Consolidation of the Francoism: The Spanish intra-totalitarian transition (VII)
VII – Consolidation of the Francoism: The Spanish intra-totalitarian transition
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
The “transition to democracy”: which the French did supposedly carry out by “the Storming of the Bastille and the great revolution”, and which the Spaniards did by a decree of Arias Navarro – “the Butcher of Malaga” – and the “constitutional pact” that ensued, is the beginning of a story that has so many principles and so many petitions of principle as the dominant ideology does need. At all events, this so-called “transition to democracy” does not cancel, obviously, the despotic history that precedes, founds and constitutes it: which cannot be comfortably evacuated and emptied as its current heirs would like to do.
When in 1977 the remainders of the ancient Spanish opposition did –unreservedly this time – surrender to “the Nationals”, joining next the organization and functions of the “new transitive régime” of the same Francoism that had finished with them, the class struggle had already ended in Spain. This official and effective ending of the internal class struggle in Spain: accepted by the Spanish National-socialists and National-communists, was the negative condition for the incorporation of that “opposition” to the Spanish Fascism.
In return, their “national reconciliation”, and the support of the vanquished to the sacred Union of the Spanish imperialistic Nationalism of the victors in their common international class struggle against the subjugated Peoples; to the common opposition of all the National-imperialists against the movement of Peoples’ liberation; and to the incurable contradiction between the imperialistic and fascist “juridical-political order”, on the one hand, and – on the other – the democratic right of self-determination of the subjugated Peoples and States: Basques and Catalans amongst others, were the positive condition. Similarly, as it has occurred in other places, the recuperation of the Spanish National-communists and National-socialists by the Francoism, and their conversion into pure and simple monarchical and Francoist Nationalists, was carried out quickly, without difficulties, and to everybody’s satisfaction.
As indicated, in spite of the phantasmagoria of a Spanish republican bureaucracy in exile: politically autistic and incapable, the political evolution in post-war Spain had finally revealed not the collapse – that this bureaucracy had been trumpeting – of fascism in power but that of the opposition of the defeated side. This evolution had been based on a number of factors, including: profound modifications in the conflicting structures of the social system; the constant shifting of the rapport of forces in favour of the holders of power; the regression, submission, liquidation or extinction of the Spanish opposition; and the recognition and approval of the fascist régime by the “great” Powers: formerly divided and finally gathered in their interest in stabilizing, strengthening and “legitimizing” the historical achievements and the institutions of the Francoism in Spain and its Colonies.
After the end of the War of fascist aggression in 1936-39, and once the military defeat had been assumed by the vanquished, the strategic accumulation of political forces in order to achieve a common anti-Francoist front had proved impossible. Being the unitary Nationalist idea that of Spain had the Francoist régime also the same and own one of the purported Spanish anti-Francoists, the remnants of the Spanish opposition were therefore always opposed to any territorial redistribution of the political power in favour of the Nations dominated by the Spanish imperialistic Nationalism, rejecting therefore the Basques’ and Catalans’ aspirations of independence; which led the former to once again subordinate the action against Fascism and its régime of military occupation to the absolute maintenance of the unitary structure of the Spanish State.
Finally the Spanish Army: which since 1812 – on the occasion of the crisis of the Spanish despotic-Asiatic régime and its terrorist reaction against the French Nationalist revolution, which it later imitated – had been constituted as real political “class” and backbone of Spain, did operate its own decisive reform, namely: the “transition”, while keeping its own dictatorship. It was the intra-totalitarian transition from the First Francoism to the currently reigning Second one, which brought the “democracy” that is: the self-reformation and consolidation of the Francoist régime under the protectorate of the hegemonic Powers – members of the international imperialistic and terrorist domination system – and of their satellites. The entire Spanish fascist regime became “democratic” overnight, counting on the complicity of the Spanish “socialist and communist opposition”, in the implementation of the trickery.
(The current unreserved support of the French and Spanish fifth-columnists “of the left” to the self-confessed fascists of always, in the maintenance of the totalitarian “unity” of their respective imperial States, does definitely reveal without the possibility of camouflaging it the nature of the social-imperialism.)
According to the monopoly of fascist propaganda, that Spanish “agreed transition” meant a “clean slate, page break, tabula rasa, zero point of the political process”; but all of this starting from the maintenance of the intangible and immovable foundations of its Despotic-Asiatic, absolutist or fascist imperialistic State. Which the “transition” actually meant was the preservation of the foundations of the political régime, giving appearances of electoral and parliamentary democracy to the continuity of the dictatorship under formal innovations; with the recognition, approval and participation of the Western Powers. The result is this political shame or shamelessness: the only régime instituted by the Nazi Axis which subsists in the Europe of the “human dimension”, which pretends to be example and model of democracy all around the world, with the obscene recognition – already during General Franco’s own personal dictatorship – and the support of the “Western Democracies” and the “European Union” (EU).
In this way, by virtue of “the pact that we’ve given us all”, that is to say: the “pact” that the Francoists were imposing for the rest to suffer, the imperialism and the fascism did keep intact the domination, plundering and robbery established over centuries of criminal violence, wars and conquests; and the defeated, oppressed and dispossessed did also keep their status as such. It was the “reconciliation” with imperialism and fascism. “Consensus, elections and constitutional assemblies” were mechanisms aimed to widen the base and the clientele of the new formal “Constitution” and the real constitution of always: based on historical aggression, war and imprescriptible crimes carried out through centuries against the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre; while the traditional “bi-partisanship” to Spanish style restored the “alternation” in the access to the management, the sinecures, the connections, and the administrative benefits and privileges.
Starting on from there, the national reconciliation between the “republican, socialist, communist” and Francoist Spaniards was carried out smoothly through the declared “conclusion” of the national-internal class struggle, along with the Sacred Union in the international-external class struggle against the subjugated Peoples and States, and through the incorporation of the Nationalism of the vanquished to the Nationalism of the victors. The conservation of their colonial heritage, and the sharing in shifts of the benefits and the administrative and repressive tasks resulting from its maintenance, this is: the management of their historical colonialist and imperialistic enterprise, along with the correlative exacerbation of the international class struggle and the xenophobic and racist hatred against the subjugated Peoples, were – and they still remain – the cornerstone of the advocated incorporation and “historical synthesis of the opponents” (Santiago Carrillo), and they did allow to consolidate the Spanish Nationalist domination upon the subjugated Peoples and States, which the new fascist War of 1936 and the subsequent counter-revolution had re-established.
The Pact of Munich (1962) had been the staging of that collusion of Spanish Nationalist reconciliation and synthesis, established on the basis of keeping the unitarian and fascist State against the subjugated Peoples and States of Basques and Catalans. This was made possible thanks to the always denied betrayal and liquidation of the Basque People’s national principles and policy, along with the Basque Government in exile, which the bureaucrats of the “Basque nationalist” Parties Pnv-Anv carried out behind its back in the said pact.
Despite the slanders and attacks of those bureaucracies against those of us who denounced that operation and advocated the non-recognition of the Spanish imperialistic-fascist régime as democratic, their vile betrayal and their lies would finally be revealed without possible dissimulation in their support for the intra-totalitarian transition of 1977, which two years later was also joined by the Eta bureaucracy. They did thus lock the Basque People in a trap in which those scoundrels-unscrupulous and/or cretins-lunatics – but all of them being paid by the régime – have it stuck from then until today.
This trap consists of hiding that these purported “moderate and radical Basque patriots”: who form the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites (Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc.), are recognizing that the French-Spanish fascist régime that militarily occupies our Country is not such but that it is a legitimate and democratic one; that the Basque People does not exist as such, with its international, inherent and imprescriptible right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples but it is part of “the Spanish and French peoples” that are the only ones that exist, as do the Spanish and French “Constitutions” and laws, jurisprudence, propaganda and parties affirm: all legitimate and democratic in our Country; that it has no State of its own but its State: legitimate and democratic, is the “Kingdom of Spain” or the “French Republic”; and that therefore there is no political-legal basis to claim its independence or that of its historical and current State: the Kingdom of Nabarre.
The Spanish intra-totalitarian transition was aimed at the conservation of the imperialistic Spanish unitary State, and above all at the maintenance of the control and stability of the political order and of its monopoly of criminal Violence and Terror: established as a result of all the wars of aggression and conquest carried out against the Basque People. From one Francoism to the other, the project of reform, adaptation and modernization of the Spanish Fascist régime – a consequence of the arrangement of the Francoist avant-garde with the Western Powers – was prepared and implemented by General Franco’s Government and his military structure, and by the financial, National-imperialistic and clerical oligarchy that sustained him. It was imposed under the Francoist monopoly of criminal Violence, Terror and propaganda for the purpose to preserve the régime’s structures of power, and to keep the achievements and institutions of the fascism in Spain and its Colonies. It was designed, supported and financed: by the decision and under surveillance and with “technical” assistance from the CIA and FBI, to make the selection and promotion of the conservative Parties, thus blocking the path to all democratic political or ideological forces. The political and financial guarantee of the operation was in charge of the Secret Services – American, British, German, Israeli and Vatican – of propaganda, espionage, repression, subversion, terrorism, corruption and “technical” assistance, along with the auxiliary services of Parties, Trade-Unions, Foundations, financial and multinational Companies, “scientific and cultural” Publications, “humanitarian” NGOs, secular Clergy and ecclesiastical Orders, and the other institutional – legal or illegal – satellites dependent on them.
All Parties and Trade-Unions of the official “opposition” to the renewed Francoism: chosen to ensure the continuity of the Francoism in Spain and its Colonies, were created, selected, designed, financed, recuperated, promoted and equipped with massive financial and ideological contribution of millions of dollars from the hegemonic Power and its satellites and dependencies, and they are integral parts of their domination system. All of them did find their place according to the transitive script and organigram produced by the true political-administrative architect of our time: the Francoist and Western Governments and Secret Services. The thick filters of the CIA and FBI were not an obstacle for the recuperation of the Republican Parties’ signs and spoils – gone over to “the Nationals” – that might serve to hide the trickery.
In practice, without the confidence of the CIA and its allies and satellites (and of the Spanish Government itself, which did administratively decide as a last resort), recognition or tolerance were closed to any political group. The “republicans” and the PsoE of the exile had disappeared from the political opposition on the ground. And the other groups were discarded when the Western Governments, Secret Services and Foundations focused their exclusive and excluding economic and political support in producing and securing a new transitive Party: the current Falange-PsoE, emerged in 1974 from the Congress of Suresnes as a complement of the traditional Francoist Party. Thus, there was sacrificed all the opposition that had been really active against Francoism; which, by itself, turned it suspicious in the eyes of those Agents of the “controlled change”.
The key question: “knowing who is in charge here”, offered no doubt to anyone. All individual or collective applicant knew that he should pass under the Caudine Forks of the Spanish Army, and knew very well that the first exigency and absolute condition of that Army was not the marginalization of the national Communists but the guarantee and improvement of the unitary status of the Spanish Empire. The slightest deviation in the field of the ruling Nationalism would meet the immediate reaction of the armed forces; and the simple suspicion or distrust from them would be the end – at least political, whether individual or collective – of those responsible or irresponsible agents involved. Through that absolute exigency the whole set of sectors and interests that supported the Francoist régime was also reinforced and comforted, since, as it occurs in other totalitarian systems, national oppression – in our case against the Basque and Catalan Peoples – was and continues to be the weakest point of the strategic apparatus of imperialistic and fascist domination. However, as it has already been exposed, it was the case that its own Nationalism prevented the Spanish “opposition” from using that weakness to fight the fascism. (In any case, between the “transition” in 1977 and the endo-military putsch of the year 1981, the last fears in this regard had disappeared among a military-political class that could no longer rise up against anybody and take to power because it had already done it many years earlier and it was in power ever since.)
With the collapse, submission and disappearance of the former opposition, the Spanish “republicans, anarchists, National-socialists and National-communists” did hastily waive to “the democratic revolution” and “the provisional régime without a defined institutional sign”: which they had so ardently maintained in the pact of Munich as a lure so as to get that the Pnv-Anv conspirator bureaucracy would accept to liquidate the Basque Government in the exile, and did abruptly swear allegiance without reservation to the Praetorian Monarchy established by General Franco; thus becoming architects of the Spanish Nationalist reconciliation, and guarantee of the constitutional order and the unity of the Empire. “There are no longer Reds left: they all have passed to the Nationals.” They obtained in return rehabilitation, recognition and rewarding insertion into the auxiliary bodies of management, propaganda and recuperation of a “new” régime whose adaptation had become as possible as necessary; all the more necessary insofar as, of the damned red-separatists, there still remained the damned separatists. All of it had been bound and guaranteed by the preservation of the political régime foundations under the formal innovations, and first and foremost of the monopoly of criminal imperialistic and fascist Violence: established as a result of the war and never put in question afterward.
In these circumstances, the remains of the clandestinity and the exile: terrified by gloomy anticipations of loneliness and isolation, abandoned by their presumed allies, emptied from their original base, and renewed and framed by successive contributions and transfusions of the Francoist Party of the National Movement, gave their simple and qualified recognition to the régime which had defeated them and that they already could not reject or modify in its substance. Finally, those “revolutionaries” – the same as all the “Socialists and Communists” from the East and West – gave up officially being so in order to become in this case, as almost all of the ancient “republicans”, monarchical loyalists and bourgeois reformists; but they still continue being the same Spanish totalitarian National-imperialists that they have always been. Thus, they could continue persecuting the free persons and Peoples as they have always done, which is the only thing they can do.
The transitive Francoism did legalize the Pnv and the Spanish “communist” Party (PcE) for marginal jobs; but it did not do the same with the squalid remnants of the PsoE: Franco’s Government acquired them at a knockdown price (as well as the Monarchy), and it then decided to exclude its historical bureaucracy in exile. Once the objective had been established, it was the CIA and the other Western “Services” and Governments: that mistrusted even that bureaucracy, which directed and financed what was called “the regrettable split” called of Suresnes, where the Falangists did exclude the official PsoE bureaucracy of the exile and took direct command.
The PcE leaders did expect from them – as they said – “that they have, towards the unity of action with the Communist Party, a better attitude than do have the Executives of Toulouse, who are still living in the thirties” and “continue maintaining an anti-communist line and imagining the future as a return to the past”, with an Executive Committee “alarmed by the event that there could take shape in the interior a direction rival to the emigrated one and destined to replace it”.
The “new” Falange-PsoE does not already take the trouble to hide – behind rhetoric in which even their spokesmen do not believe – the ideology and objectives of the Spanish pure and downright Nationalism. Nothing is going to be changed by those National-Socialists or their Social-Imperialistic offshoots (PcE and Falange-PsoE-bis), who have replaced the authentic class struggle at the internacional level against the Spanish imperialistic Nationalism, with the unwavering support for their Fascist-Nationalist régime of military occupation over the Basque People and its State: the Kingdom of Nabarre. The Marxist rhetoric and the quotations of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Iglesias (senior) gave way long ago to those of Primo de Rivera (junior), and his appeals to maintain “the unity of the fatherland”, established by begging the question (petitio principii) on the subjugated Peoples:
“[...] but in the face of any questioning of the territorial integrity of Spain there is no nuance: the mere idea of a Spain without Catalonia, and vice-versa, is that of a mutilated Spain and Catalonia.” Etc. (From the televised speech of P. Sánchez, secretary general of Falange-PsoE, in support of the suppression of the “autonomy” of Catalonia decreed by the Government of Spain formed by the traditional Francoist Party; October 27, 2017.)
“[...] What is going to be found by the secessionism and xenophobia that is now leading the main Catalan institutions is the unity of all democrats, of the forces that defend the constitutional order and singularly the main party of the country and the second one, [...]. Secessionism must be aware that it is going to find a wall, the wall of the social and democratic rule of law, [...]. We have to defend the legal good that is the ‘Constitution’ against public officials who are using their institution and their political position to violate the constitutional order. Therefore, I already announce that we are working on a modification of the criminal code to adapt the crime of rebellion to the Spain of the XXI century, to the Spain of 2018, and effectively before events as unprecedented as the one that has occurred in our country during these last months. [...]. If the [Pp] Government presents this modification of the penal code, the socialist party will support it. I will also tell you [bis], Article 155, and the joint and agreed answer that we have to give through Article 155 if that eventuality occurs, that is guaranteed; [...]. It is clear that the ‘Constitution’ is a legal good that must be defended.” Etc. (Pedro Sánchez in “Los Desayunos de TVE”, 16-May-2018.)
Once the internal class struggle had been abolished by the renovators of the Francoism, the former “National Trade-unionist revolution” is the current National-socialist involution of Falange/PsoE. In fact, the current PsoE is a potpourri of the “Traditionalist Spanish Falange and of the Boards of National Trade-Unionist Offensive” (FET-JONS) with sundry dyes, designed and cooked by the CIA as the official “opposition” incorporated into the traditional Francoist Party. The Spanish Falange (“for God, for the Fatherland and the King; for God, for Spain and for Franco”) did thus fulfil its “historical mission in the universal”, by colonizing and replacing the bureaucratic and squalid remains of the PsoE.
The PcE had no need of being colonized, and it joined itself the new transitive Francoism: its bureaucrats and intellectuals did pass under the exigencies of Madrid and Washington, and obtained the blessing and approval of the bourgeoisie, the capitalism and the Francoism in power. As for the anarcho-syndicalist revisionists, they began to discover and affirm that, after all, nothing important did separate them from the “vertical Trade-unions” of Francoism.
The hope of the PcE: consisting of attracting the remains of the PsoE, was reversed, and it was the bulk of the Communist, Castroist and Catholic-progressist “scene” (et alii) that passed the new Party that had been “renewed” at Suresnes as Falange-PsoE. The legalization was the poisoned gift that awaited the PcE: in abandoning the democratic revolution and accepting “the transition”, Carrillo did also cut the branch that sustained him. Of course he broke the party’s isolation, but it had no longer anything left to be isolated; and, for playing the puppet of the Second Francoism, the PcE was of a damn need to anyone. Finally Carrillo and his loyal followers, expelled from the PcE in 1985, caught the last train of the traditional Francoism, joined the PsoE in 1991, and passed without further ado to the dustbin of history, turned into worshippers and firm backers of the legality and stability of the new Francoism.
A similar process of decomposition was in store for the PsoE after having exercised as “socialist” auxiliary of the Francoism and reverse of Ap/Pp from the “transition”, until it all was only too evident even for the last confused guy (the fanatical followers, or the hopelessly ignoramuses or of bad faith, are to be left aside). New Spanish Nationalist and social-imperialistic spare groups: expressly aimed at the political provocation and recuperation of the subjugated but unfortunately never liquidated Peoples and States (activities made possible by the betrayal and incapacity of the liquidationist bureaucracy PNV-Eta and its satellites, constant supporters of these groups), did emerge in its place, once this function of provocation-recuperation was no longer covered by a PsoE already depleted in its mission.
With the Spanish intra-totalitarian transition it was clear that the situation had passed from a postulated democratic revolution towards what Claudin had cautiously called “a more or less democratic situation with more or less freedom”. “If it is not imposed the solution that we have conventionally called as ‘Italian’, it will be imposed the ‘German’ or a worse one”, wrote Claudin. Those who did not see well what could be the “other worse”, have been able to complete their perspective in the last forty-five years, in giant screen and cinemascope. The reality has revised upward so dismal prospects. It was the abandonment of the “more or less” democratic revolution, and the subservience and incorporation to the régime established by General Franco. It was, in three words: the Spanish solution, which simply meant the Francoist régime continuity.
Thus, the change introduced by the established power in the treatment of the opposition has been total. The primitive Despotism and Imperialism did impose their political power by repressing the opposition of the heroic times of Liberalism, Socialism and National Liberation Movements. Instead, the current Imperialism and Fascism do produce their “opposition”: they do invent, reinvent, recuperate, incorporate, condition, provoke, corrupt, finance, inform, encourage, organize, feed and direct it as appropriate to their own domination and repression against Peoples; which makes it possible to distort any possible excesses (?) of that “opposition”, which in consequence are fatally reduced to an infra-strategic level. The Parties and Trade-Unions of the official Spanish “opposition” to the established Francoist power are products, imitations, forgeries and puppets of the Secret Services of ideological intoxication and espionage of the imperialism and fascism; and they are designed for the repression against the subjugated Peoples. Their “strategy” is actually dictated: directly or immediately, by the established power. Subsidies and donations ensure their dependence on financial assistance without which they cannot survive. The “bi-partisanship”: a traditional model of the monarchical restorations in the Spanish style, is a functional avatar of the Francoist Party, which is the only existing one. Incidentally, it ensures the orderly distribution of the perks, connections and administratively organized corruption.
The Army of the Second Francoism abandoned much ballast in matters of faith and customs, sexual repression and clerical moralism, so as to adopt more effective and modern weapons of ideological domination; but its Nationalism has made but concentrate and harden, because of its being reduced to the custody of the nearby remainders of a formerly immense colonial Empire: acquired and preserved by means of criminal Violence and Terror, and lost because of the systematic destruction of productive forces, the resistance of the Peoples, and the emergence of new commercial and industrial Powers.
Without armed forces, imperialism is devoid of political expression. It is its specific violence, which is the very nature of the armed forces, and not the declarations and inaugurations of their auxiliary “political” bureaucracies: PpsoE-PcE along with the hotch-potch of their National-social-imperialistic offspring of sundry feathers (“citizens-united-we-can-add-more-country”), that constitutes the reality of the political movement of French-Spanish Nationalist imperialism. They are the Army, the Civil Guard, and the Republican Security Compagnies: the armed military wing of Spanish and French National-fascism and National-socialism, their “revolutionary” violence.
With the “transition”, the internalization of the political externalities was also quickly achieved, that’s to say: those who were outside did find themselves placed inside; and the applicants for decentralization, more centralized than before. The agents of the imperialistic and fascist Spanish Nationalism do now seek to appear as “non-violent democrats”; but they are the same fascists of ever, more dangerous still than before. They are transvestite Francoists and Falangists who retain the power that they already had, at the reasonable price of a changing of name approved by themselves and by their international partners. Opus-Deists, technocrats and the other “organic (Francoist) democrats” of Francoism: the real base of the Spanish Christian Democracy, did prepare the logistics of the conversion and the general regroupement of the continental Reaction and Fascism.
The whole world supported or accepted an operation that the incapability, the reality or unreality of the Spanish opposition presented as the only possible and desirable one. The field was left open for the great manoeuvers of reform and consolidation of the military dictatorship. There were made possible, in this way, the adaptation to the new general conditions, the incorporation of new techniques of social repression, conditioning and integration, the dosage of “democracy”, and the improvement of the methods of the great social crises: whether warlike or revolutionary, long since absent in Western world as a whole.
General Franco’s régime performed in this way its “democratic transition”. Rehabilitated, legitimated, confirmed, recognized and strengthened, it did achieve its definitive victory without solution of continuity, without even touching its class structure nor its real political “class”: the military forces, bureaucracy and administrative services, all of them populated with democrats of always or miraculously converted to democracy from overnight. To arrive at that “Pact of Forgetting” in 1975, the Spanish “opposition” and its peripheral puppets could have spared – and could have allowed us to spare – the Dictatorship of 1923, the Republic, the war of 1936 and the Francoist post-war; and despite all that, the democracy could not be worse now than it is.
Its miraculous transfiguration transformed it into the envied model – always imitated but never equalled – by all the dictatorships in the world; and into the paragon, inspiration and reference of the new Europe. A single political Party of real opposition: bearer of democratic criticism, denunciation and exigency, would have been enough then to bring out the fallacy and the true nature of the operation, thus offering the first condition for turning the crisis of the Francoism into democratic revolution. But there was no such a Party, and its social base even less. Selection, co-option and promotion of the conservative parties had blocked the way to all democratic political or ideological forces. The Unique Nationalist Party, and sham bi-partisanship, ensured the sham alternation and the corruption in the service of real power. Thus the Francoist régime got to renew itself by means of a farce-transition. “China is not more democratic, but it keeps the rule of law to a greater extent than Russia, because it exercises the alternation in power, though limited. The pacts of the Spanish transition gave the Francoist élite guarantees that it would not be crushed.” (M. Khodorkovsky, interviewed by P. Bonet for a prominent newspaper of the media monopoly of the Spanish “transition”, September 20, 2014.)
Despite Mr. Khodorkovsky’s conceptual confusions about democracy, neither China nor Russia are democratic but imperialistic and therefore criminal States. Both are States that keep Peoples subjugated through criminal Violence and State Terrorism, and violating their rights of self-determination or independence: first of fundamental human rights and precondition of them all; which is the antithesis of democracy. Establishing the mechanisms of “votes and majorities” as synonymous with “·democracy” is a fundamental theoretical error: a deception developed by the ideologists of imperialism and spread by its media monopolies of confusion and ideological intoxication of masses. We analyze it in the following Chapter XXIII: Current ideological foundation of the imperialistic State: “democracy, ‘Constitution’ and rule of law”.
In reality it was the Francoist élite which demanded and obtained from the National-social-imperialistic “opposition”: the Spanish National-socialists and National-communists of Falange-PsoE and PcE, guarantees that they would continue to crush the subjugated Peoples with impunity, in exchange for allowing them to be inserted into the tasks and benefits of the Spanish transitive fascist régime. This is what all of them have continued to do “democratically” until today thanks to the ideological-political coverage that, since 1977 to this day, is being provided to them also by the indigenous Collaborationists and Accomplices: members of the bureaucratic-liquidationist mafia that, from the official Pnv to the Eta (along with all their multi-onomastic formal splits: Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc.), do participate in maintaining both the farce of “the transition” as if it were democracy and genuine democracy to boot, as well as in all the corruption which it consists of.
The “bi-partisanship” and the Party “alternation”: traditional model of the “democracy in the Spanish style”, are an old trick long held by the Bourbon Monarchy in its successive Restorations, which ensured the corruption in the service of the real power. In these circumstances, the “conflicts between Parties” are reduced to the sharing of the privileges and benefits – legal and illegal – provided by the auxiliary services of the real political power. These political Parties are “organizations that deal but with job hunting, and that modify their particular program depending on the votes to be captured. In Spain, at least until these recent years [1919], the two big ‘parties’ are succeeding to each other in the power according to the principle of a consented alternation, under cover of elections ‘prefabricated’ from on high, so as to allow the partisans of these two formations to profit the advantages afforded by the administrative jobs. In the former Spanish Colonies, the so-called ‘elections’ and the so-called ‘revolutions’ have no other objective than the seizing the dish of butter in which they expect to find their livelihoods”. With one proviso: all these organizations are naturally and sincerely Nationalists, their support to the Spanish imperialism and colonialism does never fail. It is in the indigenous “Basque armed and unarmed institutionalist organizations where the collaborationism, complicity and betrayal are mingled with bureaucratic and corporate corruption in the hunt to the political-administrative connections.
The Spanish Unique Nationalist Party of today is the National Movement in its traditional Francoist version: Falangist and National Trade-unionist before, National-socialist now. Functionally organized after the manner of that traditional system in the Spanish monarchical restorations, the actual “bi-partisanship” Pp-PsoE is a functional avatar of the Francoist Party, which is the only existing one. Accessorily, it ensures the orderly distribution of the perks, connections and administratively organized corruption. The family continuity of the Spanish political class, its filiation and kinship, and its patrimonial/marital, clerical and corporate ties, do reveal that their present figureheads, appointed and educated in the Francoist seraglio, have inherited individually and collectively the positions and functions of their parents, relatives and cronies: career Officers, Falangists, Cardinals, Bishops, Opus-Deists and others of that ilk.
Behind each Spanish “traditional or national-socialist democrat” of today does lurk – individually and collectively – a Francoist “of before”. The popular Party (Pp) and the PsoE are the two faces and the two branches of the Spanish fascist and terrorist Nationalist Party. The profound identity of Spanish Nationalism, both in its Traditional and National-socialist sides, has been exposed by the supreme revealer: the continuity of the spontaneous opposition and resistance of the Basque People. As for the deep identity of the French Nationalist Party: absolutely fixed from the French Nationalist and Terrorist Revolution, has not even needed any revealer. (The magnified farce that – thanks to the amplification provided by the monopoly of propaganda and ideological intoxication of masses – is being staged by the puppet groups of the so-called “ultra-Right”, both in Spain and France, does simply fulfil the function of accrediting and homologating, by reference to them, the alleged “democratic, moderate and center” character of the fascist and criminal Right of always, which is the sole existing one.)
Thus, the Spanish “opposition” had disappeared; and its remainders – which did not demand or expect anything else – changed their jacket and were recuperated without difficulty: they were incorporated, confirmed or replaced by the agents and leaders of the traditional Francoism, in order to revoke the facade of the new political order. Just as it had occurred a hundred years earlier with the First Restoration (1876), this Second Bourbon-Francoist Restoration and the Spanish national reconciliation revealed the failure, the submission and the corruption of the defeated, who turned for mercy to the generous discretion of the victors in return for accepting and legitimizing the established order. They thus received the approval of the “great” Powers and participated in the “alternation” in the search for and enjoyment of the administrative privileges, according to the traditional model of the royalist Restoration: the “shiftism” [turnismo], aimed at the orderly distribution and enjoyment of the structural corruption.
However, that formal distinction between Spanish “winners and vanquished” could not hide the deep Nationalist identity between them. The true political Parties are characterized or identified by their ideological and political entity, not by formal, corporate, personal or instrumental “differences”. Actually, in the present as in the preceding Restoration, there are not really true Spanish Parties: there is a Spanish Unique Nationalist Party – made up of diverse subsidiaries – which is the facade, the “civil” arm and instrument of the Spanish Army: the true protagonist and the real and permanent political class of the Spanish political history since the crisis of the Despotic-Asiatic Spanish régime, originated by the French invasion-revolution. All those subsidiaries compete with the traditional Francoism to reach its trust and benevolence: it is the consequence of the political and moral degeneration, and of the opportunism, collaboration and complicity under a fascist régime of military occupation.
The current Spanish National Movement: its Unique Nationalist Party, has been enriched, diversified and ideologically enhanced with multiple additions and contributions. Its objective is not the opposition to the Francoism but its development, in order to end with the resistance of the subjugated Peoples. There is no official or informal political organization in the Second Francoism that has not been built, financed, approved, accepted, tolerated, assimilated and manipulated by the real power: all of it insofar as it gave its adherence to, and took as its own ones, the principles and legal and ideological conditions of the régime established by the Francoist structure of power. The others were immediately or progressively excluded, persecuted and outlawed, if they were an obstacle or were not already useful for the Second Francoism: consolidated and increasingly demanding, as a result of the collapse of the “opposition” to the Spanish Imperialism and Fascism.
The protagonists of the First Francoism were cynical fascists and criminals, without complexes and unashamed of being so. No Criminal Court has ever prosecuted them. However, during the transition from the First to the Second Francoism, the need for counting on the collaboration and complicity of those who had been defeated did advise in favour of concessions and compensations. Those circumstances forced the winners to moderate or conceal expressions that did reveal more than they wanted to say: “In Catalonia and the Basque Country, some form of political decision will be necessary to avoid the current absolute lack of connection between the reality that exists there, and the utopian official version.” (J.M. de Areilza.) Consequently, the transitive régime strove then to obtain the institutional participation and recognition of its peripheral Collaborationists and Accomplices: armed and unarmed, of the liquidationist Pnv-Eta bureaucracy.
The sociological reality “that exists there” has not substantially changed since then; yet, forty years later, once they have got strengthened, encouraged and enhanced by the stupidity, corruption, collaboration, complicity and betrayal of those local fellow travellers, the Francoists: both traditionals and National-socialists, do already consider it finished the intra-totalitarian transition, jettison their insufferable puppets, destroy the formal remains of national identity of the subjugated Peoples, and renew the orgiastic triumphant euphoria of the first Falange in the occupied Territories of those Peoples and States. It’s clear that the centuries-old effort “of Spain” to ensure that “the reality that exists there” gets finally identified with the aspirations of its totalitarian Nationalism, is today at least as present as ever before.
However, the ideological and political totalitarianism does necessarily produce a generalized under-development, paralysis and reaction. Where the freedom of thought, criticism and communication does not exist for the political issues, it cannot be developed for the whole of the economic or cultural production either. Consubstantial with all tyranny: from Asiatic despotism up to modern totalitarianism, the diverse procedures and mechanisms of repression, censorship, submission, obscurantism, dirigisme, academism, formalism, intellectual imposture, fraud and falsification in general, do block the way to the creation, evolution and diffusion of progressive ideas. General under-development entails, in its turn, ideological and political reaction.
General Franco: the criminal, cruel, bloody and vengeful tyrant, did effectively correspond to the conditions of the Spanish People after the victory of the international Fascism, and to the need to block the way for all economic and cultural capacity and for all critical and creative force capable of generating political and ideological resistances: mainly in the Peoples and States subjugated by the Spanish imperialism. Without which his régime: established through a military victory with the decisive help of the Axis Powers, would not have been able to remain, last and adapt itself, as it has done, once the winning Allies took over from the defeated and the “enemy Nations”. Nevertheless, the Allies: in view of the Spanish social-political reality, decided to maintain it; thus betraying all the principles that they had put forward to justify the war and the victory against German-Italian Nazi-Fascism.
The Francoism has never been defeated by nobody; the Francoist régime has never undergone collapse or demolition, breakdown, replacement or succession. Francoism is not a thing of the past: it is the past and present foundation of the Spanish State. It is now when it demonstrates and exploits all its prospects and possibilities, long time under-estimated. General Franco is the true father of modern Spain.
Franco was not, strictly speaking, a fascist. His vision and his political culture did reduce the society and the State to an extension of the military organization and barrack life; to a cultural level of a (civil) guard post. His régime of terror and extermination has fundamentally changed the social and political conditions and the rapport of forces in Spain and its Colonies, making it possible the Second Francoism, which lasts already longer than the First one.
Thanks to the Spanish and international fascism, and to the support and complicity of the worldwide imperialism that have never been lacking for them, the Spaniards had now a stable and secure political régime as they had never had it, since the fall of their multi-centennial Asiatic-despotic Empire to which they ascribe their greatest glories and in which they do found their national mythology: that of the largest and most devastating trans-Continental criminal organization of fanatical wrongdoers, murderers and thieves of the entire History of Humanity.
In the ideal conditions that the war and the post-war period had established for him, General Franco: the most negative, vulgar, conceited, ignorant, rude and tacky of the military or fascist dictators that the world has suffered, could have believed that his intellectual and moral level – not higher than that of the last soldier of guard – did qualify him (with the support of his military, civil and ecclesiastical cultural services) either to ban, censor or falsify the Bible, ‘Les Misérables’, ‘The Black Corsair’, ‘Mogambo’ and ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, as well as to impose his “thought” and his rules of conduct to his helpless victims, this is: many millions of children and adults of all sex and condition. “The works of Victor Hugo are not available”, announced the incorruptible official of the Municipal Library with all the superiority, dignity, satisfaction and moral and scientific sufficiency which were bestowed on him by his high and uniformed post over the depraved and dreamer aspiring to be a reader. Those who are fond of making classifications and hierarchies – indecent though they may be – will perhaps say that General Franco has not been the greatest criminal of history; but he has certainly been the most destructive of all free-thinking, of all creativity (even the fascist one), and of all initiative: either political, artistic or scientific.
The crimes of General Franco are as unforgettable and unforgivable as innumerable; however, perhaps the biggest and most disastrous of them all might not be in the war, the murders and other individual and collective exactions, nor in the mass violence and terrorism of the imperialism and fascism, but rather in having killed of boredom for forty years, without remission nor hope, the millions of survivors who had the misfortune to fall under the boots of the ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant, and to remain buried under the marble slab of his miserable despotism. In comparison with him, Hitler or Mussolini are placed – in terms of creativity and amenity – at the side of Alexander, Caligula or Lorenzo de’ Medici. The dictatorship of these ones is the dictatorship of the mental disturbance; that of Franco and his band is the dictatorship of the collective oligophrenia, the mental (and the others) castration, the destruction of reason, the disappearance of the spirit (which either is critical or is not), and the stupidity as a principle of life and conduct.
The fact that the Spanish people has endured that dictatorship for so many years, and that actually it continues to endure it under the adapted forms of his successors, does show the consequences of centuries of despotism and of the formidable beating of 1936-9. And the fact that, even under the conditions imposed to it during centuries by the despotism and the foreign occupation, there still remain in the Basque People some forms of Resistance and critical sense (albeit they may be reduced, primary and inept), does show the formidable spirit of independence that hundreds or thousands of years of freedom or fight for freedom have to some extent allowed to preserve.
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