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Home Front: Culture Wars
The Gathering World Storm
2006-10-07
It is human nature to ignore gathering storms until the tornado, hurricane, cyclone, or blizzard comes into plain view. In recent years, repetitive weather disasters have caused so much physical damage in certain areas of the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, that today some preparations, with the aid of new and sophisticated technology, do take place.

But gathering storms of political disaster do not seem to merit the same attention as the weather. Perhaps it is the naive belief that these storms of the recent past, such as world wars, holocausts and ethnic cleansing, cannot recur that inspires such passivity. In an advanced capitalist democracy such as ours, there is also a resistance to any deliberate change in our comfortable lives, and instead of vigilance we have indulged ourselves in a chronic politics of spectator political combat, reserving our emotions and passions for rhetorical electoral contests which have become so abstract they are essentially meaningless in the real world.

The gathering storm of the 21st century is quite visible in many places in the world, but apparently not sufficiently for many Americans to see it coming. When individuals, including the president of the United States, try to warn the citizenry that this storm has yet to hit the country in full force, they are dismissed by many Americans, most of them bitter partisans of the party out of power, as well as pacifists and radical populists, as prevaricators, warmongers and incompetents.
Posted by:PlanetDan

#10  Always thought Tom Lehrer made the definitive comment on the Spanish Civil War in his song The Folk Song Army:

We are the folk song army,
Every one of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice
Unlike the rest of you squares....

Remember the war against Franco?
That's the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!
Posted by: Thruque Cravirt9377   2006-10-07 12:10  

#9  Zenster

Guess the reasons Unamuno was living in nationalist instead of republican side? Also notice that after his tirade agsint Millan Astray Unamuno was not brought out of the room and shot in the spot. He didn't disappear the next night to never reappear He wasn't even arrested and sentenced to 25 years in Goulag.


Phil B

Wahen they were not in power the communists routinely betrayed tyheir nation's armies (cf Russia during WWI, France in 1940) as tehy believed defeat would bring revolution.

But once they were in power they were as nationalists as the fascists... specially when they needed patriotism and nationalism to fend off their enemies (cf Vietnam or the Great Patriotic War). And Jane Fonda, John Kery or draft doger Clinton would have been quicly dispatched.
Posted by: JFM   2006-10-07 10:20  

#8  JFM beat me to it and added a lot of the real history.

Two points.

1. I would take these analyses a lot more seriously if they got their history right rather than regurgitating half-baked marxist inspired 'narratives'.

2. The facists were socialists, just nationalists as well.

To compare (equate) Islamicists who aspire to a global Caliphate with twentieth century (national) socialists, just shows how deeply corrupting and corrosive leftist ideology is to even a semblance of rational fact-based debate.
Posted by: phil_b   2006-10-07 08:06  

#7  Indeed, Stalin lives.
Posted by: .com   2006-10-07 08:04  

#6  And I'd add that the islamists are but the vanguard of an anti-western wave fed on thoses same narratives, since the soviet-enabled decolonization wars, and the soviet arab terror-proxies.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2006-10-07 07:33  

#5  JFM, I'd worry more about this current crop of fascists than spend any more time debating the misnomer of a defunct regime.

Not so sure; we europeans (and you US Hegemons too) are living in the shadow of the soviet propaganda war; the whole System you decry in Europe was built on those taboos, memes and false narratives, lives on them to this day, and your own progressists are using them to push the "culture war" (IE the systematic errosion of western values).
What JFM is doing by correcting the article is IMHO very important.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2006-10-07 07:30  

#4  JFM, I'd worry more about this current crop of fascists than spend any more time debating the misnomer of a defunct regime. Plus, your points do not change the least thing about my own previous post.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-07 03:25  

#3  Pleaaaase. Stop calling the rebel side in the Spanish civil war as fascists. that is communist propaganda. Millan Astray was simply nuts.

Here is very brief review of the events leading to Spanish civil war.

1) What would become the Republican side during the civil war was NOT democratic. Its main componets were the anarchists (no comments), a hard line communist party (so strongly aligned with Moscow that later it brought all Spain's gold to Soviet Union's coffers) and the socialists but contrarily to the French or Scandinav Socialist Party it had NOT accepted democracy and openly told of making his stay in power permanent. It was more like a Communist Party independent of Moscow (a la post-war Yougoslavia) as waht we usually maind as socialist.

2) In 1933, the right won the elections but riots from the eft (specially the socialist party) led to President chickening out and not nominating the right wing leader as PM

3) In 1934 the Socialists tried unsuccessfully a coup.

4) It is untrue that the left won the elctions in 1936. What happenned is that after knowing the results in a few big cities (who favoured it), the left claimed victory, rioted and the memebers of preceeding cabinet fearing for their lives, stepped aside. The left also invaded the polling places and stole the ballots. So the votes of ruaral areas (who favoured the right). Went unaccounted. The definitive results of the elections were never published. What you see on wikipedia is a posteriori recosntutions aimed at proving that the kleft won. In fact nobody knows.

5) Once in power the socialists impeached most of the opposition parlamentaries. Opposition press was closed or intimidated and there were daily political assassinations or jailings perpetrated by the security forces, specially the Guardia de Asalto. This culminated with the assasination of the leader of one of the opposition parties but also with the failed attemps agasint the other main opponnent (he avoide to sleep in house) perpetrated by the Prime Minister guards.


Finallty the fascist elemnt in the rebel side was in 1936 near zero. It was mainly a colaition of conservatives, catholics, monarchists and right wing republicans. Most of the main military leaders (Queipo de Llano, Mola) were republicans.
and didn't envison long miltary rule. Had teh coup succeeded return to democarcy would have been probably quite fast. But it failed, it degenarated into a civil war and that meant that the rebels neede to find a provider of ammo and weapons. We could continue about how the insignificabnt Falange became the main component of the rebels and how Franco who was not even in the initial conspiration became their leader but that is another history.
Posted by: JFM   2006-10-07 03:18  

#2  Fascism emerged in the early 20th century in Italy, Spain and Germany. The slogan "Long live death!" was made notorious by Spanish fascists.

Much like Islam's fascination with death. George Orwell would be so proud.

In a famous confrontation in 1936, the great Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno responded in Salamanca to a speech by fascist General Millan-Astray in which the general had repeated the slogan "Viva Muerte!" ("Long Live Death!") with a speech of his own, declaring "There is a time when to be silent is to lie."

This applies in spades to the Mythical Moderate Muslims™. After five years of Thundering Silence™, that silence is no longer just consent.

The silence of mainstream Islam is now part of its "Big Lie". Namely, that Islam is the Religion of Peace™ [spit]. All pretences of seeking dialogue or proclamations of benign intent are part of that Big Lie. The Lie is told every single day that Muslims continue to attend mosques led by wahabbist clerics. The Lie is writ large by so-called moderates when they chant "not in our name", but remain eeriely calm about the Cartoonifada and the incessant stream of Islamic atrocities.

He then denounced General Millan-Astray and the Spanish fascists for their assault on Spanish civilization and culture.

And so it is that another group of militants who praise death over life itself seek to destroy, not just Spanish "civilization and culture", but that of the entire West as well.

The time is over for extending any benefit of the doubt that Moderate Muslims™ may once have deserved. It must be made patently clear to them that the price of silence is complicity. Muslims must face deportation and expulsion if they cannot bring themselves to begin the arduous task of disassembling the machinery of terrorism that has crept into nearly every corner of their lives.

"There is a time when to be silent is to lie."
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-07 01:46  

#1  well said.
Posted by: anon   2006-10-07 00:30  

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