 |
| Image: Flag of the Second Spanish Republic from Pixabay (License) |
This summer marked the eightieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War and this week, eighty years ago, the International Brigades marched into Madrid to defend the Republic from Franco's Nationalists.
The volunteers of the International Brigades came from around the world, including much needed experienced soldiers from the Great War. Of the first three thousand soldiers, most died in the first days of the Battle of Madrid, to stall the fascist advance and delay their victory - even as the Republic's nominal international allies stood by and watched, moderates outraged by Republican radicalism and hoping to merely contain or appease the far right.
Ultimately, however, the Nationalists conclusively conquered Spain and completed their mutinous coup d'etat. But it would not have been possible without plenty of international help of their own, from the fascist dictators of Germany and Italy - who sent professional forces and materiel to Franco.
These tales of the far right spreading, of progressives and moderates lost and struggling to unify or to recognise their commonality, of strife between progress and tradition, is a compellingly recognisable one today for those watching the rise of Trump in America, or Brexit in the UK and the Front National in France. So too is the appeasement and the retreat to reactive, surrendering the creation of the story of the times to the far right.
Spain's second shortlived Republic died beneath the boot of international fascist cooperation, even as the dozens of progressive factions fell upon each. And with it was swept away the achievements of the Republic's almost recklessly progressive government.
Under Manuel Azana and his Republican Left, an amalgamation of different republican parties, the dismantling of the overbearing establishment began. First as Prime Minister and then as President, Azana led efforts to modernise Spain, to make it secular, open and tolerant.
It pursued the three most prominent aspects of the establishment: the army, the church and the landowners. An Army with 800 generals, but just 16 divisions in need of them, was faced with reforms, redundancies and cuts. The Church, as under the Radicals in France a few decades earlier, faced the secularising of education - ostensibly to take the poor out from under its grip and influence. And an agrarian reform program, sought to confiscate large private landholdings (latifundia) and distribute them among the rural poor.
However, these progressive and secular policies - sought by the Republican Left in a Popular Front partnership with regional nationalists, discontented workers with strong trade unions, and an anarchist movement without parallel anywhere in the world in either scope or success - were being pursued in a country with a deeply embedded and deeply conservative establishment, only recently shorn of its figureheads, that felt vulnerable and was not yet ready for such radical reform. The pressed on, but did not take enough of a frightened people with them.
Violent clashes erupted between the Left and establishment Right. Propaganda was everywhere. Into the vacuum opened by the old establishment's ousting stepped fascism and it spoke to conservatives of all classes: it spoke to their prejudices and condoned them, spoke to their fears and made them feel strong, spoke to their problems and offered scapegoats.
In the time of Brexit and President Elect Donald J Trump, were the centre is failing and the radical Left and far Right are competing for the support of the disaffected, it seems that the problems of the 1930s - crystallised in the factional divides of Spain - have resurfaced.
The poor, the 'white working-class', found themselves on many sides - Left, Right and Centre - in the 1930s, and do so again today. Roosevelt built an alliance with them in the United States, but Hitler rallied them in Germany. In Spain they were divided, progressive from conservative. International allies, progressives and moderates, did not get behind the Republic and only reacted, seeking only contain, embrace and control the far right movements.
The question being asked - honestly, since as long ago as 2008 and the start of social democracy's decline - is how progressives can 'reconnect' with the working class, seemingly more convinced by the far right's appeals to their conservative values.
One argument that has persisted, and has been seen most readily in the UK and distressingly amongst moderates, has stressed the need to at least lightly indulge bigotry with populist appeals. To abandon openness and tolerance, in the name of the allegedly 'greater good' of grabbing power.
The trouble with that argument is that it treats the views of the people as innate and unshakeable values, even adopts them and praises them as 'tradition' - with nationalism, for instance, treated as a universal given. All that has done is fan the flames, encouraging and spreading intolerance, helping it to find a language and context to legitimise itself.
It also discounts the possibility of changing minds. While there are surely some with deeply ingrained and unwaveringly intolerant nationalism beating in their breast, history teaches that most just want a better life and are looking for a compelling narrative that inspires their confidence.
The times, the pressures, and the dominant narratives by which we understand them - these things play crucial roles in where the people will place their confidence, whether in the Left or in the Right. And it is control over these forces that progressives have surrendered, too much for far too long, in the name of an electoral strategy aimed at taking and holding power.
In the 1930s, fascism spread while its opponents were divided and weakened - often co-opting the establishment and its traditional values as its own. The Republic in Spain was left isolated by international allies even as the people took up arms, in many countries, to defend it.
But the Republic also lost an important fight: it failed to organise, to coordinate, to align its factional narratives into a single compelling story. And many of those factions saw those supported more conservative groups as inherently opponents, and attacked them and alienated them.
As in the 1930s, the far right has gotten to grips with the forces at play and produced a seductive narrative, absolving national majorities of fault and offering them simplistic, crude solutions that play to revisionist nostalgia - aided by a conservative elite that still hope to exploit or control these movements as they grow.
But where is the progressive alternative?
The American Presidential Election is yet another warning to progressives, of all factions from radical to moderate, that differences must be put aside in pursuit of the broader aims of justice and liberty, equality and empowerment, and in all of these sustainability.
The issues affecting the working poor are clear: housing and energy cost too much, work is precarious and pays too little, opportunities and security are scarce and fragile. Ideas around community and cooperative action, of democratic empowerment, that confronts these ills even exists.
So where is the progressive narrative?
It isn't progressive to dismiss the fears of the working class, but nor is it to blindly embrace the narratives spread among them by the far right. The reality is that to achieve true progressive reform you must take the people with you.
To do that, if the Left is to reach out to people, it needs its own compelling story to explain the times. That means bringing together policies into a vision, of the present and the future. And for that to be effective, the Left has to stop surrendering to the Right the creation of the story that explains our times.
No comments:
Post a Comment