols. This

1:25:02

caused a government crackdown both on the fascists

1:25:04

and on the anarchists, arresting some three

1:25:06

thousand people nationwide. Again, like we'll

1:25:09

probably about to see this is what the government

1:25:11

does, like you know, I mean, in

1:25:13

fairness, like right now, the anarchists are

1:25:15

not doing much other than

1:25:17

standing outside of buildings and breaking windows, and

1:25:19

this they were gunning people down. So yeah,

1:25:22

yeah, um, it's yeah.

1:25:24

I don't want to like try to make the case that Spanish

1:25:26

history is exactly, but like you, I think there are useful

1:25:29

parallels. So one of the things,

1:25:31

again, Spanish police did arrest more fascists

1:25:33

and more willing, were more willing to um than

1:25:36

other members of the left or the members of the left at

1:25:38

this point. Um. And in fact, the first two

1:25:40

years of Jose Antonio's movement, anarchists

1:25:42

assassinated and gunned down and stabbed a funkload

1:25:45

of fascists and brawls and outside of speeches,

1:25:47

um. Now, Jose Antonio was

1:25:50

fairly unique among fascists, both in

1:25:52

that he had genuinely warm and respectful relationships

1:25:55

with a lot of left wing politicians and that he

1:25:57

seemed to a poor violence. Uh. This was

1:25:59

a problem for his young party, and we'll

1:26:01

talk about that more in part two. Now.

1:26:04

In October of nineteen thirty four, Jose Antonio

1:26:06

traveled to Spain for a brief meeting with Mussolini

1:26:09

and to tour a fascist state. He found

1:26:11

it inspiring, and he wrote, Fascism

1:26:13

is not just an Italian movement, it is a total

1:26:16

universal sense of life. Italy

1:26:18

was the first to apply it. But it is not the concept

1:26:20

of the state as an instrument in the service of a permanent

1:26:23

historical mission valid outside of Italy. Who

1:26:25

can say that such goals are only valuable

1:26:28

for Italians. He returned

1:26:30

from Italy eager to make and so again the

1:26:32

John Ceased is the other chunk of the fascist movement. Are like,

1:26:34

we don't want to do with a fascism Italian fascism

1:26:37

because we were Spanish Spain. Yeah.

1:26:39

Jose Antonio is like, no, no, no. Fascism is a global

1:26:41

thing and it appeals to all of us. And

1:26:44

he returns from Spain eager to make a deal

1:26:46

with the Jones Ceistas in order to emerge both

1:26:48

movements. He recognizes, your propaganda is better.

1:26:50

I have more people. I've got I'm better at like

1:26:53

organizing the street movement. If we work together,

1:26:55

we can bring fascism to Spain. In

1:26:58

early November, both groups of ashes

1:27:00

came to an agreement. They initially wanted

1:27:02

to use the name Fascismo Espanol,

1:27:05

but decided to change this to Falange

1:27:07

Espaniola, which means Spanish

1:27:09

fee links. The Phalanges would

1:27:11

in time go on to earn a terrible

1:27:13

and bloody reputation in Spanish history. But

1:27:16

that it's going to be in Part two, a

1:27:20

lot of history of Oh man, this is dumpee

1:27:25

one. It's like for every uh I

1:27:28

love the like for every kid

1:27:30

that you know either it's set next

1:27:32

to her. Was the little stoner kid that was like

1:27:35

drawing the anarchist A on

1:27:37

their folder in high school that was just like no

1:27:39

rules, Like no, it's a it's

1:27:41

a real thing. It's a Yeah,

1:27:44

it's an ideology. It's not just you not getting

1:27:47

suspended for you know, slapping

1:27:50

a kid. It's a real thing. It's

1:27:52

a way to organize the world

1:27:55

in society. That in a bunch

1:27:57

of different ideas, right, the anarchis syndicalists have

1:27:59

one, there's a lot had a different added and

1:28:01

there are also anarchists like anarcho primitivists

1:28:04

and stuff who don't want to orgon, who

1:28:06

like want to go back to them more like there's

1:28:08

a bunch of ship within anarchy. Yeah, but

1:28:11

it's not you with your little drawing your little

1:28:13

A on your skateboard, you know, a little ship.

1:28:16

There's more. That's how it starts. And I will

1:28:18

say I've seen a lot of people in Portland do very

1:28:20

interesting things with skateboards. A lot of teenage

1:28:23

anarchists this year. That's that's how it starts

1:28:25

for some people, you know. Okay, okay, okay,

1:28:27

that's that's if that's the entry. It's

1:28:30

deeper than that. There's a lot going on,

1:28:32

you know. It just like doesn't mean that

1:28:34

you never have to read again, Chad, You

1:28:36

have to. You have to read a lot. Okay,

1:28:39

there's you know, yeah, yeah,

1:28:42

I named him Chad. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, that's

1:28:44

yeah. I think I think we could stand to

1:28:47

convert more of the Chad's um. Anyway.

1:28:51

This has been part one, the birth of

1:28:53

Spanish Fascism. In part two, we're going to talk

1:28:55

about the Spanish Civil War, which is one of the

1:28:57

most fascinating and important pieces of history.

1:29:00

Almost no one knows a goddamn thing about um

1:29:03

trusting. It's very so

1:29:05

frustrating people don't know about this, you know, so

1:29:07

many few people know that, like the author of George

1:29:10

Orwell traveled to Spain on

1:29:12

the premise that every single decent

1:29:15

person should kill one fascist, and

1:29:17

then it killed a bunch of fascists with

1:29:19

grenades. George Orwell was incredible

1:29:22

with grenades. He knew all the different kinds

1:29:24

of grenades. He killed a lot of people with grenades.

1:29:27

He got shot in the throat. Oh

1:29:29

my god. Yeah,

1:29:32

I'm gonna give you this as another piece of trivia

1:29:34

that has to do with the another hip

1:29:36

hop trivia. Um that you this

1:29:39

good Easter egg for your listener and then for you

1:29:41

just I think you might find this interesting and pull

1:29:43

this out one day when you're drinking with friends.

1:29:46

Um iced tea, the

1:29:49

not the drink, but yeah, yeah yeah. Rapper

1:29:52

became the actor in Law and Order, the

1:29:54

guy that made an album called cop Killer Yes

1:29:56

and became a cop on TV. Yeah you

1:29:59

know, rateistussoever. Anyway,

1:30:02

there's this story he tells that

1:30:06

about when he was getting his record

1:30:09

deal and he

1:30:11

the as as the legend goes, he

1:30:13

never played one song for

1:30:16

the people he that signed him for his first

1:30:19

record deal, right, and they were like,

1:30:21

how are you going to do this? How

1:30:24

are we gonna Why would you sign if we haven't heard any music? He

1:30:26

goes, Hey, if you're selling a box of grenades, if

1:30:29

I blow up a grenade, I

1:30:31

need to blow up a grenade for you to see, for you

1:30:33

to know that they're good. Like, I can't blow

1:30:35

it up because then you won't buy him. They already done.

1:30:38

And then the guy was like, man, that's a yeah,

1:30:42

so I see. And the guy was like, it's

1:30:44

actually a good point. And then he goes, what

1:30:47

made you think of that? He goes, why I used to sell grenades?

1:30:56

And I totally believe that he was around

1:30:59

South Central your nates. I

1:31:03

would never call iced Tea a liar for saying

1:31:05

that he sold grenades. No, absolutely

1:31:08

not. He comes from a you know, you've

1:31:10

got your eras of gangster rap where they're

1:31:13

just talking and then you've got your era of gangster Rapp was

1:31:15

like, no, you did all of the things you're talking about.

1:31:17

This. This is why you're not in jails,

1:31:20

because there was a period of time

1:31:22

for you where you were like, it was a good day because

1:31:24

I didn't have to use my These

1:31:30

are stories, y'all. Yeah, yeah, that's

1:31:32

why most of them didn't make it very long.

1:31:35

Yes, all

1:31:39

right, Well, in preparation

1:31:41

for the Spanish Civil War, which

1:31:43

is pretty gangster, listen,

1:31:46

listen to some old school Iced Tea, you know, and

1:31:48

then watch the Law and Order, you know, really

1:31:50

embrace the hypocrisy that we all embody

1:31:53

at some point. At some point, you don't

1:31:55

need to watch the iced tea and cocoa reality

1:31:57

show. I am not recommending

1:31:59

that, don know,

1:32:01

but a little bit of law in order. You know, it's whatever

1:32:04

it's on literally at all times.

1:32:07

Yeah, it's a lot like it's a lot like

1:32:09

Heroin. You know, Um, it's probably

1:32:12

not going to kill you, um, but

1:32:14

it's bad for you. Every episode

1:32:16

of Laundered, Sue, I'm not ashamed

1:32:19

at all. Every believe every

1:32:21

episode because it's on

1:32:24

at any given time of a day. Yeah, exactly.

1:32:27

My mom's nospel. We watched every

1:32:29

episode because it was always on every

1:32:33

episode. There's a belief in some Aboriginal

1:32:36

Australian cultures and this is kind of where the um,

1:32:38

what is the long tube that they blow?

1:32:42

Ever? No, no, no, the the

1:32:45

did you red that the dig red ties into

1:32:47

this that like you always have to be someone

1:32:50

always has to be playing music because you sing

1:32:52

the world into being and if the music stops, the world

1:32:54

ends. And I have adopted is a religious

1:32:56

belief that with law and Order SVU where

1:33:00

it's playing somewhere, the world can

1:33:02

continue. I think that's how we ended up with trump

1:33:04

Man. Everybody turned off the TV one

1:33:06

day in order to stop playing one

1:33:08

hour without law and order and everything.

1:33:10

Which ship all

1:33:17

right, Well, this this has been part

1:33:19

one of our two

1:33:22

partner of Behind the Insurrections on the

1:33:24

Spanish Fascist Franko Civil

1:33:26

War. We're we'll talk about Spanish Civil

1:33:29

War in part two, and then next week we're

1:33:31

going to talk about the fascists who failed

1:33:33

UM, and we're gonna talk about we're gonna get a little

1:33:36

overview of some anti fascist history you might

1:33:38

not know. We're gonna close out with antifa UM

1:33:40

and some fun stuff like the idolist pirates

1:33:43

UM, which were little kids who murdered

1:33:45

Nazis. It was great fucking rad.

1:33:49

Here we go listen to some iced

1:33:51

tea. That's

1:33:54

the episode