• PugJesusOP
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      410 months ago

      Didn’t realize the three years of the Spanish Civil War were responsible for ten years of war for the rest of the West.

      And unironically, yes. Every revolution is preceded by a hundred failed revolutions against unjust power structures. I’m not an ancom, but I’m also not under the impression that the immensely fucked current state of society is as good as it can get. I’ll break out an old Twain quote that I do so adore:

      There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

        • PugJesusOP
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          210 months ago

          It’s a little disingenuous to believe every failed revolution contributes to the one successful good outcome.

          Contributes? No. But you don’t know which attempt will succeed until the whole conflict is over. That’s not an excuse to say “Well, this will be bloody, so maybe instead we just stay under feudal authority.” You can’t do that; you have to press forward.

          The Spanish Civil War oversimplified basically boils down to this: one side, the nationalists, that supported the military regime and the Nazis and provided supplies and mainly logistics for them, and one side who decided it was better to throw their bodies into the machine until it stopped turning. The side with the Nazis won the war. Since the Nazis were at war on multiple fronts, there few allies were key in prolonging the conflict and defending Germany.

          … I don’t know that I follow this? Nazi Germany wasn’t at war, for all intents and purposes, until '39, by which point the Spanish Civil War was wrapping up. The Republican side didn’t try to ‘throw bodies into the machine until it stopped turning’, the war was highly contested and anyone’s game for the first two years.