[asianthrowaway]

I always wondered why Franco has such a bad rep. I'm not really knowledgeable about the Spanish civil war but it seems he prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country, which is a good thing in my book.

I mean no doubt he was a brutal dictator but in the grand scheme of things he was by far the lesser of two evils.

Edit: also I think your comparison of the American prison system and the gulag to be rather ridiculous. Afaik, american prisoners aren't worked to death in arctic conditions.

[jacobush]

It was not all that clear at the time that communism would become as bad as it turned out almost everywhere it was tried.

Edit: downvoted, but I think this is objectively true. The worst atrocities hadn't happen yet in the 1930's. Hindsight is 20 20. A lot of people drew on older ideals from the French revolution which we still celebrate today, not the least in the US. (Do you really think the blood of tyrants can be spillt without collateral damage?)

[rjplatte]

I think you're getting downvoted because people today still haven't learned their lesson.

[matt4077]

If you wonder about Franco's bad rep, why don't you actually check it out, instead of challenging people to prove the evil of fascist to you from first principle, and claiming their virtue if they don't.

What is your professed naïveté supposed to accomplish, except to serve as propaganda for a universally abhorred fascist while simultaneously retaining your option to claim ignorance when challenged?

[scottlocklin]

It wasn't actually a fascist regime (the Falangists were brought under political control by Franco); it was a standard issue military dictatorship, encompassing many right wing tendencies. Including things most English speakers would consider bonkers, like Carlism, which was a movement to install ... some other guy (from a slightly different branch of the Bourbon family) on the Spanish throne. Carlism was arguably more of a political force than the Falange (and still is) -they had just fought a vicious civil war over this a hundred odd years back.

Franco also wasn't and isn't universally abhorred; many Spaniards still admire Franco for whatever reasons, and there are large monuments and contemporary political rallies by fairly ordinary people honoring his memory.

Anyway, it's fascinating history and current events; reading a book will serve you better than ... expressing sentiments.

[andrepd]

It wasn't actually a fascist regime

It is as much not a fascist regime as Hitler's wasn't, in that you can argue academically that there are better terms to describe it than "fascist". Nonetheless, you can clearly identify a set of characteristics that Franco's Spain has in common with fascist ideology, therefore you can call it fascist (among other terms that some argue are more descriptive).

Franco also wasn't and isn't universally abhorred;

Over 50% of Russians say they miss the Soviet regime and would prefer it to the current autocracy. What are we to conclude from that, according to you?

reading a book will serve you better than ... expressing sentiments.

But isn't that what you just did?

[scottlocklin]

Unless you consider 'fascism' to be "stuff adrepd don't like," Franco's system of government was not fascist. The Falange, a movement eventually coopted into Francoism, was the local fascist contingent, and they weren't super popular. As I stated above, giving a mini lesson on Spanish mid 20th century history; reading a book will serve you better than point and sputter. Please go read a book and keep your point and sputter to yourself.

[pmoriarty]

"Franco also wasn't and isn't universally abhorred; many Spaniards still admire Franco for whatever reasons, and there are large monuments and contemporary political rallies by fairly ordinary people honoring his memory."

Many Germans still admire Hitler, many Russians still admire Stalin, and many Chinese still admire Mao.

In Mongolia, Ghenghis Khan is admired as a great leader of their nation, and the negative things said of him are considered to be exaggerations or lies made up the people he fought with.

It seems no matter what a dictator does, or how many atrocities he commits, there'll always be people that admire and defend him.

[scottlocklin]

Your point being? Point and sputter isn't much of an argument, even with great goblins like the ones you mention above.

Franco by any sane measure, was a much lesser goblin. As was his next door neighbor Salazar. For their times, and particularly considering their situations, they were fairly reasonable leaders. Which is probably why they were integrated into NATO.

[andrepd]

Which is probably why they were integrated into NATO.

They were integrated into NATO for the same reason that Fulgêncio Batista was propped up by the US, or the Iranian Shah, or the guy that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz. That reason is: the US benefited economically and militarily from that situation, and any other considerations (moral, ethical, the well-being of the people, whether it was democratic) simply did not enter the equation one way or the other. Who cares if Arbenz was democratically elected and his land reforms lifted millions out of poverty, the United Fruit Company was making less money for their owners after some inhumane exploitation was outlawed so in comes the US coup, etc etc.

You simply cannot argue morality or democracy when discussing this.

[scottlocklin]

I simply can argue morality when discussing this, actually, and just did. Again, point and sputter isn't an argument, and your argument will appear absurd in a few decades, as "point and sputter" at Napoleon was among Victorian gentlemen in the UK.

I didn't say anything about democracy, and confounding this word with the word "morality" is pretty ... questionable. That was one of the points that Solzhenitsyn made very well; go read his speech to Harvard.

The US picked Franco as an Ally, yes, because it served US interests. The US also allied with a lot of unsavory spanish speaking dictators in latin america; mostly for the same reason -they saw generalissimo types as a lesser evil to communist revolutionaries. All things considered, it was a reasonable thing to do. Communist body counts were considerably higher than all of these put together.

[icebraining]

Spain only joined NATO in '82, years after Franco's death, already in the democratic era.

[doombolt]

> prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country,

Or maybe it would be a flop and something closer to present euro-socialism which Spain ended up implementing anyway.

One should avoid being a brutal dictator since you never know at which rate you exchange real blood to imaginary one.

[charlysl]

The political situation in western Europe in the 1930s was explosive, specially so in Spain. On the one hand there was the then quite new Soviet Union stoking unrest in a, by contemporary standards, shockingly poor, unhealthy and exploited working and peasant class. On the other hand, you had much of the rest of society scared out of their wits by the very real prospect of revolution at their doorstep, and more than willing to support and make do with a strongman that, first and foremost, promised to crush the communists. Either side would have crushed the other if victorious.

I recommend anyone to read good books about the Spanish Civil War (like for instance Hugh Thomas' very readable history) to understand the huge polarization of both extremes, the violence, and how those in the middle where totally swept aside. I doubt that the only possible outcome, given those conditions, could have been but one side exterminating the other, either the left or the right.

Our world is, fortunately, very different. Of late, given an increasing political polarization and rise of populism, comparisons have been made with the 1930s, but if you start investigating you will realize that current conditions are nowhere near as bad.

I don't know where you are from, and how familiar you are with European politics, but modern euro-socialism is much closer to pure capitalism than anything the stalinists would have created in Spain.

I strongly dislike Franco, and I am aware that thanking him for preventing a stalinist Spain may turn heads these days. But the fact is that this is exactly what the West thought at the time. Franco became a pariah right after World War II as the only remaining leader that had supported Hitler. However, as soon as the reality of the Cold War kicked it, all that was forgotten, and western leaders (and specially the USA) started toasting him, indeed, as the man who stopped communism in a country in a very strategic position.

[arethuza]

I hardly think there was a unified Western view at the time (perhaps amongst governments but not individuals). George Orwell fought in Spain against Franco's troops in an anarchist unit (POUM) and he hated Stalinism as strongly as anyone.

His Homage to Catalonia is a superb account of his time in Spain (and just how chaotic things were politically):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

[charlysl]

Sure, I meant across decision makers. Realpolitik (the rest is propaganda).

Before and in the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when the great Orwell fought, the left in Spain was extremely atomized: there were the anarchist (very active in the beginning), the socialists, the communists (actually a minority initially), and many splinter groups (like POUM). But, just like an equally varied right swiftly unified under Franco, so did the left, more slowly, under the "oficial" communist faction, which, although it decided to be mostly pragmatic until the war had been won, fought some of the other leftists as fiercely as it fought the right.

[arethuza]

"fought some of the other leftists as fiercely as it fought the right."

Wasn't that the Soviet influence though - they regarded anarchists/Trotskyists as a far bigger threat than Franco.

[charlysl]

Yes, that was one factor for sure. But it was actually really complicated, quite mind boggling in fact. The thing is that, in spite of Stalin being pretty much the only effective external support the Spanish republic had, the communists inside Spain were pretty much a marginal group when the war started, and had to resort to all kinds of intrigues to get support from both the population and the, still, official government, and also to had get rid of rival groups, like the ones you mentioned.