Sdaly, this just goes to show that our fight against fascism goes on, even 70 years after the Spanish Civil War. No Pasaran! Pasaremos!

I was recently speaking to a friend whose Grandfather was in Spain during the civil war as a news correspondent. He related a story he was told by his Grandfather concerning a Convent they came across where these Volunteers/communists/anarchists/peoples front of Judea or whatever tag they use had raped and murdered the nuns.

I think a Communist Spain would have led to genocide.

Are these boys hiding their faces because they are hardcore urban terrorists wanted by Interpol or because of a bad case of acne??

Sorry to go off on one about this on what seems to be a tangent, but I feel unable to let Max's comment go unanswered. Max wrote: "I was recently speaking to a friend whose Grandfather was in Spain during the civil war as a news correspondent. He related a story he was told by his Grandfather concerning a Convent they came across where these Volunteers/communists/anarchists/peoples front of Judea or whatever tag they use had raped and murdered the nuns."

So, you were recently talking to a friend who told you that his grandfather had told him...(I know several people whose Grandfathers used to regale them with "facts" like the Germans bayonetted nuns and ate babys or that angels and/or phantom longbowmen saved the BEF at Mons.
Who was this person a journalist with? Is it not possible that he was shown what proported to be an atrocity committed by "the reds" by the Nationalists? In fact, the documented cases of this sort of crime committed by the Republicans are very few and far between and rarely stand up to scrutiny, inspite of the Nationalists having nearly forty years to ome up with the evidence. This is in stark contrast to the use of rape and murder as a matter of policy by the Nationalist forces, many of whose leading figures (for example the Nationalist ruler of Seville, Quiepo de Llano, whose nightly radio broadcasts celebrated his soldiers' use of rape in war.) I am not denying that atrocities were committed by those acting in the Republican interest. In most cases this seems to have been as a result of the breakdown of law and order resulting from the military uprising and, once order was restored, these crimes seem to have ceased. This seems to have been the case especially in areas where anarchist forces prevailed, so perhaps "order" is not the right word. As previously stated, this is in marked contrast to the Nationalist policy of fear, intimidation, rape, murder and terrorism to cow what they saw as a colonial population into submission, where atrocities were carried out whenever they took a town in order to assert their authority, and continued in order to maintain control. (See, for example, Badajoz, Toldeo, Malaga etc. etc. etc.) This attitude went all the way to the top, with Franco's assertion that he was prepared to shoot half of Spain ((provided it was the right half) and, for example, his repeated requests to Mussolini to provide him with poison gas for use on his own people demonstrating this.

"I think a Communist Spain would have led to genocide. "

Do you? This seems to miss the fundamental point that the war was NOT one of communism against the nationalists (unless you belive the, frankly ludicrous, assertion that the military uprising took place to preempt a communist plot.) The Communist Party was tiny and had relativley little influence before the war broke out. It is true that they increased massivley in influence during the war, largely as a result of the abandonment of a democratically elected government by the so called democracies of the west and the consequent reliance on aid from the USSR. This aid, though, seems to have been calculated to never be quite enough to ensure success. Had the Republic survived it may well have had stalinist charactersitics (even if the PCE had shed its profoundly anti-revolutionary stance) although the success in the latter stages of the war of anti-communist republicans in purging communist influence leads me to be not so sure of this. You also seem to miss the point that the people participating in the recent anti-fascist rally are (or certainly appear to be) anarchists and, whatever you might think, anarchists and communists are NOT the same. Their political ancestors went to considerable trouble, risking and often forfeiting their lives to prevent the creation of a "communist" Spain.
Also, and finally, precisely what do you mean by a genocide?

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, the legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of the CPPCG defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

If you accept this definition, then this is EXACTLY what happened during nearly forty years of Francoist rule in Spain, with the Spainsh people being the victims.

"Are these boys hiding their faces because they are hardcore urban terrorists wanted by Interpol or because of a bad case of acne??"

Er, probably neither (I know some of those who were there, and ALL of them seem to be well past puberty.) It may have more to do with not wanting their pictures to appear on either "Red Watch" or NETCU and to do with wanting to assert their ownership of their identity in today's surveillance society.

As I see that you did not see fit to publish your email on your comment, I don't suppose that I will elicit a response from you Max. So maybe I'm waisitng my time and, mor importantly, that of Indymedia readers, but I had to say something to challenge this rubblish. All that remains is or me to repeat that I wish I cold have been there in Jubilee Gardens the other day, that, sadly, the struggle against fascism goes on and oh yes, "They Shall Not Pass!" "We shall pass!" No pasaran! Paseremos!

The International brigade had communist type banners which included the hammer and sickle and had notorious communists in their ranks such as Laszlo Rajk and Esmond Romilly.

To speak out against fascism and to court communism is hypocritical. That little band of 'Anarchists '/rent a mob would be the first to be crushed under a communist regime, that they are sympathising with by being at the International Brigade monument.

Max wrote: "Obviously a subject close to your heart ."

You think? What on earth gave you that idea?

"The International brigade had communist type banners which included the hammer and sickle "

Such as? Which Brigade was that? I am unaware of any of the extant Banners or standards of the International Brigades having such decoration. Most seemed to have consisted of the flag of the Republic (a red, yellow and purple tricolour) with the Brigade number and a three pointed star that was the symbol of the Brigades. If you are as I suspect, referring to the photograph of the Tom Mann Centuria, which does indeed have a hammer and sickle on it, them you ought to know that the Centuria was not part of the International Brigades, but was a short-lived milita unit that predated the formation of them by several months. While it is true that the PSCE used this emblem, it is also true that so did formations of the POUM and of the CNT, groupings noteable for their opposition to the PSCE.

"and had notorious communists in their ranks such as Laszlo Rajk and Esmond Romilly"

And? While Rajk was indeed a communist, I hardly think that Romily could be described as such, and certainly not a notorious one. He seems not to have been a member of the Communist party for very long, if at all, and was a member of the Labour Party for much longer. Even if he was, as you assert, a notorious communist, does his memebrship of an ornisation make that organisation a communist one? If so, then you presumably think that the RAF (in which Romilly served and died) is also an irredemably communist grouping?

If you wish to show that the International Brigades were a communist organisation, even the most cursory research into the matter would have uncovered much better and more conclsive evidance than you present. Take, for example , the fact that the Brigades were set up and run by the Communist International. That said the fact that a majority of the volunteers in the brigades were members of the Communist Party is not as clear cut as it might seem, with many of them joining the Party in order that they would be accepted in the Brigades. An examination of the available evidence (including memoirs and talking to the few surviving veterans or their families) seems to suggest that the major motivation for service was anti-fascism, rather than communism. This seems to be a reason that, after they returned, many if not most of them became members of the Labour party, rather than remaining in the CP. It could also be pointed out, as you seem to think that the iconography used by the Brigades was so indicative of their communism, is it not something of a contradiction that although the British Battalion of the International Brigades was initially named after a communist (Saklatvala) they later became known as the Major Clement Atlee Battalion (and while he may have been many things Atlee was no communist.)

"To speak out against fascism and to court communism is hypocritical."

Is it? How so? I feel that you have. perhaps, confused communism with Stalinism. Even if they were communists, even the most slavish members of the CPGB disageed with Stalin over, for example, the Nazi Soviet pact.

"That little band of 'Anarchists '/rent a mob would be the first to be crushed under a communist regime"

Substitute stalinist for communist and I might agree with this point.


" that they are sympathising with by being at the International Brigade monument"

Are they? As I have said previosly, the main disagrrement between the PSCE and the other more revolutionary parties of the left was that the PSCE was actually against having the revolution until after the war was won, so there is no guarantee that a vitorious republic would have been a communist regime at all. So far as the people who attended the demonstration the other day are concerned, the memorial (erected by a broad based left wing grouping including members of the labour party, the CPGB, the TUC and a number of other organisations and individuals) commemorates all those who went to ight in Spain, wether as part of the IBs or otherwise. The International Brigades Memorial Trust includes a wide variety of people in its membership, and considers an important part of its raison d'etre the ongoing struggle agaisnt fascism. One of the outstanding features of the modern anti-fascist movement is the comparative lack of rancour between disparate and conflicting ideological groupings in presenting a united front against a common foe. As member of today's PSCE said to me when I "outed" myself as an Anarchist, "it doesn't matter... today we know who our enemy is..."

I am sure that the IBMT would wholeheartedly welcome the action last week, as they have previously welcomed anarchists and other anti-fascists to their annual memorial event.

Finally I note that, while you at least had the guts to reply to my previous posting on this matter, you chose to make a rather patronsing point and then follow this with some very poorly supported assertions, rather than engaging or answering any of the points I actually made in my first response to what I have previously described as rubbish. Are you able to actually engage in a thought out debate, or just a troll I wonder?

Well well... Max, your are mixing water and oil: Obviously, there were communists among the Internacional Brigades, but mainly libertarian communists. Don´t put in the same bag the second wave of communist influence during the Spanish Civil War, promoted by Stalin, and the Anarchist structure of the Social Revolution that happened those years; the evidence of basic disagreements happened during the Black Week in Barcelona (1937), when some communist heads chosen by Moscu tried to impose their ideas and fights in the Republican side, with several killed.

In actual fact more anarchists were killed by the Communists than by Fascists, Stalin's NKVD wouldn't tolerate non-communists. Read George Orwell !!!

"In actual fact more anarchists were killed by the Communists than by Fascists,"

Really? Hpw do you figure that one out? While it is true that a number of Anarchjists and other anti-Stalinist left wingers were killed ny the communists, both as a result of fighting and executed or tortured to death by the communist-run SIM and other security groupings, this hardly equates to the hundreds of thousand killed by the Francoist forces both during and after the war. I would dearly love to see the source for this assertion that you make..

"Stalin's NKVD wouldn't tolerate non-communists." Very true, although I think you will find that, as we are talking about SPAIN, the NKVD's tolerance or lack there of is not as germain as, for example, the SIM.

"Read George Orwell !!!"

Have done thanks, and clearly more often, more recently and in greater depth than you have.

Just one last thought, if you are going to make a bald assertion such as you do, do try and back it up with a least a smidgin of evidence in future And that goes for you too Max.