The American Spectator

M. Kienholz| 7.9.09 @ 2:22PM

An on-target commentary on the Spanish Civil War's recruiting of a Seattle boy who was killed in Spain can be found in the reports of the Canwell Committee (Washington State's Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities). I am currently completing a bio of Canwell and his committee. Send me an e-mail if you are interested in obtaining the book.

Milt Poulos| 12.29.09 @ 5:47PM

You conveniently ignore Nazi atrocities. Typical of the extreme Right.

Mark LaRochelle| 5.21.10 @ 4:26PM

Mr. Poulos, has any American city erected a monument to Nazis? Has any American university endowed chairs, buildings or scholarships named in honor of Nazis?

Jonathan Liu| 7.18.10 @ 2:15PM

Does the right not employ even rudimentary fact-checking before publishing this logorrhea? The Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought for the Spanish Republicans, whom Stalin also supported. If that makes them fellow travelers to his atrocities, surely we'd have to tear down every monument to all those "American soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines" that fought in the second world war. Whatever comfort it gave Stalin that American socialists were with his dog in the Spanish Republican fight, I'm pretty sure in the scheme of things the hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and other Lend-Lease equipment that Roosevelt with the support of American Republicans provided were a much more appreciated contribution to the world Soviet cause. Wars, or Hitler, whose blitzkreig was battle-tested in Spain, make for strange bedfellows. Perhaps if the American government was as prescient as a few hundred romantic American communists, he'd have thought twice about Czechoslovakia and Poland, which, come to think of it, may in turn have spared Eastern Europe its 50 years of Soviet subjugation.

Thus, before you appeal to the old McCarthyite slander of "premature anti-fascism" consider, with the fates of 50 million non-Spaniards in your mind, if it wasn't the San Franciscan reds that were too early but the official response of the West that was too late. Also, if despite their fighting with(=for) Stalin, you wanted to honor said "American soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines" in San Francisco, I'd recommend the nearby West Coast World War II Memorial on the Presidio. It's been there since 1960 and is in fact PUBLICLY funded on public land. I'm not which would be more disturbing: that you know you're just throwing San Francisco/liberal unpatriotism red meat to the hordes or truly believe this "opinion" says something about an event external to your life, and the many difficult deadlines your profession entails. The conscience of a hack is a rough and brutal battleground; for your sake I hope it's the former.

Communists! Scandal! Blarf.

Mark LaRochelle| 11.12.10 @ 5:25PM

Mr. Liu:

The Spanish "Republican" government was actually a socialist government, rapidly converting Spain into a totalitarian Communist dictatorship and Soviet satellite. Immediately upon its election, leftist mobs unleashed a reign of terror encompassing 269 documented political murders and the burning of 160 churches. The incident that kicked off the army rebellion and civil war was the abduction and murder of parliamentary opposition leader leader Jose Calvo Sotelo by the government's Republican Assault Guards. The government then started murdering its own socialist-anarchist allies in the POUM.

Some 80% of Abraham Lincoln Brigade members were also members of the CPUSA, which was under strict party discipline. "Stalin's foreign legion" fought to bring Spain under the Communist yoke, as part of Stalin's strategy of hedging Europe in a pincer between Communist armies in Spain (through which he could controll access to the Mediterranean) and the Soviet Union.

Far from "premature anti-fascists," the Abraham Lincoln Brigadiers were actually slow-learning Stalinists, who slavishly followed the party line, going so far as to denounce any opposition to actual fascists, such as Hitler and Mussolini, during the Nazi-Soviet pact. As the official Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives Web site admits, their "willingness to change their position on the antifascist struggle in order to conform to Soviet policy would forever cast a shadow on their legacy, as it would with the other elements of the Communist Left."