Behind the Bastards - Behind the Insurrections - The Birth of Spanish Fascism, Part 1

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

In this episode, we discuss the birth of Fascism in Spain and how it led to the first great armed conflict between Fascism and Democracy: the Spanish Civil War. FOOTNOTES: https://www.amazon.com/Fascism-Spain-1923-1977-Stanley-Payne/dp/0299165647/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fascism+in+spain&qid=1611636892&sr=8-1 https://libcom.org/history/spanish-civil-war-osprey-book-collection https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1985/12/spanish-civil-war.htm https://www.historynet.com/persistent-myths-guernica.htm https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/06/george-orwell-homage-to-catalonia-account-spanish-civil-war-wrong https://www.rs21.org.uk/2018/11/22/petain-franco-and-chemical-warfare-in-the-rif/ https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/spanish-legion-viral-tweet-twitter-history https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/oct/22/the-contested-legacy-of-the-anti-fascist-international-brigades https://www.tutor2u.net/history/reference/why-did-the-nationalists-win-the-spanish-civil-war https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii67/articles/ronald-fraser-how-the-republic-was-lost https://limun.org.uk/FCKfiles/File/Spanish_Civil_War_Source_2.pdf Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's Francisco in my Franco's? There we go. We introduced it. It's not as big a name as Hitler. I'm going to be honest with you. It doesn't have the kind of star power.

If Hitler's like Ben Affleck, right? And we're doing the Matt Damon of fascism today. That is not accurate. You are completely wrong. You just like his tattoo. Come on. I love his trashy, gigantic, fullback Phoenix tattoo. That's pretty funny. Okay, we are thinking somebody that's like a deep cut. Matt Damon is more famous than Ben Affleck. That's nonsense.

It's more like a Scotty Pippin. You know what I'm saying? Scotty Pippin to Hitler's the Michael Jordan of fascism. That's way better. We're talking the Scotty Pippin. And like Scottie Pippin. Yeah, Francisco Frank. Yeah, Francisco's underrated. He's not good. He's a monster.

He had a shoe. Quite a... Scottie Pippin had a shoe. Exactly. Exactly. Pippins. We're talking about like Franco's, which would be Jack Boots, almost as tall as the Hitler Jack Boots and not quite as shiny. But still Jack Boots. Yeah, and they're a little cheaper.

But they still Jack Boots. Yeah, for the fascist on a budget, you know? I think he just wanted to talk about the tattoo again. I did. I always want to talk. And how hilarious. And how sad Ben Affleck looks every time he's captured in the wild. Just looks like he's been dying for the last 20 straight years. When his ex-wife picks him up from the jack in the box.

Oh, it's incredible. He's just so miserable all the time. It just feels like he spent so much time being attractive that he just got tired of it. It was just like, oh my God. Speaking of fascism, you've heard of the Fuhrer principle, the idea that like a single man can embody the spirit of a people, which is, you know, what Hitler used to rise to power.

I never believed in it until Ben Affleck, because Ben Affleck is the spiritual embodiment of Boston. He really is. Yeah, he's perfect. Yeah. He's really basic. Yeah, he really is. I, yeah, like if the Southeast weren't so damn racist, I would really like that area.

You know what I'm saying? Well, I hate the Celtics, but yeah. I don't know anything about the Celtics. But I know a bit about fascism. Yes. And prop, fascism is a little bit different in every country. It's kind of like, kind of like Skittles, you know? Yeah.

Different flavors. Chocolate, chips. Yeah, yeah. Ketchup, chips. Yeah, milk chocolate as opposed to the dark, you know? This is part of why scholars and theorists have such a damnable time defining what fascism is in the first place. Yeah.

There's a dictionary definition, right? There's going to be a dictionary definition and any dictionary you open, but it's not really useful in part because a lot of dictionary definitions of fascism apply almost as well to like communist regimes, any authoritarian regime. Yeah. Which is, you know, there's some points there, which is that whenever you have a totalitarian system,

similar bad things often do happen. But fascism is unique for a number of reasons, including its ability to subvert healthy democracies. And so when you have historians of fascism, people whose whole life is studying this thing, that we're still kind of getting grips on, all of them kind of tend to have their own definitions of it. And often those definitions don't contrast,

just different ways of kind of wording the same things. I tend to feel confident that Umberto Echo has done the best job of defining it in his essay on Urf fascism. I'm a big fan of the way Echo talked about fascism. And I think that Echo would have named Trump as a fascist straight away. In part because in the mid-90s when he wrote his essay on Urf fascism, he predicted that the internet and the way that it would allow people to spread messages and crowdsource activism would lead to the rise

of a unique kind of fascist. And I think that Trump embodied that in a lot of ways. And I think Echo would have seen it right away. Now, on the other hand, I think I may know where Echo is going. I haven't read the thing, but I have this theory about the type of fascist that Trump is. But I'd love to hear what this guy says.

Yeah, I mean, Echo kind of outlined a number of different things that are when you have a mix of these things and sort of a constellation, that is what fascism is. So there's a mix of popular resentment against the left, a sense of machismo, of misogyny, a cult of action for action's sake, syncretism, the ability to pull other things in and kind of attach them to itself, other aspects of spirituality and whatnot.

There were a bunch of different things that Echo noted as kind of key aspects of fascism. Now, sorry, no, what were you saying? No, because I was going to say, well, so interesting about what I feel like what we're going to hear as history nerds for the next 100 years about the unique, what Trump symbolizes, and it might just be a new type of fascism for the rest of our life.

But just this fascism that doesn't have a foreseeable goal, like, except for just being in power. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So that's what was so interesting to me about the uniqueness about Trump's fascism is like, yeah, but what's your end game here? What are you doing?

You know what I'm saying? Whereas we knew what Mussolini was doing. We know what... Hitler definitely. We knew, yeah, he did it. We knew what you were doing. This was your goal. You know what I'm saying?

And I'm just like, what are you doing, dude? His goal was TrumpSingles.com. Yeah. Apparently, TrumpSingles. Yeah. That's one of the things that does... That's one of the things that does... That's one of the things that does...

That does, I think, that did, I think, threw some people off is that he clearly didn't have as much of a... Like Mussolini, I do think, is more similar to Trump than Hitler is in the kind of fascist that he was in, in his goals. But Mussolini had a plan to, like, take and hold power. And I guess one of the things that's been revealed is that, like, Trump definitely wanted to take and hold power, but he did not have much of a plan.

Not a plan. It was a little plan. Yeah, I was like, your goal is to reach a goal. And I... Yeah. Yeah, your goal was just... Almost like, yeah, he's... There's a lot to be said.

I don't know if it's prepared here. Yeah, you just want to keep being right, you know? And I'm like, about what? Yeah. Yeah, anyway, let's go on. It's interesting. And a number of, like, there are other scholars of fascism who took a lot longer to kind of decide

that Trump fit their definition of fascism. I'm thinking about Robert Paxton here. And Paxton is a very well-respected scholar of fascism. He wrote a book called The Anatomy of Fascism. That's a very good book. And he only felt comfortable declaring Trump a fascist after January 6th. And he was like, that was the line...

Paxton had been consistent. He's an authoritarian. There's fascist elements in what he does. But he didn't kind of name him a fascist until after the 6th. And I'm not slamming Paxton. I think there's a room for intellectual debate on this. And I understand kind of why he... Like you said, Trump's a different kind of one, right?

Yeah. And where fascism changes based on the country and based on the time period, you know? And I do think kind of one of the things that Echo was sort of peering around the edges of when he was talking about how he thought we were going to see an internet-based fascism in the future was the idea that like another aspect of fascism,

and he didn't define this as a key aspect of fascism, but I think that it is, is the ability to find a way to utilize new media technology in a way that no one else understands yet. Which Trump did, right? No other politician understood how to use social media in the way that Trump did when Trump came onto the scene. Yeah.

It's a big part of his success. Anyway, so there's a lot of debate over what is a fascist. And as a result of this debate, there's actually quite a lot of argument on whether or not the regime of Francisco Franco in Spain was truly fascist. And you'll find a lot of argument about this, about whether or not Franco was a fascist. There were fascists in Spain, absolutely.

Whether or not Franco and his regime really counts. And what's not up for debate is that many elements of the Spanish right leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War were fascists. In that fascist powers, Italy and Germany intervened in that civil war because they saw what was happening there as a battle between fascism and socialism largely. And more to the point, whatever you can say about Franco himself,

and we'll talk about him more in part two, the battle over Spain in the late 1930s absolutely ranks as the first open military conflict between fascism and democracy, and fascism and socialism too, right? Like all of that was kind of in the mix. And on the Spanish side, the Republican side, you had like the Spanish Republic who were, you know, liberals more or less, people who supported

like a constitutional democracy. And you had anarchists and communists and socialists of varying kind of lesser strains, Trotskyists too, it's a very complicated civil war. It's more like Syria than a lot of other conflicts because there's so much going on, so many different kind of corners to it. What's interesting real quick before you get into this

is like, you know, in a past life, I was like a history and social science, like high school teacher. And I went through the entire credentialing process all the way up to masters, and at no point in any of our California standards was it ever required to talk about this. And which is so interesting to me to win,

especially when I'm trying to set up, you know, because since I wasn't a direct history teacher, I was more like a social science teacher trying to set up how cultures get where they get and like why it was so weird around World War II and why we got so like, we was already itchy, why a lot of us was like, man, we really don't want to go over there.

It's because we was, I was like, well, because of the Spanish Civil War, like we kind of, you know, we was kind of going back and forth about sending troops over there. And the students were like, wait, what? And I'm like, yeah, Spain had a civil war, like, yeah, this happened.

Like, you know what I'm saying? This was like, it was right before World War II. Like this happened. It was like, this whole big thing. It was like, it's a big thing. And we were involved. Like we almost, you know what I'm saying? But just like, that's like in no...

Thousands of Americans volunteered. Yeah. Yes. And I'm like, it's not required to talk about. And I'm like, oh my God, this is, you're missing, you're missing a lot of the story. If you don't understand why even World War II was so touchy for us.

Yeah. Part of it was this. One of the reasons people don't like to talk about this is that it is, it's very complicated. And it is not as much of a cut and dried story as makes it easy to sort of summarize, right? Yeah. Once the fighting starts, once the civil war starts,

it is a bit easier. But even then, it's a very fucking messy war. Yeah. And there are really shitty people on the good guy's side too, right? Like there's a lot of like very ugly stuff that happens because it's a war, you know? The same is true of World War II.

It's just been heavily whitewashed. And the Nazis were so fucking bad that it makes it a lot easier to make your side seem like the good dudes. Now, in some ways, because of how complicated it is, and we're going, this whole episode is about the birth of Spanish fascism. And we're going to do some pretty deep history here.

Let's go. And in some ways, the story of how fascism evolves in Spain bears a lot less resemblance to what's happened in America than either of the two stories we've discussed so far. But while the similarities are a lot less direct, I actually think there's a lot here that's valuable because we're going to kind of lay out

how this evolved over time and how the birth of fascism in Spain was woven into the birth of democracy itself. And I think that's a really important story. But we're going to need a lot of context. So Spain is unique, fairly unique among European nations, in that it has not had a sense of nationalism from most of modern history.

Not in nearly the same way that you got with England or with France or with Germany once, you know, 1870, whatever rolls around. The Spanish state does go back very far to 1478 when Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, the Columbus folks, right? Yeah, when they decided to colonize all of South America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And before that, they were the ones like Spain.

They kick out the, you know, the Muslims who had kind of taken over a chunk of Iberia as a result of a counter to anyway. They take back Spain for Christendom. That would be the way they would have framed it. But they don't actually make a nation. Not in any modern sense. Spain is a bunch of independent kingdoms.

And those independent kingdoms, up until fairly recently, never really melded together. You've got the Aragonese and you've got Catalans and you've got the Basque. And there's more than that, right? I'm not going to pretend this is good. Spanish history is incredibly complicated. I am very far from an expert.

And there are still issues with like a lot of Catalans and a lot of Basque still want like some, at least some degree of independence from the Spanish state. Yeah, recognition from the nation. Yeah. And they all have their own languages and cultural traditions. And one of the things that I learned that's interesting actually is that the Spanish, what we know as Spanish

comes from the chunk of like the language group that was kind of most dominant in Iberia. But they actually stole the word for the country from, I think it was the Catalans. It's very, anyway, very complicated history. And for most of Spanish history, the only unifying factors of all these very disparate groups of people were the Crown, the King, and the Catholic Church.

And mainly the Catholic Church, right? Now, in the 1800s, Spain was dominated by a, or Spain was kind of overtaken, Spanish thought was overtaken by a revolution in classical liberalism, right? That sort of takes over a lot of parts of Europe at this point in time. And Spain is included in that. But in Spain, this kind of new liberal wave largely failed

to push for any kind of mass Spanish identity. This is where you start to get like French identity, right? But you don't really get that... I mean, in France, it starts earlier than the 1800s, but you don't really get that in a big way in Spain. And part of the reason is that kind of the cultural elites fail to institute any meaningful education reforms for the majority of the population.

Like France in the same period establishes a functional education system. And by contrast, Spain's failure to do this means that education remained the purview of the Catholic Church. They do most of the educating. And it's only for the wealthy. And the country would deal with widespread illiteracy well into the 1900s.

And when you don't have mass public education, one of the things you don't have is a widespread idea of the history and like what your nation is, and like, right, that's part of why... Anyway, nationalism is not really much of a thing in Spain as a result of this. They're too busy killing off Mesoamericans. And they're absolutely...

That's one of the things that's weird. They're a huge imperial power. In some ways, they're the first world power. Like the first power that's like on a level of like what the US was earlier in our lifetimes. Yeah, knowing like being a Californian married to a Mexican woman, like, you know, you have to somehow kind of know a little Spanish history

as to why these Mayans are speaking Spanish. You know what I'm saying? And you know, because the part of Mexico, she's from there from southern Mexico, so like they're kind of Mayan, you know what I mean? And but yeah, this like weird like... How they exported this like colorism and just this weird elitism.

Yeah, but at the same time, what they in your country read, you know, so it was just this weird like thing happening with Spain. Yeah. It's very weird. And like if we're going to be completely fair, like if you look at the system of sort of slavery that was instituted in what we now call Latin America,

it's one of the few systems of slavery in history that's like on the same level as what we had in the American South. Like absolutely. And genocide. So I'm not trying to like whitewash Spanish history. No, not at all. It's just not the same as it is with all our colonial powers.

I'm adding to it like it's peculiar that they had such an imperialistic power without this like national identity. Yeah. It's very odd. Like Spain is an interesting country to study. Now the Catholic Church was a major force in Spain for pushing against the development

of a modern liberal state, right? In the 1800s, you don't really have nations anywhere up until like that concept kind of starts like in the 1700s. Like thing shits a lot less. The idea of like a nation, the way that we conceive of one is kind of born in this period, 1700s and 1800s. And the Catholic Church in Spain really pushes

against the modern liberal state. This was largely due to the fact that liberalism had an anti-clerical bias, right? The Catholic Church for the medieval period is like the most power, the big power in the world, right? They have influence everywhere in Christendom and they start to lose it in this period because governments are like,

well, where are we going to let a church in Italy tell our government like, we're England. I don't give a shit what you say. Yeah. And you know, Catholicism is huge in Spain and the Church is like, you know, we don't want any of this shit going on. So Spain, the Church pushes against kind of a lot

of modernizing ideas. And one of those things is that Spain fails to develop a modern military system. And while it was, again, a massive military power, they never do like what France does, where you start this idea of a nation under arms and a modern professional style of the military. That takes a lot longer to develop in Spain.

And it's part of why they don't do so well when everyone else develops a modern military, right? And they start losing their empire, both to a combination of European powers taking their shit from them and from a lot of revolutions in places they had controlled that overthrows them. And so the 1700s and 1800s see a rapid decline

in Spanish power. They had been declining before then, but yeah. Now the ultimate collapse of Spanish imperialism really comes in 1898 when the United States goes to war with Spain for no reason really and takes over Cuba and the Philippines. Just take Cuba. Yeah, just cuz.

Like it's a just cuz thing. Just kind of randomly just like, hey, you want a new imperial power? We could be that. Yeah. And there, you know, Spain is an unbelievably brutal, particularly in the Philippines. And then we take over and we're unbelievably brutal

in the Philippines and the people there are like, no, you guys, so are we going to have a democracy now? And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We want your shit. Like we want your shit, you know? No, we're going to take your shit. We're setting you free so we can own you. Yeah.

I mean, I don't understand. It's that kind of freedom. Yeah. It's that kind of freedom. It's that kind of freedom. Yeah. Like we don't even let women in our country vote. You think we're going to let you vote?

What are you talking about? It's 1898, motherfuckers. Yeah. So interesting. Oh yeah, no, no, no, nothing changes. It's just your leaders speak English now. Yeah. I mean, our guns are better.

Our guns are a lot better than Spanish guns. Oh, they're guns sucked. That's why we're in charge now. Colonialism. Yeah. So one of the things that's interesting about Spain is late 1800s, you know, 1890s, early 1900s, that's like the height of colonialism.

Right before World War I starts like, like murders a lot of the great powers that controlled the whole world. So like they are, they are writing high. Africa's just been like, you know, murdered. Like in a lot of ways, like colonize the scramble for Africa's like at its height, you know, Belgium owns the Congo.

It's that period. Yeah. So everyone else who's doing imperialism is doing gangbusters and Spain's empire collapses. So what happens to everyone else in like the 50s, 60s, 70s really happens to Spain, like 60, a couple of generations earlier. So they actually go through the,

they're an empire who goes through the collapse of colonialism while everyone else is doing great at colonialism, which is one of the things that makes them very interesting. Yeah. So some of the things that happen in colonial powers when their empire's collapse, these things that we've seen in Germany and France and England and

that we're seeing now in the United States, happen in Spain in the late 1890s, because it's just the stuff that happens when you're an empire that fails. I find that really interesting. Historian Stanley Paine calls 1898 the first modern post-colonial trauma in Western Europe. And I think you do have to view it as a trauma for

the people in Spain. And probably the best equivalent to our own society would be the ongoing trauma that a lot of Americans have faced in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And I'm not trying to minimize the traumas faced in those countries as a result of U.S. action, which are commensurately greater, but we've seen in the MAGA movement, right?

And all of these like that have come home and stormed the capital and shit. Like it is a trauma. It's a trauma when you're an empire that fails. It fucks people up. Who were used to being the empire? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I find that part like, you know, as again, being a black dude, being like, you know, the saying, you know, that like equality is oppression if all you know is privilege. Yes. You know what I'm saying? So like when, if you're just, you're so used to the

system working for you the second it doesn't, you're like, something must be broken. You're like, no, it was broke. That's why it only worked for you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. It was always broke.

It was always broke. One of the people it worked for. So yeah, Spain deals with this post-colonial trauma very early, right? Before the rest, before the rest of the western world, right, really does, because it fails for them. They were the first for it to work and they were the first that it failed for, which I guess makes sense.

Yeah. Now, like in the U.S., all those failing colonial ventures that we had flooded the United States with disaffected veterans debt and it fueled the rise of a resentful right wing as well as fueling the rise of a dissident left wing, right? Jesus. Like both of that stuff was really incited in a lot

of ways by, and obviously I'm not calling the dissident left a bad thing, but like those horrible colonial wars we had really fueled a lot of that. And the situation in Spain after 1898 is not all that different. Now, with her years as a great power seemingly behind her, Spanish intellectuals begin to wonder if the sense of exceptionalism that they'd always taken

for granted had been based on false premises. And I'm going to quote from historian Stanley Paine here. I know, right? Interesting. Yeah. Symptomatic of the dismay of the nationalist military was an editorial in El Heraldo Militar on 23rd

November 1908 entitled, Worse Than Anywhere. It declared, wherever we look, we find greater virility than in our own people. In Turkey, Persia, China, the Balkan states, everywhere we find life and energy, even in Russia. In Spain, there is only apathy and submission. How sad it is to think about the situation in Spain. Damn.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of feels like us in the coronavirus. Mm-hmm. We're going to like... Yeah. I think Americans can identify with a lot of what they're hearing here, even if you don't like feel it,

because colonialism is bad. You know the intellectuals in our own society who are saying the same shit, right? Yes. Now, the Spanish political system was not at all stable domestically during the period after, like, while her empire was in freefall. And that's part of why the empire didn't last.

From 1803 to the early 1900s, there were more than a dozen military coups. Between 1833 and 1876, Spain was wracked by three civil wars, the Carlist Wars, which were not battles against everybody's favorite tertiary Simpsons character, but were instead members of a conservative pro-church political movement. The Carlists were the violent armed wing of Catholics,

right? They were the embodiment of clerical resentment against liberal Spain. They were religious extremists who didn't want the country to modernize. And I found a very detailed write-up for students on limon.uk that notes the Carlist Wars, quote, were fought with a fervor and brutality

derived from deep divisions within Spain. They also lasted longer than national wars and were more difficult to resolve. They anticipated the Spanish Civil War of respects. There was a strong element of different and conflicting beliefs within the country, profound traditional Catholicism against modern liberal thought, regional

independence against traditional central control, political liberalism against deep conservative monarchism. So this is all the stuff that's been cooking up in the background of Spanish politics at the turn of the 20th century. Now, partly as a result of the Carlist Wars, Spain had a relatively underdeveloped right wing in this

period, because, you know, a lot of them had gotten killed in wars. And they'd been very tied to the church. So there wasn't as much like a nationalist right wing. It was a Catholic right wing. Now, Spanish nationalism, as I said, was kind of nascent and didn't really start to erupt into the street until after World War

I. Spain was neutral in World War I. So you'd think they might be in a better position because they don't really get involved in this shit. And it does delay a lot of political extremism in the country. It's why they don't have, like, you know, a communist movement that's really a big deal until after the war. The first big

street fight in Spain between radical political groups actually happened between two opposed groups of nationalists in 1919. Radical Catalanists, which are like big, like advocates of Catalan separatism, had been holding peaceful nightly demonstrations in favor of independence throughout 1918.

In January of 1919, a group of right wing Españolistas who were like nationalists, violence-managed nationalists, assaulted this gathering of peaceful Catalanists. Both groups battled it out in the streets of Barcelona in what would soon become a familiar display. The Españolistas

were a mix of local army officers and men from a group calling itself the Liga Patriotica Española. This violence was soon superseded by a spree of organized political murders by anarcho- syndicalists from a labor federation called the C&T. And this is, like, unrelated to the national separatism.

There's also, we'll talk about anarchism in a second, but a bunch of anarchist extremists start murdering people based on, like, based on class, really. And that brings us a temporary stop to all the street fighting because the murders bring the cops out against all sorts of what are considered to be

political extremists. And it briefly it's what we're about to see in the United States. And it briefly clamps down on all political organization in the streets. Yeah. In most of Western Europe, anarchists tended to be smaller. Like, they weren't fairly rare for anarchists to

make a large percentage of political radicals in a European country. And it's much more common for, like, socialists and communists to be a significant like, force, a significant, like, sized force. Ukraine would be an exception to that. We talked about Nester Makno on our Christmas episodes.

And part of why Ukraine had a large and organized anarchist movement is that Ukraine was largely agrarian. And one of the things we see in, like, Europe in this period of time is that nations that have a large industrial base and a lot of industrial workers have a huge communist

movement. Nations that are primarily rural and agricultural have a large anarchist movement because anarchists are more common, kind of come out of agrarian rural communities more often than communists. Because communism is a workers movement. Marx early on in his career was very much like, you

like, kind of wrote off for a long time. Rural people was like, no, it's all about the workers. It's about industrial, like, then you can organize and you can use them to take, you know, take over the system basically and, like, rural people are kind of a lost cause. And he did change on that later in his life.

But, like, that's part of why you don't really see communism erupt out of rural areas in this period. You see anarchism when you see left-wing extremism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I'm going to quote it. Yeah, it's interesting, right? I didn't actually know that. Thought of that, yeah.

And that's part of why, when I think about ways in which to pull people in rural America away from right-wing extremism, I think of more systems like democratic confederalism or libertarian municipalism like Bookchin that are kind of more of an out of a more anarchist view. Because, like, a lot of these

libertarians, I do think you can pull into a more reasonable system that's not right-wing extremism because a lot of their basic ideology is I want to be left alone. And I think you could be like, well, we want to leave you alone. We just also would like to be left alone. Can we figure out a way to, like, yeah.

Yes, yes. Yeah. So I'm going to quote from Lehmann.uk an on kind of politics in Spain in this period. Quote, Capitalist industry had not developed in the same ways it had in Germany, Britain, and America, and Spain had little in the way of organized labor. After small-scale beginnings in 1868,

anarchism came to be a major revolutionary influence of the 20th century and was more widely embraced in Spain than other left-wing ideas. The movement first gained notice in the 1870s. After a violent incident at the town of Alcoy in 1873, when anarchists took advantage of a strike to spread radical ideas causing

the police to fire on the gathered populace, a clam down was enforced that sent the movement underground. Consequently, it became largely based in rural areas, which were more difficult to police. Anarchism was reduced to individual acts of terrorism, which in turn were met by repression and torture by the state throughout the 1880s

and 1890s. By the early 20th century, terrorism had given way to a belief in anarcho-syndicalism. This was the theory that the state could be challenged by cooperative action by the workers in strikes. The Federation of Workers' Societies of the Spanish region was formed in 1900. This movement organized strikes

to exercise political power and was again suppressed. Wage cuts and closures of factories in Barcelona in 1909, together with the call-up of men for a colonial war in Morocco, led to a general strike in the city on 26th of July. This turned out to be a major event with 1700 arrests, attacks on railway

lines and anti-clericalism, hostility to the church. 80 churches and monasteries were attacked. The government response was swift and merciless, and five leaders were executed. This is a big thing with particularly anarchists in Spain. They burn a lot of churches down, and they kill a lot of Catholic

priests. Some of that, a lot of that, is them murdering people who didn't deserve it. A lot of them, that is them murdering people who did, because the Catholic church is also terrible. Kind of wild. If you're looking for a pure good guy or a pure victim,

you will rarely find it in this. There are, obviously I'm not saying there's nuns and shit that get murdered. That's not chill. The Catholic church is also responsible for horrible repression. It's very messy. They have their own

both versions of Bastard episode of the good Christmas one that's like, oh, we invented orchid vineages. That's actually great. Then there's this. The Catholic church is so big, because

obviously we could do multiple episodes, and we probably will at some point about the massive and pervasive sexual abuse of children that was enabled by the Catholic church. We could and should also do a Christmas episode on the significant number of priests and nuns in Latin America who were like dogged

and constant enemies of U.S. imperialism and right-wing extremism during the period when the U.S. was doing most of its fucking around in Latin America. All of that's part of the church's history. It's true that half of our hospital beds are actually Catholic. It's like weird mix.

Yeah. I'm not a person who wants to simplify all this. It's very messy. This is a messy episode. By this point, when you've got these anarcho-syndicalists organizing and in some cases carrying out not all of them, but some of them carrying out

terrorist attacks and some of those attacks are on shitty people and some of those attacks are on people who don't deserve it. It's very messy. And at the same period of time, you've got Gabriel Denunzio in Italy occupying, well, I guess in Yugoslavia, occupying the city of Fium and you've got Mussolini in the early stages of forming

his black shirts and sicking them on left-wing newspapers. This is happening contemporaneously to that. You're going to have to release with this one a vocabulary list. You've introduced some new names, some new words to some people. We talked about Denunzio and Fium. No, I'm not talking about him.

I'm talking about the different factions in Spain. You said anarcho-syndicalism. Yeah, anarcho-skew-dopes and a sternocledo-master without this bug. Anarcho-syndicalist. The basic idea is that

workers who work in different factories or whatever who work in farms or whatever need to form syndicates together to organize, kind of like unions, to organize and have syndicates that work together against the state and against capital in order to, in some cases, just

gain better wages for workers, in some cases, in order to revolt against the system. But it's this idea that different groups of workers need to organize themselves and then work with other organizations of workers, rather than having bosses in a strict hierarchy. And they totally need to sell drugs. That's why they call it narcos.

Yeah. The good thing about this period is that drugs are all legal everywhere. So, by this point, like I said, denunzio's occupying fium and Mussolini's in the early stages of like forming the black shirts. Fascism's getting started in Italy. And in Spain,

though, anarchists are by far the largest and best organized group of political radicals in the country. The communists aren't really a big factor. And the right wing isn't really a big factor. It's just kind of the anarchists fighting the government a lot of the time. And the Catholic Church, you know, is kind of a lot of their, like, supporters are kind

of taking the part of right wing organizing, but the car list wars kind of drain them. So, it's not a big deal there. And this is not really the case anywhere else that you could think of. And it's part of why I find Spain so interesting. Fascism, by contrast, had a much slower time starting off in Spain. Portugal

actually beat Spain to the punch when it came to, like, having fascists. Yeah. And it was because a proto-nationalist group called Nationalismo Lusitano was formed in Lisbon in 1923. And it was directly inspired by Mussolini's Italian fascism. Now, a number of other Mussolini wannabes

sprang up in Europe during this period. You could even call Hitler at the time of the Beer Hall Putsch, kind of like a Mussolini imitator. Yeah. But the idea didn't really catch on in Spain, not yet. Spanish intellectuals were, however, watching events in Italy. And one of them, a guy named Foix, suggested that

this new political system might just be the thing to help rebuild Spain's failing empire. He wrote a fascism as a social movement. It gave voice to a vein of mysticism and idealism that exalted the concept of the patria and its full realization, the concept of a fatherland. Yeah, yeah, patria.

There's a patria coffee shop in Compton. Yeah. With some troubling. Yeah. So the name of the game for Foix was national restoration. But Mussolini's fun idea was popular outside of right-wing circles, too. There was actually a left-wing Catalan separatist movement

that found themselves drawn to Italian fascism, particularly its emphasis on militia-based direct action. And they weren't fascists. They didn't embrace, for example, Mussolini's doctrine of therapeutic violence, you know, the cult of violence for violence's sake. They just liked, number one, the imagery

of this non-state group of armed people marching in order to take power for themselves. And they wanted to do that. So like the left is, when we talked about this in our first episode, a lot of folks who are just kind of hate the system play with both fascist and anarchist and left and right-wing ideas throughout

this period of time. Also, I like that you brought up Portugal because I feel like they always fly under the radar. They do. Everybody just not noticing. They could just exist in the shadows. They was the first in Africa, you know what I'm saying? So like nobody, like, how can nobody ever

talk about Portugal? And they're also the case of a country that was incredibly powerful and colonized a fuckload of the world and then collapsed before the rest of colonialism did. And you see the same thing happen in Portugal, where all these authoritarians start coming into power because there's this sense of like, we need a strong

power. This is like, intellectuals in Spain will be like, we have to, or in Portugal will be like, we can't have a republic for a while. We have to have basically a dictator come in because he needs to fix everything. We have all these problems. We can't argue. We just need one visionary to come in. And it's not quite fascism, but

it has a lot of elements of that, right? Yeah. Robert, can you hit an ad-rick real quick? You know what else has elements of fascism, Sophie? Capitalism. Capitalism. Aspects.

Yeah. Here's... What? During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what?

They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside

an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside this hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the bad-ass way. Nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal

legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match, and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted

before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass,

and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine,

I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev,

is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, the Soviet Union is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent

in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back from...

Sorry. If by strong man, you mean a strong Sophie that keeps us in place, then yes, these ads have elements of fascism. But it's a good fascism. It's a fashion...

Fashion... Fashionism. Which is fine. It's fine. Because our glasses are dope. We appreciate our podcast dictator, Sophie. Who rules with an iron fist.

It does operate a system of political reeducation camps, but that is a story for another episode. So, in late 1923, Spain gained its first real fascist party, the Tresistas. They wore a blue uniform

because blue is the color of the working class for the right wing. We got it backwards here, which is weird, right? They wore a blue uniform and they hoped to spread throughout the country, but the organization fizzled. There just wasn't any real interest in fascism

in Spain in this period. Now, while political fascism failed to gain meaningful purchase in Spain during this time, fascist thought and inclinations were spreading among a lot of influential Spanish thought leaders, and particularly within the military

officers. Much of this had to do with the rise of the revolutionary left in the 1890s, these anarchists that I was talking about. In his landmark book, Fascism in Spain, scholar Stanley Paine notes that the military resistance to the left had less to do with politics than you might expect.

Officers largely accepted moderate left-wing social and economic aims, and there was even a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought among Spanish military leaders. Despite this, Paine writes, army officers demanded suppression of this disorder, violence, and subversion of national unity.

So again, it's this... The military's big problem with the left is they're disordered, right? They're trying to tear down this system, and we're doing pretty well in this system. It's the thing that is always the case, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The military itself was also heavily divided

in this time, not along political lines, but between bureaucratic officers on the peninsula itself and combat officers who'd spent time fighting in Spain's colonial possession, Northern Morocco. So, Spain's... Most of its empires has collapsed right now, but they have Northern Morocco.

And Spain had gotten Morocco basically during the last stages of the scramble for Africa, and it was given to them by France and England, who you might notice don't have the right to give Morocco to anyone, but they did. And it was due to, like, diplomatic support that Spain gave them.

Like, it was literally... Like, it was them the way that a normal person could help you move if you help me set up my sound system this week. Like, that's how Spain got Morocco. That's crazy. It's bullshit. It's also a beautiful country.

Gorgeous, yeah. Now, so they were given the right to occupy the land by France and England in 1906 in exchange for diplomatic support, and Spain's conquest of Morocco was kind of like the first one-night stand you have after a breakup. They just had, like, a big... You know, they needed something

to boost their confidence after losing to the United States. And Spain turned out to be pretty bad at conquering Morocco. Their control never amounted to much more than a few towns, cities, and roads on the coast. Much of the territory and its people refused to yield.

And in 1921, a charismatic Moroccan leader named Abdul Karim rose an army and launched what became known as the Rifi Insurrection. For a time, it was the strongest rebellion against colonialism anywhere in the pro-Asian world. Like, these guys actually do great. Yeah.

For a while, you know? Now, the war attracted ambitious young Spanish officers, eager to make a name for themselves. One of these guys was a fellow named Francisco Franco, who rose to the rank of colonel fighting the insurgents. Now, Francisco and a lot of young officers were very frustrated

by the corrupt and bureaucratic nature of the military, which had not seen a major reorganization or modernization in decades. It was a lot, in a lot of ways, like a Napoleonic army with, you know, somewhat better guns, which is part of why they're getting their asses kicked. Yeah. Now, Franco and a number of other officers

formed military councils of like-minded officers and lobbied for reforms and some of those reforms were successful, but nothing they did was enough to write the inertia. In early 1921, the Spanish army launched an offensive into northern Morocco from the coastal territories they held. Now, because the people in charge were idiots,

they didn't properly prepare lines of communication, and they almost immediately advanced on their supply lines. No defensible forts were left behind to secure supply routes or water. And on July 22nd, after five days of skirmishes, a force of 5,000 Spanish troops were attacked by 3,000 RIF fighters.

This should have been an easy win for a European military, but the Spanish had poor organization and were basically out of ammo because they'd outrun their supply lines. So the RIFs overrun the Spanish army, and they advanced like several hundred miles, slaughtering Spanish soldiers,

taking over supply depots and positions as they go. The Spanish army shatters entirely. They lose more than 13,000 men wounded in a matter of days, and the RIFs suffer around 800 casualties. This is like a... one of the worst defeats suffered

by colonial power in Africa. They get their asses handed to them. The defeat was so extensive and so shameful that the Spanish general committed suicide in the field and his remains were never found. Like, it is... And the RIF,

this whole instruction is fascinating to read about because these guys have it on lockdown, you know? It is hard to imagine how shattering this was to the people of Spain and their image of themselves and how much it disrupted Spanish politics. The military was, of course, enraged

and even though the failures were entirely their own, they blamed their failures on the civilian government. It was their fault. It's your fault we're bad at war. That's what's wrong with my cheese mode. You know what I'm saying? It's like, well, could it be us?

I didn't lose this war. You see it on the right here where it's like it was the liberals in the left that lost us the wars. And they're like, no, we suck at this. We're bad at it. Look, man, take it on a chin, okay? We're bad at it and it's bad. You shouldn't have been there in the first place.

We can stop this shit in like, I don't know, 1945, we'd still be like, you know what we're good at? It's war. Don't have to do it often. We're good at it. We show up. Now, again, yeah, it really fucks up a lot in Spain

at this period of time. And obviously, the liberal government is also enraged, largely at the cost in Spanish life and treasure in this colonial adventure. And in early September, 1923, three liberal ministers resign in protest because the military draws up plans for a new offensive in Morocco.

And they're like, come on, guys. You just got your asses kicked. This is a terrible idea. Fellas. Can you not take the message? It's bad. Catalysts who didn't even really want to be part of Spain, let alone

send their sons to die in fucking Morocco for Spain, held a huge rally in Barcelona where the Spanish flag was dragged through the ground. This really pisses off the military. And it pisses off a bunch of senior generals, most prominently a career military man from a career military family

named Miguel Primo de Rivera. Now, as the captain general of Barcelona, the guy in charge of the military in Barcelona, de Rivera was a desk officer, not an African veteran. And that's kind of like the break between the army. Besides with the African veterans.

And he sees this liberal government that's having failed his illustrious Spanish army. He also had seen Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922. And while he is not a fascist, he really likes Mussolini. And the March on Rome convinces him that with the army behind him,

he could force an end to the parliamentary politics that he thought were holding the military back. And I'm going to quote now from a book called Fascism in Spain. About like this revolt that de Rivera leads. What began in Barcelona is a classic pronunza miento. I'm sorry, Spain, with a local takeover

in the Catalan capital by its captain general who called upon the rest of the army and other patriotic Spaniards to rally round. In fact, also in the traditional style, all but one of the other captains general at first sat on their fence. The pronunza miento succeeded above all because the liberal government

did almost nothing to defend itself. The issue was finally decided two days later by the crown as Alfonso the 8th and constitutional limits or procedures transferred power to what would become the first direct military dictatorship in Spanish history. Primo de Rivera gave no evidence of any explicit theory or

plan. His assumption of power was at first predicated on a 90 day emergency military directory to deal with such problems as attempted subversion, the stalemate Morocco, administrative corruption and political reform. In fact, his only professed ideology was constitutional liberalism.

He insisted that the Constitution of 1876 remain the law of the land and initially denied that he was a dictator in any genuine sense, insisting in his first public statement, no one can with justice apply that term to me. Of course, everyone's sense has called him a dictator.

The years of... What is it about... I have two questions about this. I forget what historian I heard say, but he's just talking about just generals. They all kind of have this like diva gene.

They're just kind of divas. It's kind of hard to what is that? That's my first thing. It's very deep in western civilization particularly, right? You have to look back to Rome at this stuff. The way generals in Rome were treated,

number one, if you were a general in Rome and you had a major military victory, the Senate would vote for you to have what was called a triumph, which is where you were in all but name king for a day of Rome. The whole city had this huge party for you and all of your trophies of war

were dragged through the streets. Because you were so powerful and so basically worshipped that day, it was one guy's whole job to stand next to you the whole time and throughout the day whisper to you, you will die at one point. You're going to die someday.

And Rome constantly had civil wars that were the result of generals taking their armies and taking power. It happened all of the fucking time. It's why you got Caesar. It's why it stopped being a republic. One of the reasons why the United States military is organized the way it is

and why there's such, if you look at some of the shit the military was saying at the end of Trump's time, why they had so many statements about the military having no role in the elections is because from the beginning, the founders of this country were like, that's going to be a problem. We're going to have a military.

At first, a lot of them were like, we shouldn't like it always is a problem. Let's just have a bunch of militias, which there's something to be said for that. Anyway, they are divas. If you're going to take the responsibility for the lives of tens of thousands of men

into your own personal control, you got to be a little bit of a diva. Kind of. Seemed like it. So obviously everyone today calls Primo de Rivera a dictatorship. The years of his leadership are generally known as a dictatorship.

And this was met like his coming to power was met by a lot less resistance than you might guess. Spain was exhausted by years of political bickering foreign policy setbacks and economic frustration. Several years earlier, political theorists in Portugal had talked about the need to bring in a temporary dictator, what they called an iron

surgeon to solve intractable problems. And Primo de Rivera was one of a lot of strongmen who came to power throughout Europe in this period who weren't fascists, although they often admired fascists and took some ideas from them. But de Rivera doesn't really have an ideology. He just wants to fix

things and figures is enough of a narcissist that he's like, I know how to do this. And while de Rivera wasn't a fascist, his brief reign would help further lay the groundwork for fascism in Spain. And the war that he brought to Morocco was in many ways a prelude of fascist wars of extermination

to come. Only it was waged with the help of his allies, the French. Uh oh. Yeah. See, after the Spanish army broke at annual, which is that big battle where they lose 13,000 dudes, the Abdel Karim, who was the guy in charge

of the reef and his, his, his, like in, I don't know what you want to call them. I'll call them revolutionaries. Established a republic. Now France, who just fought a whole war, you know, World War One, but what they claimed was the right of national self-determination and who were a republic

themselves, did not like that Abdel Karim and his rift had established a republic in Morocco because they're afraid they own a bunch of Africa. They own a bunch of Africa near Morocco. Very close. Yeah. People are going to hear that there's a republic that isn't run by Europe and they're going to,

they're not going to want to have us in charge anymore. Wait, this is an option? Yeah. Not having y'all's option? Yeah. Yeah. We can have a democracy and not you? Yeah. Kind of like that. Yeah. France is like, no, that's not, that's not

going to happen. No, no, no, no. Not an option. Not an option. Not an option. So they decide to enter the war against the rift on Spain's side to crush the rebels. In 1925, France and de Rivera's reformed Spanish army begin a counter-offensive against the rift. Now, leading things on the French side

was a fella named Marshall Patain, hero of the battle of Verdun during World War One, and the guy who would become the leader of Vichy France during World War Two. He's the guy who collaborates with the Nazis. Now, Patain at this point, yeah, I know, he's a real piece of shit. Yeah, because the Republicans didn't kill this guy.

He's a war hero at this point, too, though, because he led France through the battle of Verdun is, if you're making a short list of the very worst battles in the entire history of human warfare, Verdun might be number one. You know, Stalingrad, there's a couple of other like, but it's in the running,

you know, it's horrible. Like a million people die. It's a terrible, terrible battle. So he's a big war hero, and when he decides he wants to go to Morocco, the French government is going to give him everything he asks for. So he puts together a force of 150,000 men

to face Abdel Karim's tribesmen who were very well-organized and good fighters, but they numbered just 20,000. The offensive started with one of the first, yeah, amphibious landings, yeah. There's no, like, Gandalf showing up and helping. No, no.

We don't get a Gandalf in this story, I'm sorry. Outgunned and outmanned. Yeah, you guys are like, you're fucked. It's a bummer. And this amphibious landing is started, spearheaded by a young colonel named Francisco Franco, who led the soldiers of the Spanish foreign legion into battle.

Now, you have seen the Spanish foreign legion. Everyone in America pretty much did, because at the start of the coronavirus lockdown, when Spain had a lockdown and brought in the military to help, there were pictures of a bunch of very jacked and very handsome Spanish soldiers in incredibly tight-fitting uniforms

marching down the streets of Barcelona. And a bunch of U.S. liberals were like, oh, my God, they're so hot. Why can't we have those soldiers here? I'm going to tell you the backstory of those soldiers, because those were the men of the Spanish foreign legion. And it's not a great backstory. Oh, no.

It was crazy. It was crazy about, like, the geography right now. I don't know this backstory that you're about to say, but I'm just picturing the geography, there's no soul at the edge of Spain to the tip of 10 years

in Morocco. It's just the merediterranean sea. It's a 90-minute boat ride. Yeah, it's not far, right? It's not far. It's almost like you could sit in Morocco and watch it. Like, yeah, you come to Spanish. You can get to Spain. They own a way off. They own a way off.

They own Spain to Africa in the time you would get a quarter of the way across Texas. Like, it's nothing. We're going to talk about why the uniforms look the way they do. So, the Spanish foreign legion were found in SOPHY,

he's not a pointy motherfucker. No, they're hot, they're hot. They're hot. They're nice. They are stashy as hell, but they are hot. Nobody's arguing that they're not hot. The pants are subjectively way too tight.

Yeah. that they're not good looking men. Yeah, we're not going to disagree about this. But problematic. So the Spanish foreign legion was founded in 1919 in mimicry of the French foreign legion, since Spain was also mimicking French ambitions in North Africa at this point.

The founder of the legion was a guy named Milana Stray, a veteran of Spain's brutal war in the Philippines and of the fighting in Morocco. And he wanted to create a colonial army for Spain that they could use to regain some of their lost glory. He created an interlocking series as he founded, like when he founded the foreign legion, he wanted them to be brutal,

because if you're going to keep a colonial possession, you have to murder a lot of people, right? That's how colonialism, where you have to kill a lot of people. Good God. And so your soldiers have to be soulless, broken men in order to gun down the proper number of children to keep an empire.

These are, he wanted shock troops. And yeah, I mean, in fine as hell. I just sent Papa, I just sent Papa. She just sent me to picture, that's why I was like, good God, I know, I know. Nobody's like, I get why the reaction was what it is. Like the Spanish foreign legion today, look like characters in,

like they look like characters in a pornography. Like they don't look like real soldiers. They look like fake soldiers from a sleazy porn. Yes. Yeah. And they kind of did then. So Milana Stray, in order to make sure these guys are as brutal as possible,

creates for them an interlocking series of hazing rituals with the goal of like shattering these men's souls. And he wants to explicitly, he's like, I want to separate these men from their past lives and unify them in quote, brotherhood and death. Now, Milana Stray was a big fan of the Bushido code of the samurai. Oh, here we go.

Yeah, I know, I know all of these fucking guys. And he cribs from Bushido to write his own legionary creed, what's emphasized tireless duty, bodily hardness, which is why they're all jacked, unconditional brotherhood and fighting to the death. And I'm gonna quote from a write-up and prospect magazine on the foreign legion here. Many of these themes were common across fascist movements

and the militaries they influenced, but others were distinct to the legion. Legionary swore to become bridegrooms of death from the title of a popular song about a legionary sacrifice in the rift, renouncing familial and romantic bonds and sublimating them into loyalty to each other and the legions flag.

You are married to death. Death is your wife. Sheesh, not married to the streets. You not married to the game. You married to death. So if you think these guys are hot, I have bad news for you. They're fucking the Grim Reaper.

Yeah, yeah, sorry. You don't attract them. You are too alive for me. That's not my type. Yeah, so these guys, the reason why they have these shirts with like really open, weird necklines, is that- I'm sorry, I'm gonna need you to rephrase that.

What? What's weird about that? Good for them, they have checks. They're showing it off. Why are you jealous? They are showing it off. It's also meant to emphasize their willingness to fight in the hot desert air.

And the green is from like the color, it's like early camouflage. Yeah. Sophie need her as saddie. This is what I wish was normal. Sophie, they are married to the concept of murdering children, I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not here for that, but the-

They even got bulges, dog. I know they have bulges, right? As I said, the pants are subjectively too tight, but like go ahead. This is not functional. It's like a nice pastel mint color, you know? None of the youth, this uniform is like functional. Yeah, they're not.

You have to be married to death because nothing about this says you ready to survive. It kind of looks like it's the tin man from the Wizard of Oz, worked at Baskin Robbins and had to go do a porno shoot later. So Franco and his foreign legion men, Franco and his foreign legion men were the tip of the spear of the French

and Spanish governments thrust into the heart of Morocco. Okay, you know what you just did there, are you joking? I know, I know, Sophie, but we're about to talk about genocide, okay? Okay, but you know what you just did there, you know what, we need to take a break for that, too. The tip of the spear doesn't just mean a dick. We need to take a break, Robert.

You rusted. All right, we're gonna go to ads. All right. We're gonna go to ads, and then we're going to talk about a colonial genocide. Fine. Yes. During the summer of 2020,

some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.

He's a shark, and not in the good, bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI

isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days

after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine,

I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, all right, we're back, and we are no longer talking about hot guys, we're talking about the genocide,

those hot guys helped commit. Well, kind of, yeah, we'll talk about it. You brought it up like that, you know what you're doing, bro. I don't, I'm trying to emphasize that sometimes things that look nice are also flashy as hell, and people are on guard. Sometimes the good looks will stick it to you.

So the overwhelming force. You know what you just did there too. Overwhelming force, no. That's the hot guy. Anyway. Yeah, they just thrust their power all over you. Okay, god damn it. You know what you're doing.

Okay. I know I'm trying to talk about the use of chemical war weapons upon civilians. All I'm saying is I've never wished Jamie Loftus was here more than right now. I am very glad she's not. Doc, she would murder us in the devil on tondras. Jesus Christ.

She's a professional at this. Jesus Christ. I love you, DQB. The French in the Spanish have so many soldiers and so much high-grade military hardware that there is no chance the RIF are going to actually win. Victory was only a matter of time. But D'Rivera and Marshal Patayne were not willing to wait.

And so they started using chemical weapons to slaughter tribes, people en masse. And they're not using them on military forces. They first start bombarding the city of Tangier with a phosphine gas, which is a deadly chemical weapon. It's what they used in the trenches. It chokes people to death on their own rotting lungs.

It's horrific stuff. The Spanish army began pounding the outskirts of the town. And as soon as Spanish forces started gassing tribespeople, other commanders in the country begged to be able to do the same. One Spanish general wrote of his desire to use them, them being chemical weapons, with delight.

This was all very good for France, who profited not just from stability in Northern Africa, but because they were selling Spain the gas, they also profited financially. I'm gonna quote from an article on the website RS21 here. It was in fact a French business, Schneider, which in 1922 helped to open a plant for the production of toxic shells in Malilla.

And indeed, the French made an official request, or one French general, Leotley, made an official request to his supervisors for provisions of chemical weapons in June 1925, justifying that the use of these munitions with their toxic power allows us to spare human lives during our attacks. In face of these bombs,

dropped at the most populated regions of the territories controlled by Abdul Kream, the Rifians tried to fight back with non-explosive projectiles, as well as making shells charged with pepper power, with little success. Right up to the end of the Rift War, the Spanish army would continue to use these lethal gases

with the support of the French forces, with Marshall Patayne at their head in Morocco. So to spare human life, they attacked civilian targets with chemical weapons. They're like, so look, hear me out. I didn't shoot him. I gassed him and his family. He just, he died from the air.

Yeah, it's some real, we had to destroy the village to save it vibes. Yeah, yeah. So victory in Morocco started the dictator's time and power off, we're talking about D'Reveri here, with widespread popular support. He created a political party, the UP, the patriotic union,

whose motto was monarchy, fatherland and religion. His mouthpieces at the UP declared that the D'Reveri dictatorship was only a transitional thing and that the military dictatorship would eventually be replaced with a civil dictatorship. So this military dictatorship is just temporary. We got a civil dictator. It's gotta be fine.

It's gonna be a good, totally reasonable kind of dictatorship. It's like a dictatorship without the guns. Like it's cool. It's cool. Yeah, yeah. Now this would be difficult. Yeah, so the patriotic union or the UP

was mostly composed of middle class conservative Catholic Spaniards. And historian Stanley Payne notes that in some provinces, sectors of the old political elite did join and dominate, but the organization also incorporated ordinary middle class people who had not previously been politically active. So in spite of the fact that electoral politics

didn't exist during D'Reveri's dictatorship, it served a purpose of rallying and in some ways activating the middle class as a political entity. The UP's goal was to ensure some form of right wing dictatorship remained the permanent government of Spain. And much of their support came from their victory in Morocco

and their success in, for the first time, igniting widespread nationalism among the Spanish population. The UP held the country's first mass rallies and for a while, D'Reveri and his party were popular. But by 1929, the worldwide economic crash had started to hit Spain as well. The wealthy financiers who'd backed his regime

started to sour on him and some of his interventionalist economic policies. At the same time, D'Reveri faced growing resistance from students who were a political factor for the first time in Spain due to the fact that the dictatorship had reformed the education system. In his last years in power,

D'Reveri sought to stay dictator by taking a leaf from the book of a man he idolized, Benito Mussolini. And this is the first time D'Reveri actually kind of goes fascist a little bit. I'm gonna quote from the history of Spanish fascism here. Italian diplomatic correspondence from Madrid in the final days of 1929,

reported that Primo D'Reveri was indicating that he would soon begin a fundamental reorganization of the UP along the lines of the fascist party. This reorganization never got started. As Javier Tussell and Ismael Saz have written, what the Spanish dictator felt for Mussolini was considerably more than platonic admiration. He was pathetically incapable of transferring

Italian institutions to Spain and was often infantile in his effusive expressions to Mussolini. So he wants to be a fascist by this point. And he's like, he's kind of simping on Mussolini here. On Bini Mumu, yeah. Yeah, just like, you're so good. I just want to do what you do.

Why can't I be as cool as you? It's kind of sad. He's an old man too at this point. He's not doing great. It is very weird. He's a Mussolini stand, hardcore, but he just doesn't have what it takes to be a fascist dictator.

He's just, he's only a normal dictator. You know, you hate to see it. In January of 1930, this dictator was shit-canned by his king, who followed him out the door about a year or so later because popular support for the monarchy collapsed as a result of the dictatorship. For a brief awkward period, Spain lacked any kind of legitimate government.

Its king and parliament were gone. A short succession of strongmen held powers that national political elite struggled to cobble together some kind of functional government. The whole experience further radicalized the middle class, this time activating large numbers of Spanish liberals who advocated in the streets for a Republican government. In 1931, the Spanish Republic was born.

Now this did not thrill a lot of people. Like it thrilled people, a lot of people, but it also kind of pissed off a lot of people, particularly young military officers who'd supported the dictatorship. Francisco Fraco was one of these frustrated men. He'd been a close student of Primo de Rivera and had liked his unofficial title of national boss,

like Hefe Nazionale or something. Yeah, Hefe Nazionale is kind of what they called Primo. And he was like, I like that idea. I like being everybody's boss. Yeah. The years of dictatorship proved to Franco that a strong man could unify Spain, bring law and order and military victory.

The only error that de Rivera had made in Franco's mind was that he didn't have any kind of ideology. Franco didn't really believe in anything other than like, I'm the guy who can fix Spain. And when you don't have that concerted kind of ideology, you can't hold together a dictatorship very long unless you're willing to be brutal. And Primo, you know, he was not a great guy,

very brutal in Morocco, but was not willing to be brutal in Spain. Not really, not compared to any other dictator, you know? And Franco was with him in Spain. I mean, was with him in Morocco, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Franco was like, he was a colonel in Morocco. Yeah, okay.

And so, and what it like, people will say that like de Rivera was a bloodless dictator, which again, looking at what happened in Morocco, not true. But if you're living in Spain, he's not mass executing people. He's not even mass imprisoning people. He's not hosting huge executions of his political enemies. He's a pretty, if you're in Spain, a pretty mild dictator

about as mild as they get this century, you know? Which is not to like whitewash him or anything. It's just like part of why he doesn't stay in power long, you know? You gotta be more brutal than he is if you're going to hold power as a dictator. Now, Primo de Rivera's fall from power was also a lesson to Benito Mussolini.

It convinced him that his regime could not afford to compromise its power at all with an elected parliament. This was in Mussolini saw basically like, ah, the only option, I have to become so authoritarian that no one can push me out. And as a result, de Rivera's fall was a major, it pushes Mussolini to spring towards more radical authoritarian policy in 1932.

All of this stuff is interconnected, you know? Just like everything, just like the Syrian civil war is directly connected to why President Donald Trump became the president, you know? Like it's all, everything always is connected. That's the way the fucking world works. The Spanish Republic would have just five years of pre-war existence.

For its first two years, the socialists dominated the government. So not like hardcore communists, but definitely like left wing. For the first two years, the left is dominating the Republic. For the next two, a center right counter reformation pushes back against the gains of the left. The tug of war was largely in politics

between socialists, Republican centrists, and Catholic conservatives. And the Catholic conservatives starting in 1933 were represented by Spain's first mass Catholic political party and first really powerful right wing political party, the CEDA. And I'm even gonna try to tell you what it stands for. We'll call them CEDA, you know?

That's the birth of like the organized political right in Spain in a way that actually is able to take some power. Now the CEDA was the primary home for the conservative middle class who'd been radicalized first by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and next by the early years of left wing power in the Republic. And they're being radicalized both by the fact

that the socialists are in power and they're doing the thing socialists do, which is in part to say the church is not gonna have power. Like we're not going to like let the Catholic church run things, but also by like the anarchists who are still fucking up churches and stuff in this period of time. So it's the same it is here.

You've got kind of these more moderate people on the left and then you've got people on the left in the streets doing things that scare these religious conservatives and make them decide like we have to take back our country. That happens in Spain too. It's a familiar story again to everyone listening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now a number of socialist laws were passed

that clamped down on the power and prestige of the church in this period. And obviously there were again widespread, like there were anarchists attacked 50 convents in Madrid in 1931. And again, this helps energize the right. It's also if you're a Spanish anarchist who grew up living under a Catholic church

that did all of the kind of fucked up shit we know the Catholic church to do. Nobody's, again, nobody's a monster here. Well, there are some monsters. We're about to talk about them. But yeah, this enraged fundamentalists and the CEDA like because of how angry they were at the left, the CEDA is never a party that accepts

the necessity of democracy, right? They want to take power and institute a Catholic state. They don't believe the Republic that they're participating in is legitimate, which also sounds familiar to a Republic. Dominions, the dominionists, okay. Yeah, yeah. Now, again, while this is all going on,

the radical left in Spain tried several times to carry out insurrections against the Republic. So the anarchists, because they're anarchists, do try to overthrow the Republic because they don't like the Republic either for different reasons than the CEDA. In some cases, they even fought alongside communists. Communists and anarchists are pretty good

at working together in this period compared to how they'll be later. They attack police stations and in 1934, they succeed in taking over large chunks of the state of Asturias. This insurrection got far enough that the Republic called in their Imperial shock troops, the foreign legion, who brutally suppressed the revolt

by massacring basically everybody they could, just gunning people down in huge numbers. The only thing that they do, you know? That's why you have these guys, to murder everybody. To put everybody down, everybody shut up. When I get there, everybody shut, everybody's sitting down. We do not have machine guns because we're good at discriminating with our violence.

We have machine guns because it makes it faster, you know? Sounds like Stephanie, she just come in and every... I'm not asking who did what or why this is broke. Everybody sit down. It's your aunt who comes in with the fucking sandal and just starts to, like, you won't need to calm down. You know what I'm saying? Because we in Spain. So she come in with the chocolate.

She's just everybody getting it. I don't got no, I don't want to hear nothing. Everybody getting it. You know what I'm saying? That's my aunt Stephanie. What's up aunt Stephanie? The CNT, who's that anarcho-syndicalist party, launches constant strikes in this period,

largely because they're angry that the Republic had failed to rest... So when the Republic comes to power, the far left is like, because the far left are anarchists and they're agricultural, right? They're primarily in rural areas. And most of Spain's agricultural land, like 70% or more, is owned by just like rich assholes

who make the people who are actually farming it, pay them unreasonable rent and it like keeps them impoverished. And the radical left is like, we should, the land should belong to the people who farm it. Yeah. Maybe, why don't we do that? Yeah. I understand.

We got a lot of radical thoughts. This don't feel radical though. Yeah, it does, it's not, like it is in the time. It shouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah, this really shouldn't be a radical thought. It shouldn't be. They work land, so they should own it.

This scene. Yeah. The Republic being a Republic gave them some of what they want, but not much. They redistribute about 10% of Spain's uncultivated land to the peasants. And that really pisses off the anarchists. So they launch a bunch of,

in addition to these insurrections that other anarchists are doing, the CNT is doing like strikes and stuff in this period as protests. In 1933, a peasant protest was suppressed by Republican police who shot 19 of them dead. So this government, which is broadly speaking, we'll call it a liberal government, is a government.

They still gun people down when you fuck up, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now, the constant unrest damaged the left's middle class support and the infighting between communists, anarchists, and Republicans hurt the broadly speaking liberal and left ability to keep control of the government from the right.

In 1934, the CEDA, led by Jose Marie Gil Robles, became the dominant power in government, or at least gained a lot of power in government. This provoked outrage from the Spanish, like they weren't in control or anything, but they had power for the first time. This really pissed off the Spanish left, because in the rest of Europe, at the same time,

Hitler has just consolidated all of his power and destroyed Weimar democracy. Italy is completely fascist now, and there's dictators all throughout Europe. So the left sees the CEDA gain some power, and they're like, this is the start of what we're seeing happen, the fascists are going to take over. They're not wrong to be terrified that way,

because that is what happens, you know? Yeah, I was like, it's happening, that's because it's going to happen. It's happening here, they say. Yes, wow. And they're not wrong, yeah. So again, the left in Spain, and when I say the left in this sense,

I mean both the liberals, the anarchists, the communists, the socialists, all of them, start to get really panicked. And this fear is reinforced by the fact that Gil Robles consistently gave speeches ranting against democracy, and in favor of what he called a totalitarian concept of the state.

Stanley Payne writes, quote, it seems fairly clear that the CEDA's basic intentions were to win decisive political power through legal means, the exception being an ill-defined emergency situation, and then to enact fundamental revisions to the new Republican constitution, which restricted Catholic rights, in order to protect religion and property

and alter the basic political system. So again, they're not out of line to be afraid of what is going to happen by the CEDA gaining power. Left-wing fears that the CEDA would bring fascism to Spain were further stoked by the fact that CEDA magazines kept running huge, loving articles about how good fascism was.

They would have like these huge spreads about fascist Italy and what a perfect state it was. There were articles about the Nazi regime in Germany. Now, broadly speaking, the Spanish far right is more Italian fascists than German. For one thing, they don't really get the anti-Semitism. Like everyone in Europe, they're kind of anti-Semitic,

but it's not an organizing principle for them. The Nazis, they see as like kind of weird, but like still, they're better than the left. But like, yeah. It's like, I get what y'all are going for. I really don't understand this part, but I don't know why you didn't do this, but yeah, I'm vibing with you.

We kicked out the Muslims. I mean, I guess it's the same, but I don't know. Anyway, you'll say right. So Robles even visited, the guy in charge of the CEDA, even visited Germany in 1933 to attend the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. So again, the CEDA is not entirely a fascist party, but the left in Spain in this time

calls them objectively fascist, and you can see why. Now, for his part, Robles only really rejected fascism because he saw it as foreign. During a speech in 1933, he said, we want a totalitarian patria, but it is strange that we're invited to look for novelties abroad when we find a unitary and totalitarian policy

in our own tradition. So he's like, fascism, like I like it, but it's foreign, and we in Spain have our own totalitarian tradition that we should be embracing. And when he said this, he was actually referencing Ferdinand and Isabella, the first Spanish monarchs who were not totalitarian. It wasn't, you couldn't be back then.

You just- No, it didn't exist, but thank you. Yeah, it's very silly and very ahistorical. In the same speech, Robles continued, for us, power must be integral. For the realization of our ideal, we shall not be held back by archaic forms. When the time comes,

parliament will either submit or disappear. Democracy must be a means, not an end. We are going to liquidate the revolution. Liquidate. Liquidate, so- Damn. Yeah. In addition to the CDEDA, who,

if you don't want to call them fascists, they're at least pretty close. Fascists, low sodium fascists. Yeah, low sodium fascists. They're like diet Mountain Dew fascists, right? They're like gluten-free fascists. Like you don't want to go all the way, but you're on the spectrum.

Yeah. Now, Spain also had its own explicitly fascist political parties. And when I don't call the CDEDA fascist, it's because I do want to differentiate between the people who are like, we're fascists, you know? Like, it is important to do that.

That grew and evolved throughout the yearly 1930s. Now, the founding father of Spanish fascism was a guy named Ramiro Ledesmo Ramos. Oh, Ramos. And like most fascist intellectuals, he wanted to be a novelist before he got into politics. And he wrote a fake memoir of it. Like, it's very Ben Shapiro kind of dude.

Yes, yes, yes. He wrote a fiction novel, which was a fake memoir about a depressed intellectual who commits suicide, which seems like it was very self-pitying. And nobody is, well, he writes it when he's 18. Nobody's willing to take it. And his rich uncle pays to publish it, which tells you all you need to know about Ledesmo,

the fascist, the father of Spanish fascism. So as a pseudo-intellectual, Ledesmo's greatest concern was that Spanish culture had not given the world a truly dominant political ideology. He complained, we are the only great people who have still not borne the philosophical scepter and who therefore have not projected

an intellectual dictatorship over the world. And so as a result of this, he decided to steal a political system from Italy and become a fascist. He eventually formed the Yuntas de ofensiva nacional sindicalista, or Johns. And his followers are called the John Zistas, which is silly, but that's what they're called.

Yeah, Ledesmo and his fellow John Zistas refused to call themselves fascists, but they were. They talked lovingly of Italian fascism and they wanted the same things. One of Ledesmo's first followers was the first Spanish translator for Hitler's Mein Kampf. But to his credit, Ledesmo did try to find ways to make

Spanish fascism unique. In part, he attempted to do this by marrying it to Spanish anarcho-syndicalism. Ledesmo adopted syndicalism, the idea of worker councils governing themselves and striking to make their demands met or adopted aspects of that. And he kind of awkwardly welded it

to Spanish revolutionary nationalism. And one of the things that is odd that characterizes Spanish fascists in this period is they really reach out to the anarchists. They're trying to convert anarchists. In part because the anarchists are like the most vital anti-government movement in this period. Yeah, it's a weird thing.

Yeah, they was reading the tea leaves of being like, you know, I think you don't like the same shit we don't like. Yeah, maybe I can convince you to be a fascist. And it happens for some of them, right? Like that is a story that's very uncomfortable about anarchist history is that during the period of time when fascism rises, and a number of anarchists in different countries

and an uncomfortable number of them decide, no, you know what, I'm a fascist, which is not great. Yeah, let's just do that. Yeah, and it's important, you know, whatever you believe to be honest about its history and that includes the ugly parts. So Ledesma and his fellow John Seastres refused to call, and also we're going to talk in part two

about the fact that a fuckload of anarchists died fighting fascism in Spain and where a lot of the very first people who were willing to put their lives on the line to fight global fascism, before the United States was willing to fight the Nazis, a fuckload of anarchists died fighting fascism. And I'm not trying to say that,

and that's much more dominant a part of anarchist history than the ones who went fascy, but a number of them do go fascist, and it's something the fascists directly try to encourage. Yeah, it's like the, like the black Trump. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Look, man, they're still us, dog. That's still, I can't lie.

That's still, that's my uncle, man. Yeah, and it doesn't erase the fact that Biden only won the election because of a fuckload of organized black voters, you know? Yes, yes, yeah. So like the left wing of the Nazi party had done, Ledesma sought to make fascism collectivist, stressing that the individual has died

and that the collectivist state is all that matters. This was not an initially successful line of propaganda. And by the end of 1932, there were barely any John Seastas. Spanish fascism might not have taken off at all if it had not been for a fellow named Jose Antonio de Rivera, the son of the now dead dictator. So de Rivera's kid becomes like really the first prominent Spanish fascist.

And one of the things, this guy is such a figure in Spanish history that he's one of the only people from this period of Spanish history who's known by his first names. He's Jose Antonio, they don't call, like they call his dad de Rivera, he's Jose Antonio, which is like kind of a mark of how significant this guy was.

Now Jose was a weird fascist and we'll talk more about him in part two. He is not like other, he's not nearly, for one thing, he doesn't really like violence in the same way that a lot of fascists do. And he's like weirdly friendly with a lot of socialists, like in government, like he's like, and not in a, I don't know, he's a very weird fascist.

His background though makes complete sense. He's the rich son of a military family whose father took almost absolute power in order to murder foreigners and steal their shit. So it's not weird that he becomes a fascist. Yeah, I was like, yeah, it's like representation matters. Like you have to see something to believe that it's possible. So he's like, my dad took over the country.

I mean, I bet I can too. Yeah, and you could see him as like kind of what I'm sure one of the Trump kids will try to do, although I would argue he's a better person than any of the Trump kids. Wow, you did this. Wow. Not a high bar.

So he creates his own fascist party based on the idea of bringing in another dictator like his dad, but not sucking at it this time, right? Like we need a dictator, my dad had the right idea, but he didn't have an ideology. I'm gonna bring in an ideology. And both Jose Antonio's party and the John Sistas receive a shot in the arm on January 30th, 1933

when Hitler takes power in Germany. A magazine, Elfascio, which is a very subtle name. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I peaked, my vocal peaked right there. I was like, oh, they turn a red. Elfascio. Yeah.

God dog it. So Hitler takes power in Germany and Elfascio gets launched in Spain and the government shuts that shit down right away and bans publication of future editions. Which is like when in doubt, look, you need your brand to be clear. Yeah.

You need to be clear. And we're talking a lot in the United States now about the value of deplatforming fascists about the, and I'm an advocate for aspects of that, about the value of taking away these people's ability to reach a mass audience. They do a harder, much harder core version of that in Spain. You get in, one of the things that's unique about Spain

is the police in this period crack down on the fascists more than they do on the left, which is weird. It's unique historically. Everywhere else, it is the opposite. Yeah. And part of why is because the Republic is very scared of these fascists for good reason. And if we're looking at like the effectiveness

of deplatforming to what extent it works, Spain shows us that it doesn't necessarily stop them from gaining power because they deplatform the fascists, they try hard to deplatform the fascists in the Spanish Republic. It doesn't do the trick. So again, useful historical context here, which is not to say there's no value in deplatforming,

but we should be paying attention to what happened in Spain. And the deplatforming in Spain is being done by the government, by cops and shit. Now, the law for the defense of the Republic gave the Spanish Republic power to ban anything that threatened the Republic's existence. Banning fascist propaganda, though, was not enough to stop the contagious excitement

over fascism and the broader right-wing reaction against the recent victories of the left. The John Sistas and Jose Antonio's movement grew. Jose Antonio was noted as not being particularly charismatic, but he was good with words, and he was a successful lawyer, so he had money. He entered into frequent public debates with left-wing intellectuals, where

he would say stuff like this. So again, he's a big, like kind of like Richard Spencer, I will go down and sit down and talk with all of you. I'll be very nice, I'll be very polite, and I'll talk about fascism in that way. He's that kind of fascist. OK. Quote, this is Jose Antonio from a debate

he had with kind of a more liberal guy. The liberal state believes in nothing, not even in itself. It watches with folded arms as all sorts of experiments, even those aimed at the destruction of the state itself. Fascism was born to light a faith. Neither of the right, which at the bottom, aspires to preserve everything, even the unjust. Nor of the left, which at the bottom,

aspires to destroy everything, even the just. But a collective, integral, national faith. And you can see why people would be appealed as four things like, we're not right-wing, we're not left-wing, they're both bad, we're something different. And he also, the thing that all fascists have to do in order to succeed is point out things that are true and problems with the system.

And he does. The liberal state believes in nothing, not even in itself. That's a good, that's a true statement. That's a good, yeah, that's a good, yeah. Kind of got one there. Yeah, yeah. And that's part of why, again, that's part of why he does succeed in bringing in some people from the left

to the fascists and converting people. And at least in getting a lot of them to be like, well, he's not that, he's not as bad as the state. A lot of people say that. In July of night, and a lot of people don't, by the way, anarchists murder a, we'll talk about this in part two, murder a fuckload of fascists in this period. So when I say a number of people on the left are like,

well, he's not as bad as the state. A lot of people on the left are like, no, they're bad and we have to start shooting them to death now. So like, yeah, let's not, it's a lot, a lot's going on. You said in the beginning, this is messy, you know? Yeah, yeah. In July of 1934, the John Sistas launched an attack on the Madrid offices of the friends of the USSR,

damaging the offices and threatening people with pistols. Okay. This caused a government crackdown, both on the fascists and on the anarchists, arresting some 3,000 people nationwide. Again, like we're probably about to see this is what the government does. Like, I mean, in fairness, like right now,

the anarchists are not doing much other than standing outside of buildings and breaking windows. In this, they were gunning people down. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's different. It's, yeah, I don't want to like try to make the case that Spanish history is exact, but like you, I think there are useful parallels. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One of the things, again, Spanish police did arrest more fascists or were more willing to than other members of the left or the members of the left at this point. And in fact, the first two years of Jose Antonio's movement, anarchists assassinated and gunned down and stabbed a fuckload of fascists and brawls and outside of speeches. Now, Jose Antonio was fairly unique among fascists,

both in that he had genuinely warm and respectful relationships with a lot of left-wing politicians and that he seemed to abhor violence. This was a problem for his young party and we'll talk about that more in part two. Now, in October of 1934, Jose Antonio traveled to Spain for a brief meeting with Mussolini

and to tour a fascist state. He found it inspiring and he wrote, fascism is not just an Italian movement, it is a total universal sense of life. Italy was the first to apply it, but it is not the concept of the state as an instrument in the service of a permanent historical mission valid outside of Italy.

Who can say that such goals are only valuable for Italians? He returned from Italy eager to make, and so again, the John Sistas, the other chunk of the fascist movement, are like, we don't wanna do a fascism, Italian fascism, because we're Spanish. We're Spain, yeah. Jose Antonio's like, no, no, no, fascism's a global thing

and it appeals to all of us. And he returns from Spain eager to make a deal with the John Sistas in order to merge both movements. He recognizes your propaganda's better, I have more people, I've got, I'm better at organizing the street movement. If we work together, we can bring fascism to Spain. In early November, both groups of fascists

came to an agreement. They initially wanted to use the name fascismo espanol, but decided to change this to falange espanola, which means Spanish phalanx. The falanges would, in time, go on to earn a terrible and bloody reputation in Spanish history, but that is gonna be in part two. Lot of history in this.

Man, this is dope. One, it's like, for every, I love the like, for every kid that, you know, either it's set next to or was the little stoner kid that was like drawing the anarchist A on their folder in high school. That was just like, no rules. It's like, no, it's a real thing.

It's not just, it's an ideology. It's not just you not getting suspended for, you know, slapping a kid. It's a real thing, yeah. It's a way to organize the world and society and a bunch of different ideas, right? The anarcho-syndicalists have one. There's a lot of different, added in,

there are also anarchists like anarcho-primitivists and stuff who don't wanna, who like, want to go back to a more like, there's a bunch of shit within anarchism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not you with your little, drawing your little A on your skateboard, you know, your little shit.

Like, there's more to it. That's how it starts. And I will say, I've seen a lot of people in Portland do very interesting things with skateboards. A lot of teenage anarchists this year. That's how it starts for some people, you know? Okay, okay, okay. If that's the entry level, I'll give you that.

It's deeper than that. There's a lot going on, you know? I'm just like, hey, this doesn't mean that you never have to read again, Chad. You have to read. In fact, you have to read a lot. Okay, like, there's a thought, you know? Yeah, I know I named him Chad.

I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. I think we could stand to convert more of the Chads. Yeah. Anyway, this has been part one, the birth of Spanish fascism. In part two, we're gonna talk about the Spanish Civil War, which is one of the most fascinating

and important pieces of history that almost no one knows a goddamn thing about. And it's so frustrating. It's very frustrating. So frustrating, people don't know about this. No, so many few people know that, like, the author of 1984, George Orwell, traveled to Spain on the premise that

every single decent person should kill one fascist and then it killed a bunch of fascists with grenades. George Orwell was incredible with grenades. He knew all the different kinds of grenades. He killed a lot of people with grenades. He got shot in the throat, like, he's... Oh my God. Oh, man.

I'm gonna give you this as another piece of trivia that has to do with another hip hop trivia, that this good Easter egg for your listener. And then for you, just, I think you might find this interesting. And pull this out one day when you're drinking with friends. Ice tea, not the drink, but the rapper that became the actor in Law and Order.

The guy that made an album called Cop Killer. Yes. And became a cop on TV. Yeah. Greatest hustle ever, right? Anyway, there's this story tells that about when he was getting his record deal. And as the legend goes, he never played one song for the people

that signed him for his first record deal, right? And they were like, how are you gonna do this? How are we gonna... Why would you sign if we haven't heard any music? He goes, hey, if you're selling a box of grenades, if I blow up a grenade, I need to blow up a grenade for you to know that they're good. Like, I can't blow it up because then you won't buy them.

They already done. And then the guy was like, man, that's a... That was the iced tea thing I've ever seen. Yes. So iced tea. And the guy was like, oh, it's actually a good point. And then he goes, what made you think of that? He goes, why I used to sell grenades? Iced tea. And I totally believe that.

He was running around South Central selling grenades. I believe that. I would never call iced tea a liar for saying that he sold grenades. No, no, no, absolutely not. He comes from a, you know, you've got your eras of gangster rap where they're just talking and then you've got your era of gangster rap.

It's like, no, you did all of the things you're talking about. This is why you're not in jail. It's because you're rapping. There was a period of time for you where you were like, it was a good day because I didn't have to use my AK. These are true stories, y'all, yeah. That's why most of them didn't make it very long. Yes, yes.

All right. Well, in preparation for the Spanish Civil War, which is pretty gangster. Yes, listen, listen to some old school iced tea, you know, and then watch some law and order, you know, really embrace the hypocrisy that we all embody at some point. At some point, you don't need to watch the iced tea and cocoa reality show.

I am not recommending that. I don't watch that. No, but a little bit of law and order, you know, it's whatever. It's on literally at all times. Yeah, it's a lot like it's a lot like heroin, you know, it's probably not going to kill you, but it's bad for you. I've seen every episode of Laundry to S.V.U. I'm not ashamed at all.

Every episode. I believe it. Every episode. Because it's on at any given time of the day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, my mom is an awful, we watched every episode because it was always on. I've seen every episode.

There's a belief in some Aboriginal Australian cultures. And this is kind of where the, what is the long tube that they broke? The most proper thing that's ever happened. No, no, no, the thing that the didgeridoo ties into this, that like you always have to be, someone always has to be playing music because you sing the world into being. And if the music stops, the world ends.

And I have adopted as a religious belief that with law and order S.V.U. Where as long as it's playing somewhere, the world can continue. I think that's how we ended up with Trump. Man, say everybody turned off their TV one day in law and order stop playing. One hour without law and order and everything went to shit. All right, well, this has been part one

of our two part of behind the insurrections on the Spanish fascism of the Spanish Civil War. We'll talk about Spanish Civil War in part two. And then next week we're going to talk about the fascists who failed. And then we're going to talk about, we're going to give a little overview of some anti-fascist history you might not know. We're going to close out with Antifa and some fun stuff

like the idolist pirates, which were little kids who murdered Nazis. It was great. Fucking rad. All right, here we go. Listen to some iced tea. That's the episode. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series

that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time,

and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass.

And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.