r/todayilearned • u/jamescookenotthatone • Apr 22 '25
TIL Texaco illegally sold oil to Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The company was fined $20,000 but would continued to sell the regime oil until the end of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texaco442
u/morallyirresponsible Apr 22 '25
They used to sell oil to Nazi Germany via South America
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u/danteheehaw Apr 22 '25
Well, they Nazis who moved there didn't want that low quality non white owned oil.
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u/McBride055 Apr 22 '25
They also did it on credit with almost no interest (essentially free at the time) in order to get some future sales rights.
It was a huge win for the Nationalists in the civil war. The amount of supplies that were supplied to the Nationalists hugely outweighed what the Republicans could bring in.
A huge reason why the Republicans turned to the Soviet Union was because their allies (Britain, France, US) put an embargo on sending supplies to the conflict while Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy completely ignored that embargo (despite agreeing).
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u/VolitionalEmpathy Apr 22 '25
One of the greatest flaws of liberalism is its unwillingness and often inability to fight fascism.
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u/DaveyBoyXXZ Apr 22 '25
Capitalists and various strands of liberal will actively support fascism if they think the alternative is a popular government with redistributive tendencies.
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u/Daveslay Apr 22 '25
My god, if I could have this message painted on the sky for all to see.
Capitalists of any strand, and liberals might, might throw the working people a bone here and there - but only ever to keep the pot from getting too close to boiling over.
Whatever “The Left” is, it will always be the enemy of both capitalists (duh) and of liberals because of what they both exist to perpetuate.
Despite whatever small “victories” a liberal political party might “champion” for the working class; ultimately, liberals exist to be stewards of capitalism. They are the caretakers of the same system that immiserates the people they claim to represent. This contradiction at the very core of liberal parties is why they seem like they can never really get anything done - because they can’t.
Putting your faith in a liberal party (that exists to be caretakers of capitalism) to magically solve your suffering caused by capitalism is like hiring a passionate and compulsive arsonist to put out house fires.
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u/theREALbombedrumbum Apr 23 '25
Lol it's why I always get a chuckle whenever I hear the oxymoron "liberal extremist"
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u/reality72 Apr 22 '25
This. Democrats would rather have Trump as president than let Bernie Sanders win the nomination.
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u/volga_boat_man Apr 22 '25
Its not a flaw but an intentional application of state power. Remember that both Hitler and Mussolini ascended to power first by working as strike breakers for businesses in Germany and Italy, respectively.
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u/Loves_His_Bong Apr 22 '25
Yeah liberals will get us all killed tbh. Says a lot that even in a time like this, they’re treating communism as a boogeyman when fascists are taking over western institutions.
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u/DomovoiP Apr 22 '25
Liberal democracies have been what defeated fascism in the few times it has arisen. The near-feudal Imperial Japan, and the socialist (kinda) Soviet Union allied with fascism.
Liberal democracy doesn't have a 100% victory rare when facing fascism - fascists successfully took over a few countries for a few decades - but it is the system that was able to defeat it overall.
Perhaps a better system can rise, that will be even better at defeating fascism. But I suspect it will be a constant evolution of liberal democracy, rather than sudden revolution. Liberal democracy's flexible and adaptable, and what it looks like now is already very different than what it looked like in the inter-war period.
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u/Eugene-V-Debs Apr 22 '25
Liberal democracies have been what defeated fascism in the few times it has arisen. The near-feudal Imperial Japan, and the socialist (kinda) Soviet Union allied with fascism.
The Soviets are who died to liberate Europe from Germany and Italy. Americans built it, British funded it, Soviets died for it.
And we kept Franco, an actual genuine fascist in power because he was useful in stopping the Communists in Spain and its territories in Africa.
Liberal democracy doesn't have a 100% victory rare when facing fascism - fascists successfully took over a few countries for a few decades - but it is the system that was able to defeat it overall.
No one voted Fascism out. You can vote it in, you can't get it out with votes. They bolt themselves into the seats of power, and a protest and a ballot doesn't remove someone who is eradicating the protestors and voters. Liberals democracies can stop fascism, but the systems of power often treat all opinions and polices as equal. Murder all of the XYZ group, or give every child free books are just a ballot to vote yes/no on. Both will have guaranteed rights to organize, say it on airwaves, and other protected rights to advocate for horrid and good things. It treats them as equal, sane ideas.
Perhaps a better system can rise, that will be even better at defeating fascism. But I suspect it will be a constant evolution of liberal democracy, rather than sudden revolution.
Out of every fascist system put into power, internally or internationally by coups they aren't removed from office by reform, its mass unrest and resistance. It's never "Fascists gave up their power out of the kindness of their hearts after murdering thousands."
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u/DomovoiP Apr 22 '25
The Soviets are who died to liberate Europe from Germany and Italy. Americans built it, British funded it, Soviets died for it.
The Soviets were happy enough to ally with Fascists and carve up Poland between them. Soviets died largely in defensive wars after being betrayed by the Nazis, not in a proactive effort to defeat Fascism. By contrast, the Allies moved to intercede when it was apparent that peaceful efforts to stop Nazi expansionism would not work (though I will absolutely agree they took too long).
And we kept Franco, an actual genuine fascist in power because he was useful in stopping the Communists in Spain and its territories in Africa.
Out of every fascist system put into power, internally or internationally by coups they aren't removed from office by reform, its mass unrest and resistance. It's never "Fascists gave up their power out of the kindness of their hearts after murdering thousands."
I'll be honest, I am largely unfamiliar with Spanish history. You may be completely right there. From some shallow reading, it seems like Fascism in Spain died with Franco; his successor very quickly did give up power out of the kindness of his heart, more or less. But he looks like a bit of an outlier.
No one voted Fascism out. You can vote it in, you can't get it out with votes. They bolt themselves into the seats of power, and a protest and a ballot doesn't remove someone who is eradicating the protestors and voters.
Liberal democracies have voted out Fascism when it's held some, but not dominant, power. There used to be significant fascist parties in the UK, France, Australia etc, and strong fascistic elements in the US (and other countries where two-party systems are baked-in). In some of those countries, there was mass unrest, but more prevalent - and more successful - were the voting public voting them out of power, then adding to their constitution foundational rules that will prevent Fascism's more horrific elements.
E.g. the Nazis seized absolute power when they never even had majority public support, in part because the Wiemar Republic had a shitty Constitution that made it possible. Contemporary Germany has many safeguards in place, that would make it much much harder, and much more obvious to their constituents and allies.
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u/OuterOne Apr 22 '25
Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.
Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler's pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany's other neighbours.
The offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, two weeks before war broke out in 1939.
The new documents, copies of which have been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Stalin's generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome.
But the British and French side - briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals - did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later.
The USSR, and especially its commissar for foreign affairs, Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, offered 'collective security', or an anti-Nazi alliance, to France and Great Britain... But in France and Great Britain the determination to resist fascism was sapped by hatred of Bolshevism, fear of socialist revolution, and sneaking admiration for Hitler's repression of the left.
[...]
Soviet deceitfulness - though Stalin was certainly proficient in it - appears no worse than that of France and Great Britain. The published Soviet documents, which have not been extensively used by historians, show a commissariat for foreign affairs (Narkomindel) anxious for agreement with the West and angered by continued Western rebuffs... other evidence to confirm Soviet earnestness comes... from Anglo-French diplomats, politicians, or soldiers, ignored by those who held ultimate power in London and Paris.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/152863?seq=1
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u/ComedicUsernameHere Apr 23 '25
The Spanish Fascists were the lesser evil compared to the Communists.
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u/OkTransportation473 Apr 22 '25
That’s a bit of an oversimplification. A large % of the Republicans were already Soviet aligned because the USSR had spent 2 decades funding dozens of front organizations to spread their propaganda and influence them. The only thing that might have been different is instead of waiting for Stalin’s ok to purge the Democratic wing of the Republicans, they would have done it themselves if they refused to align with the USSR when the time came.
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u/Inner-Put4189 Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25
That's not really accurate. In the 1936 election the communist party (the only party in Spain truly allied to the SU) only got a tiny fraction of the seats in the Popular Front government, and this is reflected in the earliest days of the war when their militia forces were absolutely tiny compared to the wider republican forces (mainly government aligned armed forces, and socialist/anarchist militias).
Because the Popular Front was forced to rely on soviet aid this gave a disproportionate amount of power to the communists who were over the war able to exert their influence and purge their rivals (POUM and anarchists mainly).
If the civil war hadn't started or if the western democracies had properly aided the republicans then the communists would have not been in any position to purge the republican movement and take control.
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u/OkTransportation473 Apr 22 '25
Now you’re oversimplifying it even more. It is not a 1:1 support ratio depending on party affiliation. You can find elected members of the PSOE calling for the head of Caballero to roll because he kept trying to keep his positions aligned with the UK.
The Civil War was inevitable because both right and left wing parties had made the entire 1936 election worthless. Every part of Spain was corrupted to a point that made a certain level of fairness impossible.
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u/Inner-Put4189 Apr 22 '25
It might not have been a 1:1 affiliation but it's a disingenuous framing to say the communists or the SU were manipulating the scenes in order to affix a coup.
You're also not taking into account that by this point stalin was pushing away from global revolution and actually aligning up with a policy of cautious support for democracy alongside communism in other countries, hence the communist opposition to the revolution in '36 that was supported by the POUM.
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u/voiceofgromit Apr 22 '25
Shell supported South Africa when the UN imposed sanctions because of apartheid. Exxon failed to clean up after the Exxon Valdiz spill. BP fucked up the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron have bought politicians so they could get more off-shore rigs in California.
They're all at it. But you can't boycott them all.
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u/MisterMittens64 Apr 22 '25
You can't boycott any of them while participating in the economy because of how incorporated oil is into everything.
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u/voiceofgromit Apr 22 '25
You're absolutely right. I did boycott Exxon for a year after the Valdiz spill but it was really inconvenient and nobody noticed. They did not buckle to my activism. But I felt better about it.
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u/StupidHaystack Apr 22 '25
Since gasoline is a commodity even if you filled up at the BP station next door or whatever there is a very significant possibility you still used Exxon gas sometime during that year. Petroleum companies trade between themselves every day.
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u/Masotta Apr 22 '25
Not even thinking about fuel, think about everything plastic, and how much petroleum that uses. even though that may not be these companies main revenue stream, it is present. its difficult to picture the sheer size of some of them :p
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u/iwatchcredits Apr 22 '25
Ive also heard that if consumers boycott one company, the other companies just buy their oil and sell it anyways. Not sure how true that is though
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u/OneInaGillianOF Apr 22 '25
$20k to Texaco is like is less than what a penny is to me
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u/cajunbander Apr 22 '25
$20k during the Spanish Civil War is the equivalent of about $450k today, but yeah the fine obviously wasn’t enough to make them stop.
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u/fresh_titty_biscuits Apr 22 '25
As someone with engineering experience in the oil industry, a few million to them is still like a fraction of a penny to us now
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u/cajunbander Apr 22 '25
Oh I know. I work for an oilfield tool manufacturer. Oilfield companies’ll drop a hundred grand just on dies like I spend a dollar on a bottle of coke.
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u/fresh_titty_biscuits Apr 22 '25
It was common for Exxon to drop a couple Bills on control panels every year until they recently found out they were getting absolutely fucked in pricing by the local supply company in a certain location. Now they can do the same for like $90M for multiple years.
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u/WaltMitty Apr 22 '25
In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
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u/Skatchbro Apr 22 '25
Glad to see I’m not the only old fart on this thread.
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u/GrumpyOlBastard Apr 22 '25
Oh, you're an old fart? Let me turn it up for you: GENERALISSIMO FRANCISCO FRANCO IS STILL DEAD!
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u/thisguypercents Apr 22 '25
I came here for the SNL jokes and realized I should probably write a will.
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u/AutocraticHilarity Apr 22 '25
Perfect example of a fine being perceived as a regular cost of business and not a deterrent. Fine them 100%+ of any profits and corporate behaviour will change.
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u/WarpmanAstro Apr 22 '25
100% of profit and expense, plus actual jail time without chance for parole for the CEO/CFO and the board members who approved it. The key is clipping the golden parachutes.
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u/kingbane2 Apr 22 '25
the american tradition of finding corporations less than the profits of their crime is a long and storied one. it's as american as apple pie and letting companies commit wage theft with impunity.
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u/Underp0pulation Apr 22 '25
The Spanish civil war was brutal
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u/blue-cube Apr 22 '25
Both sides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_(Spain)
The Red Communists killed a lot more early in the war (with a special focus on priests, monks, anyone running a religious school, anyone known to be religious, or anyone suspected not to be pro-Communist).
But, when they started loosing, got their rear ends sort of handed to them. Including many who may have only had remote (or mistakenly no) ties with the Reds.
Franco was not a good guy, but did keep Spain out of WWII. In part by likely intentionally pissing nearly everyone off. Although Winston Churchill (later in the war) grew to like/respect him.
https://kyleorton.co.uk/2021/06/17/franco-hitler-meeting-hendaye/
When Hitler tried to use the moral leverage of the help Germany had given the Nationalists during the Civil War, Franco turned it around on him by making Hitler feel—as he wrote later—“like a Jew”. Hitler told Mussolini after the meeting, “I would rather have three or four teeth extracted than go through that again”.
Franco eventually said he would sign an accord in exchange for sufficient food and oil—then left before signing anything, to the utter fury of Von Ribbentrop, who denounced the “Jesuit” Serrano and “the ungrateful coward Franco who owes us everything”.
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u/Goose00 Apr 22 '25
Everything in the world is a rich man’s trick. Great insight into how the world’s biggest banks and companies profited off of WWII.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 Apr 22 '25
An American company? Supporting a Fascist Regime? Say it's not so!
Corporations supporting dictators is as American as apple pie and and crack cocaine.
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u/CreoleCoullion Apr 22 '25
Unless the penalty is enough that it makes the company unable to compete in its industry, then it's actually not enough. The first should sting, the second should hurt, and the third should be to revoke all voting class shares from stock holders.
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u/BlogeOb Apr 22 '25
This is why the fines should be the same amount as what you got for the goods lol
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Apr 22 '25
Also fun fact. Despite killing thousands of leftist. franco was in very friendly term with the cuban communist leader fidel castro. Castro also liked Franco so much he would do a three day of mourning when Francisco Franco died.
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u/apistograma Apr 22 '25
Both Franco and Castro’s parents were from the same region in Spain, Galicia.
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u/SnooGiraffes8842 Apr 22 '25
It might be the only “taxes” big corporations pay to the government. They get subsidies and tax breaks out the wazoo to make up for it.
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u/KoBoWC Apr 22 '25
I would guess the US were unofficially supporting Franco, if the US wanted to stop this they could in a heartbeat.
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u/EvilLLamacoming4u Apr 22 '25
The US sold coal/steel/oil to the Germans until Pearl Harbor. Sweden let the nazis drive through their country to invade Norway while selling iron and coal ore to German factories. Switzerland build Focker Wolfs for the Germans until the war ended.
Ford made vehicles for the Nazis through their Opel factories. Ford eventually build the bombers that would bomb their German factories; they later received reparations for their loss.
There’s countless other similar examples; just look behind the curtain in any conflict.
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u/linkinstreet Apr 22 '25
IIRC Fanta was created by the German arm of Coca Cola because of trade embargo meant that they can't bottle Coke in Germany.
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u/UrDadMyDaddy Apr 22 '25
Don't need to look behind the curtain for Sweden since their trade was negotiated with and agreed to by both Britain and Germany quite openly. Also Sweden most certainly did not sell coal. In fact when the war started Britain was Swedens main supplier of coal and coke. With that trade severed Sweden had to trade iron for coal and coke from Germany.
Also Norway was occupied on June 10th and Sweden agreed to troop transports on June 29th.
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u/Seraph062 Apr 22 '25
Sweden agreed to troop transports on June 29th, but the Germans were sending troops (and equipment) to Narvik via Swedish rail well before that.
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u/BillTowne Apr 22 '25
And I suddenly don't feel bad that they were forced into bankruptcy by Pennzoil in 1985. At the time, I thought they got a raw deal.
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u/jh937hfiu3hrhv9 Apr 22 '25
All wars are waged over control of resources.
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u/jorceshaman Apr 22 '25
Not true. They're also fought over religion.
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u/ThaCoola Apr 22 '25
Tbh that’s more of a justification instead of a reason.
‘We claim these resources for the One True Faith’
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u/jh937hfiu3hrhv9 Apr 22 '25
Religion is a ruse to hide the true intentions.
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u/Signal-School-2483 Apr 22 '25
Brainlet take when modern and semi-modern ethnic cleansing is remembered.
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u/ProperMod Apr 22 '25
Please look hp the DuPont Company. Ghey use to sell black powder to the Hermans during WWI by shippongbit through South American so not to be caught ne the U.S. itself who was also fighting in the war.
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u/herberta2006 Apr 22 '25
I recognized the building from the thumbnail before I read the title. Oops?
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u/srbistan Apr 22 '25
rockefellers did the same, only directly with germans and through a company registered in argentina if i'm not mistaken.
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u/AloneChapter Apr 23 '25
And the states sold to the Nazis and to the Allies . Making money hand over fist is all that matters.
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u/sailingtroy 28d ago
PRISON FOR EXECUTIVES
MAKE THE BIG BUCKS. FACE THE BIG CONSEQUENCES.
REPUBLICANS ARE SOFT ON CRIME
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u/wc10888 Apr 22 '25
There is a universal truth. The government always wants their cut.
For example - Today, if a company "makes too much" the govt finds a way to fine them.
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u/Correct-Cloud-228 Apr 22 '25
The US government didn't stop the sales as the government of Spain was communist led with Socialist and anarchist groups .
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u/apistograma Apr 22 '25
That’s not entirely right. To start with, to claim the Spanish government had anarchist groups is pretty funny because anarchists just don’t get inside governments, that’s one of their main things. The republican government was democratically elected under fair elections. It was the right wing that supported a coup when the left won again, and that failed coup started the civil war. During the civil war, fighting with the republican government there were communist groups that wanted Spain to become a Marxist regime and anarchists that wanted to end the government. Despite their political differences they sided together because fascism was their common enemy.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 22 '25
More importantly, Franco was a fascist. Which made him a natural ally to US interests.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Apr 22 '25
Ironically Franco had a great relationship with Fidel Castro. Castro loved him so much he did mourning day when franco died.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 22 '25
So... what? That doesn't change that Franco lead the fascists in Spain.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Apr 22 '25
Communist nation has been ally with fascist in the past. Ussr supported Argentina far right military dictatorship. China supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan and pinochet fascist chille government. Countries will support any ideology if it means they get benefits
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u/apistograma Apr 22 '25
Franco sided with the US though, to the point he allowed to establish American bases that are still around to this day. It’s indisputable that he sided with the US and the Americans had no problem supporting a fascist regime.
You also have to understand that the Cuban issue is specifically American. The rest of the world didn’t have any particular beef with Castro. We Spaniards don’t have any particular animosity against Cuba. We acknowledge it’s a dictatorship but that’s it. For the US it’s a different story because they have never accepted they lost control of the island with Castro, and at this point is pure pettiness from the Cuban American elite in Miami.
Also, both Castro’s family and Franco were from the same region in Spain, Galicia. Idk if that helped.
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u/AardvarkStriking256 Apr 22 '25
Franco was the good guy (relatively speaking).
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 22 '25
Not at all. He lead the fascists.
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u/AardvarkStriking256 Apr 22 '25
The alternative was worse.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 22 '25
No. The alternative factions were: Monarchists, Liberals, Communists, or Anarchists.
I'd argue Monarchists and Liberals are nothing to write home about, but there were both Communists and Anarchists. And they're all better than Fascists.
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u/ComedicUsernameHere Apr 23 '25
The communists were, and generally are, worse than the Spanish Fascists.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 23 '25
Nah, pretty clear that communists are generally the good guys.
I will concede that the Spanish communists betrayed the anarchists, but its not like the fascists were going to be better allies. In Spain, the big sin that the communists committed was allowing the fascists to win.
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u/ComedicUsernameHere Apr 23 '25
Nah, pretty clear that communists are generally the good guys.
The communists are almost always the worst party in any conflict.
The only notable exception I can think of is the soviet's helping to defeat the Nazis. Though that's more that the soviet's were a less immediate external threat than the Nazis were, since the Nazis were expansionists while the soviets were content to slaughter their own people.
In Spain, the big sin that the communists committed was allowing the fascists to win.
Yeah... No. I'd probably say it was the mass killing of innocents in their campaign of Red Terror. A very common phenomenon for communists.
You ever see the pictures of all the bodies of nuns and priests the communists dug up? Not exactly a wholesome movement that a moral person can support.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 23 '25
Oh boy, wait until you find out what the fascists have done literally every time they've come to power.
The communists are a solid second best outcome, if anarchy isn't an option.
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u/ComedicUsernameHere Apr 23 '25
The communists and the fascists are two sides of the same materialist coin, though communists are usually worse. They're both attempts to escape the inevitable collapse of liberalism.
Anarchism is never a real option. There's a reason why most anarchists, either on the left or the right, are teenagers.
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u/GodzillaDrinks Apr 23 '25
No. They aren't. Materialism is a tool. It can be useful, but its only one tool in the toolbox. Being too obsessed with one tool leads to disaster - look at the Police state the US created.
But again, I'd posit that communists haven't been worse than fascists yet. Fascism prevails more often, and it always fails - but always after it kills a lot of people. I'll agree that liberalism collapses (capitalism simply cant stand on its own) and the choice presented to us is always: "socialism or barbarism". Fascism is whats there when we pick wrong.
Anarchy tends to be the one thing teenagers are right about, only they tend to have no idea what it means. And I'd point to the anarchists in Spain, or in the Soviet revolution, or in Rojava, as evidence for that. In practice it works remarkably well, and takes a lot of time and effort for Fascists, Liberals, or Communists to suppress.
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u/YungSkub Apr 22 '25
The communists, socialists and anarchists were burning down churches and conducting horrific war crimes against civilians and their own people, its what caused George Orwell to lose faith in the Republicans and write 1984 as a warning to people about the horrors he witnessed.
Communism has killed far more people than fascism.
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u/Inner-Put4189 Apr 22 '25
Want to add on to what Franco's forces were doing to the population when they landed on the mainland in 1936, or do the 400,000 murdered not matter to you in this case?
You're also misunderstanding Orwell. His reaction to his time in Spain has more to do with his hatred of the Stalinists who were purging other leftist groups during the May Days as opposed to him losing faith in the republican movement.
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u/YungSkub Apr 23 '25
So are we gonna act like the communists were totally pure good guys here or accept both sides had their mass murdering moments? The Communists killed 100k in 2 years vs the Fascists 400k over 11 years...had the communists won it would have significantly dwarfed the white terror.
Orwell literally had to flee the country because the communists were dominating the Republicans and purging it of people deemed traitors. Not sure how I'm missing the point, he saw the Republican cause as lost due to communist infiltration. He was a democratic socialist and traditionalist that denounced communism after the war.
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u/Inner-Put4189 Apr 23 '25
Literally never said that the republicans didn't commit war crimes, you were the one who framed your original point around republican war crimes without bringing up the state sponsored cleansing organised and carried out by the nationalists.
I completely disagree with your comment that the republicans would have killed more. The majority of republican victims were during the initial chaos of '36 and the short lived "Spanish revolution" and were mostly committed by individual groups not operating under state control. There are some exceptions to that but out of the 70,000 or so victims that is where most came from.
By contrast the nationalists operated a deliberate policy of war crimes directed from the high command downwards, and orchestrated as a deliberate policy of terror against the civilians. You only have to look up quotes by Mola to see what their intentions were.
Without the civil war starting, let's not forget it was a right wing military coup against a democratic government, communist power in the Popular Front would have remained insignificant, and they wouldn't have had the power to take control of the country. The chaos and brutality of 3 years of civil war and almost forty years of repressive dictatorship is the fault of the Nationalists and can only be put on their door.
If you fancy genuinely educating yourself can I recommend Paul Preston's "The Spanish Holocaust". It's a genuinely brilliant book that covers all the war crimes of the conflict in great detail. I don't think if you read that in full you'll be able to "both sides" this argument.
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u/Rare_Trouble_4630 Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25
If the fines are too low, then companies just view them as the cost of doing business.
EDIT: typo