Sean Collins, who has some interesting things to say about comics, is considerably less measured when it comes to writing about the terrible events of the past week in Spain. That’s understandable; attacks of the sort that happened in Madrid should provoke our outrage and revulsion.
However, Collins' posts aren’t really incensed over the attacks so much as the Spanish people’s subsequent rejection of President Jose Maria Aznar and his Popular Party. In this post, he writes:
Yesterday we discussed the notion, insisted upon by various and sundry antiwar pundits, that the Spanish election didn't really have anything to do with a cowed electorate repudiating the fight against terrorism and turning toward appeasement. But dammit, if it keeps turning out that the Spaniards themselves failed to get that memo, as this Washington Post article suggests, we may have to revise that particular theory.
First of all, notice how that first sentence actually presumes what it's pretending to prove by its axiomatic association of “repudiating the fight against terrorism” with “turning toward appeasement” – or, even more fundamentally, by its equally axiomatic (and even more arguable) association of repudiating the Bush administration’s fight against Iraq with “repudiating the fight against terrorism” and, therefore, with “turning toward appeasement.” But there’s no reason to believe that any of these three things are equivalent – particularly the first and the third. Bush’s war with Iraq and Aznar’s support for Bush were both deeply unpopular in Spain; rejecting them need not have anything to do with appeasement, in Spain or in America.
But that’s not why I’m posting. This is. Follow Collins’ link and read that Washington Post article. It doesn’t exactly confirm Collins’ claim that Spain voted for appeasement:
Sunday's stunning electoral defeat for the ruling party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of President Bush's closest European allies, reflected a late surge of public anger over the government's support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq triggered both by the attacks and by the sense the government had sought to exploit the bombings for political gain, according to political analysts and voters.
Anger over Aznar’s support for Bush in Iraq, yes; anger that he sought to exploit the bombings by blaming them on the ETA, yes; but nowhere does it mention appeasement. Of course, this analysis is buried all the way down in the second paragraph, so it's easily overlooked.
Further down in the article, however, writer Glenn Frankel does quote some people who interpret Spain's elections as appeasement:
Some analysts said the vote cast doubts on Spain's commitment to the war on terrorism, and warned that the extremists responsible for last week's attacks would view the results as a clear-cut victory.
Ah, yes, “some analysts.” I loved his work with North Vietnam – or maybe it’s the same guy who produced those fake newscasts used to promote Bush’s Medicare plan. Seriously, without further information it's impossible to tell whether this "analysis" is firsthand observation from Spain or another airy concoction of an administration that's determined to rewrite any event deemed incompatible with its policy goals. But I digress; here’s a guy with an actual name who reaches the same conclusion:
But [Jose] Varela [Ortega, VP of Madrid's Ortega y Gasset Foundation], who described himself as pro-American, said Spanish voters resented the war on terrorism because of a natural tendency to opt for a policy of ignoring or appeasing violent extremists.
Is this a positive confirmation that the Spanish people support appeasement? No, it’s just classic Journalism 101 writing – cite one opinion, cite a contrasting one while you maintain your precious journalistic objectivity. The Frankel article also offers these, completely different reasons for Aznar’s defeat:
Usually analysts expect a dramatic disaster such as last week's synchronized attacks on morning rush-hour commuters to solidify support for governing parties with well-defined law-and-order policies. At first, when officials blamed the Basque separatist movement known as ETA for the bombings, the pattern seemed to be holding, with opinion polls suggesting the ruling party might increase its grip on power. The Aznar government has been widely credited for taking a tough stance against ETA.But in the ensuing 48 hours, as suspicion shifted toward Islamic extremists connected with the al Qaeda network, the tide seemed to turn. Opposition politicians and journalists alleged that the Aznar government was withholding evidence implicating al Qaeda, triggering unprecedented street demonstrations outside Popular Party headquarters here and in other major cities on the eve of Sunday's elections.
And these:
Others said their votes reflected both a lack of confidence in Spain's intelligence and security services, which failed to detect warning signals that the attack was imminent, and a lack of trust in Aznar, who has been accused of manipulating and selectively using intelligence information for political purposes.
And these:
"All the negative elements of his political personality were shown at this stage and the election became a plebiscite against Aznar," said Antonio Lorsa, a University of Madrid political scientist. "People felt one cannot trust this party and this man."
Of these five paragraphs - Varela Ortega's and the four that offer alternative explanations of the Spanish elections - guess which one is being regurgitated around all the right-wing websites as evidence of "the mindset" of the Spanish people? (And keep reading to find out what all these articles and weblogs aren't saying about their source, Jose Varela Ortega, and the think-tank that he works for.)
The other four paragraphs, the ones you won't hear about, cite polls, demonstrations, historically documented scandals, named sources, and actual voter testimony, not anonymous spin. And what do they tell us? That Spaniards initially supported Aznar in the face of the terror attacks, until it turned out he was lying about who was responsible.
But that's not the treatment you'll see in Collins' post, where the Post article miraculously confirms that Spaniards "failed to get that memo," where it somehow establishes that appeasement alone motivated them. An update gives a very similar treatment to a Guardian editorial, heaping them with all the old conservative invective about "moral equivalency" and even "Jew-baiting" quite out of proportion to what the editorial actually says. I don't think the Guardian's references to the Israel-Palestine conflict are particularly relevant, but is a direct response to an equally blunt Israeli editorial really "Jew-baiting"? This label seems to bear no relation to the editorial, but it does allow Collins to smear war opponents with the taint of anti-Semitism.
And from that charge, we're only one quick invocation of Godwin's Law - quick! too late! - from the usual fustian rhetoric, and some nice little Neville Chamberlain clip art:
No, you know what? The glib act can only get me so far. Disgusting fifth-column appeasement of the type the Guardian and its fellow travelers are now embracing--encouraged, wouldn't you know it, by those Spanish election results that are supposed not to mean what we hawks think they mean--needs to be called out directly. Appeasers, Jew-baiters, America-bashers, liars, fascism apologists, moral equivocators, quislings, I'm calling you out. I will not stand for Paz In Our Time.
Fascinating, isn't it? Anybody who opposes Aznar, or Bush, or the war in Iraq, or pretty much anything else Collins dislikes is compared to communists ("fellow travelers") and to Neville Chamberlain in the same breath. (Funny how rarely the hawks mention that Chamberlain was a Conservative PM, a leader by inheritance, the son and brother of prominent British politicians - in other words, a fellow not unlike Dubya.)
The most interesting bit, though, is the reference to the "fifth column." I'll assume Collins is making a shrewd allusion to Spanish history here - and not an unintentional one - but the reference is worth explicating. The term "fifth column" originally referred to Francisco Franco's Falanges, right-wing sympathizers who would supposedly sabotage Madrid from within while four columns of a fascist army advanced from without. So now, apparently, any British leftists who oppose Bush's war with Iraq - or, even worse, any Spaniards who reject a right-wing candidate in favor of a socialist one, via a democratic election - are fascist saboteurs. Nicely done.
But it's not over yet! Because you know who really was a Falange? A bona fide fifth-columnist working for Franco during the Spanish Civil War? Antonio Garrigues y Diaz Caabate, who was the father of Antonio Garrigues Walker, who is the president of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation, which employs noted Spanish-mindset-diviner Jose Varela Ortega. In other words, Collins is calling fascist anyone whose beliefs contradict the spin of the guy who works for the think-tank run by the son of the genuine fascist. Now, I don't believe the sins of the father are visited on the son - I don't know how much Garrigues Walker's or Varela Ortega's views differ from those of Garrigues Sr. - but I think this pretty strongly suggests which way the Ortega y Gasset Foundation's political biases fall. This is the one guy out of the whole article whom the bloggers choose to trust?
What bothers me about all this is not the hawks' political views - they are, of course, entitled to them - but the constant and deliberate rewriting of the truth that they're marshalling to defend them. Never mind the name-calling: if the cause is so noble, if its values are so obvious, why do its defenders need to distort their own sources?
Happily, people don't always get away with such flagrant revisions. Jose Maria Aznar and his "Popular" Party (now with obligatory sneer quotes) tried to rewrite a terrorist atrocity for their own crass political gain, and the Spanish people threw them out of office for it.
And well they should have. Just imagine what would have happened if our own President had exploited a national tragedy for his political advantage; if he had lied about the parties responsible so as to further his own career; or, to follow these lies to their next logical steps, if he had started a war with another country entirely, and if he had played dress-up soldier on an aircraft carrier so that war could provide a campaign photo opportunity, and if he had used footage of the dead as a campaign endorsement, and...
Oh, wait.
Shit.
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