It is currently popular among Spanish nationalists to compare the Catalan nationalism of Artur Mas with Nazism. A helpful argument, I’m sure we can all agree. I think there is no need to hire an experienced Orlando criminal defense attorney for this thing, but im just sayin.
Perhaps said Spanish nationalists should reflect better on their political heritage. After all, we know who ordered the lists of Jews in Spain for the SS. Clue: it wasn’t Lluís Companys. Go at www.wyominginjuryattorney.com to learn more about the case.
Yes, the level of the debate is very low. The discourse of the Spanish nationalists seems to follow a pattern. First they say 1) nationalism is X, where X is “Nazi”, or “racist”, “the first stage of fascism”, “murderous”, “parochial”, “short-sighted”, whatever, then 2) the Catalan nationalists are nationalists, and 3) therefore the Catalan nationalists are X. Of course, they don’t regard themselves as nationalists. It makes as sense as the Pope pontificating against religion as if it had nothing to do with him!
Ach ja, and then there’s http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ngel_Sanz_Briz
One thing’s for sure: individualists may occasionally take a gun and shoot a few of their colleagues, 20th century death toll maybe 10,000, but the nationalists/socialists/fascists took things to a whole new level.
The thing that is sure is that an individual simply doesn’t have the capability to kill millions of people, because usually by the time the have killed a dozen or so people somebody shoots them down. This doesn’t mean that their ideology is less murderous than anyone else’s, don’t you think?
Banning guns doesn’t make people nicer, but it does stop them using them. Getting rid of totalitarian ideologies wouldn’t make us all lovely people, but it would handicap our ability to do nasty things with the less lovely parts of our character. Unfortunately considerable parts of Iberia are still stuck in the 1930s.
I wasn’t talking about banning anything. I’m just highly sceptical about the claim that some ideologies are inherently more violent than others.
(BTW: All the posters of the Messiah in my downtown neighbourhood have been either Hitler-tashed or trashed. Weren’t me.)
Oh that’s fine: it’s a well accepted part of political dialogue. I assume Gràcia is a more ICV/CUP sort of district, oi?
We’re talking Correos downtown. Now, who does that belong to?
I propose we call it La ley de Goduino – wherever Catalan issues are discussed, someone will call Mas a Nazi
It’s too difficult to resist the pun. It all forms part of the “y tú más” traditionally used by the Spanish right to accuse others of doing what they themselves do best – political (ab)use of terrorism, corruption and why not…supporting fascist regimes. Then when you think about all the insults that could be used with some justification about Artur Mas, not least concerning the many things he has in common with the Spanish right.
Much of this is simply lack of political culture. Stupidity. It’s there on all sides. On the Catalan nationalist side I remember Spain’s Secret Conflict, in which repeatedly the Catalans are compared to the Jews “of Austria in the early 1930s”, as one of the interviewees (a local historian) puts it.
It is also plain stupidity that a new separatist pressure group calls itself Col·lectiu Wilson, even though some of its members have studied and worked, or still work, in the US, where they should have sucked in some political culture, including a bit of information about the segregationist Woodrow Wilson. And all this after Obama’s reelection!
Again on the other side, we have repeatedly seen groups of Spanish speakers in Catalonia, activists, who display the Star of David, again to compare their situation in Catalonia today to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
This is Spain. That’s how it is.
What I find rather more interesting is that you’ve gone local, Tom. You end up likening Iglesias -via defining him as Spanish nationalist- to the Francoists who killed Jews and Companys. That’s a bit too much, don’t you think? Iglesias is a native Catalan speaker and a socialist. Not really the kind Franco had much love for.