Fascist Rulers

"Can we consent to the shameful spectacle we are presenting to the world for one more day? Can we abandon Spain to the fatherland's enemies by cowardly and treasonous actions, surrendering it without a struggle and without resistance? No! The traitors may do so, but those of us who have sworn to defend it will not. We offer you justice and equality before the law. Peace and love among Spaniards. Liberty and fraternity free from libertinage and tyranny. Work for all. Social justice, carried out without rancor or violence, and an equitable and progressive distribution of wealth without destroying or endangering the Spanish economy. But first, a war without quarter against the exploiters of politics, against the deceivers of the honorable worker, and against the foreigners and would-be foreigners who, directly or indirectly, seek to destroy Spain. At this moment, it is Spain as a whole that is rising up and demanding peace, fraternity, and justice; in all of the regions, the army, the navy, and the forces of public order are rushing to defend the fatherland. The energy devoted to upholding order will match the magnitude of the resistance offered to it. Our motives do not derive from the defense of a few illegitimate interests, nor from the desire to go backward along the path of history... Because the purity of our intentions prevents us from stifling those advances that represent an improvement in the political and social realm, and because the spirit of hatred and vengeance has no place in our hearts, we shall be able to salvage those legislative efforts which are compatible with the internal peace of Spain and its much-desired greatness, bringing about, for the first time in our country, the three-part order, Fraternity, liberty, and equality. Spaniards: Long live Spain! Long live the honorable Spanish people!"

"Let us be under no illusion. The Jewish spirit which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day."

"It's true. They have everything. Everything except reason."

"The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva."

"All is well, thank God... but victory will not be complete, definitive or stable, as long as Masonry is in our Spain. And how will it disappear? What to do? Ask Mussolini."

"I say this to you because we Spaniards are a forgetful people, because we are used to living for the moment, because we do not look back, because we do not know how to see the chain of heroes, because we do not contemplate the sum of sacrifices."

"In April 1937 Franco, as effective of , fused the Falange with the , monarchists and the rest of the right to form the single party of his regime: a process, though differently conducted, somewhat similar to 's fusion with Nationalism and Clerico-Fascism after 1922. The product, like the Italian Fascist regime, was a compromise between radical fascism and conservative authoritarianism, in this case with unambiguous military and Church support."

"Minneapolis residents say they feel besieged under what some are calling a fascist occupation. Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been swarming a city whose vast majority in 2024 did not vote for Donald Trump – or for a paramilitary roundup of its diverse population. Tragically, two residents have been killed by federal agents. Consequently, social media is aflame with comparisons of Trump’s immigration enforcers to Hitler’s Gestapo. While comparisons to Hitler’s fascist regime are becoming common, I’d argue that it may be even more fitting to compare the present moment to a less-remembered but longer-lasting fascist regime: that of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975. In 2016, critics warned that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was grounded in textbook fascism, exhibiting signs such as racism, sexism and misogyny, nationalism, propaganda and more. In return, critics were met with intense backlash, accused of being hysterical or overly dramatic. Now, even normally sober voices are sounding the alarm that America may be falling to fascist rule. As a scholar of Spanish culture, I, too, see troubling parallels between Franco’s Spain and Trump’s America."

"The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question."

"Repression characterized every aspect of Franco’s regime. He nominally re-established the monarchy without appointing a king — but retained all executive powers in his own hands. Democracy was abandoned, criticism regarded as treason, imprisonment and abuse of opponents rife, parliament a mere puppet to the executive, rival political parties and strikes banned, the Catholic Church given a free rein over social policy and education, the media muzzled, creative talent strangled by strict censorship and any dissent ruthlessly suppressed by his secret police, who practised widespread torture and murder right up to Franco’s death in 1975. Dismissive of international criticism, Franco himself insisted on personally signing all death warrants until his death while his family married into the aristocracy and amassed colossal wealth."

"The crucial difference was between the regimes of the old Right, who wanted to turn the clock back to a pre-democratic elitist era, and the new Right who seized and sustained power through the instruments of mass politics. The former included General Franco and the Greek dictator Metaxas, men who feared mass politics and allied themselves with bastions of the established order such as the monarchy and the Church...the new radical Right, in contrast, rose to power in Italy and Germany through elections and the parliamentary process."

"Neither the Nazis nor the Italians were able to cash in on their "investments" in Spain. Franco saw Hitler only once and, as an old specialist on criminals from his days in the Tercio, he immediately sized up his partner."

"We do not rule out that it will change in the future, but for now it is. I am convinced that Masonry is very good for England in England; the bad thing is that in Spain it is still very good for England."

"The defence of internal peace and order constitutes the sacred mission of a nation's armed forces and that is what we have carried out."

"One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism."

"We strive to form a single national front against the Masonic lodges, against Moscow and the Marxist societies."

"Spaniards! To all of you who feel holy love for Spain, to all of you who in the ranks of the army and the navy have sworn to serve the fatherland, to those of you who swore to defend it from its enemies with your lives, the nation calls you to defend it. The situation in Spain has been growing worse every day: anarchy reigns in most of the countryside and the towns; authorities named by the government preside over revolts, when they do not directly promote them. Pistols and machine guns are used to settle differences between groups of citizens, who murder each other treacherously and treasonously while the public powers do nothing to impose peace and justice. Revolutionary strikes of all kinds paralyze the nation, ruining and destroying its sources of wealth and creating a situation of hunger that will throw working men into a state of desperation. Artistic monuments and treasures are the object of the most frenzied attacks by revolutionary hordes obeying the commands they receive from foreign directors, who count on the complicity or negligence of governors and officials. The most serious crimes are committed in the countryside while the forces of public order remain in their barracks, restrained by blind obedience to governors who intend to dishonor them. The army, the navy, and other military forces are the target of the lowest and most slanderous attacks by the very ones who should safeguard their prestige."

"States of emergency and alarm only serve to muzzle the people and to keep Spain from knowing what is happening outside the gates of their towns and cities, as well as to jail supposed political adversaries. The constitution, constantly suspended and violated, has been completely eclipsed; there is neither equality before the law nor liberty, enchained by tyranny, nor fraternity, threatened by the tearing apart of the national territory... that the governing powers themselves are promoting, nor solidarity and defense of our borders, when in the heart of Spain people listen to foreign broadcasts preaching the destruction and division of our soil. The judiciary, whose independence the constitution guarantees, also suffers persecutions that exhaust or neutralize it, and it is the target of withering attacks on its independence. Electoral pacts made at the cost of the integrity of the very fatherland, together with assaults on civil governments and vaults [intended] to falsify their acts, created the mask of legality that rules over us. Nothing restrains the appetite for power... In addition to the revolutionary and ignorant spirit of the masses deceived and exploited by Soviet agents, who hide the bloody reality of that regime that has sacrificed 25 million people for its existence, there is the maliciousness and negligence of authorities of all kinds, who, protected by an incompetent government, lack the authority and prestige to impose order and the rule of liberty and justice."

"We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams."

"Fascism, since that is the word that is used, fascism presents, wherever it manifests itself, characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary. It is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way, according to its conception of life. Our rising, here, has a Spanish meaning! What can it have in common with Hitlerism, which was, above all, a reaction against the state of things created by the defeat, and by the abdication and the despair that followed it?"

"We have torn up Marxist materialism and we have disorientated Masonry. We have thwarted the Satanic machinations of the clandestine Masonic superstate. Despite its control of the world’s press and numerous international politicians. Spain’s struggle is a Crusade; as soldiers of God we carry with us the evangelism of the world!"

"The whole secret of the campaigns unleashed against Spain can be explained in two words: Masonry and Communism... we have to extirpate these two evils from our land."

"Francisco Franco, the former fascist dictator of Spain, gave the Nazis a list of every Jew in his country in order to facilitate efforts to locate, deport and destroy them, according to a document found recently in a Spanish archive and reported on Sunday by the Spanish daily El Pais. The paper said that in 1941, Spain prepared a list of all 6,000 Jews in its territory and gave it to the architect of the Nazis' Final Solution, Heinrich Himmler..."

"The document is an official order, dated May 13, 1941, issued by Franco's chief of security, Jose Maria Finat y Escriva de Romani, to all provincial governors. It instructs them to prepare a list of every Jew in their district, both local residents and foreigners, along with details about "their personal and political leanings, their means of supporting themselves, their commercial activity, the level of threat they constitute and their security classification."

"The last of the Republican forces surrendered to Franco on April 1, 1939. The general vowed at the time that he would never pick up his sword again except to defend his country from invasion. When Hitler urged him to bring Spain into the wartime Axis alliance, he refused as a matter of principle, then asked how much Germany was willing to pay. He set his own terms: generous amounts of military and economic aid, plus Morocco, a possession of Vichy France. The Germans viewed the price tag as exorbitant and knew that handing Morocco to Spain would so outrage the Vichy regime that it would no longer collaborate. To break the deadlock, Hitler traveled from Berlin to the Spanish frontier town of Hendaye, where, on October 23, 1940, he met with Franco. The chancellor was confident that his willingness to journey eleven hundred miles to visit the Spaniard in his own country would produce a breakthrough. After all, wasn't he the master of Europe? Instead, in a nine-hour meeting, Franco evaded every request. When Hitler pressed him for a commitment, he replied with questions. Asked to moderate his demands, he repeated them. When the Fuehrer predicted a quick victory over England, implying that Spain could wait no longer if it wanted to share in the triumph, Franco doubted the scenario before adding that, even if the Germans were to capture London, the British would keep fighting from Canada."

"Barely containing his fury, Hitler had no choice but to make the long trip back home empty-handed. The following February, he tried a final time, writing to Franco, "We three men, the Duce, you, and I, are bound together by the most rigorous compulsion of history... In such difficult times... a bold heart can save nations." Flattery didn't work with Franco, who politely declined the chance to link his fate to the Nazis. Writing again, this time to Mussolini, Hitler predicted that Franco- who would die in his bed at the age of seventy-five- was making "the greatest mistake of his life.""

""Bring us Franco's balls!" the men shouted. "'e ain't got no bloody balls," a voice replied."

"Every town along the Mediterranean shore was empty and deserted. The road was jam-packed with peasants evacuating toward the north, on mule-back, in donkey-carts, afoot. They looked at us in the cab of the truck, moving against the stream they made, and they kept moving. Hundreds were camped along the roads; hundreds were plodding north toward Barcelona, their few possessions, mattresses, blankets, household utensils, domestic stock, on their backs, in wheelbarrows or on their burros backs. Little children were walking, holding onto their mother's skirts; women carried babies; older children were driving goats, sheep; old men were helping old women along the road; their faces were impassive, dark with the dust of the roads and fields, lined and worn. Their eyes alone were bright but there was no expression in their eyes. Looking at them you knew what they were thinking: 'Franco is coming; Franco is coming.'"

"General Franco is an authentic national hero. It is generally conceded that he above others had the combination of talents, the perseverance, and the sense of righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihlistis that were imposing on her, in the thirties, a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even Spain's historical identity."

"General Franco made it clear that Spain could enter the war only when England was about ready to collapse."

"In Spain there was a constitutional monarchy from 1917 until 1923, then a military dictatorship under Primo de Rivera until 1930, then a republic that drifted steadily to the Left, culminating in the formation of the Popular Front coalition, which included both Communists and Socialists. After a bitter three-year civil war initiated in 1936 by a group of army officers and supported by the parties of the National Front, General Francisco Franco established himself as dictator, the beneficiary not only of German and Italian intervention but also of the debilitating 'civil war within the civil war' between the various factions of the Left."

"I most sincerely wish to go on record as being unalterably opposed to Franco and fascism, to all violations of the legal government and outrages against the people of Republican Spain."

"It would be naïve in the extreme to dismiss General Francisco Franco as a villain or a butcher. He is a creature of his caste, a product of his moral environment, and a fairly typical example of it. He has been commended for intelligence and courage, and he possesses social grace and charm. Beyond doubt, as he sees patriotism, he is a patriot. He is an idealist too. But let it be remembered that he started the war, and if he loses it, he will be a man like such tragic figures as Wrangel and Deniken, who helped create what they sought to destroy. It is Franco- and what he represents- who knit Leftist Spain into a competent unity; if communism comes to Spain, General Franco will have been its accoucheur."

"Franco is hardworking, has a thorough knowledge of the Spanish political and economic situations, and is more astute politically than any of his opposition."

"Just as the [[w:1936_United_States_presidential_election|[1936 United States] presidential campaign]] neared its climax the Spanish Civil War broke out, lending point to the fears of the isolationists that the United States might get dragged into a general war against its wishes. We have tended to forget, under the influence of the great war to follow, for which the Spanish struggle was only a rehearsal, the intense bitterness it generated. That bitterness spread far and quickly beyond national frontiers and begat class struggle in foreign lands to an extent the Communist revolution in Russia never approached. For the Spanish war was nourished by religious fanaticism. In Spain the rich and conservative classes were devoted supporters of the Roman Catholic Church. It was their wealth that made the Church in Spain so rich as to be the main support of the Vatican in Rome. When the Spanish Republic, established after many vicissitudes following the departure of King Alfonso XIII, continued to gain strength at the subsequent elections and to attempt reforms, the rich Catholics decided things had gone far enough and that the good old days must be restored by force of arms. They made General Franco their champion and Mother Church their battle cry."

"The Socialist Intervention. We Socialists who were in favour of intervention advocated war, because we divined that it contained within it the seeds of revolution. It is not the first instance of revolutionary war. There were the Napoleonic wars, the war of 1870, the enterprises of Garibaldi, in which, had we lived in those days, we should have joined in the same spirit and same faith."

"The country is young, but its institutions are old; and when — If I may be allowed to quote once more from Karl Marx, the old Pangermanist — a conflict between new forces and old institutions begins to shape itself, that means that the new wine cannot any longer be kept in the old skins, or the inevitable will occur. The old forces of the political and social life of Italy will fall into fragments."

"We want an extraordinary heavy taxation, with a progressive character, on capital, that will represent an authentic partial expropriation of all wealth; seizures of all assets of religious congregations and suppression of all the ecclesiastic Episcopal revenues, in what constitutes an enormous deficit of the nation and a privilege for a minority; revisions of all contracts made by the war ministers and seizure of 85% of all war profits."

"The Revolutionary War. To say that we are causing a revolution in order to obtain war, is to say something which we cannot maintain. We do have not the strength. We find ourselves face to face with formidable coalitions, but the fasci of action have this object, to create that state of mind which will impose war upon the country."

"The Socialists, and I am still one, although an exasperated one, never brought forward the question of irredentism, but left it to the Republicans. We are in favour of a national war. But there are also reasons, purely socialist in character, which spur us on towards intervention."

"This is what we propose now to the Treasury: either the property owners expropriate themselves, or we summon the masses of war veterans to march against these obstacles and overthrow them."

""Religious man" is an abnormality and "religion" is the certain cause of epidemic diseases of the mind which require the care of alienists."

"But you have not seen the last of me! Twelve years of my party life are, or ought to be, a sufficient guarantee of my faith in Socialism. Socialism is something which takes root in the heart… Do not think that in taking away my membership card you will be taking away my faith in the cause, or that you will prevent my still working for Socialism and revolution."

"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

"Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative."

"The integral reclamation of our national territory is an enterprise the achievement of which would alone suffice to make the revolution of the Blackshirts glorious down the centuries."

"The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity."

"We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism.... We intend to be an active minority, attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. But if the middle class thinks that we are going to be their lightning rods, they are mistaken."

"The faculty by which man is differentiated from the lower animals is his reasoning power. But the devout believer renounces reason, refuses to explain the things which surround him, the innumerable natural phenomena, because his religious faith is enough for him. The brain loses the habit of thinking; and this religious sottishness hurls mankind back into animalism."

"With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins."