LOOKING AGAIN AT SPAIN

                                                                        

A few days ago, I took part in a panel at the Center for Political Education in San Francisco. It was one session of a class on "Countering the Right", and it looked back at the fascist conquests of Ethiopia and Spain in the 1930s. The participants were mostly young, a majority women and men of color, lively and very engaged. I had some difficulty reading my short talk on Spain, even in 20pt type, and questions had to be repeated for me. But I enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly.....

SPAIN

legacy of  "premature anti-fascism"

An advantage of being old is that you lived through historic events that happened before most people were born, and you remember some of them vividly if you shared them with people who were close to you.  I was 14 years old and in high school when the Spanish Civil War broke out. I had close friends, some only a few years older than I, who joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought in Spain.  I remember the wife of Dewitt Parker sitting in our kitchen, being comforted by my mother day after day as she waited for news.  Dewitt never came back, he died in Spain.  I met Wilfred Mendelson when I went to a summer camp school on politics of the day, much like the one you’re attending tonight.  He was only a few years older than I, a student at City College of New York (CCNY).  He didn’t come back either.  An older friend, George Watt, did come back.  He was one who was able to swim the Ebro River in the last days of the war to escape Franco’s conquering army.  George later volunteered to fight in World War Two; he was shot down over France, where he was rescued by the French Resistance.

Why was the Spanish Civil War so important and why do its lessons register so strongly today?  Spain is considered the beginning of World War II, not so acknowledged by most people at the time, and the people who volunteered to defend the Spanish Republic are often called "premature anti-fascists".  Mussolini had already carried out his bloody conquest of Ethiopia.  That didn’t wake up the world, and much of the world was still in denial about fascism when Mussolini and Hitler sent their bombers and tanks to help Franco set up a brutal dictatorship that lasted for years after the end of World War II.

The world paid dearly for not waking up on time to the nature of fascism, for allowing Ethiopia and Spain to fall under the fascist boot.  For many years, actually through the first phase of the second world war, the major governments of the West -- Britain, France and our own USA -- were more focused on the “red scare,” the election of a leftist popular front democracy in Spain than they were on Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.  These governments and the League of Nations chose so-called “neutrality” which was actually a policy to blockade and strangle Spain while the fascists poured in their military might and turned Spain into their war games rehearsal for world war.  A man named Litvinof, the USSR's representative to the League of Nations, had a different message.  It was called “collective security.”  The thrust was that countries and governments, whether they be capitalist or socialist, liberal or  progressive, should unite to stop fascism.  It took quite a few years and a holocaust of many millions of lives from many nations before Litvinof’s formula took hold.

The world learned about the nature of fascism in the last century.  But current events urgently call for reeducation.  The danger of fascism grows out of the deepest problems of our society, out of a system in which greed and super-wealth dominate at the expense of human needs and rights.  It brings to power the most reactionary multi-billionaires.  While it is hardest on the poorest and most oppressed, its racist, nativist, misogynist divisiveness makes it an extreme threat to the broadest segments of society as a whole.That means that defeating fascism requires not only the courageous persistence of those communities under attack and their supporters, but it requires the broadest possible united efforts among people whose opinions and even interests are bound to differ.  That’s one of the lessons, the most important one, that’s left to us by the "premature anti-fascists" of the 1930s. If that proved essential when fascism threatened from abroad, it's as crucial today when the menace is emerging on home terrain.

Some historians of the Spanish Civil War focus on ideological conflict  between various factions of communists, socialists and anarchists. That conflict on the Left surely cast a shadow over those times. But 80-plus years later, what inspires is the  heroism of the Spanish people and the many volunteers who came from many lands to fight and die alongside them. The big story is the legacy left to us by the "premature anti-fascists" of the 1930s.

                       

FOLLOW-UP

In response to yesterday's blog,Trump's 2020 Launch, a reader sees it differently: 

Leon,

Much as I wish it were otherwise I have to disagree with your main point.

Trumpism, along with its international versions, is a pernicious threat to democracy in the United States and in the world. It has already destroyed much of our national civic understanding, and Trump's re-election would be a true disaster from which we would not likely ever recover.

Yes, Trump is using McCarthyite tactics to frighten and divide the Democratic Party. And he has succeeded. I'm scared out of my wits that he may be re-elected.  And the way to assure his re-election is for the Democrats to continue to gratuitously feed him ammunition for his scare tactics. I believe that Tom Friedman is right that we need to put off any discussion of a progressive (let alone socialist) agenda until after we have gotten him out of there.

I believe that much of the progressive agenda is highly worthy, but it will require more time than remains before the election to convince the majority of voters. We can't afford to turn off the large number of voters who don't like Trump but who are scared (or can easily be scared off by Trump's tactics) of anything that sounds like socialism.  

It is absolutely critical that Trump be repudiated (and by a large majority), and we need to do everything we can to make that happen. 

Andy

My reply:

Thanks, Andy.

I don't think your note and my blog are necessarily incompatible. The intensity of our conviction that Trump must go, and our fears about the danger of his re-election, are certainly equal. Our differences have more to do with perceptions of political reality and of the challenges leading up to the election. Even if I agreed with Friedman that democrats should postpone discussing big ideas thatTrump will exploit to paint the Democratic Party "red" -- is that a realistic prospect? You can't wave a wand and have everyone from Sanders and Warren to AOC and Omar conform to Friedman's restrictions.

 There is an option for the undoubtedly sizable number of democrats who share Friedman's view, namely, pick a "centrist" presidential candidate like Joe Biden. That presents its own risks and problems worth examining at another point. But the Democratic Party is evolving as society's problems deepen. It is more and more diverse. It can never be monolithic in thinking or action. That's reality, and it does make things difficult and complicated, but far from hopeless.

We can have a realistic hope that all democrats will make it their priority to expose and oust Trump, and to get out the largest possible majority vote. That’s the only way to win. True, we can lose if “centrists” and “progressives” are each in their own ways tone deaf to the needs and possibilities that connect with voters -- or if they choose to fall into fighting each other over who lost the election well before it takes place. 

If overreach is the danger as Friedman fears, another losing formula is timidity and intimidation. We can’t let Trump’s McCarthyism bully us into a sort of conformity, where ideas, public discourse, vision and inspiration are put on hold. We can’t surrender to our fears our confidence in a strong democratic majority. A self-censored, enfeebled Democratic Party is just the ticket for Trump. 

No one can be sure, but I think the outlook will improve as the nominating process unfolds. Trump may whip up his crowds, but his racism and bizarre behavior are daily more exposed. It’s surely a time for alarm, but not for losing confidence.
Leon  

TRUMP'S 2020 LAUNCH

• It wasn’t a surprise, but this week Trump took off the wraps on his 2020 election strategy. Racist incitement against immigrants now extends to mob chants of “send her back” against four members of Congress, women of color and citizens of the USA. And that is parlayed into Trump’s relaunching of McCarthyism, the “red scare”, to condemn the Democratic Party as “unAmerican”.
• All the boasts and distortions about Trump’s economic performance will be called on, but that won't suffice. His weapons of choice are racial tropes to inflame his fans and a  McCarthyite assault on the Democratic Party. He hopes to frighten and split the Democratic Party while he keeps the GOP together in subservience to him.
• Tom Friedman has set off a chorus of alarm, understandably horrified by what Trump’s reelection would mean for America and the world. He’s right that how the Democrats campaign in the months ahead is crucial. But all-out war between “centrist and progressive” democrats would just give Trump his best chance. History has lessons, too often forgotten. Divide and conquer is the formula; keep the opposition divided and at each other’s throats.

Democrats and a majority of voters who want Trump out are never going to speak with one voice, except on that imperative. Nor should they. We need debate, we need dissent, we need ideas and fresh thinking more than humankind ever has. We can’t let Trump frighten us into surrendering our exercise of public discourse.

Is there a way to keep a relentless focus on ousting Trump while preventing  differences of opinion and outlook from fracturing a winning democratic coalition?

It's difficult and complicated, but we can hope that some of the following attitudes take hold. There has to be mutual and genuine respect for everyone's commitment to defeating Trump whether calling themselves "liberal" or "progressive" or without a label. As far as I'm concerned, that goes for Friedman even though I disagree with his suggested course. It also should go for most of the potential nominees who advocate significant social change rather than settling for an illusary return to pre-Trump "normalcy". Some have already begun to have an impact on public consciousness and  concern about income inequality, climate change and job creation, the many dimensions of racism, and more. Some have brought to center stage the obligation of the superwealthy to give back a share to lower the income gap and fund public advances in critical areas of human need.

 Friedman advises tabling big ideas until after the election is won. Obama proved that a vision is critical to winning. His experience also proved that the vision won't guide the ship out of the harbor as long as it is anchored to the military-industrial-finance complex and is the target of GOP sabotage.

So let's not let Trump scare us into self-censorship of thought , speech and hope. We can survive differences of opinion. Democracy can't survive without them.

Meanwhile, solidarity calls out to every decent human being. Whatever bent or persuasion, we can't be silent while immigrant families are brutalized in prison camps. We can't allow the four Congress women to stand alone while incitement to racist violence flows from the White House into into Trump's raging election spectacles.

Given the circumstances and the time of day, it should be expected that common ground can be found across the wide democratic political spectrum whoever wins the nomination. So may it be with a clear public majority.