1930s Spain and Syria/Iraq

THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN 30s SPAIN AND SYRIA/IRAQ

Comparisons are made between the “volunteers” who go to fight in Iraq and Syria (often for IS) and those who, in the 1930s, went to fight for the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War ( we tend to forget the less numerous European and American volunteers who joined the forces of Franco). Specifically, commentators criticise the laws brought in or proposed to curtail Middle Eastern armed adventurism on the grounds that they would have prevented people joining the International Brigade in  Spain (although apparently there was technically a law against that even then).

The motives of the Spanish Republican volunteers were various and complex. It has been said there are nearly as many lenses through which to view the historical, political or cultural aspects of the Spanish Republic and its struggle as there were participants.

That acknowledged, one can reasonably generalise about the ideals of the educated middle-class British volunteers, because they have been eloquently spoken for by the powerful voices of the writers who flourished in the 1930s- Auden, Spender, Day-Lewis, McNeice, Lee, Brenan and Orwell, to name some of the most illustrious. They were (most of them; the Communist Party was a prime mover of the International Brigade ) subscribers to beleaguered Enlightenment values and also to an ideal of Britain, tolerant and at peace, which were all increasingly difficult to defend as socio-economic reality or as a political philosophy as the tides of economic misery and strident nationalism rose high. Thus Auden writes, in his poem Spain, 1937, contrasting a desired world with a grim present reality, and also sounding a prescient note of deep gloom:

Tomorrow, for the young, the poets exploding like bombs,

The walks by the lake, the winter of perfect communion;

        Tomorrow the bicycle races

Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but today the struggle.

Today the inevitable increase in the chances of death;

The conscious acceptance of guilt in the fact of murder;

        Today the expending of powers

On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

…….

The stars are dead; the animals will not look:

We are left alone with our day, and the time is short and

           History to the defeated

May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.

These were the people Winston Churchill dismissed as “armed tourists”.

The motivations, fates and futures of modern volunteers are undoubtedly important. ( It seems that a major differentiating factor is that few if any of the 30’s volunteers returned with a view to wreaking bloody havoc in their home countries.) They too join up join up to defend, or rather propagate an ideal or ideals, but sadly very different ones.

Perhaps the Enlightenment has, for the present, nothing much to offer these young men. Its virtues of critical exploration, without fear of autocracy or religion, and the promotion of personal autonomy have been increasingly perverted, in the eyes of many of non-Western descent or residence, by the historic cruelties, and modern legacies, of colonialism and the vast amoral indifference of global capitalism. In short, the lives and values of  of Auden & Co do not mean anything to the Jihad-tempted. Something older, and nastier, has taken one of its many roots.

And there is another depressing parallel to be drawn with Spain, if we are considering the conflict there as some sort of precedent (one among many) for Syria/Iraq today. What deserves more notice is a hideous similarity between the practical ideology which motivated the core leaders of the Francoist rebellion and that which drives IS. I carefully use the phrase “practical ideology”, because, obviously, the religious dimensions are different: militant conservative Catholicism on the one hand and militant conservative Islam on the other. Although even here there is an irony: the shock troops of Franco’s southern army which advanced on Madrid in the early stages of the war were Muslim Moroccan mercenaries. Of whom more later.

The broad aim of Francoism was “purification”: the claiming back of traditional Spain (Catholic, aristocratic and male) from the pollutions of the “Reds”, which term embraced actual communists, anarchists of every stripe, liberals, free thinkers, feminists and homosexuals: in short, all representatives of 30’s modernity, both good, bad or plain “different”.

Purification was carried out lethally and mercilessly, with the rebels’ southern army and its Moroccan mercenaries setting the example as they butchered and raped on the way towards Madrid. Falangist death squads also operated openly in Rebel-held territory (Garcia-Lorca was an early victim).

(There were atrocities committed by supporters of the Republican government, especially in the early stages of the Nationalist revolt: against Catholic clergy and nuns, landowners and Nationalist prisoners and sympathisers. But this was not the systematic policy of the government.)

The Nationalist ideology held that opponents were less than human: hence it was no crime or sin to inflict torture, rape or death. This is a deadly virus of the mind and spirit, which denies humanity to any but the true believer. It manifested itself in Spain and, of course, infected other countries, poisoning the politics of “right” and “left”. It has continued to do so since, in many places.

Islamic fundamentalism appears to be its latest host body.

“Purification of unbelievers”: someone, somewhere is always pursuing this bloody goal.

February 2015