Showing posts with label Franco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Franco. Show all posts
Friday, June 30, 2017
Spain and the General – Spain (2007)
The Hidden History Of The Spanish Civil War
Monday, April 26, 2010
NZZ am SONNTAG: Dem bekanntesten spanischen Strafverfolger drohen wegen seiner Ermittlungen zur Franco- Diktatur ein Prozess und die Suspendierung. Dagegen haben Spanier am Samstag in über zwanzig Städten protestiert.
Zehntausende Spanier haben am Samstag ihre Solidarität mit Baltasar Garzón demonstriert. Unter den Teilnehmern der zentralen Veranstaltung in Madrid waren viele Nachkommen von Franco-Opfern, die Fotos ermordeter Familienangehöriger hochhielten. Zu den Protestmärschen unter dem Motto «Gegen die Straflosigkeit der Franco-Diktatur» hatten Opferverbände aufgerufen. Sie wurden von Intellektuellen, darunter der Schriftstellerin Almudena Grandes und dem Regisseur Pedro Almodóvar, unterstützt.
Der Oscarpreisträger Almodóvar sagte zum Schluss der Veranstaltung, die Würde der Opfer stehe auf dem Spiel. In einem Manifest äusserte er sich besorgt über die Konsequenzen des gegen Garzón eingeleiteten Verfahrens: «Dieser Prozess verachtet den Schmerz von Kindern und Enkeln und macht den Wunsch Hunderttausender spanischer Familien nach Gerechtigkeit zunichte.» >>> Cornelia Derichsweiler, Madrid | Sonntag, 25. April 2010
THE OBSERVER: Charismatic Judge Who Pursued Spain's Fascist Assassins Finds Himself on Trial >>> Giles Tremlett Madrid | Sunday, April 25, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
THE OBSERVER: Powerful enemies are attempting to unseat the 'superjudge' who tried to bring the death squads of Franco's dictatorship to book
The crowd gathered outside Madrid's national court was loud and angry. "The world has been turned upside down," they cried. "The fascists are judging the judge!" Some carried photographs of long-dead relatives, killed by rightwing death squads in Spain's brutal civil war in the 1930s. Others bore placards bearing the name of the hero they wanted to save, the controversial "superjudge" Baltasar Garzón.
Pedro Romero de Castilla carried a picture of his grandfather, Wenceslao – a former stationmaster taken away from his home in the western city of Mérida and shot by a death squad at the service of Generalísimo Francisco Franco's rightwing military rebels 74 years ago. The family have never found his body.
Garzón, he explained, had dared to investigate the atrocities of 36 years of Franco's dictatorship and now, as a result, he faces trial for allegedly abusing his powers. "My grandfather's case is one that Garzón wanted to investigate," he said. "He's a brave and intelligent judge, but now the right are out to get him." >>> Giles Tremlett Madrid | Sunday, April 25, 2010
Related / Verbunden / Lien en relation avec l’article:
LE FIGARO: Espagne: le juge Garzon fait appel >>> AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Crusading Spanish Judge Balthasar Garzon Faces Trial Over Franco Probe >>> Fiona Govan in Madrid | Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Monday, October 13, 2008
TIMESONLINE: The death of Jörg Haider has cast a light on the resurgence of facsist politics in Austria and Italy
The death of the Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider has again focused world attention on his country's ambivalent attitude to its Nazi past. The son of an SS officer, Haider won notoriety by praising Hitler's welfare policies and describing concentration camps as work camps. None of this seemed to bother Austrian voters, who gave him and his fellow-travellers a third of the vote in the last elections.
In Italy, too, right-wing politicians have recently showed signs of a positive attitude to the fascist regime run by Mussolini from 1922 to 1945. The election of Gianni Alemanno as Mayor of Rome was greeted by supporters shouting “Duce! Duce!” - the name taken by Mussolini and Hitler, while the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared that his movement is “the new Falange”, in a reference to the Spanish fascists of Franco's day.
What drives the radical politicians of the new Right is, in the first place, hostility to immigrants, a feeling that is likely to get worse as the European economy slides into recession. Added to this are fears of the collapse of law and order. The rhetoric of fascism provides a handy symbol for the far Right's determination to deal firmly with immigrants and criminals. It contrasts with the complacency of conventional politicians in Italy and Austria who for decades after the Second World War cosily arranged everything for their own benefit in coalition governments built on political compromise.
This collapsed in Italy a few years ago, and seems to be collapsing in Austria today. In both countries, support for the far Right offers voters the most obvious means of giving voice to their protest and disillusion.
Such rhetoric arouses little public hostility because Austrians and Italians have never felt guilty about their fascist past, as the Germans have. In Germany today you will see former concentration camps turned into sombre monuments to the murderous cruelty of Nazism; small brass plates in the pavement outside houses and shops whose Jewish owners were driven out in the 1930s, with the names of those owners inscribed on them; a monument to Jewish victims of Nazism installed at the centre of the capital city, Berlin. The Nazi past is everywhere, and people's rejection of it is universal and comprehensive.
True, in parts of the former East Germany, the far Right has made some headway, building on popular resentment, especially among the young and unemployed, of the economic shock therapy administered after its absorption into the West in 1990. But it has always remained on the fringes of politics, completely ostracised by the mainstream.
Not so in Italy and Austria, where the far Right is an acceptable coalition partner for leading parties, and few seem troubled by its positive references to the national past. As Europe Slumps, Is the Far Right Rising? >>> Richard J. Evans | October 14, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
Friday, June 27, 2008
Because many people have been reading this essay lately, I have decided to reprint it. I have linked it to a YouTube video, as I did originally.
DEFINITION – Fascism: …As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, … and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism. … [Source: Dictionary.com]
With the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, most people thought that the world had been rid of fascism. Today, however, we cannot be so sure, because there is evidence aplenty of its revival. These days, many people talk of another form of fascism in particular: Islamofascism. Some people believe this term to be apt for the radical religio-political movement based on Islam, which is currently spreading through the world like wildfire; others, especially Muslims, find the term insulting and demeaning. Who is right? Are the infidels right to be shocked, disgraced and indignant, or are infidels right to use the term to point out to the unsuspecting the dangers we face. Why? Even the President of the United States of America himself, George W Bush, has used the term in public when referring to the antics of Al-Qa’eda and its determination to cultivate mayhem throughout the free world.
When we refer to Islam and radical Islam, we have to be careful not to confuse people. In this politically correct world, a world in which nobody seems willing to upset ethnic groups and people of other religions, it has become customary to dance around the truth so as not to offend. Therefore, our politicians have become accustomed to speaking in riddles, when clearer, more appropriate language would serve the needs of the electorate far better.
In times of danger, clarity of thought is essential. Prevarication serves no-one’s best interest in the long-run. Prevarication might well buy us some time; but it certainly doesn’t solve issues for the long-term good of the nation, for the long-term good of our civilization.
Let’s take a look at the real Islam…
The real Islam is exclusive in the extreme, just as Nazism was. It tells the believers – the Muslims throughout the world – to kill the unbelievers, to kill the infidels. This cannot be disputed, since it is there in black and white in all versions of the holy book of Muslims, the Qur’an.
They [the infidels] but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God [Allah] (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. – Al-Qur’an, Al-Nisa’ (Women), Surah IV, 89 (Translation by A Yusuf Ali)
And then we have the following:
… When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. … – Al-Qur’an, At-Tawba (Repentance), Surah 9, 4 (Translation by N J Dawood)
These exhortations are also redolent of Nazism. They are certainly as violent and brutal and cruel.
These are the words of the founder of Islam or the words of Allah, according to your viewpoint and according to where you stand on the matter of Islam being a great and authentic religion. Muhammad certainly managed to make those who submit to Allah feel superior and exclusive, since Muslims are considered (by Muslims) to be superior to all other human beings. They are, after all, Allah’s ‘chosen people’, just as the Aryan race was the superior race in Hitler’s Germany. This is surely another similarity between these two ideologies.
There is no doubt about the fact that Muhammad was a 'great' and magnetic personality. This is quite indisputable, since were he not to have been so, then Islam would surely have died out long ago. But don’t all fascist movements rely on a magnetic personality to lead the followers, to lead the masses, to lead the people who cannot think for themselves? Think of three great examples of the twentieth century: Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. All had quite magnetic personalities: people just had to watch them and listen to them and their rants.
The fact that Muhammad died more than fourteen hundred years ago makes no real difference, since his personality is no less magnetic today than it was when he roamed the sands of the desert. His words are still harkened unto by 1.4 billion people worldwide, and we are still counting.
Muhammad must surely rank as the dictator par excellence, since his words were clothed in a deity. Hitler, when he was sitting in his Bunker with Eva that day in 1945, when he was contemplating biting that cyanide capsule and plucking up the courage to shoot himself through the temples, must surely have regretted with every fibre of his being that he hadn’t been smart enough to clothe Nazism in a deity, just as Islam had been about fourteen hundred years before. How much more successful Hitler might have been!
Does Islam qualify so far, according to our dictionary definition, to be classified as a form of fascism? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
We are then informed that fascist dictators rally their followers by means of mass parades. Well, we cannot say with any certainty whether Muhammad did this. In all probability, he did not, since Islam, in the days of the Prophet, was in its infancy, and there would have been too few followers to rally. What we can say, however, is this: In the modern world, the dictators of the Islamic world have no difficulty whatsoever in getting rallies together on the streets of their cities. Often times, they are genuine; yet at other times, the numbers in the rallies are made by ‘rent-a-mob’. Either way, we must decide whether Islam passes this next test of a true strand of fascism. You decide!
Then we are informed in the definition that fascism appeals to strident nationalism. Well, there is no doubt that Islam is an Arabo-centric movement, worldwide. When praying, all Muslims must face Makkah (Mecca), and this takes place five times a day for the pious and faithful. One is certainly not allowed to ignore the Arab world if one is an adherent of the ‘religion’ of submission that is Islam. Added to this, of course, we have the Ummah, which is the community of Muslims throughout the world. When one enters the fold of Islam, when one becomes a follower, when one submits to the ‘will of Allah’ – some would say the arbitrary ‘will of Allah’ – then one joins the ‘nation’ of Islam worldwide. In this sense, can we not conclude that Islam is a form of extreme ‘nationalism’, a form of Islamic nationalism, a 'nationalism' that transcends geographical borders and frontiers?
Then we are told that fascism promotes suspicion and/or hatred of foreigners and impure people. Well, can we not conclude with the copious and available evidence that we have that Islam is certainly exclusive, since anyone who is not a Muslim is treated as inferior, and actually unclean, as in Kafir (pl. Kufar). The term used in Islam is Naji for such an unclean and unsavoury person. Does this remind you of the way that the Nazis thought of Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and Slavs and Russians? Nazis called them Untermenschen (unclean sub-humans); Muslims call them Najis (unclean disbelievers living in a state of Jahiliyyah, a state of pre-Islamic chaos), people who are unworthy of the human condition.
One other thing that Nazis, in particular, had in common with Muslims was this: They both hate(d) the Jews; both groups are deeply anti-Semitic. This, of course, is true to this very day. Mein Kampf, Hitler’s infamous book written whilst he was incarcerated, the title of which means ‘My fight, or my struggle’ (a title which bears a striking resemblance to the term Jihad, if you hadn’t noticed) was replete with anti-Semitism. One can but wonder why this very book is such a bestseller even to this day in countries in the Middle East, and even in Turkey. The book is an endless source of fascination to Muslims.
Fascism is a form of totalitarianism, but then isn’t Islam a form of totalitarianism, too? Fascism doesn’t demand state control of the means of production; but then Islam doesn’t either. Though it does have its own economic principles, economic principles which are neither capitalist nor socialist, economic principles and theory which are simply Islamic. This theory of economics demands neither state-ownership of the means of production nor does it demand equality among the faithful. But Islamic thinking certainly does call for infidels to be treated in an inferior manner, to be treated as dhimmies, or protected people who are not afforded the same rights as those who have submitted to Allah’s will.
Jews in Nazi Germany were made to wear a yellow star to mark them out from the crowd. Non-believers in an Islamic country, according to the ‘Pact of Umar’, are also subjected to similar indignities. Here we have another similarity.
The cult of personality, we are told, is the cornerstone of fascism. Do you think that Islam measures up on this score? Does Muhammad qualify? Was Muhammad charismatic enough? Has Muhammad passed the test of time? Can we conclude that Muhammad is the Gestalt which can truly be described as the non plus ultra of Gestalten, the non plus ultra of personality cults.
Whether ‘Islamofascism’ is a justified and apt term or indeed a calumnious one to describe what we are witnessing around the world today as Islam becomes ever more resurgent is for you, the reader, to decide. Do, by all means, think long and hard about this matter, for the future of the free world depends on our getting this right. It depends on our careful handling of this most thorny of contemporary issues.
©Mark Alexander
All rights reserved
Thursday, July 26, 2007
DEFINITION – Fascism: …As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, … and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism. … [Source: Dictionary.com]
EDITORIAL: With the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, most people thought that the world had been rid of fascism. Today, however, we cannot be so sure, because there is evidence aplenty of its revival. These days, many people talk of another form of fascism in particular: Islamofascism. Some people believe this term to be apt for the radical religio-political movement based on Islam, which is currently spreading through the world like wildfire; others, especially Muslims, find the term insulting and demeaning. Who is right? Are the infidels right to be shocked, disgraced and indignant, or are infidels right to use the term to point out to the unsuspecting the dangers we face. Why? Even the President of the United States of America himself, George W Bush, has used the term in public when referring to the antics of Al-Qa’eda and its determination to cultivate mayhem throughout the free world.
When we refer to Islam and radical Islam, we have to be careful not to confuse people. In this politically correct world, a world in which nobody seems willing to upset ethnic groups and people of other religions, it has become customary to dance around the truth so as not to offend. Therefore, our politicians have become accustomed to speaking in riddles, when clearer, more appropriate language would serve the needs of the electorate far better.
In times of danger, clarity of thought is essential. Prevarication serves no-one’s best interest in the long-run. Prevarication might well buy us some time; but it certainly doesn’t solve issues for the long-term good of the nation, for the long-term good of our civilization.
Let’s take a look at the real Islam…
The real Islam is exclusive in the extreme, just as Nazism was. It tells the believers – the Muslims throughout the world – to kill the unbelievers, to kill the infidels. This cannot be disputed, since it is there in black and white in all versions of the holy book of Muslims, the Qur’an.
They [the infidels] but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God [Allah] (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. – Al-Qur’an, Al-Nisa’ (Women), Surah IV, 89 (Translation by A Yusuf Ali)
And then we have the following:
… When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. … – Al-Qur’an, At-Tawba (Repentance), Surah 9, 4 (Translation by N J Dawood)
These exhortations are also redolent of Nazism. They are certainly as violent and brutal and cruel.
These are the words of the founder of Islam or the words of Allah, according to your viewpoint and according to where you stand on the matter of Islam being a great and authentic religion. Muhammad certainly managed to make those who submit to Allah feel superior and exclusive, since Muslims are considered (by Muslims) to be superior to all other human beings. They are, after all, Allah’s ‘chosen people’, just as the Aryan race was the superior race in Hitler’s Germany. This is surely another similarity between these two ideologies.
There is no doubt about the fact that Muhammad was a 'great' and magnetic personality. This is quite indisputable, since were he not to have been so, then Islam would surely have died out long ago. But don’t all fascist movements rely on a magnetic personality to lead the followers, to lead the masses, to lead the people who cannot think for themselves? Think of three great examples of the twentieth century: Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. All had quite magnetic personalities: people just had to watch them and listen to them and their rants.
The fact that Muhammad died more than fourteen hundred years ago makes no real difference, since his personality is no less magnetic today than it was when he roamed the sands of the desert. His words are still harkened unto by 1.4 billion people worldwide, and we are still counting.
Muhammad must surely rank as the dictator par excellence, since his words were clothed in a deity. Hitler, when he was sitting in his Bunker with Eva that day in 1945, when he was contemplating biting that cyanide capsule and plucking up the courage to shoot himself through the temples, must surely have regretted with every fibre of his being that he hadn’t been smart enough to clothe Nazism in a deity, just as Islam had been about fourteen hundred years before. How much more successful Hitler might have been!
Does Islam qualify so far, according to our dictionary definition, to be classified as a form of fascism? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
We are then informed that fascist dictators rally their followers by means of mass parades. Well, we cannot say with any certainty whether Muhammad did this. In all probability, he did not, since Islam, in the days of the Prophet, was in its infancy, and there would have been too few followers to rally. What we can say, however, is this: In the modern world, the dictators of the Islamic world have no difficulty whatsoever in getting rallies together on the streets of their cities. Often times, they are genuine; yet at other times, the numbers in the rallies are made by ‘rent-a-mob’. Either way, we must decide whether Islam passes this next test of a true strand of fascism. You decide!
Then we are informed in the definition that fascism appeals to strident nationalism. Well, there is no doubt that Islam is an Arabo-centric movement, worldwide. When praying, all Muslims must face Makkah (Mecca), and this takes place five times a day for the pious and faithful. One is certainly not allowed to ignore the Arab world if one is an adherent of the ‘religion’ of submission that is Islam. Added to this, of course, we have the Ummah, which is the community of Muslims throughout the world. When one enters the fold of Islam, when one becomes a follower, when one submits to the ‘will of Allah’ – some would say the arbitrary ‘will of Allah’ – then one joins the ‘nation’ of Islam worldwide. In this sense, can we not conclude that Islam is a form of extreme ‘nationalism’, a form of Islamic nationalism, a 'nationalism' that transcends geographical borders and frontiers?
Then we are told that fascism promotes suspicion and/or hatred of foreigners and impure people. Well, can we not conclude with the copious and available evidence that we have that Islam is certainly exclusive, since anyone who is not a Muslim is treated as inferior, and actually unclean, as in Kafir (pl. Kufar). The term used in Islam is Naji for such an unclean and unsavoury person. Does this remind you of the way that the Nazis thought of Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and Slavs and Russians? Nazis called them Untermenschen (unclean sub-humans); Muslims call them Najis (unclean disbelievers living in a state of Jahiliyyah, a state of pre-Islamic chaos), people who are unworthy of the human condition.
One other thing that Nazis, in particular, had in common with Muslims was this: They both hate(d) the Jews; both groups are deeply anti-Semitic. This, of course, is true to this very day. Mein Kampf, Hitler’s infamous book written whilst he was incarcerated, the title of which means ‘My fight, or my struggle’ (a title which bears a striking resemblance to the term Jihad, if you hadn’t noticed) was replete with anti-Semitism. One can but wonder why this very book is such a bestseller even to this day in countries in the Middle East, and even in Turkey. The book is an endless source of fascination to Muslims.
Fascism is a form of totalitarianism, but then isn’t Islam a form of totalitarianism, too? Fascism doesn’t demand state control of the means of production; but then Islam doesn’t either. Though it does have its own economic principles, economic principles which are neither capitalist nor socialist, economic principles and theory which are simply Islamic. This theory of economics demands neither state-ownership of the means of production nor does it demand equality among the faithful. But Islamic thinking certainly does call for infidels to be treated in an inferior manner, to be treated as dhimmies, or protected people who are not afforded the same rights as those who have submitted to Allah’s will.
Jews in Nazi Germany were made to wear a yellow star to mark them out from the crowd. Non-believers in an Islamic country, according to the ‘Pact of Umar’, are also subjected to similar indignities. Here we have another similarity.
The cult of personality, we are told, is the cornerstone of fascism. Do you think that Islam measures up on this score? Does Muhammad qualify? Was Muhammad charismatic enough? Has Muhammad passed the test of time? Can we conclude that Muhammad is the Gestalt which can truly be described as the non plus ultra of Gestalten, the non plus ultra of personality cults.
Whether ‘Islamofascism’ is a justified and apt term or indeed a calumnious one to describe what we are witnessing around the world today as Islam becomes ever more resurgent is for you, the reader, to decide. Do, by all means, think long and hard about this matter, for the future of the free world depends on our getting this right. It depends on our careful handling of this most thorny of contemporary issues.
©Mark Alexander
All rights reserved
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