• djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    The guy fought Nazi supplied Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. This take is nuts, he almost died for the CNT-FAI. He’s not a Nazi sympathizer.

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      18 hours ago

      And went on to literally work for the British intelligence services and provide them lists of communists, you could read the provided sources.

      Just a thought experiment: since you apply this logic that fighting the Nazi-supplied nationalists in the Spanish civil war makes one an antifascist, do you agree that the greatest antifascist force in Europe was the USSR as the only country supplying weapons, munitions, tanks and airplanes to the Republican and Anarchist during the civil war?

        • Riverside@reddthat.com
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          16 hours ago

          Circular sourcing, you’re quoting Orwell himself in that citation.

          Regardless, “the communists” referred to in this link are not the USSR, they’re the Spanish communists, you’re conflating the two again and therefore pushing the fascist propaganda that the Jewish Bolsheviks were puppeteering everything in Spain. Also, are there any quantitative modern studies of the scale of this “embargo”? Because I’ve provided sources* proving that the extent of the “anarchist repression” by the USSR in Spain was about 20 individuals, and motivated by the revolts in Barcelona that the Fascists and Nazis were pushing for.

          *I linked the sources in another comment, here is my research on the topic as a Spaniard myself. If you read through this, you’ll see that Stalin himself commended the anarchists in private meetings with the Republican diplomats and tried to get the Spanish Second Republic to collaborate with them

          Edit: adding Stalin’s opinion on collaboration with anarchists:

          Aludió ampliamente a los anarquistas y señaló que en las filas confederales había buenos elementos. Preguntó si podría haber una plataforma común entre socialistas y comunistas a propósito de la CNT. La respuesta de Pascua fue afirmativa, aunque con matices.

          He extensivelty referred to the Anarchists and pointed out that there were good elements among the confederates [CNT, largest Spanish anarchist organization at the time]. He asked whether there could be a common platform between socialists and communist regarding the CNT. Pascua’s answer was affirmative, though with caveats.

          (Translated by myself from one of the sources linked, feel free to browse through the books yourself as I did).

          • anaVal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            15 hours ago

            To be honest I don’t care if the communists are Soviet or Spain. The arms that the USSR was sending didn’t reach the anarchists. That was the only claim I was refuting.

            Reiterating for the sake of clarity.

            That the Communists withheld arms from the Aragon front seems established beyond question, and it can hardly be doubted that the motivation was political. See, for example, D.T. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War (1955; reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), p. 110.

            The fact that the footnote ends with Orwell’s own quote is just a nice tie back to the discussion.

            Regarding the rest of the comment I’m not interested in reenacting “anarchist vs ML: spanish civil war” online theater. I just wanted to push back on the claim that the USSR supplied anarchists.

            • Riverside@reddthat.com
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              15 hours ago

              To be honest I don’t care if the communists are Soviet or Spain.

              I just wanted to push back on the claim that the USSR supplied anarchists

              Least intellectually dishonest anticommunist.

              I’ll go ahead and spend one fucking hour reading through the sources again just to prove you wrong because I’m 100% certain that the at least half of weapons that the anarchists used were of Soviet origin, and I know for certain you won’t provide such sourcing because if you actually did the reading you wouldn’t be saying that the USSR didn’t supply the anarchists too.

              Otherwise prove me wrong: give me a modern source estimating the availability of weaponry of anarchists in the Spanish civil war and its origin.

              • anaVal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                15 hours ago

                Ok. You wanna dance? Let’s dance.

                The USSR did supply (provide any weapons to) anarchists in Spain.
                However the Communists¹ didn’t supply (provide as many weapons as they could have to) anarchists in Spain.

                ¹: because as you pointed out the fault wasn’t just the USSR but Spanish as well.

                I was hoping that the context made the distinction clear but clearly that is not the case.

                • Riverside@reddthat.com
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                  15 hours ago

                  Give. Me. A. Material. Numeric. Source.

                  Until you do that, your analysis is exclusively vibes-based, and should be rejected.

                  • anaVal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    15 hours ago

                    That the Communists withheld arms from the Aragon front seems established beyond question

                    That is my source. It’s good enough for me. The fact that Chomsky (a well respected academic*) published that is good enough for me.

                    *: There are ties to Epstein, but for me that doesn’t invalidate his academic opinion.

    • Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml
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      16 hours ago

      Everything we know about Orwell disagrees, from his review of Mein Kampf to his comments about Jews and Homosexuals. He opposed fighting the literal German Nazis until war actually broke out. The civil was was a few years and a single book, and hardly representative of his entire life.