“Just Like at Madrid, Comrades” | Hacker News Reader

“Just Like at Madrid, Comrades”

laphamsquarterly.org

57 pointsThevet31 comments

One should not infinitely demonize one side and picture the other as innocent/fighter of freedom when there was such a prolonged conflict and both sides committed selective mass murders against civilians (you can however argue that a side was even more evil than the other, but that's not the topic of today).

When a side is superior to the other the conflict is solved in a few weeks/months at most. The national side didn't do the war alone, and the war almost stagnated during long periods of time because at times there was no easy conclusion on the horizon and no side wanted to give up.

Everything else is propaganda and ideology I believe, prove me wrong otherwise.

In a turbulent time in the politics of country X, an important part of the army of that country rebels against the elected government, wins a terrible civil war, and proceed to establish a 40 years catholic-fascist dictatorship.

I tried to take away all the propaganda and ideology.

Everyone can judge now by itself if what happened in country X was evil.

You just omitted everything, for example that the republic had 8 different Coup d'etat and that it often needed to use the army to repress their own civilians, restrict rights in many regions and became ungovernable during most of its time. Neither the Republic was a free democratically elected nor the dictatorship was fascist during its whole time in the power. And still the fascist dictatorship was still terrible with no doubt, but missing the key facts misses the point of history which should be to honor the truth to avoid repeating those mistakes again.

You are still judging it in the frame of the modern world. Do not romanticize the past by judging only parts of the story projecting modern ideas on them.

Saludos Roberto.

Deleted comment

I didn't say that the catholic-fascist dictatorship of country X was evil. I said that after they won (whatever their reasons for starting the fight) they kept the power for 40 years using force and without consulting the population. Now, if you want to put other things in the balance, feel free to do it.

I can't avoid to ask myself if we were talking about concrete real countries like Germany or Japan, instead of the hypothetical country X, we would be so picky about nuances. Maybe, you are right and it's a propaganda thing.

No, you're right.

One of the big issues in historical discussions, especially if you get out of scholarly material is that a lot of people do tend to have overly simplified views of conflicts and if they've got a side they are biased towards, the other side is demonized, as you have said.

In any conflict, especially war, the door is opened for vendettas and sociopathy and basically evil (chaos is a ladder). The Nationalists had Hitler and Mussolini as backers, the Republicans had Stalin. Of course, both sides (yes, both sides) had good people that were stuck in the middle of it for whatever reason.

Hemingway's account in the middle of For Whom the Bell Tolls where the rebels go into the town and murder priests and other supporters of the conservatives really struck me. Hemingway actually fought with the left and was sympathetic to them, but even he was aware of atrocities that were being committed by his own side.

The demonization of the other side and the inability to call out our own side when they're doing wrong really just weakens one's own cause. It's kind of sad that we as humans still haven't figured that out, but I guess it's something about how we are and it's a tragedy cause on that other side is just another person.

I think it's part of human nature to form groups and keep ideologies and believes in spite of knowing that's not rational. Still I think speaking to single individuals could lead that to better conclusions than just anonymous discussions on the internet or speeches for the masses.

Somehow I lost faith in education of the masses since in the last 20 years I've seen how the biggest part of population got access to a higher volume of information but with higher biases than ever before and more and more sources being deeply biased by an activist or political agenda. That's probably also part of the democratization of the internet, bringing our old habits into this new reign now open to everyone.

One should also not pretend that, because both sides did bad things, that automatically makes them morally equivalent.

Bad things happen in war. German troops committed war crimes in World War II; so did American troops. That doesn't mean they committed the same number of war crimes, or crimes on the same scale, or that the American cause was therefore morally equivalent to the German. Volume matters. Scale matters. Intent matters.

Your logic leads inexorably to false balance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance), where anyone who isn't perfectly pure is therefore completely impure and therefore all sides are always the same. That's not how the world works. Even the best-hearted people make mistakes and do bad things. Saying one crime is morally the same as many crimes, or one small crime is morally the same as one gigantic one, or one accidental crime is morally the same as one committed on purpose, only serves to give the worst among us a free pass.

> prove me wrong otherwise.

Spare us the Ben Shapiro posturing, please.

I don't believe any of his statements imply moral equivalence. I can believe (using your example of WW2) that on the whole, Imperial Japan was a more evil system (rape of Nanking? unprovoked attacks?) but still see Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the murder of Japanese prisoners of war as evil acts of their own. That's not the kind of slippery slope you are describing, it's just how history works

I really think bringing in the rhetorical attacks and the references to Shapiro and modern politics (nobody wass taking about that guy) is disingenuous and takes the discussion out of the historical and into today's politics, which isn't useful and distracting.

I never said there was a balance, just that none of the sides deserve any praise or romanization when the other to gets the sole attribution of any evil acts. Both sides performed mass murders of civilians. Stop praising people who did that just because an even more depictable side won that conflict.

> Spare us the Ben Shapiro posturing, please.

Maybe that's your issue, you are projecting your frustrations on me and answer things I never said.

In case anyone else is like me in wondering why the name of Bir-Hakeim is so familiar - there is a Paris Metro stop named for the battle. South bank, just west of the Eiffel tower.

Orwell's account in "Homage to Catalonia" is moving and chilling. You get a sense of his deep sympathy for the fragile, classless society emerging in the early days of the civil war, but as the narrative progresses, you see how doomed it all is: an abortive bid for freedom pinched between Franco and Stalin. If nothing else, read it for the way Orwell spins being shot in the neck into dry comedy gold.

I had the privilege of devouring it over a week in Barcelona. If you are ever there when the world opens up again, there is an absolutely vivid walking tour of the city that covers all the main points, which I can't recommend highly enough.

http://iberianature.com/barcelona/history-of-barcelona/spani...

His description of trench warfare is powerful and horrifying. He had my heart racing when describing going over the top and chasing someone down a trench with a bayonet.

Reading Churchill’s Memoirs right now, and there is a line in it where Rommel is telling a captured British officer how in this battle the brits made it so easy for him by spreading out their forces so he could defeat them in detail piece by piece.

Franco won the war.

403'd.

No idea what this is doing on HN.

In addition to being off-topic, it's heavily biased, highlighting the (reprehensible) civilian casualties caused by the Nationalists, while remaining silent on the similar number of (also reprehensible) civilian deaths caused by the Republicans.

It also describes the Nationalists as Fascists (which is true), while describing the anarchist and communist backed Republicans as "left-leaning" (which is biased understatement).

> No idea what this is doing on HN.

Most likely because people found it interesting. Not everyone finds the same things interesting.

> which is biased understatement

Funny thing regarding biases in political leaning is that it's all based around context. The US, being very right-leaning, would describe one person as left-leaning while in many European countries that same person would be center or even slightly right. So it all depends. It's useful to outline where you're coming from before laying out your perspective, as it's also biased (just like mine).

> Funny thing regarding biases in political leaning is that it's all based around context

Or it just highlights the complete uselessness of the right-left dichotomy.

They use right-left in political science departments, so I'm not sure it's "useless". It just requires context. We don't look at US and EU politics on the same scale, or at the very least, EU politics are just further to the left on the universal scale.

But you know that...

> EU politics are just further to the left on the universal scale.

But I don't think this is actually true or a useful statement. Many aspects of American politics are more left-wing than their European counterparts; anarchism or libertarianism, for example, roughly defined as antipathy toward the state, is often considered left-wing and is far more prevalent in the US. Left-wing politics in contemporary Europe seems to almost always include a strong state role.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_anarchism

As I said, I don't think any sort of universal right-left dichotomy is useful. It also doesn't factor in non-traditional political thinkers, like say, Nietzsche, who could not be accurately described as right, left, or anywhere in between.

> Funny thing regarding biases in political leaning is that it's all based around context.

There is no context on which the Republican side was not comprised of communist and socialist groups supported by Stalin's Soviet Union.

It's a feature story focused on an obscure and mostly unknown thread spinning out of the war, not a history of the Spanish Civil War.

That conflict was an incredibly complex and tragic series of events... beyond the scope of what an article like this can cover. It wasn't a commies vs. nazis event, and this wasn't an article doing a survey view of the conflict.

Fascism is national-socialism. Communism is international-fascism.

I also found it highly biased, romanticizing one side and demonizing the other... falling in the false dichotomy of evil vs good. In Spain often people doesn't remember that in order to have a prolonged civil war there are two equally powered sides needed, both with equal social support and both with equal lack of will to negotiate. I think it is a major mistake to bring back to history the conclusions and ideas from the present, the "democracy" of the "republic" was also highly flawed and often the left sides would try and fail a coup d'etat wanting a communist revolution and it never achieved law and order. The country was just highly unstable politically and socially since the decadence by the loss of the oversea provinces and everything concluded in that war all together.

> in order to have a prolonged civil war there are two equally powered sides needed, both with equal social support

You might want to do a bit of reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_involvement_in_the_Span...

If you want to get into the weeds on this, try to be balanced (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD#Spanish_Civil_War)

The Spanish Civil War soon became more about blue-on-blue infighting between traditional leftists and straight-up Stalinist agents. Orwell did not flee Spain because of the Nationalists closing in, he was being hunted by soviet agents.

Also the soviet union sent people and machinery to the republicans, and they were significantly more powerful at the time (ultimately Russia also defeated Germany, but that is now an unfair statement). I also read several books on the topic, my whole point it that this article is unfair and biased.

It is generally recognized that negotiating with Fascists is a bad idea, as many in the Weimar Republic would indicate.

Nationalist Spain also enjoyed extreme support by both capitalist Western Europe and the Soviet Union. If your theory of equal popularity being necessary for a protracted civil war, asymmetric foreign support indicates that the non-Nationalist side would have higher social support.

I am not sure where you are getting the delusional idea that the Soviet Union supported the Nationalists since they were the biggest backers of the Republicans and by the later stages of the war had complete control over the Republican leadership.

when a side is superior to the other the conflict is solved in a few weeks/months at most. The national side didn't do the war alone, and the war almost stagnated during long periods of time because at times there was no easy conclusion on the horizon and no side wanted to give up. You cannot infinitely demonize one sided and picture the other as innocent/fighter of freedom when there was such a prolonged conflict and both sides committed selective mass murders against civilians (you can however argue that a side was even more evil than the other, but that's not the topic of today)

P.D. The Soviet Union sided with the republicans until they unfairly appropriate (aka stole) the spanish national treasure.

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