Obligatory Post Election Blog Post: Part 7--The Fascism Issue

See also Part 1: Boy Did I Not See That Coming

Part 2: I think I've Become Very Out of Touch
Part 3 I Was Wrong. I Was so so so SO Wrong
Part 4 All the Reasons It Seemed Donald Trump Could Never Win
Part 5: All the Reasons Donald Trump Actually Won
and Part 6 The Racism Issue

There's been a lot of talk about Fascism this past year.

Some people on the Left have been straight out calling Donald Trump's campaign Fascist.  Some other people on the Left have been ridiculing this idea and calling it alarmist.

I have, with my typical inconsistency, retweeted both views in my twitter feed over the past year.  I can be easily swayed from one view to the other depending on whom I reading at the moment.

But I have, at least at times, thought we were witnessing a Fascist movement this election year.  And I maintain those concerns.

Just to be perfectly clear, though, I have never in a million years thought that we were on the verge of something like an American Holocaust.
(I tend to believe that the Holocaust is sui generis and should be discussed as its own separate craziness, and not as part of Fascism.  Certainly when Mussolini started the Fascist movement in the 1920s, he never dreamed of anything like the Holocaust.  Some people may disagree with this, and view the Holocaust as a natural outgrowth of Fascism.  Feel free to make your case in the comments.)

Also, I've never really worried about Fascism taking over America.  I have enough faith in the institutions of American government.  They may be deeply flawed, but I believe they are stable.  (Other people may disagree with this as well.  Feel free to comment.)

But Fascists popular movements can still spring up in the United States, even if I believe they have no chance of success.  And Donald Trump's campaign may show elements of it.  Possibly.  But let's look at the evidence first.

What is Fascism?

One of the books I read about linguistics, An Introduction to Language, made an interesting point about the inherent ambiguity of language.
I'm quoting from memory here, so you'll have to forgive the roughness of this quote, but one of the points they made is that political terms like communism and democracy have no universally agreed upon meaning.  And yet, people passionately argue about these words all the time as if they had clear and precise meanings.

I don't know about you, but many of the political debates I've been in during my life (probably most of them) have actually been semantic debates.  What does socialism really mean?  What does democracy really mean?  Is China a communist country or a capitalist country?  Which countries are truly socialist?  Is Obama a socialist?

I've learned over the years that there is such wide disagreement over what the terms "socialism", "communism", and "democracy" mean, that it's all but pointless to have a discussion about it.

And "fascism" is even more confusing.

Socialism is, at least in the political science classroom, somewhat clearly defined.
Your average man on the street, who thinks Obama is a socialist because he raised taxes, is of course confused.  But if you attend meetings of doctrinaire Trostykist groups (as I did when I lived in Australia) then they have pages and pages of doctrines from Marx and Lenin clearly spelling out what socialism is and what it isn't.

No such writings exist from the Fascist movement.  It was, even at its prime, a movement that was always somewhat confused about what it's core doctrines really were.
To quote Wikipedia: "Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism. Each interpretation of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow."

All we can really say is: (1) Something happened in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and
(2) We can make certain comments about how it played out historically.

I'm going to be focusing mainly on Spain and Italy, because I think what happened in Germany belongs in its own category.

So, what is Fascism?

* Fascism was a revolutionary populist movement.  It was populist in the sense that it appealed directly to the lower-classes.  It was revolutionary in that it advocated by-passing the traditional mechanisms of government and relying on violence to achieve power.

* Communism was also a revolutionary populist movement.  And so Communism and Fascism could have similar appeals to the working class.  And in fact, in countries like Italy many of the same people flirted with both ideologies.  (I think this was less true in Spain.)
But although Fascism and Communism may have had similar appeals, as organized groups they were always violently opposed to each other.
The Fascists had been disturbed by the Communist uprisings in Spain and Italy.  The Fascists wanted radical populist reforms just as much as the communists did, but they were frightened by all these godless atheistic Jewish intellectuals in the communist party. The Fascists wanted economic reform, but they didn't want to completely get rid of the traditional religion and values.  They wanted to maintain the authority of the Catholic Church,  and keep a hierarchical society.

Fascism, particularly in Spain and Yugoslavia, had a very strong relationship with the Catholic Church.  In Spain especially, if you were not a Catholic, you were very unlikely to be a Fascist.
In Italy, the relationship with the Catholic Church was a bit rocky at first, but an accommodation was quickly made.  (Germany, a traditionally Protestant country, was the exception, and the relationship with the Church was a lot more complicated there.)
Communism, by contrast, was atheistic in theory, and the Communist Party was mostly made up of secularists.

Also Communism was (at least in theory) supposed to be international in its outlook and embrace an international proletarian revolution.  Fascism, by contrast, was always nationalistic.  Fascism was about making your own country stronger and having pride in your own nationality.  Working class people with strong national pride would be attracted more to Fascism than to Communism.

* Because nationalism has always been such a strong part of Fascism, groups that are not part of the national racial majority were looked upon as enemies.

* In countries where Fascism had strong ties to the Catholic Church (Spain and Italy and Yugoslavia) minority religions were looked upon as enemies.

* Fascism was authoritarian.  In all the countries where Fascism gained dominance, they did not allow any freedom to opposing views.

* Fascism was always characterized by violence in all the countries in which it gained dominance.

* In all the countries in which it gained dominance, Fascism removed any constitutional protections on human rights.  It was associated with brutality and it had a reputation of being associated with torture.

*Fascism was associated with militarism

(By the way, I'm not a professional historian, I'm just a nerd.  So if I got any of that wrong, someone let me know in the comment section).

Donald Trump's Campaign

So, at this point, the parallels to Donald Trump's campaign should be leaping out at you.

*  It is right-wing populism.  However it was antagonistic to Communism and Socialist intellectuals.

* It is closely associated with the dominant religion.  (81% of White Evangelicals voted for Trump).

* It is nationalistic.

* Donald's Trump threats to open up the libel laws and sue all the newspapers has been associated with silencing the opposition.

* Trump has enthusiastically embraced Torture:
"Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys—”Torture doesn’t work!”—believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form. Some people say it’s not actually torture. Let’s assume it is. But they asked me the question: What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding." (see here)

* Minority religions are viewed with suspicion:
"Donald Trump’s policy advisers are discussing plans to establish a registry for Muslim immigrants in the US, a man believed to be a key member of the President-elect's transition team has revealed." (see here)

* The Trump campaign demonized immigrant groups

* Donald Trump has expressed militaristic views:
"I would bomb the s--- out of 'em. I would just bomb those suckers. That's right. I'd blow up the pipes. ... I'd blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left. And you know what, you'll get Exxon to come in there and in two months, you ever see these guys, how good they are, the great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker, brand new — it'll be beautiful." (see here)

* Trump often used violent rhetoric against people who opposed him at rallies:
"You know what I hate? There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches. We’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks." (see here)

*Many of Donald Trump rallies have been associated with violence, particularly toward minority people.  (see here)

And finally, the Fascists themselves view Donald Trump as one of their own.  All the groups in America that explicitly self-identify with the Fascist ideology have come out and endorsed Donald Trump for President.

So to my mind there is no doubt.  There are definitely elements of Fascism in Donald Trump's campaign.

But then, what of it?  There were a lot of the same elements in George Wallace's campaign.  And in Richard Nixon's campaign.

Some of this has always been part of the ugly side of American politics.

I think this is the worst we've ever seen it so far, but it is still just part of a spectrum.

*********************************************************

I mentioned this before, but apparently It Can't Happen Here by Lewis Sinclair is selling like hot cakes all of a sudden.  Amazon is currently out of stock of the book.

My own review of the book (from way back in 2006) is here.

In my review, I write:

...with apologies to Sinclair Lewis, I’d say that this rapid transition to Fascism can’t happen here. Not the way he portrays it at least. 

And that's what I still believe.  Donald Trump's campaign may definitely have courted elements of Fascism, but (to repeat what I said earlier) I believe the institutions of American government are stable enough to withstand this.  There are enough checks and balances in the American system to prevent any one group from getting too powerful.  And as long as a lot of people still oppose Donald Trump (and a lot of people still do) then we won't be seeing a rapid conversion to a Fascist state anytime soon.

....but then again, I've been wrong before, so...

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

(Book Review)

Put this in the category of "books-I-really-should-have-read-a-long-time-ago-and-am-somewhat-embarrassed-to-admit-I'm-just-getting-around-to-now." It's been on my reading list forever, and but I've only now actually sat down and read it.

And, like most books in this category, once I finally did start reading it, I wondered why in the world I had waited so long. It's an extremely readable little book, and moreover one that really gripped me. Once I started reading it, I had a hard time putting it down, and I finished off the entire book in a few days. (Which, for me anyways, is a bit of a feat. I'm one of those people who usually takes about 6 weeks to finish a book.)

But before I get into how great this book is, let me start at the beginning and explain why it had been on my reading list.

For starters, I'm a big George Orwell fan. I have not, to my shame, read a lot of his books (I'll have to work on remedying that), but what I have read has made an impression on me.
"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" I read during my college years, when I was trying to reconcile my idealism with my middle class lifestyle and the book did a lot to shape my evolving world view.
The first time I read "1984" (again back in college)I went in expecting a political book, but was instead amazed at how beautifully it was written. For this reason "1984" was one of the only audio-books I brought with me to Japan (in an effort to keep up my English literary skills despite being surrounded by a foreign language environment.) And it's one of the few books that I've listened to so many times I've practically got it memorized. ("Animal Farm" was also included as a bonus on the same audio book.)

As for this book, Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" may not be well known to the general public, but it is often read and often quoted in the crazy leftist circles I hang out in. It is practically required reading for anarchists, and as a nominal anarchist myself it's high time I finally got around to it.

Noam Chomsky himself is a huge fan of this book, and often talks about it in articles and interviews.
Chomsky talks about the importance of the contents of the book (although not completely uncritical of the anarchist movement in Spain, Orwell does portray them as the true voice of workers' control and workers' democracy, in contrast to the totalitarian methods used by the Communist party.) But Chomsky also thinks it's important to talk about the publishing history of the book. It was suppressed when it was first published in 1938. Only a few copies were sold in England, and the book wasn't even published in the United States. According to Chomsky, the reason has as much to do with the institutional left as it does with the right. In the 1930s communism was very fashionable among intellectuals, and it was unpopular to criticize the established Communist party. In the 1940s, the Soviet Union was our ally against Hitler. It was not until the 50s that this book was finally published in the United States, and then it was only because of the red scare, and this book was presented as cold war anti-communist propaganda. "Orwell, who had died already, would have hated it" said Chomsky (link here).

[Incidentally, while on the subject, another one of Chomsky's favorite Orwell stories is that Orwell had originally written an introduction to "Animal Farm" (W), in which he said that press censorship is not only a problem in totalitarian governments, but a form of it exists in England as well. It's just that in England, people are a lot more subtle about censorship. As if to prove Orwell's point, this introduction was suppressed.]

Anyway, all these are reasons why I should have read the book long before now. As to the actual book itself:

The book is a memoirs of Orwell's time in the Spanish - Civil - War. It describes how he arrived in Spain full of enthusiasm for the Republican Government, and then gets disillusioned by the totalitarian tactics of the Communist Party (although he remains an ardent anti-fascist till the end.)

Politics are the main thrust of this book, and yet to focus too much on politics would be to do an injustice to Orwell's writing. The real joy in this book is that it's just so well-written.
In this regard, the book truly is an overlooked gem. Not only do we have a first hand account of the historic Spanish Civil War (something invaluable in and of itself) but it's written by a writer who is worth reading--someone who knows how to use just the right words to create just the right images, and does so in a way that makes the book really flow.
Right from the beginning of the book you know you're in good hands.

In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table.

He was a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or six, with reddish-yellow hair and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye. He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast, gazing with a puzzled frown at a map which one of the officers had open on the table. Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend--the kind of a face you would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not he was a Communist. There were both candour and ferocity in it; also the pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their supposed superiors. Obviously he could not make head or tail of the map; obviously he regarded map-reading as a stupendous intellectual feat. I hardly know why, but I have seldom seen anyone--any man, I mean--to whom I have taken such an immediate liking. While they were talking round the table some remark brought it out that I was a foreigner. The Italian raised his head and said quickly:

'Italiano?'

I answered in my bad Spanish: 'No, Ingles. Y tu?'

'Italiano.'

As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard.
Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was as though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy. I hoped he liked me as well as I liked him. But I also knew that to retain my first impression of him I must not see him again; and needless to say I never did see him again. One was always making contacts of that kind in Spain.

These wonderful descriptive passages continue on all through the book. In fact, if I had to choose to quote another passage to illustrate how well-written this book is, I'd be somewhat spoiled for choice. There's a very interesting passage in which Orwell gives a very detailed account of what it's like to be shot in a war and to think you're about to die (which someone else has excerpted for their website here) and there's vivid descriptions of the street fighting in Barcelona, and of the scene in which Orwell's wife warns him that the Communist Police are looking for him.

But I'll limit myself to one more long quotation, and the quoted passage below will just have to serve as an example of the pleasure that is found reading this book:

There seemed no hope of any real fighting. When we left Monte Pocero I had counted my cartridges and found that in nearly three weeks I had fired just three shots at the enemy. They say it takes a thousand bullets to kill a man, and at this rate it would be twenty years before I killed my first Fascist. At Monte Oscuro the lines were closer and one fired oftener, but I am reasonably certain that I never hit anyone. As a matter of fact, on this front and at this period of the war the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being unable to kill your enemy you shouted at him instead. This method of warfare is so extraordinary that it needs explaining.

Wherever the lines were within hailing distance of one another there was always a good deal of shouting from trench to trench. From ourselves: 'Fascistas --maricones!' From the Fascists: ''Viva Espana! Viva Franco!'--or, when they knew that there were English opposite them: 'Go home, you English! We don't want foreigners here!' On the Government side, in the party militias, the shouting of propaganda to undermine the enemy morale had been developed into a regular technique. In every suitable position men, usually machine-gunners, were told off for shouting-duty and provided with megaphones. Generally they shouted a set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come over to our side. This was repeated over and over by relays of men; sometimes it continued almost the whole night. There is very little doubt that it had its effect; everyone agreed that the trickle of Fascist deserters was partly caused by it. If one comes to think of it, when some poor devil of a sentry--very likely a Socialist or Anarchist trade union member who has been conscripted against his will--is freezing at his post, the slogan 'Don't fight against your own class!' ringing again and again through the darkness is bound to make an impression on him. It might make just the difference between deserting and not deserting. Of course such a proceeding does not fit in with the English conception of war. I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him! I now think that from any point of view it was a legitimate manoeuvre. In ordinary trench warfare, when there is no artillery, it is extremely difficult to inflict casualties on the enemy without receiving an equal number yourself. If you can immobilize a certain number of men by making them desert, so much the better; deserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can give information. But at the beginning it dismayed all of us; it made us feel that the Spaniards were not taking this war of theirs sufficiently seriously. The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative.' Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a Fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.

You'll notice, if you read the above quote, the humor that sneaks into it. And this is also typical of the way the whole book is written. While reading this book the corners of my mouth were constantly twitching upwards in little half smiles at the subtle humor Orwell infused throughout his writing.

Actually, although the book is most famous for its politics, the majority of the chapters are just about describing the every day nature of the war. In fact Orwell is almost apologetic when politics intrude into his narrative:

"If you're not interested in the horrors of party politics, please skip [this chapter]; I am trying to keep the political parts of this narrative in separate chapters for precisely that purpose. At the same time it would be quite impossible to write about the Spanish war from a purely military angle. It was above all things a political war."

Orwell first arrives in Barcelona to see that the anarchists are in complete control of the city. He describes the kind of revolutionary society the anarchist have created:

The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

Orwell enlists in the anti-fascist republican cause, but he soon discovers there are deep divisions with in the anti-fascist side. On one hand there are the anarchists, who see the war as a working people's revolution. On the other side are the middle-class republican capitalists, who see the war as a way to re-establish bourgeois capitalism, and want to roll back the gains that the working class had made during the early days of the war.

So far so simple. But here is what Orwell claimed very few people outside of Spain actually understood: the Communist Party was actually against the working class revolution, and it was the Communist Party more than anyone else that wanted to restore bourgeois capitalism. The official Communist Party at this point was completely controlled by the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union didn't want to upset its various international alliances by having a revolution in Spain. And so it was the Spanish Communist Party which was responsible for crushing the worker's revolution, destroying worker's control of factories, and throwing all the revolutionaries in jail.

Orwell was in Barcelona when street fighting between the anarchists and the Communist controlled police broke out, and he describes what he saw.
Orwell himself had joined the militia as a member of a Trotskyist organization, and so in the end had to flee from Spain for his life after he saw many of his friends rounded up and jailed.

The Communist Party, of course, placed all the blame for the violence on the anarchists and Trotskyists. The Communist newspapers in Britain repeated the official line, and even the capitalist newspapers attacked the anarchists. As Orwell writes:

The reason why a one-sided version has been accepted is simply that the Spanish revolutionary parties have no footing in the foreign press. In the English press, in particular, you would have to search for a long time before finding any favourable reference, at any period of the war, to the Spanish Anarchists. They have been systematically denigrated, and, as I know by my own experience, it is almost impossible to get anyone to print anything in their defence.

Orwell dedicates a whole chapter to examining the lies and misrepresentations of the English press.

Although Orwell apologizes for the political chapters in his book, in my opinion they are the most interesting. It's a pity this book was so little circulated when it was first released, because the journalists he named in this chapter really deserved the public shaming he tried to give him. In particularly Orwell goes after the Communist controlled press.

Orwell showed that the journalists write so many logical absurdities and self-contradictions that, even though they were hundreds of miles away from the actual events, they must have known they were lying.
It's a beautiful thing to see a brilliant mind like Orwell's simply rip apart all of these articles. (It's also not hard to see why this is one of Noam Chomsky's favorite books. Orwell's media critiques are very similar to Chomsky's own style.)

And finally, one can see in these chapters Orwell's frustrations with political manipulation of the truth, a theme of course that he would develop further ten years later in "1984."

A fascinating little book. At only 232 pages, it's well worth the short time it will take you to read it.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Mumia Abu-Jamal & George Orwell (Recommend skipping to the 5 minute mark to skip the introduction.)

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell: Book Review (Scripted)

Pan's Labyrinth

(Movie Review)

This is a movie that's been on my list for sometime. It's been highly recommended to me by just about everyone I know. And I also enjoyed "Hellboy" and "Hellboy 2" by the same director.

I waited to see this movie, because I wanted to watch it on a DVD that had English subtitles. All the DVDs in Japan only had Japanese subtitles, making it hard to watch foreign films.

Not that I couldn't have struggled through. I've watched foreign films like "Black Book" or "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" in Japanese. But I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. So I waited until I was back in the US to see this one.

(Sorry, I know my linguistic difficulties in watching these films is of interest to no one but myself. Onto the review).

Like I said, this film has been highly praised by just about everyone I know, including friends much smarter than me whose opinions I greatly respect. Bork, for instance, recommended this film to me. And I understand Phil thinks highly enough of it that he even shows it to his Freshman English class.
Not to mention all the professional movie critics who have lavishly praised this film.

So there's not a lot for me to add here. It is a great film. The fantasy parts of it are beautifully done, and draw you completely into the fairy-tale world.

The historical parts of it are also very well done. As a history geek, the Spanish Civil War is an area - of - interest - to - me. But actually this film takes place in 1944, after the Civil War is over, and the Spanish Maquis is left fighting the fascist forces.

I knew nothing about the Spanish Maquis before seeing this film, but after watching the film my interest was sparked and afterwards I spent some time reading up on them via wikipedia (article here) and some other interenet sources.
And that's really what a good historical movie should do. They can't teach you a lot in 2 hours, but they can excite your interest and cause you to want to learn more on your own.

Finally, this film is quite powerful emotionally without ever resorting to sappiness.
A common complaint I have against a lot of Hollywood movies is that they work too hard to try and manipulate my emotions, but in this case everything comes naturally from the story.

So, yeah, it's a great film, just like everyone told me it would be. Not a lot to add here.

....Well, alright, if you want to get greedy, I guess you could lament that the story doesn't do more.
The idea of mixing in fantasy elements into a historical narrative is genius. (I'm sure there's a technical literary type word for this type of genre, but I don't know what it is.)
However, both stories in and of themselves are pretty thin. I'm not sure if the historical part of the movie is meant as a padding for the fantasy section, or the fantasy part is meant to pad out the historical sections. But there were times I wished the story had more meat to it.
The fantasy elements had a lot of great visuals, but the actual story was lacking.

I know it's easier to criticize than to create. Especially when you're juggling two difficult genres, I'm sure it's difficult to strike the right balance. But if I was going to be greedy, this is what I would ask for.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on the United States Healthcare System

Pan's Labyrinth: Movie Review (Scripted)

An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald

(Movie Review)

Another documentary I watched off of TV links. (They wouldn't have had it at my local video store anyway). That TV links is a dangerous site, isn't it? As if the Internet didn't waste enough of my time as it is....but nevertheless here's the link for anyone interested.

I had never heard of Ethel MacDonald before. Neither have most people. Which, according to the Internet, is one of the reasons this documentary was made in the first place, in order to rescue Ethel MacDonald's forgotten legacy.

Ethel MacDonald was a Scottish anarchist who took part in the Spanish civil war as a journalist and radio propagandist for the Spanish Republic. According to wikipedia she was also active in the 1950s peace movement towards the end of her life, but this documentary only focuses on the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War, and in particular the anarchist movement associated with it, has long been one of those areas of history that I've been interested in but never got around to thoroughly reading up on. (So much interesting history, so little time. Regular readers of this blog of course know that lately I've been focusing my reading on the Paris Commune, another land mark in anarchist history).

The Spanish Civil War, with its different stages and shifting alliances between monarchists, fascists, republicans, anarchists, and communists has often confused better history students than me. Add to that the story of international support for the Spanish Civil war, and then on top of everything the personal story of journalist Ethel MacDonald, and you have a film which is juggling a lot. Fortunately the film makers do a good job of narrating the material. It may not get too in depth about the Spanish Civil War, but it never gets too confusing either. It handles each topic briefly, but it handles enough topics to maintain interest.

As you would expect, there is lots of archival footage and old news reels. But there are also actors to supply the visuals when the archival footage doesn't exist--similar to the BBC series "Days that Shook the World" (which I guess is why the film is labeled docu-drama). At times this gives the film a bit of a cheesy feel, but the constant visuals also help to give a narrative to the muddled history of the Spanish Civil War.

There is also the usual cuts away to the talking head experts, the only one really recognizable is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky doesn't seem to know a lot about Ethel MacDonald (or at least they don't ask him about her) but he fills in a lot of the history and analysis of the Spanish Civil War, and is brilliant, articulate, and a pleasure to listen to as always.

The story of the Spanish Civil War is one of deep divisions and betrayals on the left (a theme also present in Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls") and Ethel MacDonald's own experience serves as a very good example around which larger themes are introduced. Once the Communists turn against the anarchists in Barcelona, MacDonald has to go into hiding from the very republican government she was fighting for.

If you hang out in activist circles (as I do on occasion when I'm in the US) the betrayal in Barcelona is still remembered by the anarchists. I was at a media mouse event last year where I remember a woman advocating that anarchists should never make common cause with communists because as soon as communists get into power the first thing they do is shoot all the anarchists (Barcelona being one example, the Russian Revolution another).

It is hard to argue with historical fact, and everyone knows that history does to some extent repeat itself but I'm wary of turning historical precedent into some sort of religious dogma that can be applied across the board to all countries in all time periods. Communism, anarchism or any ideological movement does not have an independent life of its own but is made up of nothing more or less than its human adherents, and people are always different depending on circumstances.

At any rate, in a country like the US where the communists are in no danger of rising to power any time soon, I hardly see the danger in cooperating on anti-war projects. I circulated A.N.S.W.ER. petitions back in 2002 and don't feel a bit guilty about it. But all of this is probably another topic for another post.

Link of the Day
Swagman family blogging: my sister's post on the last couple weeks and everyone being back in town for my brother's wedding (even features a picture of me at the Swagman family dinner table)
Plus news that she and her boyfriend got engaged. Congratulations!

An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald: Movie Review (Scripted)

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

 (Book Review)

Wow, did I love this book!

This is one of those books that’s been on my list for a long time, but that I kept putting off. I wanted to read it because I had heard it was about the Spanish Civil War, which is one of my historical interests because of the connection with anarchist and radical history. 5 years ago this is one of the few books I brought with me to Japan with the intention of reading, but never did.

I kept putting the book off because I had bad experiences with Hemingway in high school, and found the famous Hemingway style to be more annoying than anything else.

Perhaps I’ve matured as a reader, or perhaps this book is better than Hemingway’s usual, but I did not find Hemingway’s style as annoying as I remembered it. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The story takes place in the mountains behind the fascist lines among the guerrilla fighters. Robert Jordan is an American volunteer who has been sent to dynamite a bridge in the fascist territory. Pablo, the leader of the guerrilla’s, is opposed to this mission because he views it as an unnecessary risk.

The debate about whether or not to destroy the bridge takes up most of the book. In a way it reminded me of those George Romero Zombie movies. An army of zombies is outside the house, but the humans spend the whole time arguing among themselves. “Go to the basement.” “No stay upstairs!”

“For Whom the Bell Tolls” has the same sense of misdirected energy. The guerillas are deep behind fascist lines, but they spend most of their time arguing with each other. Although this is a tactical rather than ideological debate, I suspect Hemingway might have meant this to be symbolic of the Spanish Civil War as a whole, and the failure of the anti-fascist forces to form a United Front. The issue of internal divisions is addressed more explicitly later in the book. Near the end there is a passage when one of the characters is sent to deliver a crucial message and gets delayed first by paranoid Anarchists, next by bureaucratic republicans, and finally by purge happy communists. The end result is that the message arrives too late.

Its always difficult to tease out the political beliefs of an author based on statements made by his characters, but I suspect Hemingway and I do not line up exactly. Robert Jordan, the main character, makes a number of statements that I really agreed with, including the subject of hidden fascism in the United States. On the other hand, the anarchists in this book are portrayed as either useless or drunks. And several characters make racist statements against Gypsies. (I guess it might be unfair to extend these sentiments to Hemingway himself, but they are never corrected elsewhere in the book.)


But politics aside the book as a story is amazing. I think especially Hemingway has a real skill for conversation. Not necessarily “writing the way people talk” (in fact much of the dialogue sounded stilted) but rather having a sense for the natural flow conversations take. And also the mental thought process of the characters was very well described.

The book is not antiwar, at least not in the tradition of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The characters believe in the cause they are fighting for. But Hemingway makes a real effort to show the costs and misery of war. And the fascist soldiers are not shown as mindless robots to be killed like they would be in an Indiana Jones movie.

The theme of suicide is prevalent as well. Given how Hemingway ended his life, it’s interesting to see what his thoughts on the subject are.

Oh, and lest I forget, the book is also a love story. I guess I haven’t mentioned that yet, even though that’s the main point of the book. Actually the love story parts didn’t really stick with me that much. I enjoyed them for what they were, but it is the other themes of the book that I took more interest in. I guess there’s just no hope for me as a romantic.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Aquaman has been referenced on two occasions in the animated television series The Simpsons (1989—). In "Treehouse of Horror VIII" (airdate October 26, 1997), in a sequence entitled "The Homega Man," the Comic Book Guy is shown reading an Aquaman comic as he states aloud, "But Aquaman, you can't marry a girl without gills. You're from two different worlds." He looks up to see a neutron bomb heading directly for him and mutters, "Ooo, I wasted my life," just before the bomb explodes. In "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (airdate November 14, 1999) when Homer is drowning at the beach, he shouts out to his infant daughter, "Maggie, help! Call Aquaman!"

Link of the Day
This one is old news, about 3 years ago now, but I wanted to link to it just because I realized I never linked to it before. A salon.com article on police spying in Grand Rapids.
I was in Japan when all this was going on, but I'm extremely proud to say I know most of the people mentioned in the article. Abby Puls is a good friend from Calvin, and in fact stayed over here at my parents house a few nights once when she was waiting on a ride home for Christmas break. Erica Freshour and Jeff Smith are friends from Media Mouse, and I've gone on many adventures with them including the Quebec protest.

I know many of you have already seen this article. I see Phil Christman even had a letter into Salon about it. I was asking Jeff Smith about this the other day, and he told me that they had told the local media all about it, but no one thought it was news worthy until after Salon did a piece on it. Only then did the Grand Rapids Press and others cover the incident. Pathetic.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway: Book Review (Scripted)