Capitalism chose fascism over democracy in Spain

[yurbud]

It's difficult to pick just four paragraphs from this one since it puts our government's support of fascism in Europe in long historical perspective.

The sad thing is, if our government was actually interested in the safety of the American people, and even access to strategic natural resources, it could do so much more cheaply than the current policy of seeking corporate advantage and increasing profit margins at the expense of Americans and citizens of other countries.

If we need what another country has so badly, we simply let them pick the price, and treat the oil and other extraction industries as tools of our interests not AS our interests, and make those companies subserviant to both our government and that of the country they are digging and drilling in.

These institutions are also ignoring the capitalist forces at work in the U.S. that nurtured and financed fascism from its infancy in Italy and Germany and supported Franco's seizure of power and abduction of Spain. Without the corporate support for German and Italian fascism, Spanish fascism would have been stillborn or handily defeated. Instead, the U.S. had to contend with three fascist countries and a world war that killed at least 50 million people.

The Lincoln Brigade was supported by the Soviet Union and whatever small donations the global working class could contribute during the Depression. It took three years and the money and support of fascists from all over the "free world" to defeat democratic Spain. The U.S. was officially neutral, but the purpose of that so-called neutrality was actually to support the Spanish fascists. U.S. corporations easily subverted the two U.S. neutrality acts of 1937 by using their global network of subsidiaries, affiliates, boards of directors, banks and direct control over U.S. extraterritorial production as conduits to send money and war materiel to the Spanish fascists. GM, Ford, Standard Oil, IBM and others had manufacturing plants in Nazi Germany. It isn't possible that the supporters of the neutrality acts didn't know this. Enough of them were sympathetic to fascism to allow the laws--irrelevant to Franco's supply lines but not to the desperate Republicans--to pass. When war materiel was sent directly from the U.S to the Spanish fascists, U.S. corporations had the help of Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State under President FDR, the "Saint," to cover for them (see this excellent piece by Vincent Navarro).

The principle myth for explaining U.S. support of fascism was fear of the Soviet Union and the spread of "repressive" communism. In fact, the only criterion the U.S. has ever had for supporting or rejecting any regime or policy is whether it would welcome, if not foster capitalist profit needs.

[denverbill]

1. And it's still that way today.

When China didn't allow private property ownership, they were shunned and demonized by our 'leaders'. Now that they do allow it, nobody really gives a damn about their human rights policies or anything else, only about doing business with them. That's why we are running a $250 billion trade deficit with them. China seemlessly shifted from authoritarian/socialist to authoritarian/capitalist. It's still the same one-party repressive dictatorship, but now, they allow capitalists to make money, so everythings a-OK.

Contrast that with the popularly elected Hugo Chavez, who is moving Venezuala to the left.

Our government doesn't give a shit about democracy, only capitalism.

[HeresyLives]

2. Is there a link?

[yurbud]

3. LINK:

http://counterpunch.com/krales04072008.html

[HeresyLives]

4. Many thanks!

[yurbud]

5. de nada