I first became familiar with Soldier of Fortune magazine and its affiliated publishing house, Paladin Press, at a local newsstand which sold an array of publications unimaginable to anyone born in the 21st century. That was the sort of place where kids and adults alike went to acquire not only unusual publications in their niche area of interest, but often to find out that such things even existed, much like the fabled record stores of old, where an oft-smug hipster would gatekeep access to his “secret knowledge,” or if he liked you, which often meant “could make money off of you without you being too annoying,” would pull out a catalog from an obscure or foreign record label and order you a cassette or disc for double to triple the standard rate, which you would get in four to six weeks. I’ll never forget sending the equivalent of $67 in 2026 dollars in this fashion for a Japanese edition of an album by some band that I had heard on a college radio station, forgetting about it because it took so long to arrive, and then listening to an album that mostly sucked.

SOF, which not coincidentally evoked special operations in its acronym as well as its symbology, was founded by adventurer and Vietnam veteran Robert K. Brown, whose hilariously titled autobiography, I Am Soldier of Fortune: Dancing with Devils, recently fell into my mitts while trolling a used book store - the only kind of book store worth visiting these days. Published in 2013, the book is half-memoir, half recycled SOF articles strung together into a narrative structure.

That isn’t a dismissal. Brown expands upon some of SOF’s most infamous articles, which serve as his confession as to what SOF really was. He admits that a lot of their activities in Afghanistan, particularly the capture, documentation, and evaluation of various Soviet small arms, were conceived of by the U.S. government, and that 5.45mm ammunition, AGS-17 grenade launcher, RPG-18, anti-personnel mines, and so on were ultimately smuggled to Defense Intelligence Agency officials in the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan or back to the U.S. Machine gun expert Peter Kokalis’ extended missions in El Salvador, where he served as an actual mercenary, not fighting but getting the government’s small arms maintenance and training programs whipped into shape, were in service to U.S. foreign policy. Excepting the 70s African Bush Wars content - which never seemed to earn Brown or his guys any grief from the U.S. government - despite the posturing and “the gummint isn’t tough enough on the damn commies” rhetoric, the SOF schtick soon became in lock-step with the ends the post-Carter administrations sought. The memoir is an excellent encapsulation of Cold War gonzo journalism and war tourism, which includes Brown’s decades of manipulation of the Army Reserve system to finally go to the SF Q School and get a command in Vietnam. Don’t be fooled by the SOF reputation - Brown doesn’t take himself too seriously, owns his status as a scoundrel, and hints quite a few times that not only were various famous figures he cites such as the legendary Mitch Werbell III quite likely con artists, he himself probably deserves the label more than a little bit.

Brown speaks quite candidly of his youthful naivete and thirst for adventure which drove him first into the military, then dalliances with Cuban revolutionaries while in grad school, and, frankly, moronic credulity which he was lucky to endure most likely because he was a true believer in a time of true believers. Angels protect the young and foolish, and his entre into the reporting and publishing biz in pre-revolutionary Cuba is both entertaining as well as a baseline for the rest of his career - a skilled bullshit artist who was willing to go anywhere and talk to anyone where he saw the hint of excitement and adventure. Honestly, it’s quite inspiring, and Brown makes fun of himself quite a bit, confessing here and there that he was usually being taken for a ride by more savvy operators.

I’ve parsed and decoded a great example of the sort of true con which Brown’s retelling confesses - Soldier of Fortune’s activities in Thailand during the early 80s framed as either Prisoner of War report investigations or on the ground anti-communist reporting. He details this topic across seven chapters, the first of which is appropriately titled Cons, Psychics and An Aborted Search For POWs; fellow olds will recall the steady beat of Prisoner of War sightings and associated drama as grifters, dreamers and politicians exploited the hopes and prayers of the families of American soldiers, aviators, and “volunteers” who were never confirmed dead in the Second Indochina War. Bo Gritz, Ross Perot, and other characters became common names on the nightly news for their private activities surrounding the POW Question while politicians such as John McCain, himself a former POW, put the kibosh on any genuine government investigations being released to the public. Laos made for a rich field of exploitation due to the challenges the People’s Army of Vietnam and their vestigial Pathet Lao puppet government had in controlling many stretches of their vast borders. The Republic of Viet Nam’s refugee flow surged with the collapse of the government in 1975, but before long slowed to a trickle, while Thailand’s camps along the Mekong river border with Laos saw a steady ebb and flow of the population for decades before they were finally defunded and shut down well beyond the opening of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in 1994 to both investment and outsiders.

The SOF team established two “safe houses” (you can roll your eyes) in Thailand as bases of operations - a house in the city of Chiang Rai in the farthest northeast reaches of Thailand, in the territory of the old kingdom of Lanna, always more akin to the Lao kingdoms, with whom their nobility and rulers frequently intermarried and often paid tribute, than the, to be generous, syncretic southern Siamese kingdoms, who subsumed them via vassalage, then paperwork, in the late eighteenth century after their liberation from Burmese rule.

The Bangkok outpost served, as Brown suggests, as partying and whoring central, as well as a diplomatic station which could be easily reached by politicians, fundraisers, mercs, volunteers, etc. via international flights. Brown hints at several points that his Thai Border Patrol Police operative - one of good old Bill Lair’s PARU boys and the chief front for the CIA in Thai government - essentially set the whole operation up - in my opinion as a heat sink to direct the energy of the American yahoos in what would be a harmless direction for Thai relations with their neighbors. The Bangkok outpost, which drifted from a zero-star hotel to a penthouse on the edge of the notorious Pat Pong district, made a handy stopover for Brown’s various globetrotting adventures, and the “anticommunist resistance movements” on the Thai border with Laos, or Cambodia, or Burma always made for good stories for those who didn’t know any better. SOF famously delivered hard evidence of PAVN use of Soviet chemical weapons in Laos in the form of a sample delivered via helicopter, the “yellow rain mycotoxin,” yet in 1991 this was cited in a Senate hearing by an intelligence analyst as a high-profile bit of government-fabricated misinformation.

The Chiang Rai outpost made the most sense for a “really real” effort to operate in the highlands of northern Laos, where the Hmong guerrilla resistance could alternately scam the roundeyes for funds and arms, or theoretically infiltrate the SF vets being financed by SOF for what would certainly be an ill-fated 180km trek to a site that was controlled by the Chinese army with “Hmong guerrillas trained in China,” probably Chinese operatives variably monitoring or scamming the SOF guys. One of the villains of Brown’s take is an American born in Burma into a missionary family who scammed SOF out of a steady stream of cash with promises of armed Lahu tribal guerrillas, a drug lab raid, extractions of American POWs, etc. all while it was later learned that Brown was renting out his family home in Chiang Rai for a small fortune! Very few people understand that “ethnic minorities” divided by what the libertarians would call an imaginary line simply do dirt on either side of that line for their own reasons, and could earn themselves a lot of leeway from the Thai or Chinese governments in this fashion. While language barriers were a huge issue for Americans in SE Asia, language comprehension is almost irrelevant compared to the inability of the SOF guys to frame a conceptual headspace for the people they were interacting with.

I promised above that I would show my work for identifying the SOF “Liberty City” base in Laos as a true con, i.e. if they actually penetrated Laos where they would have done so, based upon Brown’s documentation. It’s more likely that this base was entirely in Thailand, which would be par for the course for the Thai, but if everyone was telling the truth, including the local handlers stringing the SOF lads along for cash money, this is it:

The team refocused on our primary mission at the moment: infiltrating into Laos to the desolate village of Muong Sai, some 160 kilometers distant from our FOB ‘81, or “Liberty City,” where our agents had placed four Americans only several months before.

After an all-night stay at the safe house [rented in Chang Rai, the northeasternmost city in Thailand, see map below - KD]… [we] began the brutal trek into Laos, splashing through rice paddies, up gently rising slopes and then up the rain-slicked rocky trails for the last nine miles into Laos. Most of the walking was up 60-degree inclines with only slight respites from the agonizing climb.

…Zabitosky recommended that the site’s location be moved several kilometers farther into Laos from the original choice. Some of our troops had reconned the area, and its higher ground coupled with its panoramic view of the Mekong River made it a strategic site.

…Our go-to guy, a Mr. Dieng, who was no doubt with Thai intelligence, had secured road clearances enabling free access to and from our Liberty City training site….

…we headed toward Laos, some seven kilometers away across the rice fields, and up into the mountains.

…KMT (Kuomintang) soldiers, stationed in strategic locations, glared at us suspiciously…. The KMT forces were used by the Thais in some places as border pickets…. In return, the KMT was provided limited support, resupply and medical evacuation capabilities.

…Crossing the Laotian “border fence,” a single strand of rusty barbed wire into the eerie, wild, lawless hills was a creepy, anti-climactic non-event.

…I could see the camp more clearly in the daylight. It was built of bamboo and thatch and it sat on high ground above the Mekong River.

Chiang Rai is directly south by southeast of the centerpoint of the “Golden Triangle,” where the Ruak River - the physical border between Burma and Thailand in this region - flows into the Mekong river, which serves as the physical border between Burma and Laos northwards, and Laos and Thailand to the south, everywhere except for a point about five kilometers southeast of the Lao border town of Houayxay, capitol of Bokeo Province, at 20.168430, 100.579126, where for ancient reasons the “imaginary line” runs from north to south along a ridgeline down to Phu Suan Sai, where it follows the meandering Hueang River east by northeast - until it flows back into the Mekong. Every point south of this dogleg in the Hueang River, encompassing the remaining territory west of the Mekong but still within Lao territory, is in Sainyabuli Province, until recently more commonly (but less phonetically accurately) transcribed as “Sayaboury” and thus baked into my head. That narrow sliver illustrated above where the SOF boys may have set up their base is in Bokeo Province. Quite amusingly there are now quite a few tourist vistas along the Thai-Lao border running along this ridge, whereas in the 70s and 80s it would have been ill-advised to venture here without the approval of Thai PARU forces or perhaps the KMT drug traffickers I mean militia.

Sainyabuli Province is way too far from Chiang Rai, and requires far too deep of an incursion to overlook the Mekong to make any sense, but that 10km stretch of Bokeo Province illustrated above has got to be the place - again, if everyone was telling the truth. None of the other locations make any sense, and I must confess that, at first, I thought they were full of shit or were credulously repeating a con of the Thai, but I think this is the spot where the true con played out. The Thai forced them to end the scheme after a cover story in Soldier of Fortune bragged about it, which serves as all of the evidence I need that the “mission” was never a POW rescue, but safe adventure posing with weapons in cammies with exotic foreigners, selling magazines, self-promotion, and perhaps way down the line, keeping the POW subject in the forefront of the American public discourse, if not simply cashing in on it.

All in all, this is an entertaining read chock full of gonzo journalism, but not one that you can take too seriously. The editing frankly stinks, and I imagine that Brown paid Vann Spencer, apparently an SOF staffer with no other bylines, by the hour to take transcription. I’ll also confess that the above is likely the most scrutiny paid to anything Robert K. Brown wrote since the mid-80s. I Am Soldier of Fortune is a snapshot in time, at the crest of the Cold War, and worth a peruse from the used book rack if you ever read the magazine, but it reminds me of that old saying, “Never meet your heroes.” As a friend of mine who served with a USMC LAR unit put it, while we used to run around together in camos in the woods as kids and trade Paladin Press books, “SOF magazine is for Hunter S. Thompson readers - pure creative writing.”

KD

Selection bias is a thing, but whenever I encounter another male 1990s literature student in the wild, he is almost always one of us, or else is a childless lock-step prog libtard. “In the Wild,” nobody seems to care about the Important Writers as upheld by university creative writing programs, and by the mid-00s those programs pivoted hard away from celebrating the White-presenting heterosexual male writing program alum and into Intersectionality. The old joke about the creative writing professor’s novel about a creative writing professor considering committing adultery is a classic for good reason. Creative Writing Program Content is a genre of its own - emotive, rambling navel-gazing that all goes back to James Joyce’s Ulysses, although there are good authors who came out of those programs (ahem), with the caveat that their readability and relevance is inversely proportional to their adherence to many of the standards extolled by the instructors.

I invoke that world, a world utterly irrelevant to nearly all actual readers and genuine book enjoyers, as the novel upon which the film I will be sort-of-reviewing here, Motherless Brooklyn, is an exemplar of the type. Its script is, sort of, based on the Most Important Novel of 1999 (after which culture ended)! Funny, I didn’t think I’d heard of it. The author, Jonathan Lethem, was among the last celebrated White-presenting heterosexual male mischlings in the mainstream literature world before it became completely obsessed with all things Intersectional. I couldn’t recall being aware of the book, or its author, until meditating upon it carefully and realizing that, right at the time when I “should” have been paying attention, I filed it away in my brain as typical Creative Writing Program junk. Reading excerpts from the novel, I see an old enough to know better creative writing student deep in imagining a literature-drenched interpretation of a person with Tourette’s. Nonetheless it was deemed Important, as such things were until the most important detail was the identity of the author and not their work.

Edward Norton bought the film rights to the novel in 1999, and while he kept the basic premise of a young man with Tourette’s investigating the murder of his boss, he projected it backward into the New York of the late 1950s, and served as writer, director, and star. The protagonist’s boss evolved from a mobster into a crooked detective murdered after becoming embroiled in a blackmail plot against famed urban planner Robert Moses, also recast as an Anglo-coded Trumpian Exposition Mode character portrayed by Alec Baldwin who loves RAPE, but you see, when you’re wealthy and powerful they let you do it.

Sound ridiculous? I was able to get through it because I was a captive audience - I had read half of Robert K. Brown’s I Am Soldier of Fortune to burn up most of a cross-continent flight, but I needed to turn off my brain, and maybe sleep, so I watched this out of morbid curiosity as I am a film noir and 20th Century pulp detective novel enjoyer. In sum, the additional two plus hours of not very exciting twists and turns become unmoored from the story we were given as framing in the first twenty minutes, but it’s honestly filmed quite beautifully. The period styling is done very well, though the color design is incredibly heavy-handed and had me rolling my eyes. The Thom Yorke-Wynton Marsalis soundtrack ties everything together more effectively than the storytelling, so that by the time it ends you have been on a ride that is neither satisfying nor worthy of the audio-visual effort which dragged the whole mess over the line.

Fellow olds may recall that Edward Norton collaborated with King of Cringe Black Cinema Spike Lee in 2002 on 25th Hour, in which Norton portrays A Typical White Man, a racist who craves Latinas while casually dropping the gamer word, as one does. All I remember from that movie was its Confront Your Racisms, You White Debbil message, along with a super cringe Twin Towers representation in pillars of light while someone played a twinkly piano because Spike Lee is incapable of expressing anything with the least bit of nuance. Gee, I wonder why?

Yes, Ed Norton wants us to confront our racisms, and Motherless Brooklyn does this in an incredibly heavy-handed way, because Everything We Know Is Built On White Supremacy, Including Parks and Bridges. Now, the Robert Moses story, whether told through legend or by Robert Caro in The Power Broker is quite interesting and worth exploring, and the manner in which his machinations are dismissed in this film as Simple Power Hungry Wacisms is incredibly reductionist and boring. The drama in which Miles Davis I mean Trumpet Man as played by Omar I mean Michael K. Williams proclaims Ed Norton’s character to be not only One Of the Good Ones but also a Cold Ass Honky because of his Tourettes-induced bebop moment was so stupid that I fell asleep.

The “relationship” Ed Norton has with yet another high yella in this film is absurd and doesn’t really say what he thinks he’s saying. All in all, the film is essentially a 1980s made for TV movie plot with Tourette’s slathered atop it, given a decent production budget, shot beautifully and edited with a very good soundtrack. There is one very brief moment, early in the film, where the spirit of the original novel shows up, otherwise “Brooklyn” is like Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op possessed of negrophilia and a photographic memory, getting KOed with a blackjack, slugging down booze to take away the pain, and moving on to the next scene where someone would blurt out something that got us to the next scene.

Speaking of high yella, this chick’s name is, ahem, “Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha-Raw,” of course raised by a white mother. Some of her COVID-era “art”:

OK, fine KD, you watched a bad movie on a flight, who cares? This isn’t merely a bad movie I watched on a flight - it is a perfect representation of peak Woke, a time receding into the rear view mirror, though not everyone is aware of that yet. There is a new zeitgeist, the vibe has shifted, etc. I wouldn’t have watched this in the theater because it’s a movie about how Donald Trump and Wypipo are bad, but the important thing is that this was An Important Movie, at the crest of the wave, buoyed with huge names - Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Willem Defoe, Gugu M’bingbong Dingdong… all the greats. This was Bruce Willis’ last theatrical release; the $26 million budget was well-spent when it came to style, but not substance, and the box office returned a mere $9 million domestically. Peak Woke doesn’t represent a new height of libtardery, but rather the end of its dominance and its race toward its irrelevance. This would probably have been a huge movie in the 80s or 90s. However, the Fatigue had set in; blacks aren’t cool anymore. As a matter of fact, a plurality of people have figured out that they never were, at least not in the mean. Familiarity breeds contempt. Libtards owned.

KD

The details are still coming hot and heavy, but on April 21, 2026, newly appointed Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama had returned an 11-count indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center or SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

My position, after years of analyzing the SPLC and examining these charges: the SPLC had grown accustomed to the protections it has been furnished for decades by legacy media and government institutions and became very lazy in its practices, reflecting its growth and the uncontrolled expansion of its mission in the Obama era. Say what you will about the con artists who founded and developed the SPLC, they were highly competent in their roles. As the money poured in, and the monstrosity at 400 Washington Avenue swelled like a tick, the Center clearly ran into a competency crisis, as the more valuable human capital who knew the play ceased to be involved in day to day activities. The late 20teens SPLC scandals, which surprised nobody, led to a rush to the door by the more worldly jewish members and the elevation of true incompetents who didn’t understand the subversive nature of their activity, which necessitates a level of discretion and criminal cunning to survive.

Let’s take a tour of the charges and supporting evidence and contextualize them within the frame of the SPLC’s mission, not the doomer interpretation that this is all done at the behest of israel for some nonsensical reason.

The Founding of the SPLC and its Charter

Let’s see if any of the following details trip your bullshit detectors. The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 by Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. and Joseph Levin, Jr., law partners who smelled financial opportunity in the field of civil rights litigation. Older biographical blurbs describing Dees are comical caricatures drafted for an audience of northern libtards and elderly jews who hear the clip-clop of Cossacks around every corner. He is sometimes described as the son of a tenant farmer, or “hailing from a family of tenant farmers,” although more in-depth biographies explain that his grandfather was a prosperous land owner and operator of a regional cotton mill. Indeed, for a Certain Audience, it’s pointed out that Morris Seligman Dees, Sr. was named by that same grandfather after “a good jewish friend,” sometimes described as a prominent Alabama rabbi. Are we really going to believe that the son of a wealthy landowner and regional cotton mill operator, named for a prominent rabbi, was a tenant farmer? African American, please.

Most tellingly, per The Progressive,

Except for the letter signed by Rabbi Baylinson, Dees has rarely used his middle name. Ira Burnim, a lawyer formerly on the Center’s staff, says, “Morris used his middle name in mailings to Jewish ZIP codes. The intent, I assume, was to boost returns.”

Dees, Jr. earned a law degree from the University of Alabama in 1960, and went on to make several million dollars in the direct mail and publishing business while also maintaining a law practice. He bought out partner Millard Fuller for $1 million in 1964 (!!) and then sold the business in 1969 for an undisclosed sum to Times Mirror, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times, a move which he credited to “a night of soul-searching” at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport. A successful - and lucrative - lawsuit which led to the desegregation of the Montgomery YMCA, is said to have inspired the founding of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and solidified its method - destroying non-progressive organizations through highly lucrative litigation, not criminal courts, i.e. overwhelming them with court costs and court-mandated financial penalties. Officially, the Center became, ahem:

…a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.

Dees, Jr. served as the Center’s chief trial attorney, while Levin, Jr. was the center’s legal director from 1971-76; the latter became the center’s CEO in 1996, and after 2003 its president emeritus.

What types of organizations did the SPLC destroy via huge civil settlements during this time? Various wings of the FBI-occupied skeletal remains of the KKK; Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations; and the bank accounts of several counties and municipalities in the South. Dees’ fundraising efforts for his litigious activities were conducted in the same fashion as the business which made his original fortune: direct mail, with scary media copy and glossy one-pagers which could be clipped by earnest libtards to help in the fight against mean evil racist cartoon characters just like they seent on tha TeeVee. In 1981 the Center pivoted to what would soon be its second biggest business behind fundraising - an intelligence laundering service for smearing anybody the libtard establishment chose to target as a “hate group.”

Per the Current Affairs magazine article The Southern Poverty Law Center is Everything That’s Wrong with Liberalism, which I interestingly found in the Congressional record as a PDF:

(Sometimes all of this became downright grotesque. In the 1980s the SPLC sued the Klan over the lynching of Michael Donald, and won a $7 million verdict for Donald’s mother. The Klan, however, had by this time diminished to almost nonexistence. Its sole asset was a warehouse that was sold for $55,000, which was all Donald’s mother got. She apparently used a large portion of this to pay back an interest-free loan that the SPLC itself had extended her. Afterward, the SPLC began using photos of Michael Donald’s corpse in its fundraising letters, raising $9 million off the case. Donald’s mother evidently saw none of this money, though when she died barely a year later Morris Dees was quoted in her obituary praising her bravery.)

Indeed, it is telling that in 1986, the entire legal staff of the SPLC, excluding Dees, “resigned,” as the organization made the shift from “traditional civil rights work” to “fighting right-wing extremism.” In other words, lawsuits are hard work, and the evidentiary level necessary for even sloppy, dramatic civil court work is far higher than political fundraising.

By 1988, as reported in The Progressive’s excellent article How the Southern Poverty Law Center Got Rich Fighting the Klan, the Center was nothing more than a lucrative business, which Dees openly admitted; it had made its top staff wealthy, and brought in more than double its operating costs for so long their permanent endowment had grown to over $22 million - by 2020 that endowment topped $800 million. From that same article:

Deborah Ellis, one of many attorneys who have left over the years because of disagreements with Dees, recalled, “I felt that Morris was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on. The Klan is no longer one of the South’s biggest problems—not because racism has gone away, but because the racists simply can’t get away with terrorism any more.”

Ruby Ridge, Waco, and… the NRA?

By the 1990s the SPLC was leveraging its reputation as a neutral civil rights organization to brazenly slander partisan opponents of all types. Here’s how the Second Amendment Foundation put it:

It has become relatively easy for SPLC to marginalize gun owners and gun-rights advocates. If someone opposes the government infringing upon their Second Amendment rights, they’re opposed to the government, which makes them antigovernment, in SPLC’s view. The nonprofit always adds extremist to any negative label like a dose of seasoning, so now the victim is transformed into an antigovernment extremist. Once labeled, SPLC quickly adds them to their Hatewatch list and publicly compares them to real antigovernment extremists. Within minutes the poor victim is associated with Klansman, Nazis and actual terrorists, such as Timothy McVeigh.

This was achieved through the development of a staff of journalists and “researchers” who couldn’t meet the low standards of a news room but thrived in the libtard NGO space due to having the right grudges and few scruples. From newsletters in the 80s and 90s to their ever-expanding website in the twenty-first century, the SPLC became a “source” for western governments and has been quite obviously used to launder Five Eyes intelligence org material. Additionally, since the 80s the SPLC had been “placing sympathizers into Klan groups for the purpose of gathering information,” which quite obviously highlights the potential for agents provocateur.

How does it work? Someone with an existing relationship with the Center provides information to be published on the website in the style as quoted above. Organs in the originating country then cite the respected SPLC website. An example from 2001:

In an atmosphere of 'fear and despair,' extra-parliamentary and electoral fascism is making a comeback across Europe.

The Center for Immigration Studies explained in 2010 that Stopping ‘Hate’ Is Really about Stopping Debate. The leftist and conservatard tendencies in articles from this era to Lean Into The White Liberal Hypocrisy is cringe, and fascinatingly, the clever observations of jewish former associates as seen in the articles from the late 80s and early 90s are nowhere to be seen, as that could be confusing in the post-2001 environment! Why is that relevant when discussing the SPLC? A huge amount of those “white” SPLC associates don’t consider themselves White. Internet denizens of our stripe will never forget seeing this chart behind jewish senior fellow Mark Potok’s head in his Montgomery, AL SPLC office in the 2018 documentary Alt-Right: Age of Rage.

MeToo, But For an NGO?

In March 2019, at the absolute peak of the First Trump Derangement Era, the Center’s coffers were swelling and its staff had grown by more than 200, including the execrable “researcher” Michael E. Hayden, now an Adjunct Professor of Arch-Faggotry at Hempstead, New York’s Hofstra University (AJAB).

SUDDENLY, out of seemingly nowhere, the SPLC fired founder Morris Dees for undisclosed reasons. His profile disappeared from the SPLC website. In a statement, the SPLC announced it would be bringing in an “outside organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices.” Some articles mentioned MeToo due to the contemporary news cycle. In The New Yorker, Bob Moser, a former SPLC staffer who takes pains every few paragraphs to remind the reader that he enjoys cock, wrote in The Reckoning of Morris Dees that the Center’s BlackAndBrownVoices demanded it for a variety of reasons, using the Huwhite label to obfuscate certain details:

One day later, the Los Angeles Times and the Alabama Political Reporter reported that Dees’s ouster had come amid a staff revolt over the mistreatment of nonwhite and female staffers, which was sparked by the resignation of the senior attorney Meredith Horton, the highest-ranking African-American woman at the center. A number of staffers subsequently signed onto two letters of protest to the center’s leadership, alleging that multiple reports of sexual harassment by Dees through the years had been ignored or covered up, and sometimes resulted in retaliation against the women making the claims.

Quoth Wikipedia for the relevant timeline of this “staff revolt”:

A week later, President Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda Brownstein announced their resignations amid the internal upheaval. The associate legal director Meredith Horton quit, alleging concerns regarding workplace culture. Cohen said, “Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them.”

Cohen’s pronouncement went on:

“We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse—truth, justice, equity, and inclusion,” Cohen wrote. “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”

Do you notice any patterns?

Interestingly, Mark Potok’s LinkedIn dates his departure from the SPLC in late 2017. Something was clearly brewing. The official story, that BlackandBrownVoices were ascendant and, to reflect that, Karen Baynes-Dunning would become the First Black SPLC Board Chair Hooray, a board which had been hand-picked and enriched by ringmaster Dees since 1971, doesn’t pass scrutiny. Board Chair Bennett Grau, Goldman Sachs alum and hedge fund manager and business partner of Chelsea Clinton’s husband, yes they both are, remained on the board, leaving it 50% kosher, with a dusting of chocolate and an Asian attorney added for flayva. The relevant board members are, as always, representatives of global finance and progressive lawyers, but now there’s only one Whitey. Of the upper staff, the ethnic Bust-Out is obvious, with the vast majority of legacy staff having left by 2023.

Was there really a need for a “shake-up” over BlackAndBrownVoices, maybe some naughty touching? Or was something else looming?

Note above that I’d mentioned finding PDF copies of some of these older SPLC-critical articles in a Congressionally-managed cache. To wit, the URL:

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU08/20220217/114425/HHRG-117-JU08-20220217-SD014.pdf

What happened in 2019 that led the “lavishly compensated leadership” of the SPLC to jump ship at the pinnacle of their power? Was it really just a “staff revolt?”

Someone in Congress was getting ready to strike the SPLC in at least mid-2022. Why?

The 2026 Charges Brought by the Department of Justice

One detail that is missed by those who don’t regularly deal with regulations which govern aspects of their daily lives is that in most industries, from the business entities to the individual employees, laws mandate that everyone is responsible for reporting and preventing criminal activity and fraud, waste and abuse. Banking and health care are exemplars of these rules, as a vast array of regulations make any interaction that draws attention as a potential to likely crime a mandatory reportable event to a regulatory body. The lowliest bank clerk may face penalties or criminal charges for failing to escalate a regulatory issue, and in an era of automation would most definitely be flagged in association with a questionable transaction. The business and the employee both are required to ask specific questions about accounts and transactions which are then reported to a government agency if they are, or are potentially, non-compliant.

There is a mantra in this world that an account holder can damn themselves with a single word.

Back to the indictments. In 2016, strange banking activity led unnamed Bank-1, an FDIC-insured financial institution, to inquire with the account holder of a number of accounts as to why in the fuck they were engaging in what appeared to be classic money laundering behavior. From the indictment:

This is a big oopsie. Lying to a bank is a crime in and of itself. Employee-1 and leadership within the SPLC realized that they done fucked up and requested the closure of the bank accounts in question in 2020, and instructed that the money in the fraudulent business accounts be returned to a single, accurately identified account held in the name of the SPLC. Really smart!

In September 2021, to address Bank-1’s investigation, which had by then mapped out all of the SPLC’s sketchy account activity over the years, the president and CEO of the SPLC, as well as the Board Chair, admitted to the Center’s “past” illegal and fraudulent activities, and explicitly listed all of the account operated illegally and fraudulently, and stated that this business had been conducted “for the benefit of the Southern Poverty Law Center operations and operated under the Center’s authority.” Their excuse? “We dindu nuffin an anyways dat shit was an old crime.”

The charges:

1. False Statements to Financial Institutions (18 USC 1014)

The DOJ charged the SPLC with four counts of bank fraud, citing this statute, which prohibits knowingly making false statements to influence a bank. The indictment alleges that SPLC employees:

• Created Shell Companies: Opened accounts under fictitious names such as “Center Investigative Agency,” “Fox Photography,” and “Tech Writers Group.”

• Deceived Banks: Misrepresented the ownership and legitimate business purpose of these accounts to hide the fact that the funds were coming from the SPLC and being paid to informants and the heads of “extremist groups” owned and directed by the SPLC.

2. Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering (18 USC 1956)

The SPLC was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors argue the organization used a multi-step process to “clean” the funds:

• Transferring money from the SPLC to a primary sham account.

• Moving funds to a second sham account.

• Loading the funds onto prepaid cards to be handed off to informants.

The DOJ contends this structure was specifically designed to shield the source of the funds from federal financial monitoring networks.

3. Wire Fraud (18 USC 1956)

The DOJ alleges that the SPLC used electronic communications to execute a scheme to defraud donors. The government argues that by paying informants who were active members of extremist groups, the SPLC was effectively “funding extremism” rather than “dismantling” it as promised in their fundraising materials.

Want more? The very best article on the mechanics of this subject, written by Patrick McKenzie, can be found here. An excerpt:

As Bits about Money has covered frequently previously, the anti-money laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), and related regulatory edifices function in a subtle manner. They do not simply proscribe conduct and rely on perfect enforcement by the financial industry. To achieve the overall objective of stochastically interdicting crime, the regs are designed to force criminals into repeated unpalatable tradeoffs. One is “You can choose making money, or you can choose never interacting with banks, but it is very difficult to choose both.”

We then follow the criminal into the bank. “By the way, lying to a bank is a crime.”

The SPLC’s “Defense”

Interim SPLC CEO Bryan Fair stated that these informants were necessary for intelligence gathering to protect staff following past violence, such as the 1983 firebombing of their headquarters, and that the program had already been discontinued before the indictment.

Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, lept into the fray to attempt to protect the SPLC for the reasons you’d expect.

The “Fs” - the SPLC’s Paid Informants or Operatives

This fiasco is particularly amusing to Real SPLC Watchers out there, the guys and gals tuned into the scam and who understand the Center’s role in the tentacle game, or “Deep State,” or ZOG, whichever you prefer. Let’s examine a few of them, and note for yourself who is involved and who isn’t. “F” indicates a Field informant or operative, paid by the SPLC for various activities.

• F-37 was paid more than $270,000 between 2015 and 2023. F-37 infiltrated the “Unite the Right” leadership chat, attended the event at the direction of the SPLC, and coordinated travel for a handful of attendees. With the leaks and doxing which became endemic to the legitimate, grassroots organizations around this event, the pressure cooker environment prepared by the SPLC and “the Deep State,” as evident in the breathless framing of the journalist’s style guide on the topic and the behavior of law enforcement and local government, it’s quite obvious what the SPLC was up to in this case.

• F-9 worked for the SPLC for 20 years and during that time was paid more than $1 million. F-9 conducted fundraising for the National Alliance, and in 2014 stole more than 25 boxes of documents from the headquarters of another group and copied them for the SPLC before returning them covertly. The materials were then used in an inflammatory article by another SPLC employee. Another F, F-39, was blamed for the theft to cover for the senior informant in exchange for a $6,000 payoff.

• Another F was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, the rebirth of which we can infer was wholly the creation of the SPLC.

• F-27 was paid over $300,000 by the SPLC between 2014 and 2020. He was an officer in the National Socialist Movement, the openly Fed-run Bad Optics guys who courted alt-right podcasters of note in that same era.

• F-30 led the National Socialist Party of America, which seems to have been wholly a creation of him and the SPLC for the purpose of fundraising, for which he was paid more than $70,000 between 2014 and 2016.

• F-11 was a conduit between the SPLC who funneled more than $160,000 to various corny “leaders” of corny movements like the long-defunct KKK.

The Correct Takeaway vs. The Wrong Takeaway

“People” online are attempting to reframe the SPLC indictment to obscure the obvious points and weaken those of us who can go into the world so armed.

What is, or was, the SPLC? First and foremost, the SPLC was a scam which preyed upon libtards for donations and dramatic headlines for goodwill. It then evolved into an attack vector by Whatever You Want To Call Them to attack the entire West - in the United States, Europe, etc. for Globohomo, ZOG, or whichever term you prefer. Money poured in, which most importantly funneled into sinecures for anti-White activists, or donations to foundations, politicians, etc. Their “work output,” which often consisted of government intelligence laundered by the Center, was cited as evidence in legislative hearings and to define talking points via the media.

The Deadly Attack On Charlottesville By Evil Huwhite Supreeemists Which Left One Dead After Being CHALLENGED became a meme largely due to proactive framing by the SPLC and the “leaked” or fabricated talking points of one of their operatives, who was almost certainly involved in the stream of doxing of members of various Southern heritage groups who participated in the event to protest the removal and destruction of monuments to Southern heritage. There were many good people on both sides, yes yes, but several well-paid fringe weirdos were also directed to participate by the SPLC as proven by this indictment, and likely others at the direction of federal handlers as well. I am not saying that the right’s position at the event was illegitimate, or that even a plurality of the participants were bad guys. No! But you can spot the difference between a proud Southerner and a plant from a mile away.

Here’s an example of someone who is probably not a fed or a bot who believes this stuff because they are a low-IQ shut-in immigrant boomer. Don’t despair over these people.

These are useful idiots, few of whom understand that they are reinforcing their enemies’ positions by attacking some of the targets the SPLC paints, but not their ultimate targets which are painted in their proxy framing - Trump, the GOP, White Christians, yes, you, YOU, you White Supreeemist, You.

Again, the SPLC did not “manufacture racism” - the SPLC worked with informants to delegitimize real protests over legitimate issues, manufactured fake groups for fundraising and narrative control, and destroyed people’s lives through smear campaigns, all with the goal of permanently changing America and the West demographically and politically. It is not “doing a heckin’ racisms” to oppose your enemies, and even if it is, who cares?

If banking law violations bring down this hydra, so be it. Prepare to press S.

KD

In sum: buy once, cry once, but you still have to treat shoes and socks as consumables. Find the balance that works for you and just accept that you’re spending your money this way. Good shoes should be a priority, because they last a long time and are your primary interface with the earth - your most-used garment. Most importantly, get over the mental blocks about “what shoes should cost,” because I’d bet that you can afford those “ridiculously overpriced” shoes or boots by contextualizing them vs. a few meals out. It’s 2026, my dude.

I must confess that, in my youth, as I “didn’t care about fashion, maaaan,” I had a somewhat adversarial relationship with clothing, including footwear. I disliked the flashy colors of 90s shoes and, unsurprising for people who know my background, settled on Doc Martens or Danner boots, which I wore for years in my foot-powered wanderings all over North America and Europe. I went through a huge variety of wool and synthetic socks, and developed a loathing for cotton socks which persists to this day. Wool or wool blend for me, thanks, but I hadn’t yet reached the top of the feets mountain, which I will explain below.

The mindset I adopted to overcome my thinkcel autismo on the topic of feets, which would occasionally freeze me into inaction or impulsive purchases just to get out of a store, was to stop thinking of buying clothes as a chore and instead as a search for something that protects me, like a pistol or a dagger. As humans, we developed clothing to protect us from the elements, and since the beginning our garb sent a signal to others: our tribal alignments, social standing, self-worth (whether you like it or not), and so on. Wamens look at your shoes, dude, and they JUDGE - they judge! Ever have a wamen chat you up over your footwear, which their mother taught them to use as an initial assessment of a person? It’s fun when you aren’t wearing janky trash that gives them the ick. “Janky trash? I don’t care about your class signals, maaaan!” Screw that. I learned more about the importance of quality footwear from working class guys, whose happy, protected feets keep them alive. As bipeds, the very worst thing we can do to ourselves - but which people commonly do - is to hurt our feets, so… take care of them. Find what works. Put time in and do some research. And be willing to not buy anything right now, and to go to another store, to do a little more research or get a little weird because these things are consumables.

Snazzy Costs $

In my early 20s I made the mistake, a few times, of buying cheap “dress shoes” that only looked great for about a month and were never very comfortable. Even though I worked in an office where feets were judged, I was extremely reluctant to spend the kind of money necessary to get good shoes which would last, in part due to a mental block from my childhood about “how much shoes should cost.” I was young, and my feet had barely stopped growing; previously having to trade out high quality leather boots when I could barely afford to do so had traumatized me psycho-financially. Like a dog returning to my vomit, I bought a pair of Doc Martens original Oxfords (2026 $160US) when they were on sale and realized that an additional measly $20 improved my office drone life tremendously, though I had to wear very specific socks to be happy, as I had grown into a half-size, which Docs don’t cover. Again, the learning was that, regardless of the thin “dress socks” designs being standard even though they had never worked for me, medium weight wool or wool blend socks solved the problem and I could walk like a maniac in them. I bought another pair of “mid-priced, mid-quality” dress shoes at Nordstrom’s, among the cheapest ones they sold in that upper-mid scale joint, and found that they were dogshit; for shoes which looked appropriate in a suit, and could actually be walked in, I had to double my spend, which brought me to the glorious world of Samuel Hubbard and his Founder Oxfords, which are still a favorite - dressy but still comfortable and walkable (2026 $195-$295US depending on the exact trim). You simply won’t find quality “nice shoes” cheaper than these; I have shoes which cost double to triple this, with leather soles, and while they’re great, they only get worn once or twice a year, while these guys remain my go-to. Notice that they cost as much as a pair of Danner boots? This is a trend that carries over into work boots, cowboy* boots, and so on - unless you are the luckiest person ever, buying once and crying once in the category of footwear means ponying up at least a couple hundo, with every class below that maybe looking nice but not holding up or being comfortable for actual walking, and everything above that being beautiful, or bespoke, hopefully comfortable, but solidly in the “spending as a choice” category.

Footwear as Reaction to Climate

The winds changed and I found myself in a faraway land of red dust, mosquitoes and humidity, where many of the men in my family, neighborhood and church had developed “jungle rot” and lost toenails a single mountain range to the east. I found that wearing my cool guy Danner boots - insulated black leather and steel toe, natch! - was disastrous. I found some steel toed jungle boots, and that made life easy when operating around the truck or equipment, but for general use I wanted to get out of the boots ASAP. That dust gets everywhere - it worked its way into the crevices of all kinds of gear for literally years. The local standard was to remove shoes constantly, and in boots, that blows. The locals wore the cheapest Chinee flip-flops imaginable, but those were insufficient for anything more than going into the shower, or running outside at night to keep some tribal from stealing shit off the truck - lots of those guys have totally jacked up feet, and some can’t even wear shoes because of the, ah, “adaptation.”

I tried Tevas and the more “sneakery” elements on them were rotting almost immediately. I learned from another expat about the pinnacle of trekking sandals and was converted to the Church of the Chaco Z-2 (2026 $95US). The Z-1 lacks the toe strap, which is the real game changer the Z-2 brings for locking your feets into these things, and I have hiked mountains and forded countless streams in these, from Asia to the Pacific Islands to the Rockies. Even a punji stake won’t get you through the Vibram sole! The only circumstance in which these things don’t totally rock is on sandy beaches - then I loosen the straps so that the toe loop isn’t employed, otherwise the grit will rub a strap-shaped wound into Big Toes L and R. It sucks!

Jump forward a decade and I got back into running as, between work and family, I simply lacked the time for hiking regularly, or just trekking all over town, but I wanted to keep active in outdoor cardio beyond the gym. I quickly came to see shoes and socks as consumables, although quality running shoes last, say, 300-500 miles before you should put it into a lower rung of use, i.e. meandering, then mowing the lawn. Failure to heed this rule - the mileage monsters are stricter about it than I am - puts your knees, hips, ankles and feets at risk. As I now run moderate mileage, 15-25 per week at ~5 miles per session, and mix trail and pavement, I go for a midweight, neutral shoe that doesn’t have an extremely thick sole, which I found messed with my stride and thus my shins. I am currently a Brooks Ghost 15 enjoyer (2026 $150US), in part because they do wides, on top of having a perfect toe box for me, and I don’t have to ride those stupid half-sizes. If you are becoming a runner and are looking for strategies to keep your spend in check, once you find a shoe, buy them on Amazon as their “season” ends, and get one or two extra pairs when they’re on sale. They will not be cheaper in the future. Remember: for runners and hikers, shoes and socks are consumables. The shoes in particular rarely last more than four to six months. This is a habit that you learn early and I am thankful for it, because running injuries blow and will prematurely age you… eventually. If you are still toddling around in five year old sneakers as daily drivers, and are feeling a bit squeaky, retire them and thank me later.

Socks Really Tie the Room Together

If you grew up in scouting, or hunting, or did time in the military, you have a totally different understanding of feets, and the sock, of anyone else out there. “Layering” r.e. feets is a concept totally foreign to most people, but all of us who have worn a heavy boot while packing too much gear get it. The undersock, a thinner wicking sock which serves to keep your tootsies dry and protected from excessive friction, and oversock, a thick buffer which bonds the undersock to the boot while cushioning the feets from wear and tear, is a classic approach to heavy boots and are a tactic which works well if you are forced into a half size larger shoes or boots because you need a midsize, wide, or both (like me).

However, when it’s particularly wet, or sticky, your toes rub and chafe against one another, which can become a problem, quickly, or leads to needing to stop, unload your gear, dry them out and change socks, if that’s even possible. Cotton socks are worse than useless in these conditions, and wool and wool blends are better, but don’t really prevent this. What does?

Enter the toe sock.

I’m sure we all knew cute girls who owned a pair of rainbow toe socks because they wanted you to look at their cute little feets. At some point in the 90s or 2000s, functional toe socks became a thing, and the first time I ever saw them was at REI when examining the weird-but-fine-for-other-people Vibram Five Fingers shoes. I don’t like them much - they’re a little too in-touch-with-the-earth for me when out and about - but the glowing reviews from people I respect who were toe sock enjoyers got me to try them about ten years ago. The toe sock was the final piece of the puzzle I was attempting to solve. How?

• The individual “toe sleeves” separate the toes, protect the toes, wick moisture from the entire circumference of each toe, allows the toes to breathe, and have eliminated between-toe blisters, hot spots and chafing.

• By separating each toe out, they fill out the toe box of the shoe or boot better, and allow the individual toes to engage more in the stride, which actually does help with posture and balance.

In sum, a medium-weight wool blend toe sock binds feets to footwear as if they were magic. My feet don’t get hot, don’t get cold, don’t get chafed or worn or wrinkly or blistery. Three seasons per year find me coming home from a run with soaking wet feets, but my shoes don’t slip, or bind, or eat up my toes or the edges of my feet.

Every active guy I know who tries my recommended toe socks ends up loving them, as do their feets. My go-to toe socks:

Injinji Trail Midweight Mini-Crew socks (2026 $17US) have become my favorite, due to both their comfort in the widest variety of footwear - from running shoes to dress shoes to boots - and their longevity. The problem with Injinji’s thin running toe socks is that they simply don’t hold up, and I can’t recommend them, but I’m not really a thin sock guy. The midweight Trail socks are very, very comfortable, and are all you need in a light boot - more on that below!

For running, the Trails are just a touch too heavy / cozy for me except for when it’s snowing or pouring winter rain; Injinji Ultra Run mini-crew or no-shows (2026 $15US) are sufficiently light yet durable for the rest of the year. As noted above, the thinner running socks feel wonderful, but tend to separate at the wear points far too soon. There are light models which lasted me a long time, but it’s hit and miss - the Ultras are a sweet spot and I can recommend. Thin ones, YMMV.

Finally - Light Boots? No, Heavy Shoes

I gravitated toward ultralight backpacking, or backpacking inspired by this school of thought, a long time ago, and found that heavy boots, while a necessity for high mountain rockscrabbling when carrying a ton of gear for the rest of the family, or hunting in the deep wet suck, slow you down and wear you out prematurely compared to lighter footwear. That said, many of the light “hiking” boots blow, and are the worst of both worlds, too heavy in some ways while not providing enough ankle support being the most common. As noted above, I do a lot of trail running, and there are a decent number of guys who like wearing glorified running shoes, or trail running shoes, on ultralight treks, and that is fine on some trails, but where I live, the tootsies take a beating on the avalanche fields or when hopping creeks and drainages. I’ve always wanted something light, with good ankle support and a solid, grippy sole that is nonetheless not heavy.

Several years ago an internet mans commanded that I try Altama Maritime Mid height boots (2026 $125US), designed for marine military activities, and his pedigree demanded that I take him seriously. I dragged my feets until late last year when I picked a black pair in my weirdo size - wides weren’t previously available, or at least were never in stock. That has changed! Check ‘em out:

It’s difficult to express what a revelation these things are. The sole isn’t a waffle boot pattern, yet are sticky, grabbing the terrain in moderate to steep trails strewn with mud, rocks, streams, and ancient broken mossy concrete; the traction is excellent. On the steel or sodden timber decking of boats and docks, obviously what they are intended to grip, they do so like there’s no tomorrow. The soles are noticeably where all of the weight resides, until you put them on and get your laces cinched down perfectly over a nice pair of Injinji Trail Mid-weight socks - man becomes one with the gear on his feets. They are nimble yet robust where you need it. The ankle support is excellent, and the nylon panels are tough and abrasion resistant. There are drainage points above the soles at the most critical locations, flanking the balls of the feets aka metatarsals, which is where slipping and sliding happens in an otherwise well-fitted shoe. Like I said above, they don’t feel like light boots, but heavy shoes, “heavy” as in robust, not weighty. These are really incredible footwear that I am happy to endorse.

Altama makes the Maritime in low, mid, and 8” heights; I consider the Mid perfect for my needs as I don’t have to meet uniform standards yet need the ankle support for anything I’d be wearing these guys for. The lows are probably great for wispy young fellows as an all-purpose shoe. You can get them in a bunch of colors and camouflage patterns. I’ll almost certainly be picking up a green pair for “stuff.” They are probably a little light for some types of hunting, but I will try them this fall for the upland season, and am confident that they’ll be great.

Take Good Care of Your Feets

In closing, shoes and especially socks tend to be an afterthought for most men, unless they happen to work in an industry which revolves around protecting the feet. Buying cheap shoes and boots will never be anything other than a waste of money, when spending double gets you four to five times the use out of a pair, without accumulating little injuries which lead to premature infirmity. And socks - try toe socks! Good socks really tie the room together, and toe socks protect the most vulnerable parts of your feets in ways that nothing else can. By doing so, you won’t be like most of the other olds, hobbling around with jacked up feet, ankles, knees and hips, all because you were delusional about saving the cost of a meal out to take care of your interface with the earth. Take good care of your feets.

- KD

* Or Mexican dancing boots, if you prefer.

On Spreaker

Wherein we discuss the Iran debacle, 10mm hardcast lead outdoor loads, and Korth revolvers.

Read more

Read more

Read more

There are many unsung heroes in our world, people who play key roles yet are forgotten by history. Quite often, these people are simply eclipsed by historical trends, and in many cases an apparently inconsequential decision or action goes on to have great impact. This essay will explore a critical element often overlooked when exploring the Spanish Civil War, cast aside in favor of the truculent theater of political battles. The men who, while not being actively recorded by history, ultimately played the greatest role: Spain’s army.

While recording with the Pete Quiñones show I was surprised to learn that my hosts, though quite familiar with the war and political conflict leading up to it, were less familiar with the critical role that the army played in instituting the Republic due to a loss of confidence in King Alfonso XIII. Most people approach the Spanish Civil War as being born out of political clashes and conflict, but there was a second war theater in the background, silent yet more intense: the war between the politicians and the army officers, as well as the friction between different factions within the army. To understand the Spanish Civil War, it is imperative to examine this hidden conflict which birthed the Second Republic.

During Spain’s military dictatorship era, 1923-1931, a wide rift developed between the king and the army. In 1927, the dictatorship had lost much of its support within Spanish society; this caused the king to distance himself from Primo de Rivera and the army in an attempt to prevent the unpopularity of the dictatorship from affecting his own. After the resignation of Primo de Rivera due to the overall lack of support from the army, the king desired a return to parliamentary monarchy in order to address growing political and social unrest led mainly by spurned politicians and intellectuals. General Berenger was appointed to implement this transition, but was unable to do so, mainly due to its rejection by the political parties in open revolt against the king. Unable to form a parliament due to the lack of cooperation from the parties, growing displays of open contempt from intellectuals, and minor military insurrections like the 1930 Jaca Uprising and Cuatro Vientos, in which Queipo de Llano played an important role, Berenger resigned.

King Alfonso XIII appointed Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar as the new leader of the government, as he saw him as more flexible and willing to accommodate the political parties in hopes of making them change their tune. However, this move caused discontent within the army as many considered Aznar to be a soft and useless man, nothing more than a puppet of the politicians who surrounded him. Even worse, the king pleaded with exiled politicians to return and form a government, but they all sternly refused his invitation unless the king accepted every one of their many conflicting demands. Ultimately he selected José Sanchez Guerra, a Conservative politician who had spent several decades in government, including a short stint as Prime Minister, to form a government while insisting upon maintaining a royal veto power over cabinet members, which led even the most staunch conservatives and monarchists to refuse to participate. This intractable situation led a vast sweep of Spanish society to conclude that the regime was finished, and in no time, Sanchez Guerra resigned.

King Alfonso XIII attempted once more to form a government consisting solely of those who still remained loyal to him, promising an interim regime until new elections could be held. This action was seen as a sham by the politicians who became more incensed than ever against the king. During the 1930 Court Martial of the pro-Republican Jaca Uprising conspirators, which involved several Republican politicians represented by famed feminist lawyer and future politician Victoria Kent Siano, the weakness of Spain’s political system and the failures of the king took center stage. Politician Niceto Alcalá-Zamora asked, “What authority could the crown have to jail us after pleading for our support?” The prosecution asked for 15 year jail terms for the conspirators, but the ultimate sentence was for 6 months. A campaign for amnesty led to widespread protests and riots, including one at the School for Medicine of San Carlos in Madrid, which ended with 2 dead and several wounded. This led General Security Director General Emilio Mola, future 1936 coup leader, to harshly – and publicly – criticized the weakness and leniency of the government, and directed the most vitriol against its titular head Admiral Aznar.

Local elections were held eighteen days later, which saw a republican-socialist coalition win a majority of seats in 42 of Spain’s 50 provincial capitals, a sign that change was in the horizon. Indeed, republican and socialist elements declared that the election had been a moratorium on the monarchy, and claimed that the results showed now less than the fall of the monarchy and the birth of the Republic, which led to widespread riots across the country. The king attempted to form a new government in order to appease the republicans, though only two of his generals, Berenger and Calvacanti, professed support for the regime. The legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the army and the Guardia Civil was uncertain, and José Sanjurjo, an arch-monarchist and head of the Guardia Civil, refused to explicitly support King Alfonso XIII, stating that under his command, things could go either way.

The situation was escaping the control of the establishment. Those still loyal to the king were divided, with figures like aviation engineer Juan de la Cierva and General Berenger advocating for censorship and repression in order to resist the tide. Others, such as the Count of Romanones, encouraged the creation of a new government and that royalists bide their time rather than be rash. The king sought a viable solution which included his participation in government, while his close aides advised him to respect the people’s wishes. There were talks calling for the king’s abdication between republicans and the Prince of Asturias, the heir to the crown, but ultimately the government sent General Sanjurjo and a detachment of the Guardia Civil to arrest the Republican Revolutionary Committee. The group, composed of Casares Quiroga, Alcalá-Zamora, Largo Caballero and Fernando de los Ríos, were at Conservative Republican Miguel Maura’s home in Madrid. When Sanjurjo entered the room and saw the group, he and his men formed up and proclaimed, “Hail the Republic. Your orders, ministers.” After this, Manuel Azaña and Alejandro Lerroux were called to gather with the other members of the Committee.

King Alfonso XIII saw that matters were slipping through his fingers. He later wrote in his memoirs that he considered ordering the army to take to the streets, put down the riots and jail all of the republican politicians, but he feared that this order could lead to a new coup d’etat, that part of the army might rebel and join against the state as occurred during the dictatorship with the Sanjuanada and the Uprising of Cuatro Vientos, or even worse, that he could trigger a civil war. Knowing that only one general in the entire army openly supported the monarchy, as well as the lack of support from the Guardia Civil, the king decided to leave Spain along with many of the nobles in Madrid. By noon April 14, 1931 he was making preparations for his departure to Paris, a decision which took many of his aides and vocal supporters by surprise. Upon his departure, the king left behind a note to be published in newspapers:

The elections celebrated last Sunday clearly reveal that I’m not beloved by my people. My conscience tells me that this departure is not final because I always tried to serve Spain and gave my all for the public interest even in the most difficult moments. A king might err, and without a doubt I have done so. But I know that our nation showed me generosity and mercy despite my guilt.

I am king of all Spaniards, but also a Spaniard. I could find plenty of means to maintain my regal position by struggling against those who challenge me. But, in a resolute manner, I prefer to step aside rather than launch a fratricidal civil war. I do not renounce any of my rights, since they are mine and mine alone, given by History. And to which I will pay my dues when the time comes.

I hope to know the true and adequate expression of the collective opinion. And while the nation speaks I deliberately suspend the exercise of royal power and I depart Spain, thus recognizing the people as the sole master of their fate.

I too believe I must fulfill a duty dictated by my love for my nation and I plead to God that all other Spaniards feel it as deeply as I do.

With King Alfonso XIII’s abdication the afternoon of April 14, the provisional government was proclaimed April 16, with their main goal the drafting of a new constitution along with working on new reforms. Initially the army showed ardent support in the best case and tacit tolerance at worst, with all prominent officers wishing to know where this new direction would lead them. Unfortunately, several of the early decisions of the new War Minister, Manuel Azaña, would turn a great number of members of the military against the nascent Republic. At its very beginning, a group of officers began to engage in conspiratorial activities against the new regime.

Azaña, like many republicans, was mistrustful of the military as well as anyone who served the government during the monarchy. The old ranks and institutions were a great threat which would have to be dismantled or substituted to protect the safety of the nascent Republic. One of the first steps was to force all officers of the high command to swear loyalty to the Republic along with the suppression of military chaplains among the troops, the dissolution of military religious orders, and the end of the Law of Jurisdictions, which granted military authority over state administration. Azaña was one of the most fervent anti-clerical members of the government, and he declared that barring religion from the armed forces was critical for public order.

The second important action of Azaña’s military reforms was to downsize the infamously bloated officer corps of the Spanish army – there were 800 generals and nearly 21,000 officers leading 16 divisions, about ten times the number called for in a modern military structure. An extraordinary early retirement system was established to allowed any army officer to volunteer for early retirement with full benefits. Were there insufficient volunteers to reach the government’s desired force goals by a certain deadline, remaining officers could be compelled to retire without benefits nor compensation. This measure saw around 9,000 officers choose retirement, followed by the reorganization of the army led by Azaña. This was quickly followed by another decree which allowed the government to demote to the reserves any officer, including generals, who were not assigned to a post. This was a covert way for Azaña to get rid of any officer of dubious loyalty or quality. Franco would say in regard to this decision:

The Azaña Retirement Law was not badly thought out, and it wasn’t as bad as most said at the time. However, it was motivated by the sectarianism of wishing to exclude from the army those officers of conservative leaning.

Unfortunately, this decision had the opposite effect of this intent, since most officers who retired at the time were of liberal or leftist bent. Those retired men would not enjoy a peaceful retirement, as the 1931 Law for the Defense of the Republic stated that any retired officer voicing criticism or discontent against the Republic would lose their benefits and be subject to imprisonment. The law was harshly criticized by mainstream republicans such as Miguel Maura and Angel Ossorio, but Azaña defended his decision, declaring that the Republic had no duty or obligation towards its enemies.

Azaña next decreed that all military promotions on “war merits” during the dictatorship were null and void, which led to more than 300 officers being demoted one to two ranks. Among these affected officers were most of the generals who would become involved in the 1936 uprising. Additionally, a civilian was appointed High Commissioner of Morocco, which all local military authority would obey. These two polices caused a great amount of animosity among the most senior members of the Spanish army.

A seemingly minor measure which likely caused the most discontent among the military was the closing of the General Military Academy of Zaragoza. This military academy, at the time led by General Francisco Franco, was created during the dictatorship to reform military training and reduce the differentiation previously seen in specialized army corps such as artillery, the engineers, and the air force. Cadets were trained for two years in the Zaragoza general academy, then two more years in their specialization, when they were promoted to lieutenant, without titles or civilian ranks. Many members of the army saw this move as a great benefit to promote a sense of brotherhood and camaraderie across the entire army as more officers would know each other from their time in the common academy. Azaña closed the General Academy with the declared justification that it was used more for indoctrination than for training. This was paired with the decision to reserve sixty percent of positions in military academies to those with a college or bachelor’s degree, on top of compelling military officers to earn a civilian university education when they achieved certain ranks.

These decisions were followed by lowering the mandatory military service to one year for common recruits while those with a university degree would only serve for one month. A Military Industry Consortium was created to bring weapons and explosive factories under the control of the civil government so that Spain could steadily modernize their armament without reliance upon imported weapons.

Finally, pardons were granted to military officers who had participated in uprisings or coup attempts against the old government. There were a few attempts to topple the dictatorship, such as the Sanjuanada, led by monarchists, or the uprising of Cuatro Vientos, which ended with participating officers in jail or executed. Those still in prison were pardoned and given considerable promotions, like Manuel Goded, who was appointed High Command Chief, and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who was named commander of the 1^st Organic Division in Madrid.

Perhaps the most noteworthy military reform during the first months of the Republic was the creation of the Guardia de Asalto, the Assault Guards, initially called Compañías de Vanguardia, or Vanguard Companies. The Republic sought not only to create a more specialized and militarized police force than the Guardia Civil, but also capable of tackling extensive civil disorder without the support of the army. The Guardia de Asalto was created not only as a precursor to modern riot police, far better equipped and organized than the Guardia Civil, but also loyal to the Republic. In January 1933, Azaña openly expressed his favoritism toward the Assault Guards by granting them political protection despite their excesses.

These reforms were introduced gradually through 1931 and early 1932, but in the meantime several events destroyed the legitimacy of the Republic in the eyes of many officers. The first were the events of Castilloblanco, in Extremaduras, where a small detachment of the Guardia Civil were sent to disperse a large demonstration in the village December 30, 1931. Tensions grew to such an extent that troopers fired into the air, intending to disperse the crowd; outraged, the demonstrators descended upon them and killed them. The response by José Sanjurjo, commander of the Guardia Civil, was to criticize the government for not providing the means and manpower to appropriately deal with large scale disorders, and claimed that not even Rif rebels were as brutal as the leftists. Meanwhile, the government joined the leftist press in slandering and vilifying the Guardia Civil, with Azaña personally saying that the fault lied on the Guardia Civil, and that the “chumps” who died were tarnishing the reputation of the corps. The left mobilized to exculpate the murderers through articles in newspapers, and socialist lawyer Luís Jimenez de Asua personally defended the culprits. Meanwhile, numerous captains and lieutenants of the Guardia Civil, furious at the response of the government, proposed a military uprising to Sanjurjo, who advised them to calm down.

In Arnedo, la Rioja, on January 5, 1932 the UGT trade union, linked to the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, planned a large demonstration after a shoe factory refused to take back several workers who were fired the previous month. Seeing massive unrest brewing, a detachment of the Guardia Civil was sent in order to prevent the demonstration from spiraling into a riot. Tensions were high in the wake of Castilloblanco; when a trooper was assaulted by demonstrators, the unit responded by firing three volleys into the crowd, killing a total of 14 and injuring 30. General Sanjurjo was quick to defend the actions of his men and denounced the leftist mayors and governors who had encouraged and protected the agitators when they damaged property and provoked unnecessary conflict with the Guardia Civil. The government once more echoed the general opinion of the left and harshly criticized the Guardia Civil, calling for the dissolution of the corps and punishment of all those involved. Sanjurjo was then demoted and stripped of his position as commander of the Guardia Civil, replaced by General Miguel Cabanellas. Five months later, Sanjurjo would lead the failed coup known as the Sanjurjada.

The first clear sign of the trending mood within the army, as well as the true aims of the government, manifested in a joint exercise in Carabanchel in February 1932. At the time, cadets from two military academies were performing a joint exercise. General Rafael Villegas declared, “Viva España!” while Colonel Julio Mangada replied, “Viva la Republica!” General Manuel Goded then gave a brief speech which ended with, “Viva España! And nothing more.” Colonel Mangada showed clear discomfort and refused to return the salute, for which General Villegas ordered him arrested for insubordination. While the Colonel would later be cleared, Manuel Azaña would quietly demote and strip General Villegas of his position, which led Manuel Goded to resign in protest. Goded would go on to support Sanjurjo in his failed coup attempt.

This seemingly minor event was a clear sign that, from then until the end of the Civil War, there would be two camps within the army – those who were loyal to the nation of Spain and those loyal to the socialist Republic. These loyalties would gradually engage in a silent war fed by constant civil unrest and clear political favoritism, favoritism that would come to light January 10, 1933 after the events at Casas Viejas. The anarchists had called for a general strike in protest of the “passivity” of all other workers unions. This strike eventually evolved into riots which were quickly suppressed thanks to the rapid and preemptive actions of the Guardia Civil and the Guardia de Asalto. A detachment of Guardias de Asalto was sent to Cadiz to aid in putting down the riots, but when they arrived to Jerez de la Frontera, they found the phone line had been cut in the village of Casas Viejas. Local anarchists had attacked the local barracks of the Guardia Civil, killing the sergeant and two troopers.

A squad of twelve Guardias de Asalto were dispatched to investigate, and when they arrived at the village they began to arrest known suspects. When they arrived at the home of a known member of the CNT on the outskirts of town, a shootout ensued; two Guardias were killed when they attempted to open the door. The troopers were reinforced with a unit of forty more Guardias ordered to “show no mercy.” Another assault against the house ensued, where the troopers set the house alight, killing everyone inside except one woman who managed to flee. On the following day, the Guardias patrolled the town and arrested potential anarchist collaborators, then led the prisoners to the ruined house where they executed them. This is narrated by Capitain Rojas, the man in charge of the Guardias:

As the situation was quite dire, I was way too nervous. The orders I had been given were too severe, and I noticed that one of the prisoners looked at the Guardia that was at the door and said something to another. He looked at me in such an insolent way that I couldn’t hold myself back and I shot him immediately. Everyone did the same, and they all died by the burnt house. We did the same with the other two who were not there. That way I fulfilled my orders and defended Spain from the anarchy that rose to attack the Republic.

These incidents were a massive scandal for the provisional government and particularly for Azaña, who was all too eager to violently and swiftly put down riots led by the anarchists. But the reaction of Azaña, who ardently defended only the Guardia de Asalto from any criticism levied against them, told those in the army and the Guardia Civil where the loyalties of the government were. This was compounded by the testimony of some of the Guardias involved in the events, who stated that they had received orders from Azaña stating, “Take no prisoners. Shoot to kill.”

The general environment told many in the military that the politicians and their decisions could not be trusted, since they showed clear favoritism. Even some of the most liberal officers who had originally supported the Republic, like General Cabanellas, began to think twice about the current situation. But before the events at Casas Viejas, the most important event during the first years of the Republic was the Sanjurjada, a coup attempt led by the then-demoted General José Sanjurjo, a man of high standing disgraced at the order of Manuel Azaña. The coup was plotted primarily among a small group of military officers, such as Manuel Goded, as well as monarchists and conservatives who disapproved of the government’s position on “the religious question,” along with the center-right led by Alejandro Lerroux, a political enemy of Azaña’s. The conspiracy garnered a large amount of support thanks to the growing recognition that the passivity of the government regarding attacks against the clergy and the church were a strategy of what we now call anarcho-tyrrany. The Carlists and Alfonsist monarchists formalized their collaboration with the Pact of Terriet, in which both branches of the monarchic movement put aside their differences in order to take down the Republic. Yet the main objective of this coup, or at least the goal of the military, was not to destroy the Republic, but to flush out the left-wing republican politicians and prevent a “revolutionary government” from taking over. The involved parties determined that, after toppling the government, a temporary military dictatorship would take over as a transitory government.

The Sanjurjada was destined to fail due to a lack of preparation, means and support from many officers. Notably, Francisco Franco withdrew from the conspiracy three days prior after seeing the lack of preparation as well as a high chances of failure, which is also why the Traditionalists withdrew. The Republic had extensive knowledge of the conspiracy, even that the coup was going to take place August 10, 1932, only two days after their final preparations. In Madrid the coup was a total failure, with the government preemptively arresting all those participating in the planning. The main act of the coup took place in Sevilla, a city then considered the “Red City” of Spain, chosen to be a symbol of the re-institution of public order and justice much like Primo de Rivera had previously done in Barcelona. The coup in Sevilla was initially a success, but when news arrived that the coup had failed in Madrid, most of the participating troops abandoned their posts and refused to fight. With the anarchists and communists mobilizing against him, and knowing that he was completely alone, Sanjurjo attempted to flee to Portugal, but was arrested in the city of Ayamonte. In the rest of Spain, nothing noteworthy happened.

The failure of the Sanjurjada led to a massive wave of persecution of right wing elements across Spain; in the army, about 300 officers were relieved of their positions or demoted, along with multiple retired officers losing their benefits for either voicing support for the coup or participating in it. There were many preemptive demotions from officers whose loyalties were in question or due to their past relations with the dictatorship. Such was the case of General Emilio Mola, who was quickly demoted and removed from his post after the coup despite not being involved.

General Sanjurjo was sentenced to death, but Azaña, with the support of President Alcalá-Zamora, commuted his sentence to life in prison. This decision earned him the displeasure and anger of Juan Negrín and Santiago Casares Quiroga, both of whom vehemently advocated for Sanjurjo to be executed; Azaña wanted to keep him alive to be a symbol of the failure of the military.

By now the general discontent among the army was widespread and well known to Azaña, who attempted to garner support with some of the most important generals who were not openly hostile to the Republic, or that he considered to be potentially dangerous. Such was the case with Queipo de Llano, who was lavishly regaled with a well-paid position with few responsibilities, until his eventual dismissal in late 1933 due to multiple instances of corruption. Another was Francisco Franco, who was awarded the position of Military Governor of the Balearic Islands, a position which came with a considerable promotion but removed him from mainland Spain.

The electoral victory of the CEDA right wing coalition in November of 1933 was a great boon for the army, particularly for many of the generals who would later lead the Nationalist movement. Many in the military saw the potential change in the government positively, and for some of them it was indeed, since General Franco was promoted to Chief of High Command and many of the generals and officers who had been demoted or arrested during the Sanjurjada were pardoned or reinstated to active service, such as Generals Goded and Mola. This also meant multiple promotions for many Africanist officers, with Mola becoming appointed to the High Command. These gestures were intended to with the loyalty of the military commanders and thus to reduce the intensity of their conspiratorial efforts.

However, unrest loomed again on the horizon as the left, motivated by their electoral defeat, prepared for war. Despite an initial proclaimed tolerance by the Republic for an elected center-right government, the left did not sit idly by during this period. The first to act were the anarchists, who launched a series of small, fairly inconsequential failed uprisings in December 1933. These uprisings took place mostly in Aragón, Navarra and La Rioja, with numerous shootouts between anarchists and law enforcement, ending with the arrests of the most significant leaders, among them Cipriano Mera and Buenaventura Durruti.

Meanwhile, the socialists steadily prepared a better organized response and demanded that CEDA be prevented from participating in the government, though a handful of appointments were made in the summer of 1934. The small and poorly prepared uprisings by the anarchists throughout the years taught the socialists that if they hoped to strike a blow, they had to be thoroughly organized and prepared, a point reinforced by their past successes such as the strike of 1917. The 1934 “October Revolution” was originally planned as a nationwide uprising against the “right wing fascist government,” with a lengthy period of preparation by drafting orders and stockpiling weapons, munitions and explosives. Despite all this preparation, their coup attempt failed, with surges of violence in Basque Country and Catalonia being put down by the government relatively quickly. However, the uprising was successful in Asturias, thanks to the minimal military presence in the region and well-organized and relatively well equipped rebels, among them the Asturian miners who would go on to become the Republic’s most feared sappers during the Civil War.

The government was quick to react, and while Gil Robles proposed Franco lead the military response, the center-right politicians refused to accept this. In order to pacify Asturias, a large contingent of troops from Santander, Leon and Galicia were dispatched, reinforced by a detachment of Regulares from Morocco led by Lieutenant Juan Yagüe Blanco, who eventually suppressed the rebels after two weeks of fighting. The left claimed that a military response to the violent rebellion in Asturias as an unfair punishment and they began to voice their protest against the actions of the army and the government, and turned the names of those involved in the military operations into political martyrs. But more importantly, the victory of the troops over the rebels in Asturias led to the birth of the Unión Militar Española (UME), or Spanish Military Union, soon after. Their first publication praised the actions of the army in crushing the leftist threat to Spain, and harshly criticized those in the army who opted out of the fight or believed that the rebellion was justified. The concluding paragraph of their first publication was the most important:

You will see that not a single true culprit for this horrible crime against our nation is punished or executed. Not Pérez Farrás. Not Largo Caballero. Not Indalecio Prieto. Not Manuel Azaña. Not Teodomiro Menéndez. Not González Peña. Those punished will only be the nameless, defenseless and swindled poor revolutionary. An army without traitors! Only an army of heroic and eternal Spaniards!

The UME, despite its initial intent of being merely a conduit for right wing officers and troops to circulate communications between each other, would become an extremely valuable organization for the conspirators as it would be used to transmit orders and communications between officers and, in 1936, between the compromised generals. Soon after its creation the analogous Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista, Antifascist Republican Military Union, or UMRA would be created, and a silent but intense war would begin within the army. The UMRA, formed mainly by communist and socialist officers and troopers, would lead to extensive vigilance and investigative efforts in late 1935 and early 1936.

The tumultuous 1936 general elections were marked by widespread riots and political violence, along with the mobilization of left wing paramilitary organizations like “La motorizada”. Upon learning of this situation and electoral manipulation in certain provinces, the right wing demanded that the government deploy the army in order to put down the riots and restore public order. Gil Robles was the first to make this demand, soon followed by Calvo Sotelo and Francisco Franco, who was Chief of the Army High Command. Franco knew that the Public Order law could be used to declare the state of war and restore order, but Portela Valladares refused to act. Seeing the passivity of the government, Franco made contact with Generals Manuel Goded and Ángel Rodriguez del Barrio to seek support for deploying the army, but after several calls he determined that the situation was not favorable. The chiefs of the Guardia Civil and the Police publicly refused to mobilize their officers; upon learning of Franco’s maneuvering, Portela Valladares stripped Franco of his position.

The Popular Front was declared victorious before the second round of elections. The first action of president Azaña was to demote and spread out all military officers that he considered to be troublesome and potentially disloyal or dangerous so they could not be gathered to organize a coup or lead large parts of the army into a state of rebellion in one location. This, however, was a terrible move on his part, as the most prominent officers were spread out to distant garrisons where they could conspire with little risk of being discovered, and in some cases were put into direct contact with other groups which would go on to join the Nationalist movement, like Republican General Mola with the highly organized Carlist Requeté militias in Navarre.

During the spring of 1936, the leftist UMRA begun to voice their worst fears in alarming memos to the government, reporting the actions and movements of many of the officers involved in the military conspiracy, particularly those of Mola, who they had learned was in touch with the Carlists. However, their constant fearmongering regarding a military coup led many politicians to conclude that their alarmism was nothing but the delusions of bored officers and soldiers who saw threats around every corner. Much later, a few weeks before the beginning of the Civil War, the true reason for the government’s passivity would be revealed.

The catastrophic failure of the Sanjurjada had emboldened the government, leading many of the politicians to become overconfident in their ability to manage and control the armed forces to neutralize a potential military coup. Santiago Casares Quiroga and Manuel Azaña, upon being presented with extensive reports about the conspirators, declared that they would do nothing regarding the allegations or information, as if they moved against the officers with weak evidence, they would simply make things considerably worse. On top of that, they confidently stated that they would prefer for a coup to happen so they could crush the participants once and for all in their effort to restore public order. This decision would prove fatal for them, as well as the Republic, just a weeks after they made it public.

Following is a list of key participants in the conspiracy:

• Emilio Mola Vidal: Born in Cuba shortly before it became independent, he joined an infantry military academy at the age of 17, and was commissioned a lieutenant at 19. He quickly moved up the ranks thanks to his performance and leadership in Morocco, where he took part in numerous operations critical to the Spanish war effort, the most important being the Alhucemas Landing, where he was promoted to General. He was awarded the position of General Chief of Security during the Dictablanda of Berenger, where he criticized the softness of the government. He had knowledge of the Jaca uprising and attempted to dissuade the leading officers from participating. After the Sanjurjada, he was demoted and sent to a reserve position, which led to economic hardship for him, driving him to become a toy maker and write books in order to provide for himself. When the right-wing government came to power in 1933 he was amnestied and returned to duty, where he expressed great optimism about CEDA and their position against the left, particularly the communists. He was firmly convinced that a foreign group of Jewish conspirators was working with the communists in order to destroy Spain. With the election of the government of the Popular Front, he was demoted and sent to the “backwater” of Navarre, where he dedicated himself to organizing the military conspiracy under the code name of “The Headmaster.” During the Civil War General Mola served as the leader of the Nationalist Army of the North until his untimely death in a plane crash.

• José Sanjurjo Sacanell: Born in Pamplona in 1872 to a military family, his first deployment was in the colonial wars in Cuba. He earned most of his promotions in Morocco, his most notable being commander of the Alhucemas Landing, which earned him a noble title and the position of High Commissioner of Morocco. He was promoted to Commander of the Guardia Civil in 1927, a position which he would hold until his demotion in 1931 due to his clashes with Azaña. After the end of the Dictatorship, many considered him to be the most appropriate to lead the country after Primo de Rivera thanks to his leadership skills and distinguished service. Initially supporting the nascent Republic, he soon found himself at odds with the politicians after attacks by the press turned public opinion against the Guardia Civil, actions he defended. He would carry out the failed Sanjurjada in 1932, be jailed, then go into exile until receiving amnesty in 1933 along with many of his co-conspirators. By the beginning of 1936 he began to participate in the military conspiracy by opening negotiations with the Carlists thanks to his Carlista family heritage. When the July 1936 uprising began, he planned to fly from Portugal to Burgos in order to lead the new Nationalist government, but his plane crashed upon take off, leading to his death.

• Francisco Franco Bahamonde: Born in 1892 in Ferrol to a military family, he initially planned to join the Navy like his father, but due to its dwindling thanks to the loss of overseas Spanish colonies, he instead joined the Infantry Academy of Toledo. Upon graduating he volunteered to be deployed to Morocco, where he had a stellar military career and earned meteoric promotions on war merits, achieving the rank of Commander at 24 years of age. He developed a reputation as an extremely methodical, watchful and farsighted commanding officer, eventually earning himself the nickname of “baraka” (The blessed one) from the Moroccan Regulares thanks to his many victories achieved with no casualties and few wounded. In 1921 he developed the Foreign Tercios, known as La Legión or the Spanish Legion, with his close friend, the veteran José Millán Astray. His actions in the Rif war would make him a national hero, alongside his brother Ramón, and he eventually became a close friend of King Alfonso XIII. He played a critical role in the Alhucemas Landing, leading the Legión and securing their foothold on the beach. Initially Franco declared his respect for the Republic in the same way he respected the monarchy, but the ill-conceived military reforms of Azaña started to sour his opinion, as he saw civilians meddling in matters they didn’t understood. The change of government in 1933 and his sudden promotion to Military High Command made him the most prized military figure among right wingers. He participated mainly as a military advisor in the government response to the October Revolution in 1934. With the victory of the Popular Front in 1936 he was dispatched to the Canary Islands, a post that he considered a terrible humiliation. But, despite his animosity against the Republic, and contact with the military conspirators, he didn’t formally join the plot until the murder of Calvo Sotelo due to his doubts about their chances of success. Like Mola, he believed that an international Jewish conspiracy was feeding the communist encroachment in Spain with the objective of destroying the nation. He would eventually be appointed the leader of the Nationalist Movement during the war, the position that he would hold until his death in 1975.

  

• Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer: Born in 1872 in Cartagena, he joined the Cavalry corps and participated in the war for Cuba where he was promoted to Captain. He deployed to Morocco during the Rif War, participated in many of the earliest operations, and lead some of the first units of Regulares, where many of the officers who would go on to become involved in the conspiracy served under his command. After the Disaster of Annual he became the loudest officer criticizing the Juntas de Defensa, the Peninsular officers who opposed the rapid ascent of the Africanistas, and demanded that the focus of the army should be modernization and an orientation toward combat operations. Of liberal leanings, Cabanellas had numerous clashes with Primo de Rivera during the dictatorship, involving himself with Queipo de Llano in the Cuatro Vientos uprising. At the proclamation of the Republic, Cabanellas was rewarded with the position of military governor of Andalucía, and eventually took the place of Sanjurjo as the Commander of the Guardia Civil, a position he would hold until 1935 where he was reassigned to Zaragoza. The reasons for his involvement in the conspiracy are uncertain, and many agree that he likely joined thanks to the recommendation of his close friend Queipo de Llano. When the Civil War broke out he became the first formal leader of the Nationalist movement thanks to being the oldest officer, eventually being substituted by Franco in September of 1936. Cabanellas showed great displeasure from this decision and was eventually moved to the position of General Army Inspector. He died in 1938 from a stroke. His son, who remained loyal to the Republic, had to flee Spain shortly after it became public that his father was one of the officers involved in the Coup.

• Manuel Goded Llopis: Born in 1882 in San Juan de Puerto Rico of a Catalonian military family. His family emigrated to Spain shortly after the loss of Cuba. He joined the military academy of Toledo in 1896, graduating 2 years later and choosing to be deployed to Morocco. His military career was a stellar one, becoming Captain by the age of 17, Lieutenant by 25 and General at 27. He would play an important part in the Alhucemas Landing that would earn him a promotion to Division General. While he initially supported Primo de Rivera and the Dictatorship, during the Civilian Directorate he took active part in conspiracies against it. He would go on to play a key part in the Sanjuanada, a coup against Primo de Rivera led by the monarchists in 1926. He would be arrested and eventually amnestied by Berenger. With the arrival of the Republic he was promoted to High Command Chief, a position he would resign from in solidarity with the demoted General Villegas. He would eventually join the Sanjurjada and be discharged from the army until he was amnestied by the Lerroux government. He was one of the generals who mobilized the army in Asturias during the 1934 October Revolution and was a key founding member of the UME. With the 1936 victory of the Frente Popular he was appointed military governor of the Balearic Islands in order to distance him from any major military garrisons. The conspiracy made him responsible for the uprising in the Balearic Islands and Barcelona; while he was successful in Balearics, early mobilization of the anarchists in Barcelona led to its failure in the city. Knowing this, he surrendered in hopes that his men be spared.

• Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra: Born in 1875 in Tordesillas, he joined the Cavalry Military Academy of Valladolid when he was 18. Upon graduation he was deployed to the war in Cuba where he earned himself considerable merits and a promotion to Captain. He went on to volunteer for the war in Morocco. Queipo de Llano was involved in numerous scandals such as when he challenged journalist Rafael Esbrí to a duel to the death, which landed him in prison for 2 months. His attitude and character led to him having many personal and professional clashes with other officers, notably General Miguel Primo de Rivera. He earned himself a reputation as a daring daredevil officer who carried out reckless actions and risky cavalry charges in combat while being negligent in his private life. During the dictatorship his animosity with Primo de Rivera and general attitude resulted in his being sent to reserve status, which led him to work as a soap maker to earn a living. During the Dictablanda, his almost constant criticism and enmity with Primo de Rivera led to Jose Antonio and Fernando Primo de Rivera ambushing him in a cafeteria and beating him up. In 1930 he would become the most important officer involved in the pro-republican coup attempt of Cuatro Vientos, an action that elevated him into a hero of the Republic. Seeing the operation fail, he fled in an airplane to Portugal and eventually established himself in France where he got in touch with other exiled politicians such as Indalecio Prieto. At the proclamation of the Republic he returned to Spain. Initially he showed great support for the Republic and his reputation earned him the position of General Capitain of Madrid and was lavishly rewarded by Azaña who looked the other way regarding his corruption, nepotistic schemes and outrageous demands, like riding the king’s favorite horse or seizing Primo de Rivera’s old armored presidential car. Eventually he was appointed General Carabineer Inspector, a position with few responsibilities and good pay that allowed him to live a fairly comfortable life. While disillusioned with the Republic, his personal turning point was the destitution as President of Parliament of his close friend and father in law Niceto Alcalá Zamora in 1936. José Sanjurjo managed to convince Queipo de Llano to join the conspiracy and attempted to convince General Cabanellas to join as well. Queipo de Llano’s position as General Inspector gave him considerable freedom of movement in the Peninsula, allowing him to communicate with little oversight with other officers. Tasked with leading the uprising in Sevilla, which he disliked; the coup triumphed in the city thanks to a large mobilization of members of the Falange.

• Juan Yagüe Blanco: Born in San Leonardo in 1891, he joined the Infantry Academy of Toledo in 1907 and became acquainted with Franco during his formative years. He spent 4 years in Burgos where he became a lieutenant before being deployed to Morocco. He participated in several military operations in Morocco and eventually was one of the first officers to join La Legión, along with other notable Africanist officers. From the beginning he showed displeasure with the Republic due to Azaña’s reforms, which hampered his military career. He led the Regulares to Asturias during the 1934 October Revolution where he allowed the African soldiers to be particularly brutal and callous, and showed anger when a surrender agreement was reached by the general Eduardo Lopez Ochoa. In 1934 he joined the Falange Española and became a close friend to Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. He led the uprising in Morocco, where he managed to take control of the whole garrison without firing a single shot. During the war he was known for being a particularly brutal and ruthless officer, though very effective. He became known as the “Butcher of Badajoz” after the alleged execution of up to 4,000 prisoners in the city’s bull ring. He was eventually replaced by General José Enrique Varela.

• José Enrique Varela: Born in San Fernando in 1891 to a miliary family, he joined his father’s regiment at 18 years of age. After later joining a military academy, he deployed to Morocco as a lieutenant, where he twice earned the Laurel Cross of Saint Ferdinand, the highest decoration in the Spanish army. He was considered among the most exceptional officers in the army, alongside Generals José Sanjurjo and Miguel Primo de Rivera. He continued his a stellar career in Morocco where he was eventually promoted to colonel. Since its beginning he was at odds with the Republic, particularly after the military reforms; he joined Sanjurjo in his coup attempt and was eventually arrested. During his time in jail he became close with other Carlists involved in the coup, particularly with Manuel Fal Conde, and eventually joined their ranks and pledged to their cause. While imprisoned, he proclaimed that the Republic was already in hands of the communists and it had to be toppled. After being pardoned in 1933 he traveled to Navarre where he officially joined the Carlists and agreed to oversee the training of the Requetés, where he earned the nickname “Tio Pepe.” After the creation of the UME he was one of its most active conspirators. He was to lead the uprising in Cádiz but was arrested right after news of the Moroccan uprising arrived. After the coup began he was freed by the local garrison, and successfully established control of the city with the aid of the troops from Morocco. During the war he led most of the campaign in Andalucía at the head of a group of Regulares. Allegedly he was the man who coined the term “Fifth column.”

• Joaquín Fanjul Goñi: Born in Vitoria in 1880 to a monarchist military family he joined the Military Academy of Toledo at 16 years of age. He fought during the last few months of the war in Cuba; after the war he earned a law degree. During the monarchy he was a representative in the Cortes while also taking part in the war in Morocco during initial operations in the Western Sahara. He was elected to the Cortes in 1931 and served a minority party as a representative through all of the Republic’s elections. In 1935 he became General of the 2^nd Organic Division and was one of the main military aides for Gil Robles, aiding the government in pointing out and ousting leftist officers. With the elections of 1936 he became a representative in the Cortes once more, but he was stripped of his seat in April, lost his post in the army, and forced to stay in Madrid. He would get in touch with Mola through the UME in early 1936 and was charged with the uprising in Madrid. Initially the task was given to General Rafael Villegas, but once the uprising began, no one knew for certain who was in charge. His actions in Madrid were initially successful, gaining the support of part of the garrison. While waiting for reinforcements to take Madrid, his forces were attacked and defeated by anarchist militias. Fanjul was held prisoner in the Cárcel Modelo and would become one of many prisoners extra-judiciously executed by the left, along with one of his sons.

We live in a moment of great upheaval and ideological disruption, where one finds refreshing insight living side by side with discourse mired in thinking of the past. When discussing current events, the “normie” perspective is often heavy with themes of loss, surrender, and despair despite overwhelming evidence of legal, technological and, most importantly, cultural sea changes. There is no better illustration of this psychological conflict than when comparing notes on the state of Virginia regarding the resurgent Democrats, buoyed by fraud and a sclerotic state Republican party who put up a poorly-spoken foreign black woman for governor. The newly-enthroned DNC machine is going for broke to secure elections for their party henceforth while attempting to drive their enemies out of the state via taxation, gun control, and legislated anarcho-tyranny.

The default American “right-wing” answer to conflict since the end of World War Two has been primarily individualist: to retreat from your home and embrace your role as a consumer, i.e. to buy a house in a faraway desert where you can amass all types of products for your “hobby” or “lifestyle”. However, all actual political success on the right in the past century has been via collective effort and a collective mentality: gun rights advanced massively once the sportsman frame was eschewed and we asserted our right to hold the territory conquered and developed by our ancestors. I maintain that the urge to PANIC AND ABANDON SHIP is a loser’s mentality, historically illiterate, and a massive strategic mistake, as a sudden, nakedly partisan legislative bum-rush will neither persist nor defeat us long-term. Indeed, the social, legal and technological advances favoring us will soon override or nullify state-level restrictions if we can keep our heads and march in formation.

Conflicting forces have tugged American firearms regulations to and fro over the duration of our nation’s history, with these distinct spasms playing out over multiple decades. On the national level, there were essentially no restrictions on private ownership by free men of anything of any kind until the interwar 20^th century, reflecting several thousand years of European jurisprudence. Local and state laws regarding arms and who could and couldn’t possess or carry them predate the establishment of the United States of America and all point in the same direction. Specifically, it was almost always illegal for anyone to arm an Indian or a slave, save when done so by agents authorized by the state, or the slave was armed and under the direction of his owner. Local criminal codes were so written to allow for the arrest of criminals, sailors, and ruffians by restricting the carry of the types of weapons they favored as a class. The proliferation of small handguns of a remarkable breadth of quality across Europe and the Americas, consistent with the technology of their given era, evinces the commonality and general acceptance of firearms carry. One exception to this general rule was in the post-Reconstruction South, where weapons laws prohibited essentially everyone from going armed in public, and indeed it is the South proper where such laws fell last.

New York State’s infamous Sullivan Act of 1911 became a template for local restrictions in the most settled and urban “ethnic” areas of America, requiring a license to both purchase and possess concealable firearms; previously, the law prevented sales of firearms to blacks, but thanks to the actions of teeming masses from the less desirable parts of Europe, everyone was made equal. The criminal class would have to travel beyond state lines to procure weapons with which to rob and murder New York’s capitalist class as well as the less-connected citizenry with relative impunity, although it is often stated the a White man of good character (and means) going strapped would not face any legal issues should he be forced to defend himself until the 1960s or so, with the law being enforced primarily against “problem citizens.” Similar restrictions cropped up quickly in other states and municipalities, and most firearms restrictions of this type remained much the same for the remainder of the 20^th century.

The Congress, after several years of attempts at similar legislation, passed the National Firearms Act in 1934, henceforth the “NFA,” through the Congress, “justified” by the gangstermania of the 1920s and ‘30s; a then-prohibitively-costly $200 transfer tax and a rather arbitrary engagement with local law enforcement was required for lawful ownership of machine guns, silencers/sound suppressors, short barreled rifles (<16”) and shotguns (<18”), Destructive Devices (explosives, items with rifled bores larger than 0.50”), and “Any Other Weapons” or AOWs, a catch-all term for unconventional weapons and disguised firearms, later downgraded to a $5 transfer tax for AOWs only. Hinted at in the short-barreled weapon restriction is the original intent to include handguns in this “tax law,” Constitutionally justifiable only due to the right of Congress to impose taxation schemes. There are any number of spurious or legally contradictory aspects of the NFA which make no sense and survived to the present despite being poorly explained or argued, all the way to the Supreme Court, with the most famous being US v. Miller. What matters is, in the now-seemingly-over period of Federal Firearms Regulation, Someone Did Something! The next big Doing Something was the Gun Control Act of 1968, when laws defining what are now considered “normal” firearms commerce regulations were implemented in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, including restrictions on imports. After all, Lee Harvey Oswald bought his Italian Carcano through the mail! Now lesser known is another attempt in this period to ban handguns nationwide, first through provisions struck from GCA ‘68, then via efforts by the National Council to Control Handguns, later renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence after the fortuitous crippling of an obese man. Suck it!

Eighteen years later, the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, perfectly named to appeal to the people of the era, ended the civilian market in new machine guns, freezing the supply of registered weapons which were grandfathered and turned them into investment items, while loosening some constraints on the trade in other classes of weapons. In the same period, after several decades of skyrocketing crime thanks to black liberation / The Reign of the Libtard, the American right lobbied hard at the state and local levels to assert the Second Amendment as a codified guarantee of personal defense after several decades of confused legal precedent muddling its original personal and collective interpretation. Concealed carry laws spread around America, transitioning from code only used to prosecute blacks, Mexicans, and criminals, to “equality” where carry permits first became genuinely required, little known and rare, to shall-issue permits, with armed self-defense in public seen once again as an American right. Note – you likely have your history of concealed carry wrong. Purportedly “liberal, lost forever” Washington state was the first to go shall-issue in 1961, and Texas didn’t re-legalize carry of any type until 1995!

Other restrictions on the types of weapons seen in movies or senseless black crime began to crop up at the state level, both handguns and “assault-style weapons,” with major moves to restrict them further at the federal level failing to progress through Congress. In 1989, George Bush Sr. directed the Treasury Department to restrict the importation of “assault weapons,” named foreign-made semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns as well as any exhibiting certain scary features, such as the infamous shoulder thing that goes up. This was sold as totally great for domestic manufacturers, just like 1968! Bush Sr.’s decree cooled down Congressional libtards for five years; in 1994, due to totally out of control urban crime, Congress passed the Crime Bill, which locked up a broad swath of savage animals over the next twenty years, a glorious interlude of urban peace which ended when progressive worship of blacks was codified. The Crime Bill also included a compromise “domestic assault weapons ban,” which implemented a national restriction on Scary Guns as well as the manufacture and sale of magazines holding more than ten rounds, via a bipartisan effort which specified a sunset of these restrictions in 2004.

This restriction, coupled with the spread of permitted concealed carry around the entire country, led to a metaphorical explosion in the production of small, powerful handguns with ten round magazine capacities as well as the concealed carry accouterments market – truly a Renaissance in practical firearms culture. Under the Bush Jr. presidency the Crime Bill Assault Weapons Ban sunset, thanks in part to a massive number of fresh American war veterans coming home from The ZOG Wars. Federal gun control efforts would continue to be curb-stomped for the next two decades, and quite possibly forever, as we have clearly entered a new national deregulatory cycle.

Again, we live in a time of great contradictions: sensible federal deregulation efforts have led to a loosening of restrictions on Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, and silencers/suppressors resulting from the legal battles over products which comply with the letter, “but not the spirit,” of confused federal laws. Meanwhile, states newly captured by libtards via fraud force egregious gun control upon their citizens, while they enthusiastically free Donquavious to commit murder so as to combat racism.

Federal firearms law deregulation is driven by a dizzying combination of sly legal assaults disguised as technological advances, brought to bear by the sharpest minds America has to offer. To illustrate: federal law mandates that accommodations must be made for the disabled in all aspects of life; and an accommodation required for a disabled person with the function of only one hand to operate a very large “handgun” can also be used by the non-disabled thanks to equal protection laws; therefore, there is now a whole class of legally protected basically-Short-Barreled-Rifles (SBRs) and -Shotguns (SBSes) which have made NFA laws regarding these items essentially unenforceable. In 2025, Congress passed a law waiving the $200 tax for these items, as well as suppressors/silencers, because they are safety items, protecting the hearing of America’s shooters. With the tax for these items removed legislatively, they will almost certainly be removed from the NFA altogether, as with no fee, there is no tax, and therefore, no longer Constitutional standing for these items to be so regulated as it only passed muster thanks to the right of Congress to administer tax regulations.

The latest shooter’s wonderland is the judicially mandated approval of Forced Reset Triggers and “Super Safety” devices as legally semi-automatic per the wording of the NFA, which means that, from a federal perspective, the brass rainbow is both attainable and affordable so long as the mechanism pushes the trigger forward to reset. Millions of these devices are lawfully legally in the hands of Americans; the cat is out of the bag.

Let’s revisit the new state-level restrictions which have people panicking. If you are faced with this situation – you have a good job, or a good life, behind the lines in a newly Libtarded Zone, with fresh gun control laws or more coming down the pike, the remainder of this article will help you strategize your acquisitions as well as to say, hey lil fella, it’s not so bad. Don’t accept this circumstance, but what you really need to get through this is the correct state of mind.

First, the oft-recommended “solution” to liberalism is to constantly move around the country and embrace being disconnected and deracinated. If you live outside of the Blue Hives or n-word zones, or have family nearby, a move to suburban Texas, where you don’t know anyone, is probably just delaying the inevitable – after all, Texas will be hard blue in ten years barring major changes. You are almost certainly better off staying in place, digging in, and networking. If you are already disconnected, having moved to one of these zones for work, what difference does it make? Moving is probably sensible. If you ARE better off from a cultural and familial perspective in, say, Idaho, I get it. Idaho is nice. Running is easy. But it’s often not the right move. Big things are coming soon. Big things you can help with. And, as many people have observed, “blue state right-wingers” are almost always way more rabid and in tune with reality than the sea of normies in the back country, who are usually good in the abstract – they have good instincts – but “that city stuff” seems so far away to them, excepting where there are problem demographics. See: Sam Hyde on why he won’t move out to the woods. OK, back to guns.

Your correspondent believes that every man needs an AR-15 rifle, a quality double stack 9mm or larger caliber handgun with 13-21 round capacity, then guns for the stuff you think you need to do – be that hunting, concealed carry, or collective defense. If a ban is looming in your state, and you have a few months before it goes into effect, you should absolutely secure a quality AR-15 rifle, a decent optic, and as many 20 and 30 round magazines as you can get. 20s are very handy, and I keep a 20 round magazine in each AR in my safe or when it’s in the car, and 30s on the PCs / chest rigs. Springs and good followers are cheap – it’s not a bad idea to buy those in advance, too, along with all of the critical spare parts and springs to keep your rifle running. Stock up on high quality ammunition so that you can practice and train before worrying about a diverse, interesting gun collection.

If there is a handgun that you want to buy, or need to round out your collection, or that you want to get so you can SBR into a “subgun,” whatever, consider what you can buy after the ban goes into effect, and what you can’t. If you are considering a Glock 19, for example, you will be able to buy that later, albeit with neutered magazines. Consider buying the standard-capacity magazines now or designing your acquisition plan around magazines you already have or will stockpile before a ban. If you want a PCC AR which takes Colt SMG mags, buy the gun and the mags, because you won’t be able to buy either soon. If your funds are limited, a PCC AR which accepts magazines you already own is surely the right approach.

With NFA deregulation on the march, consider registering as many of your weapons as NFA items, as nearly every state which doesn’t expressly ban these classes of weapons contains a clause overriding restrictions against them when federally registered, particular in states such as Virginia which illegally claim to not recognize grandfather clauses. It is also quite sensible to de-prioritize acquisition of certain NFA restricted items, such as suppressors, until after the semi-auto hosts your state will bar you from accessing in the near future are in your hands.

See how this goes? Get the stuff you can’t get soon first, then flesh out your arsenal with stuff you can buy under the new regime. If you really need an SBR “subgun” with a suppressor, get it. If a suppressor ban isn’t on the table, get the gun first, then the suppressor. If you want a new bolt action rifle, but already have one and have other priorities threatened by a looming ban, focus elsewhere before worrying about the bolt gun.

Now, let’s say you are in a now-restricted state and want to buy some weapons. As noted above, generally you can still buy conventional semi-auto magazine fed pistols. If you move in the future, or become a member of law enforcement or get deputized by your county sheriff, you will be able to buy standard capacity magazines all day long. Regarding the use of these weapons in self-defense, I want to point out that these newly assertive blue states haven’t restricted carry rights other than implementing legally dubious restrictions on carry in parks, etc. or will hit you with an activist judge or District attorney. Activist judges and DAs are a huge problem, no doubt, but they also exist in supposedly “red” states. The only way out is through, and the vibe shift hints that the time for such shenanigans is short.

If you already have a decent arsenal of fighting weapons, there are all kinds of useful guns you can acquire under even deep ban conditions. The M-1 Garand is still a fine infantry weapon. The Mini-14, appropriately neutered, is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you can acquire some standard capacity magazines for it in advance of a ban. Jeff Cooper used to describe a lever action carbine with peep sights as the “Brooklyn Special” - a light, handy, non-scary weapon good for shots of up to two city blocks in lawfully legal self-defense. Aiming is good. Aiming is how you hit stuff. A lever action carbine in any caliber is a hell of a car/truck gun, particularly .357 or .44 Magnums with 16” to 20” barrels. I can fit a Marlin 1894 or Winchester 92/94 into a little hidey hole in the trunk of our family’s smallest car, easily accessed if things are spicier than usual. It looks a little more innocuous to the average juror, and will ruin an antifa roadblocker’s day, just as badly as any other real caliber out to about 200 yards if you know its ballistics, which is learned via a fairly moderate amount of very fun shooting.

What about a handy bolt action rifle? Ruger just released their Ruger American 2 Scout; though I like a little more barrel on a Scout, I’m sure they’re great, as that’s an excellent platform. A .308 hunting soft point through the chest is high on the list of things which would put a quick end to urban undulates. Indeed, to paraphrase Jeff Cooper again, a fellow who learns to shoot with a handy bolt action rifle such as an Enfield Mk.4 is almost certainly going to be far better at applying meaningful lead on target than one with an SKS carbine or AK. One would think this observation would be obsolete now that 7.62x39mm ammunition is no longer nearly free and SKSes cost as much as a real gun, but there are young men out there who still feel compelled to waste ridiculous sums acquiring an SKS as a first “rifle” due to obsolete internet wisdom.

We’ve already established that most conventional semi auto handguns will be relatively unaffected by the bans, magazine capacity aside, though on the bright side, restricted mag capacities tend to steer you toward real calibers. 10 rounds of 10mm – giving up zero to five rounds – in a full sized handgun makes way more sense than giving up nine plus rounds of 9mm, or you can choose to shrink your gun, understanding that there is a point of diminishing returns. This same logic played out in the 1990s as I mentioned above. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for you to discover the wonderful world of revolvers, which carry far more easily than their on-paper dimensions imply, come in real calibers, and will up your trigger control game tremendously. Whether a .38 J frame, 3” .357 K frame, or a .44 Special Charter Arms Bulldog, yes, you are giving up capacity, but these are extremely useful guns for street and trail use. The humility imposed upon one thanks to limited capacity and reload times, which aren’t as bad for a practiced person as you may assume, are probably the correct mindset for personal defense outside of riot situations. Also, apropos of nothing, revolvers don’t automatically throw brass out into the aether, which is quite convenient in more ways than one.

Now let’s get to shotguns. Until perhaps 2010, the standard response to an online “ME NEED GUN 4 HOME DEFENSE!” post was, “get a pump shotgun!” Do I agree with this take? Generally not – I think you’re better off first getting a carry gun which you can use at home or when about, followed by an AR for fixed positions – indeed, cops and “armed citizens” have largely moved away from shotguns to the AR-15 for a number of reasons, one of the greatest being recoil. However, if you are in a strict ban situation, and are a man-sized man with muscles, you can almost certainly still acquire and use a semi-auto shotgun with a conventional stock, and a magazine tube holding six or more rounds. That’s not a lot of cartridges, but recall that firing buckshot into a person at close range tends to end their life. Indeed, if I were given a shiny badge like the lawmen of old, and charged with ending a bank robber’s crime spree, an appropriately-configured semi-auto shotgun loaded with buckshot would have been my weapon of choice for every year after 1899, and I’d use the contents of the magazine tube accordingly.

Modern tube-fed semi-autos are better than ever, and come from the factory ready to go unlike in days past, whether a Mossberg 940 or 990, a Beretta 1301, and so on. Note that the ban-sensitive removable box magazine shotguns still aren’t popular, and that’s because the magazines are bulky, expensive, and tend not to work so well when capacity is greater than 5 rounds. You aren’t missing anything. For the record, my personal shotshell load of choice is #1 Buck (.30”) in a 2.75” shell, though #0 (.32”) and #00 (.33”) Buck are great, too. In the olden days, “turkey shot,” generally any shot between #3 (.140”) and #5 (.120”) was considered good for street sweeping at range when fired into the ground so as to ricochet up at shin level. This activity is now deprecated, but knowledge is power! I will go so far as to say that a semi-auto 20 gauge shotgun configured appropriately for exciting activity is downright pleasant to shoot for even the little wife, and just as lethal at close range as a 12 gauge. I certainly wouldn’t want to take nine #1 Buck pellets loaded by threes at 1200 fps to the chest. In many impending-ban states, you can SBS a pump or semi-auto shotgun and bob the barrel down below 18” into an extremely handy package loaded with five or six rounds of pure hell. Does this describe an undergunned person?

In summary: don’t panic. Don’t abandon your homeland if you have a strong community, familial and professional network. Don’t fall for an atomized individualistic, consumerist, mindset. Remember what these weapons are for, while lawfully legally obeying the new legal landscape as much as you can when you acquire and use them to protect yourself, your family, and your community. These are not owned as a “hobby” or expression of a “lifestyle.” Do not accept – mentally or spiritually – the dominion of those who seek to replace you. You have dominion over them in your own land – prove it. Organize in your community, seek and grow social capital, then focus on political power, and aid aligned members of your community in doing the same. Support the companies pushing the envelope on the federal level - ubiquity is the real Second Amendment.

Let us remain assertive and end this talk of running and hiding, which has only ever bought time for an individual, or a generation. There are people and places worth defending and holding, and the only way to do so is to stand fast and fight via all legal means available to us. You know what firearms are for. The alternative is to embrace a life spent indoors eight months out of the year watching television and occasionally venturing out into a desert hellscape to sling lead into a hillside. Pat yourself on the back for “keeping your Second Amendment rights” all you want – what will that buy, a decade or two? What about your children and grandchildren? The land your ancestors tamed is your land, and while state laws regarding defensive firearms are important, we are truly on the advance, not the retreat. Social, legal and technological trends are on our side – if we assert ourselves and maintain the correct attitude that our goal is victory, for which the “legal” efforts of our enemies will never deter us.

“Do not give into evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.”
- Aeneid, Book VI, line 95, by Virgil

In this conversation we cover the theoretical concepts, their modern manifestations - particularly as seen in the past ten or so years in America - as well as their expression during the Second Spanish Republic and the findings of the Spanish Nationalists’ military psychiatrists who examined hundreds of thousands of leftist prisoners of war.

Astral Flight Simulation

Anarcho-Tyranny, BioLeninism, and The Spanish Civil War

I’m joined by Karl Dahl to revisit Sam Francis’ Anarcho-Tyranny and Spandrell’s Biolenninism, the two most important works describing the left and our current plight. These are both HIGHLY recommended and required reading for understanding the tactics of the regime. Make sure to follow the links and read them…

Listen now

5 months ago · 172 likes · 41 comments · Astral and Karl Dahl

By the doctors Antonio Vallejo Nágera (Chief of Army psychiatric services and Director of the Psychological Investigation Cabinet of the prison Camp Inspection Body) and Eduardo M. Martinez (Medical lieutenant, Director of the Psychiatric Clinic of Málaga and Chief of Province Jail Healthcare Services)

Section 3: Biopsychological investigation of female Marxist delinquents.

It is widely known that the female sex has participated in the Spanish communist revolution with unprecedented enthusiasm and ferocity. Many young women had no doubts about enlisting as “Militia women” to fight on the front imitating the all popular Luisa Muchel since many of them died on the barricades or at the machine gun nest they handled. Even greater still was the number of women that, when joined with the red hordes, perpetrated horrible murders, arson, looting and stoked the spirits of those men around them to carry out all manner of barbaric acts. In this work we we do not try to deepen our knowledge on female criminality nor establishing a relation between sexuality and delinquency. Things that Jassny and E. Wulfen attempted to find. We limit ourselves to lay out our conclusions fruit of the study of the personality and life trajectory of 50 Marxist women that received harsh punishments for their participation on the Red Terror of Málaga. We follow the methodology that we applied to international Marxist prisoners albeit without performing an anthropological study of the subject that is required to establish relationship between their physique and temperament. On females this lacks purpose due to the softness of their bodies.

Important reminder that to understand the psychic liabilities, mental imbalances, lesser resistance to environmental pressure, low control over their personality and low impulse control that push the female sex to active participation in the Marxist revolution. In exceptional circumstances, these psychological qualities lead to severe abnormalities in social conduct that lead the individual into Psycho-pathological states. If a woman usually shows a kind, gentle and good willed demeanor it is because of the barriers that contain her. But because the female psyche has several points of contact with childish and animal behavior, when the barriers that socially constrain the female crumble they become slaves to their most uninhibited frenzy. They yield to instinctive impulses that awaken in the female sex such as an instinctive cruelty that overcomes all imagination due to the lack of logical and rational inhibitions. Jassny explains that the social oppression that women are subjected to cause the most important qualities of the gentle sex to hypertrophy: jealousy, callousness and revenge. Thus we find an explanation for feminine cruelty in the complex affection of protest against the strong: Against the men that dominate them. Female cruelty is characterized by the odd characteristic that it is not sated by carrying out criminal acts but it increases during said acts.

Females have played an important part in the red tyranny in the same way they played an important part in the French and Russian revolutions. They overwhelm the limits of female criminality by taking part in pillaging, arson, destruction of religious imagery and slaughter, all done with an exacerbated sadistic character. This fact is even more worth of attention as women usually disengage from politics despite the fact that their zeal or religious ideas have pushed many to take active part into it. It is in these political actions and demonstrations that they have the chance of sating their latent sexual appetites. Women are often seen plunging into the field of politics not led by their ideals or reason but by their feelings which reach excessive or even pathological proportions due to the irritability that is characteristic of females. The influence of the familiar and social environment appears clearly defined in the politically passionate exaltation of females as we will observe.

Subjects of study:

The current work is based on the study of 50 Marxist women jailed in the prison of Málaga. Their punishment was for aiding the rebellion and other political crimes. Their punishments are as follows:

-Death Penalty: 33 (66%)
-Life in Prison: 10 (20%)
-20 years in jail: 3 (6%)
-12 years in jail: 4 (8%)

The magnanimity of El Caudillo has commuted the death penalties of all these prisoners to life in prison.

Age:

Marxist delinquency affects all ages as we can appreciate in the ages of the subjects of our work:

-Between 15 to 20 years of age: 6 (12%)
-21 to 25: 18 (36%)
-26 to 30: 5 (10%)
-31 to 35: 4 (8%)
-36 to 40: 6 (12%)
-41 to 45: 5 (10%)
-46 to 50: 5 (10%)
-60 and older: 1 (2%)

Type of delinquency:

All within the group have taken part on the crimes of the red hordes during the Marxist domination by joining patrols when carrying out murders, looting, arson... Some of these delinquents were specially noteworthy for their necrophagia, understood as special cruelty and callousness with dead bodies and hurling insults at them right after witnessing a murder with morbid elation. Those classified as militant are the Marxist women that, armed with short or long firearms and dressed in their characteristic clothing, fought on the war front or were directly responsible for crimes in urban areas. Many have reported hidden people or done against those they held petty debts or grudges. Lastly, a large part of the Marxists have taken part in libertarian actions by inciting the mobs to take action against fascism, usually through word of mouth. In the following we indicate the most important offense of the subjects:

-Active part in criminal actions: 14 (28%)
-Necrophagia: 5 (10%)
-Militants: 8 (16%)
-Reporting: 7 (14%)
-Libertarian actions: 16 (32%)

We discarded the anthropological study of bodily physique due to the reasons we explained before and we will proceed to point out their primary biopsychic qualities:

-Introverts: 35 (70%)
-Extroverts: 15 (30%)

In order to determine the primary temperamental reaction we used the Neymann-Kohlstedt and R.Marston-Mira tests in conjunction. We didn’t used them on the international prisoners due to the impossibility of acquiring third party information, which is indispensable. It is probably because of this that their temperamental reactions are not neutral.

Temperament:

-Schizothymic: 6 (12%)
-Cyclothymic: 8 (16%)
Total normal temperament: 14

-Schizoid: 21 (42%)
-Cycloid: 10 (20%)
-Hysteroid: 3 (6%)
-Paranoid: 2 (4%)
Total degenerative temperament: 36

We observe that, in the same way it happens among the international combatants, predominates introverted primary temperament over the extroverted and the degenerative temperaments double the normal ones. On females we see the appearance of the hysteroid group albeit in a small proportion despite there being a certain percentage of prostitutes. Particularly noteworthy is the percentage of cyclothymic and cycloids among this fully Andalucian group which can explain the special psychology of the southern people.

Intelligence and culture:

We have determined the intellectual capacity of the Marxist female group with the Binet-Simon tests and the Yerkes method. This is not to compare them with other groups but to classify them, culturally and intellectually, following the same measures used in all other Marxist groups.

Intelligence:
-Superior: 3 (6%)
-Above average 6 (12%)
-Average: 16 (32%)
-Below average: 23 (41%)
-Mental weakness: 2 (4%)

Culture:
-Superior: 0
-Above average: 2 (4%)
-Average: 8 (16%)
-Below average: 17 (34%)
-Uncultured: 23 (46%)

Education:
-Bachelors degree: 1 (2%)
-Elementary in a public school: 19 (38%)
-Elementary in a religious school: 11 (22%)
-No education: 19 (38%)

These percentages bring about very revealing conclusions. In first order, Spanish Marxism fills its ranks with those less intelligent and cultured. In second term, while those of more modest position in Spain do not lack those marked with intelligence, the adaptability to social situations and their peculiar psychology that characterizes them allows them to perfect their personality genotypical conditions. Elementary education deficiencies, the absence of extracurricular activities for women and an environment that lacks culture favors the loss of intelligence and the proliferation of simplistic and materialistic ideologies. The percentage of those uneducated is truly lamentable among the popular masses of Malaga and they should be a particular subject of study since most of these uneducated people had access to schools but they didn’t took advantage of it. In some cases his was due to their lack of commitment or bad behavior while in others it was probably due to their lack of intelligence, but not so great to allow them to learn how to read and write.

The chance to obtain more complete information about the life trajectory of the Marxists of Málaga, which we could not do with international prisoners, has allowed us to surmise very important elements to judge certain factors that would lead a subject to revolutionary extremes outside of their individual personalities. We must point out the lessons gleaned from the data we consign so that much-needed social reforms can be enacted to redirect potential adherents to the Marxist cause.

Family economical status:

Determining the family economical status is similar to the measures we used with other Marxist groups. We consider the Spanish females to have a very good family position thanks to parents with high salaries or properties. A good position is when the family economic position is secured and not strained while being modest. Artisans are tied to a trade with variable wages that allow the family to have savings and not be impoverished.

-Very good: 3 (6%)
-Good: 6 (12%)
-Artisan: 16% (32%)
-Bad: 25 (50%)

Opposite to what we have witnessed among the international groups, particularly the North American one, Spaniards that have lived economic hardships in their infancy and youth form the bulk of the Marxist horde. Those coming from a family with a bad economical position could not overcome these hardships through their labor and climb in the social hierarchy as we see in the following data:

Individual economical status:
-Very good: 2 (4%)
-Above average: 8 (16%)
-Average: 19 (38%)
-Bad: 21 (42%)

Usual profession:
-Writer: 1
-Self employed: 2
-Factory worker: 8
-Sales: 3
-Hairdresser, etc’: 5
-Housewife: 13
-Maid: 15
-Prostitution: 3

It is clear that this Marxist group is marked by their illiteracy and below average intelligence we could not expect great economical progress in life, but this hardship is not the only motive they have to join the revolution since we observe that more than half of these women that were punished for their participation in revolutionary activities could fully satisfy their economical needs. Other factors that may lead to extremist Marxist behavior can be genotypical and phenotypical.

Social personality:
-Normalcy: 11 (22%)
-Born revolutionary: 13 (26%)
-Antisocial psychopath: 12 (24%)
-Social imbecile: 10 (20%)
-Congenital love: 4 (8%)

The type of normal social personality represents a small percentage of the Marxist women which can be explained thanks to the concurrency of a series of factors that we lay out, being of particular importance psychic abnormalities in the family.

History of psychic abnormalities within the family:
-Mental illness: 8 (16%)
-Psychopathy: 14 (28%)
-Criminal record: 17 (34%)
-Alcoholism: 27 (54%)
-Suicide: 2 (4%)

Said history refers to parents, brothers or uncles, thus being direct inheritance. We point out the totality of all confessed abnormalities even if, in some cases, multiple were present in some individuals.

Revolutionary history:
-In the family: 14 (28%)
-In the marriage: 13 (26%)

We speak about revolutionary history in the family when parents, children or siblings have professed extremist ideas that have influenced the social personality of the subject. It is also important that we must consider the revolutionary history in the family since, in some cases, they condition the females to frequent libertarian actions or they alter their social ideas.

Familiar religiosity:
-Pious: 5 (10%)
-Practicing: 16 (32%)
-Non-practicing: 15 (30%)
-Indifferent: 13 (26%)
-Atheists: 1 (2%)

Religious upbringing:
-Within the school and family: 8 (16%)
-Only in the family: 2 (4%)
-Only at school: 18 (36%)
-No upbringing: 22 (44%)

Individual religiosity:
-Pious: 0
-Practicing: 8 (16%)
-Non-practicing: 28 (56%)
-Indifferent: 14 (26%)
-Atheists: 0

It is curious that the whole group is formed by Catholics that have not rejected their beliefs even if these religious ideas are limited to the vague and confused feeling that admits the existence of God. Next is the elevated amount of individuals that lack a religious upbringing in a nation that prizes itself for its fight for Christendom and stern religious beliefs. It is interesting to compare this group with the Latin American Marxists in regards to their religious beliefs. While the South Americans devolve towards religious indifference or atheism, Spanish women maintain their beliefs despite the lack of practice. This brings us some great hopes in the spiritual evolution of our race. Hopes that are even greater when we learn about the political upbringing of these Marxists:

Political upbringing:
-Through books or pamphlets: 2 (4%)
-Through the press: 8 (16%)
-Through word of mouth: 14 (28%)
-No upbringing: 26 (52%)

There is a high percentage of Marxist delinquents without any sort of political upbringing or knowledge than the small fragments they have acquired through word of mouth or the press. This means that they must seek other ideological motivations to induce them to carry out criminal activities during the revolutionary period. Indeed, we can group up our subject into three groups classified by their motivations being affected by environmental suggestions, psychopathic personality anti social behavior or the biopsychic conditions rooted in their constitution.

Among the first group (19 subjects 38%) there are those of all degrees of intelligence without a great presence of those mentally weak nor particularly gifted. The inclusion of Marxist ideas within the group leads first to the exacerbation of their passionate feelings which are stoked by the environment they live in. But it is in this first group that we also find the “opportunists.” Those without doctrine nor ideals to defend that joined in the looting and violence with the goal to sating their personal grudges without consequence. In other cases they took the opportunity to seize the property and goods of those better than them or their neighbors, believing in the reality of the equitable partition system and its workings. Lastly, some of them confessed that they used the chance to live above their means in lavish villas or comfortable hotels. A minority in this group is formed by those specially young and pretty women that fell for the allure of their constant public exhibitions in a militia uniform and a red scarf and the amoral ones, led to prostitution by their unrestrained hypersexuality.

The second group (12 subjects, 24%) are the antisocial psychopaths characterized by their apolitical ideas. These are anti-socials with no preparation nor ideals, most of them of low intelligence that unleashed all their psychopathic tendencies due to the ideological predominance among their peers, false spirit of social vindication, exaltation of their instincts for cruelty, economical malcontent, sentimental and affective numbness or just adaptation to the life during the red domination.

The group of born revolutionaries is composed of 13 subjects (36%). These are women with or without political upbringing with good, average or below average intelligence and many with political activism and experience prior to the National Movement. They were led by their biopsychic tendencies to perform many intense activities along the vast red horde.

Sexual life:

It has been said many times that there is a link between sexuality and delinquency and we consider extremely interesting all data related to the sexual experience of our female subjects. In this case they spoke with sincerity with the exception of infidelities, subjects that they refused to speak about.

-Widows with children: 4 (8%)
-Widows without children: 0
-Married with children: 14 (28%)
-Married without children: 4 (8%)
-Non married couple with children: 19 (36%)
-Non married couple without children: 4 (8%)
-Virgin: 10 (20%)
-Public prostitutes: 7 (14%)

We add that the married women are those that contracted religious or civilian marriage before the revolution. Non married women, if they contracted marriage, they did so during the period of red domination and not according to law. The virgin women were very careful when bringing up their physical integrity when questioned.

The sexual morality of the people of Málaga is very low, with extreme importance the age of defloration of the single women.

Age of loss of virginity of single women:
-11: 1
-13: 2
-14: 2
-15: 2
-16: 2
-17: 2
-18: 2
-19: 1
-Before 23: 4

The professional prostitutes were all those that were precociously deflowered. Among the married women many engaged in marriage with their first man with many doing it before reaching 18 years of age, some at 15. The precociousness in sexual activity is prevalent among the younger generations, being those younger than 25. In those older than 25 only one lost her virginity before marriage.

Sexual perversions are rare among the Marxist women of Málaga despite the number of professional prostitutes. Only 3 of the women know about all manner of sexual perversions. Homosexual tendencies are also infrequent since only 6 of the subjects, one of them virgin, showed that sort of inclination.

Drug addiction:
Alcoholism: 8 (16%)
Cocaine addiction: 1 (2%)

It is interesting to note that in a region where alcohol abuse is so prevalent among men the opposite sex barely takes up this habit. Out of the 8 alcoholics, 6 were prostitutes.

Hobbies and activities:

Among an uncultured mass such as the lower classes in which Marxist ideas dominate we believed that cultural background and education along with artistic and literary inclinations would be poor or null. The result of our investigations proves the opposite and says much in favor of the innate artistic tendencies of the people of Andalucia. These must be actively promoted to elevate the average culture of the people, specially with their love for the dramatic arts.

-Folk music: 6
-Theater and plays: 6
-Cinema: 5
-Painting and drawing: 2
-Flamenco singing: 5
-Flamenco dancing: 3
-Scenic dancing: 1
-Traveling: 1
-Driving: 3
-Hiking: 3

Patriotic ideals:

Out of the 50 subjects, only 9 of them (18%) express certain patriotic sentiment. This has more to do with a love for their hometown than the defined concept of Nation that they lack. They generally express that there is no nation since all men are equal.

Sympathy for other countries:
-Germany: 6
-Italy: 1
-England: 2
-Morocco: 1
-Catalonia: 1
-Argentina: 1

The nebulous concept of nation that Marxist women have lead to the sympathy they manifest for other nations relates to their might or other sentimental reasons. The woman that expressed admiration for Catalonia spoke mainly about its manufacture industry with little knowledge about the region.

Militarism:
-Sympathy with the army: 18 (36%)
-Anti military: 1 (2%)

Sympathy for the army is mainly sympathy with the soldiers. Some of these women are the descendants of army officers or members of the Guardia Civil, so it is not strange they give a certain degree of enthusiasm. Clear anti militarism has not appeared in a significant number of the Marxist females but most of them are completely indifferent towards the army.

Current political attitude:
-Persist in their revolutionary attitude: 29 (58%)
-Changed their ways: 17 (34%)
-Refuse to respond: 4 (8%)

It is of importance to note that among the Marxist older than 30 only one has changed her political outlook with all others clinging to their political beliefs. Meanwhile, the cultured younger women were mostly those that changed.

Opinions on the National Spain:

The answer to this question is the attitude towards the current political situation:

-Good opinion: 24 (48%)
-Well organized: 7 (14%)
-Time will tell: 1 (2%)
-We will get away with this: 1 (2%)
-Not enough information to answer: 15 (30%)
-Bad opinion: 2 (4%)

The good opinion about Spain is mainly because the country takes care of the children, even if the are the children of the enemy. It protects the poor and it provides work, thus going against the red narrative. When these women compare the discipline and order in the National Spain with the orgy of violence and disorders of the red domination they have a deep admiration for the national side. Those who do not know about the New Spain because they they were imprisoned shortly after the liberation of Málaga. Despite the references they have they cannot speak from their own experience. The two females that have a bad opinion of the current state refer more to their personal situation than that of the nation.

Opinions about the red domination:
-Terrible: 31 (62%)
-There was a revolution: 4 (8%)
-There were disorders: 4 (8%)
-They were scoundrels: 3 (6%)
-None: 6 (12%)
-Good: 2 (4%)

The answers to this question given by those with a death penalty for their actions during the revolutionary period illustrate perfectly what the people think now. The answers obtained by the group that qualified the period as bad due to the general injustices and violence perpetrated, the tyranny of its leaders... has been qualified as “disgusting,” “utterly corrupt” and “outrageous.” Those that answered that there was a revolution didn’t showed any sort of concern over violence or murders since they considered a new normalcy during the revolution. The riots and disorders during the revolutionary period have tarnished the opinions of some of the Marxists that do not shy away from qualifying their former political allies as “scoundrels.” Those that manifest a good opinion or have no opinion at all is usually because they were not negatively affected during the revolutionary period and some of them even profited or had some sort of advantage, be it economical or in other way.

Opinions on Socialism and Communism:
-Good: 18 (36%)
-Tarnished: 12 (24%
-Disgusted: 9 (18%)
-Very disorganized: 6 (12%)
-No opinion: 5 (10%)

It was relieving to see that no Marxist woman expressed any sort of positive opinion towards communism after their experiences during the red domination no matter if they were communist or communist adjacent. Those who have a good opinion mainly refer to socialism, ideology they say can be beneficial if its ideas can be put in practice. They also believe that not all socialists are evil even if we fascists believe so. The percentage of those with tarnished opinions after the Marxist revolution is considerable. An interesting fact when this happens to those that actively collaborated in carrying out the measures to enact social equality. Those of moderate leanings show great indignation when talking about what happened during the red domination, qualifying socialism and communism as “foolishness” and “rubbish.”

Opinions of Russia:

We put forward this question to complement the previous one and the answers clearly indicates the reach of the disillusion of the Marxist women of Málaga:

-Bad: 12 (24%)
-They are to blame for everything: 5 (10%)
-Failure of a country: 2 (4%)
-A land of savages: 1 (2%)
-Filled with chaos: 1 (2%)
-Nothing but filth: 1 (2%)
-They know nothing about it: 12 (24%)
-No opinion: 16 (32%)

There was not a single positive opinion about the country that the Spanish revolutionaries attempted to imitate.

Ideas about society:
Bad: 29 (58%)
None: 13 (26%)
Normal: 8 (16%)

Usually Marxists speak about a concept of society that makes reference to social inequality, the egotism of the wealthy, the misery of the poor, lack of charity... Some spoke about society in a normal and discreet way.

Ideas about ownership rights:
-They are needed: 10 (20%)
-Must be respected: 15 (30%)
-Less rich and less poor: 9 (18%)
-It is to blame for everything: 5 (10%)
-Bad: 2 (4%)
-None: 8 (16%)

Section 4: Biopsychological investigation of North American International prisoners

The North American prisoners represent an almost homogeneous group regarding racial biological conditions and perfectly uniform regarding direct or indirect Marxist environmental and cultural influences.

From the viewpoint of the aim of our investigation (Finding the biological and psychological roots of the Marxist zealotry) the North American group is an excellent subject to study for the following reasons:

1. Vast differences between the European and North American environment when said country has a backwards civilization as happens in Russia and in Spain.

2. The North American populace is accustomed to political freedoms with liberal and democratic tendencies that border upon the fantastic or superstitious.

3. Their mandatory elementary education.

4. Natural tendency for all social classes to build their future through their own personal efforts.

5. The North American society represents the extremes of a materialistic and simplistic society.

Racial background:

The North American Marxist combatants that we have studied is formed by 72 males of said nationality whose racial profiling is as follows:

-North American Anglo-Saxon descent: 31 (41.66%)
-North American Hebrew descent: 4 (5.55%)
-Anglo-Saxon immigrants: 10 (13.88%)
-Spanish immigrants: 9 (12.5%)
-Polish immigrants: 4 (5.55%)
-Slavic immigrants: 5 (6.94%)
-Italian immigrants: 2 (2.77%)
-Greek immigrants: 2 (2.77%)
-North American blacks: 4 (5.55%)
-North American, Filipino mother: 1 (1.38%)

We observe the polymorphy of the racial source. Except for 6 of the 9 North Americans of Spanish origin who spent their childhood in Asturias, all others have been subjected to the same cultural, political and social influences no matter their racial background.

Constitutional biopsychic characteristics:

According to Kretschmer methodology the percentages are as follow:

Physical characteristics:
-Asthenic: 34.58%
-Athletic: 31.94%
-Portly: 11.11%
-Athletic/asthenic mixture: 2.77%
-Athletic/portly mixture: 11.11%
-Dysplastic: 2.67%

Primary temperamental reaction:
-Introverted: 36.11%
-Extroverted: 51.38%
-Neutral: 12.5%

Normal temperament:
-Schizothymic: 26.38%
-Cyclothymic: 11.11%

Degenerative temperament:
-Schizoid: 40.27%
-Cycloid: 5.55%
-Paranoid: 2.77%
-Epileptoid: 2.77%

Oligophrenics:
-Temperamentally neutral: 11.11%

We observe in the North American subjects of all races a correlation between physical build and temperament that we already confirmed in the Latin American Marxists but they didn’t have the same primary temperamental reaction we gleaned from the Neymann-Kohlsted test despite the Anglo-Saxon psychology adapting much better to it. We attribute these results to the fact that the test subject answers without understanding the content of the question or they give whatever answer they believe would be satisfactory without showing interest in the test.

In the same way showed by the South American Marxists, among the North Americans predominate degenerative temperaments much more accentuated than in the first group.

Intelligence and Culture:

Intelligence:
Superior: 0%
Above average: 19.44%
Average: 33.33%
Below average: 36.11%
Deficient: 11.11%

Culture:
Superior: 1.38%
Above average: 18.05%
Average: 16.66%
Below average: 52.77%
Deficient: 11.11%

Important to note the precedent of a relatively elevated percentage of intelligence and culture among the North American Marxists compared to the Latin American ones. Yet despite this fact we can observe that despite belonging to a nation that prizes itself as intelligent and cultured (without being neither) those of lower intelligence are present in a greater magnitude than those of higher intelligence. And they are even more those with a rudimentary cultural upbringing. We will see soon that the latter of these factors is independent from the education received and the economical situation of the family.

Cultural upbringing groups differ slightly from those of Latin America. This is thanks to college education in North America, used to obtain one of many titles after a short but specialized career. Not in the same way one would undertake a career in a Spanish university but something with more moderate pretensions. In the group “Academic studies” we include teaching, trade schools and bachelor’s degree along with short careers like philosophy, arts... All other groups are similar to those we established previously:

Education:
-College degree: 18.05%
-Academic studies: 20.83%
-Special schools: 4.16%
-Elementary education: 55.55%
-Uneducated: 1.38%

Familial economical status:
-Very good: 15.27%
-Good: 13.88%
-Artisan: 52.77%
-Bad: 18.05%

We slightly modified the familiar economical status groups. In the “Very Good” group we include land owners, businessmen with their own establishments and workplaces or individuals dedicated to a liberal profession with a high fixed salary (such as engineer, protestant pastor...). The group qualified as “Good” encompasses workers with a fixed salary, brokers, farmers... that managed to provide for their households with decency and not many constraints. Those qualified as “Artisan” are specialized workers that, on top of providing for their families can still manage to save small amounts of their wages.

The North American Marxists give us the chance to observe the benefits that early independence grants to the children in North America. This, joined with the egotism of their parents forces the youth to start very early to work on their own for their own future. The comparison between the familiar and individual economic statuses leads us to the desired outcome. To this effect we first classify the subjects by their employment or trade, establishing a clear distinction between liberal professions and manual labor. Next we establish a different qualification according to their individual economical position similar to the familiar one. A “Very good” position is understood as earning between 10 and 20 dollars a day, “Good” earns between 5 and 10 dollars a day, “Sufficient” would earn less than 5 dollars a day and still manage to satisfy the needs of their household and “Insufficient” would mean the individual cannot meet the needs of their household no matter their wage.

Habitual profession of the North American combatants:
-Teacher: 4.16%
-Journalist: 1.38%
-Artist (painter, actor, playwright...): 4.16%
-Translator: 2.77%
-Student or in training: 1.38%
-Office worker: 6.94%
-Public worker: 4.16%
-Store clerk: 5.65%
-Tradesman (mechanic, welder...): 18.05%
-Taxi driver: 6.94%
-Sailor: 9.72%
-Cook: 4.16%
-Salesman: 2.77%
-Laborer: 13.88%
-Farmer: 8.33%

Individual economic status:
-Very good: 8.33%
-Good: 26.38%
-Sufficient: 54.16%
-Insufficient: 11.11%

Broadly speaking, in the lower classes the economic status has not improved compared to that or their parents despite the subjects being men younger than 30. We understand that they were unable to reach economic stability after working for many years. Such quality favors the North American Marxists over the South Americans.

Political upbringing:
-Through books: 16.66%
-Through press articles and leaflets: 50%
-No upbringing: 33.33%

Compared to the South Americans we observe that doctrinal upbringing and teaching is more preponderant among the North American Marxists. Mainly because the average median culture of North America is below the Spanish average despite their pretensions of culture. We also observe that the number of Marxists without political upbringing is considerable, including in the group the number of Spaniards that lived in Spain during their youth. Yet with our figures we confirm the enormous value propaganda through the press plays among those with a poor cultural upbringing, specially how much the international red propaganda has done to fatten their ranks with zealots or those that could simply be defined as politically gullible.

We point out, regarding political ideology, that all the members of the North American group consider themselves “Democrats.” This is, as all subjects understand, a far left party. The Republican party only defends the interests of the wealthy and the great capitalists and industrialists while the Democrat party works for the well being of the middle and working masses of the country. In the end, the ideology of these international soldiers is analogous to Spanish Marxism since they advocate for improving working conditions, social equality, toppling capitalism, etc...

But the North American combatants are most ardent zealots of “democracy.” This is proven when we look into their reasons for enlisting into the communist ranks and the reason for the departure from their homeland.

Reasons for enlisting:
-Military vocation: 1.4%
-Political zealotry: 79.25%
-Suggested by propaganda: 15.27%
-Lack of employment: 2.77%
-Non-combatant: 1.4%

According to their own statements, 44 of these men were recruited by the “Spanish Democracy Aid Committee” established in New York to which they joined up thanks to the efforts of propaganda in the press. Other 11 internationals paid their travel expenses from America to Spain from their own pocket, in the process abandoning well paid and comfortable work positions. All the others enlisted through all sorts of different means, usually through “hooks” that provided passports and passage. Only 5 of those that joined the red domination affirm to have traveled in hopes of finding employment with better conditions than in their country.

It is particularly interesting to know the reasons that inducted those older than 32 to enlist. Those who, a priori, evoke the thought of those that failed in life. Men out of fighting age and unemployed. This investigation destroys our presumptions since 13 of these subjects answer that the specifically came to Spain to “aid democracy.” One, a painter, arrived in our country seeking inspiration for his paintings. Only 5 of the total, almost all above 40 years of age, answered that they sought employment or they wished to aid democracy through their labor. Those of military age confess in a paladin way their antifascist and democratic ideals and their enthusiasm for the cause of the people and the republic.

Age of the North American combatants:

-20: 2.77% -31: 1.4%
-21: 2.77% -32: 1.4%
-22: 5.55% -33: 4.16%
-23: 6.94% -35: 4.16%
-24: 9.72% -37: 1.4%
-25: 4.16% -38: 2.77%
-26: 4.16% -39: 1.4%
-27: 12.5% -40: 8.33%
-28: 9.72% -42: 1.4%
-29: 5.55% -43: 1.4%
-30: 6.94% -44: 1.4%

While it’s true that the political upbringing of the North American internationals is gregarious and they lack the knowledge of the Marxists and communist doctrines. Yet despite this they are no less zealots for the “struggle of the people” albeit lacking the class hatred and incensed exaltation that reigns among the European and Spanish rabble. They speak about social inequality, that North America could truly become democratic, the imperfect distribution of labor and wealth... In the end, they are communist adjacent, among which we can see a high percentage of idealist reformers and born revolutionaries.

It is particularly noteworthy the hatred, or at least antipathy that has been instilled among the American citizens against Italian fascism. This has been exploited by the red propagandists that have given the impression to many of these international combatants that the National Spain was being invaded by Italy and they had to come to free the country.

Social personality:
-Normal median: 37.5%
-Born revolutionaries: 22.22%
-Social imbeciles: 36.11%
-Psychopaths: 4.16%

We perfectly understand the high percentage of those that can be considered born revolutionaries knowing the inducing reasons to enlist among those above military age and those whose individual and familiar status was satisfactory, specially among the liberal professions. It is not shocking the great number of social imbeciles since the North American social and cultural environment favors the nurturing of such personality as it is shown by comparing intelligence, culture and education.

Religiosity:

The North American group is very heterogeneous from the religious viewpoint. In order to classify the individual religious predisposition we must first start from the familiar religiosity. It is noteworthy that, like with the South American catholic Marxists, the religiosity among the younger generations drops significantly among those that, either doctrinally or pragmatically, profess Marxist ideology. A very strange fact in particular when it comes to the Hebrew faith. Only one subject openly confessed their affiliation with a Masonic order.

Catholic familiar religion: 28 individuals

Out of 72 Out of 28

Still believers and practice: 8.33% 21.42%
Still believers and don’t practice: 9.72% 25%
Lost their beliefs: 19.44% 50%
Apostates: 1.4% 3.57%

Reformed familial religion: 30 individuals

Out of 72 Out of 30

Still believers and practice: 16.66% 40%
Still believers and don’t practice: 12.5% 30%
Lost their beliefs: 12.5% 30%

Orthodox familiar religion: 2 individuals
-Still believes: 1
-Lost their beliefs: 1

Mosaic familiar religion: 4 individuals
-Still believe: 2
-Lost their beliefs: 2

Families belonging to modern religious sects: 2 individuals
-All still keep their faith.

No familial religion: 6 individuals
-All remain atheists.

Patriotic ideals:

It is possible that the North American Marxists have a great advantage over all other nations regarding patriotism since except the 6 subjects that lived in Spain during the youth, all others consider the United States as the best country in the world. The wealthiest, the mightiest, the more democratic, where life is best... Yet this patriotism lacks any kind of spirituality since none are capable of understanding Maetzu’s definition of Homeland [Editor: Patria] and they only express enthusiasm whenever they speak about material values and not the cultural or historic.

Individual hobbies:

Whenever we ask the North American Marxists about their preferred hobbies they answer they enjoy going to the café, bar, club, cinema, walk around, travel, sports, dance, reading, music or simply “having fun.” Due to the lack of precision on their answers we can classify them into separate cultural groups according to their favorite activities that they denominate “social life,” which usually means frequenting a public place.

Within the group that enjoy “social life” we can find those that are regulars at dance halls and cheerful places and those that enjoy isolating themselves. We observe that even if some are married and they share a life with their spouse none of them has shown any kind of inclination towards marital life.

-Enjoys social life and having fun: 15.27%
-Enjoys social life and chooses seclusion: 19.44%
-Prefers theater plays and cinema: 15.27%
-Prefers music and concerts: 4.16%
-Prefers literature and art: 5.55%
-Hobbies are mainly sports: 25%

Those who prefer sports (18 individuals or 24.98% of the total) are spread in the following percentages:

-Prefers hunting activities: 11.11%
-Prefers fishing: 22.22%
-Prefers hiking: 22.22%
-Prefers athletic sports: 44.44%

These numbers destroy the myth of the American sports spirit that most likely ends up reduced to being among the public audience watching a match between athletic teams rather than cultivating sports activities for their health and educational benefits.

Failures: 47 individuals
-Professional failures: 34.04%
-Social failures: 63.82%
-Sexual failures: 2.12%

These numbers prove once more the attraction that people that have failed in life have towards Marxist ideals. The failures, in the case of the North Americans, cannot be chalked up to a social and democratic environment that doesn’t allow for the full satisfaction of legitimate individual aspirations. We consider an extremely peculiar case that among the democratic zealots, 4 of them voiced their desire to become the President of the United States while another conformed with being the vice president as it was a more appropriate position to enact his ideals of political and social reform.

Alcoholism:
-Alcoholics: 23.61%
-Teetotalers: 56.94%
-Drinkers: 19.54%

We define the teetotalers as those that express displeasure from drinking. Meanwhile, the drinkers are those who drink in moderation without being completely drunk.

Support for the armed forces:
-Fully anti militaristic: 5.55%
-Dislike for the military lifestyle: 61.11%
-Indifferent: 23.33%
-Militaristic: 9.72%

We assumed that some anti-militaristic were among those who answered “Dislike for the military lifestyle.” In any case, enthusiasm for the military among the North American popular classes is not great, like it happens in all democratic nations.

Suicidal ideation:
-Prior to prison: 9.72%
-During prison: 5.55%

We have looked into the propensity towards suicide among Marxists in order to ascertain their reactions before critical life conflicts and to establish control if their situation as prisoners leads to them making an attempt on their own lives. If we compare it to the minute amount of suicides among our POWs with the elevated percentages of those in the Great War and in the red area, the National Spain will score a significant point in its favor when it comes to the treatment of POWs.

Sexual life:
-Widower with children: 2.77%
-Married with children: 5.55%
-Married without children: 5.55%
-Single men that take part in marital life: 19.44%
-Single men whose first sexual experience was not with a prostitute: 47.22%
-Single men whose first sexual experience was with a prostitute: 11.11%
-Single men who stay celibate: 8.33%

We give extraordinary interest to these numbers that reveal the decanted sexual, materialistic and anti-confessional education of North Americans. This leads to sexual debauchery no matter which religion they practice as it is shown by the high percentage of individuals that led a matrimonial life for long periods of time, sometimes with different women, or they had their first sexual experience with non prostitutes. Usually a fiancée or a friend of the same social stratum. It is also noteworthy the low number of married men, which doesn’t reach even half of all Marxists older than 30, who cannot justify their situation because of economic hardship as their professional and economic situations were sufficient for most of them to start and maintain a family.

Once we pondered these observations we conclude that the North American Marxists will keep clinging to their ideas after living for a time in the red area and seeing firsthand the many failures of Marxist in the political, social and administrative areas and having specific and full information about their crimes and barbarism. It is astounding the superlative close mindedness of the North American democrat that when some were shown photographs of the Marxist crimes they became thrilled despite them repeating that they were still antifascists democrats. They were few, the more cultured or gullible of the group, who rectified their political position and they confessed to have been fooled with nothing but lies.

Attitude towards imprisonment:
-Cling to their ideas: 79.16%
-Avoidance to answer: 11.11%
-Rectify their ideas: 9.72%

Conclusions

1. The international prisoner combatants from North America represent a homogeneous group regarding the Marxist environmental influence. Such homogeneity is also racial since the Anglo-Saxons are the predominant group.

2. The relations established by Kretschmet between physique and temperament are confirmed among the North Americans no matter the race they belong to.

3. The degrees of intelligence among the group are balanced, but not regarding culture. Among the internationals, their cultural upbringing is deficient.

4. The Marxist tendencies of the North American combatants are not justified by their choice of work, the nature of their labor nor the individual or familiar economical status.

5. The political upbringing is comparatively mediocre among the North Americans despite the small percentage of those that have a doctrinal upbringing. The most relevant factor for the ideological upbringing of the popular masses is the press.

6. Political zealotry is the main cause for enlisting among the North American combatants. Such political zealotry is especially accentuated among the Marxists older than 30.

7. The social personality of the North American Marxists is evenly spread among those that are normal, born revolutionaries and social imbeciles.

8. The religiosity of the Marxists, no matter their religion, is a degree lower than that of their parents with many of them abandoning their original beliefs.

9. The social environment which surrounds the North American Marxists is extremely sensual and paganistic with very few inclined towards art and literature.

10. Social and professional failures are predominant among the North American Marxists.

11. The proportion of teetotalers compared to alcoholics is much higher.

12. The North American Marxist voices his predilection as enthusiasm for his nation but his patriotic concepts are purely materialistic.

13. Suicide as a reaction to imprisonment is rarely seen among the North American Marxists.

14. A very low amount of North American Marxists have a favorable view of the army.

15. Sexual depravity is the custom of North American Marxists and reveals the sexual promiscuity of the North American youth of both sexes, at least among the popular classes.

16. Most North American Marxists maintain their political zealotry even as POWs.

Read more

Instructions from the Revolutionary Committee for the October Revolution. 1934

Preliminary Instructions:

1. It is prohibited to make copies of these instructions and whoever receives them is responsible for its safekeeping.

2. The province board will be responsible for constituting the local boards in each town. For this they will communicate with the most trustworthy person that can be tasked with forming the board that will organize all communication duties with the provincial board.

3. The members of these boards will be three. More can be appointed if it is absolutely necessary.

4. The provincial boards will be located wherever it is most convenient to fulfill their duties and will be the only ones that keep in touch with the Central Board.

5. The provincial boards will have full authority over the province and the local boards over everyone in the town they are located.

6. We must avoid, by any means necessary, to put forth written instructions or orders. When this is required we will use coded language or conventional phrases.

7. All members of the board must keep the most rigorous secrecy. They shall not speak of goals, instructions or orders. They will talk only what is necessary and only with whoever they must communicate with to achieve their goals. Trust no one.

8. Provincial boards must not follow any instruction or obey any rule except those the ones they receive from the Central board. The same will apply to the orders and instructions the local boards receive from the Provincial ones.

9. No rumor, news, event or circumstance can justify the declaration of our movement in a town or province without having received orders from superior boards. Not obeying this precept can lead to terrible damages to our movement

10. All boards must be watchful that their organization is carried out with absolute detail and through rigid discipline. These are the keys to success.

11. Where there are no people of absolute confidence, boards must abstain from forming or giving orders.

12. It is convenient to have trustworthy people planted within enemy organizations so they can facilitate information regarding their plans and operations.

13. Provincial boards will agree to have passwords with local boards. Not only to carry out orders but to guarantee the safety of delegates and verify that no false orders are given.

14. It is imperative that we must remain alert against false narratives that can be spread by the government or the enemy through the press or radio. News like “The movement has been dominated” or “Its leaders have been arrested”. Each town must acknowledge that they have a firm grip on the insurrection without minding what happens elsewhere. The weakness of others does not justify your own. The triumph of the movement rests on the spread and reach of the violence we cause and the zeal in which we defend.

15. Action groups must become guerrilla fighters ready to go above and beyond. We are tempting fate with this action and must be willing to win or die. Once we start there is no going back.

[Note the dependence upon spontaneous uprising and organization. In response to the uprising’s failure, the anarchist CNT-FAI learned from this experience and instituted the Defense Cadres. “In the absence of preparation, there is no revolution.”]

General Instructions:

16. It is the duty of the Provincial Boards to:

    a) Organize and direct the movement in their respective province.

    b) Keep in touch with the Central and Local Boards

    c) Form a board in every town according to instruction number 2.

    d) Organize the forces in the capital.

    e) Ensure that all orders that they receive and give are fulfilled.

Relations with other entities and organizations:

17. Know of any organization willing to back a revolutionary movement. Once you have their support adopt any measure with the goal of supporting us indefinitely. Specially everything concerning the most important necessities.

18. The most trustworthy and decided individuals, ready to carry out any order without question, will form in groups of ten men in which 2 will be leader and sub leader. These groups will be armed and their leaders will train them in target practice and military training.

19. The revolutionary power of our forces must be measured in two ways: Those that can fight and carry out orders and those that are willing to cooperate in other ways. The first ones will be assigned to militias in groups of 10. The others will perform low risk tasks.

20. We must constitute groups of technicians to maintain electricity, sewage, telephones, telegrams... Capable of planning and, if it is necessary, carry out said plans to destroy these services so they are not easily repaired.

21. The movement must affect all services but must strike against those of vital importance (food supply, logistics, water, gas...) and the action groups must take out all those that attempt to prevent it.

22. No mater the small numbers of a population or the weakness of our organized forces, our movement must cover as much ground as possible. Technical and action groups must ensure services and industry are sabotaged so we can take to the streets.

23. Relations with favorable groups will be cordial without any hint of confusion. We will not facilitate concrete data about our organization or plans and ensuring they have their own way of organizing while being committed to respect the orders from the movement leaders, which must always be us (the PSOE).

24. All formed groups will be under the leadership of the local and provincial boards through their leader.

25. It is of great importance to organize healthcare systems to attend to any person that can be wounded fighting for our cause. Women can provide this invaluable service.

Regarding law enforcement and the armed forces of the state:

26. It is required to know the manpower of law enforcement in each town. Military, Guardia Civil, Guardia de Asalto, Seguridad... How many weapons they have. Layout of their barracks and means to take them over or at least, prevent them from mobilizing.

27. We must attempt to know how the leaders, officers and classes think in order to establish relations with them. This way we can advise them to join us and form their own board.

28. Our youths must not lose contact, albeit discretely, with friends joining our ranks.

29. We must know with exactitude the number of leaders, officers and garrisons within each province along with their names, addresses and titles to act accordingly.

30. We must also know about weapon depots and storages and the means to take them or neutralize them.

31. Trustworthy auxiliary elements within the barracks must, with all due discretion, facilitate any information regarding orders, preparations, mood and morale of the forces and means through which we can take or neutralize their weapons. We also must know ways to impede these forces from leaving their barracks and counter their actions.

32. Whenever there is a wise decision taken by the local board and the military forces they will carry out a combined action after a necessary agreement between the two. This agreement needs only to be signed by one representative of each side.

33. Once our movement triumphs, the military forces that joined us will have representation in the local board.

Action Groups:

34. Action groups will form according to instruction number 18. They will do under the orders of the respective local organization and they will obey without question.

35. On top of being given training, these groups will provide the local board the names and addresses of the people that adhere the most to the enemies of our cause and may end up being far more terrible than any counter revolutionary element. These people must be apprehended when the movement takes place or eliminated if they resist.

36. When the time comes each group will have a designated place to which they will move once their first tasks are completed. These orders must be given by their leaders. The boards will be careful to not give contradictory orders to the group leaders so their movements are accurate.

37. We must determine the buildings and streets that are most convenient to occupy in order to resist any attack and prevent our enemies from escaping.

38. Create an inventory of cars and other way of transportation that is in each population along with the places they are located and whoever can drive them if necessary.

39. To know of any depot that may hold fuel, dynamite or weapons and the means to seize them. All dynamite that is acquired must be kept in a safe place. Each person might have, at their homes, a barrel of fuel for personal use.

40. Gasoline and dynamite must be used wisely since they are useful tools to demoralize the enemy via demolitions or fires.

41. We must quickly hamper the movements of our enemies by destroying railways, bridges and roads. These actions must be thoroughly planned in order to prevent our enemy to easily reach us.

42. Initially we will draw the attention of law enforcement, whenever it is convenient, with fires, explosions or other means in order to force their mobilization. When this happens we will cut all communication lines, destroy their equipment and attack political and public centers with the goal of seizing their archives and files.

43. We must quickly seize and hold hostage the most important people and figures of authority.

44. We must neutralize law enforcement in every town even if they promise to remain neutral.

45. All roads exiting towns will be controlled. Automobiles and any other mode of transportation will be seized. We will take over any fuel depot and armed groups will search the homes of our enemies in order to take their weapons and give them to comrades that are not armed.

46. To seize all establishments where weapons, munitions and explosives are sold as soon as possible.

47. All banks and archives will be closely watched. We will prevent the churches from ringing alarm bells by any means necessary.

48. We will distribute our forces appropriately to carry out a guerrilla war. We shall never group up in large groups but to spread out to accost the enemy constantly until they succumb to exhaustion. Always attack when having a clear advantage.

49. The barracks of the Guardia Civil must be set on fire if they are not seized. It is better to destroy them.

50. If, by any reason, the provincial or local boards suffer attrition or resignations the positions will be covered by people named by group leaders in towns and by the provincial organizations in the capitals.

51. If overwhelming government forces attempt to retake a town and the location isn’t suitable to mount a defense, our forces shall abandon it taking or executing their hostages and seek better ground to defend themselves or intimidate the enemy in the mountains or the fields.

52. Action groups will be numbered in each town and will be identified by their allocated number.

53. Once the movement has triumphed in a town we will take the necessary measures to ensure complete control establishing armed vigilance and ensuring basic services and defense. If they have men to spare they shall aid neighboring towns where the movement has not yet triumphed.

54. When a city falls into the hands of the revolutionaries nothing will justify its abandonment. Even if fight drags on we shall not falter. Every day our numbers will rise while the morale of the enemy falls. Our movement, which will take the aspect of a civil war, will not be won in a single day. In this movement, time is our best ally.

Means:

55. Procure weapons by any means possible. The central board, through the provincial boards, shall facilitate any information regarding this issue.

56. In order to hamper the mobilization of our enemies we must close streets by deploying barbed wire or any similar tools and, at the same time, drench the center of the street with fuel or oil to be lit on fire. We shall strike from different points or buildings when law enforcement attempts to remove these obstacles.

57. Build barricades with hidden explosive devices connected to the electrical system or fed with batteries. When our enemies arrive to the barricades these devices shall be triggered through a short circuit in a neighboring area in order to eliminate them in a fell swoop and take their weapons.

58. Use carts, cars or vans to block the exit of any law enforcement barracks or in key streets our enemies must traverse in order to attack from safe positions.

59. Throw bottles filled with flammable liquids to the gathering places or homes of our enemies.

60. Cut any way of communication in a way it cannot be easily fixed by our enemies.

61. Blow up bridges, close off roads and demolish railways to make the enemy incapable of moving their forces effectively.

62. Slash the tires and break the engines of any vehicle that cannot be seized by our forces.

63. Where there is a radio station, if it cannot be captured, burn it or demolish it. Only sabotage it if our personnel are inside the building.

64. Incapacitate the leadership of the enemy forces that do not live in the barracks and that can return to their posts. Apprehend them at their homes or eliminate them if they resist.

65. Use army uniforms, especially those of officers, whenever possible in order to give the impression of an army uprising [To imply that this is an official government operation - KD].

66. Do not waste your energy or our means to attack.

67. Pressing the attack is always more effective than taking defensive positions. We must dominate our enemies but we must avoid over-committing in a way our enemies might take advantage of it.

After our success:

68. Once our movement triumphs our first measure shall be total control over the population. We will perfect our armed militias, taking over strategic points, completely disarming the population and occupy public buildings.

69. We will quickly reestablish communications and inform the board in the province capital of the situation.

70. We shall seize all food and goods to control commerce and provide for the population in order to avoid abuses.

71. Following the instructions and orders of the local board, an administrative and defense board shall be created. Orders from this new board will be obeyed without question. In case said orders are abusive, they will also be obeyed but reported to the provincial board for a delegate to investigate the situation.

72. Goods, belongings and properties of wealthy people shall be used to provide for the people in any way the Central Board considers appropriate. Nobody shall starve while the people has means to provide.

73. While the revolutionary movement takes place any means and energy we have will be little in order to achieve victory. Once we have won we must put our energies to work so no unnecessary deaths or damages take place. Particularly regarding things which may be useful or necessary to reach our goals.

Excerpts from a series of articles published by Josep Pla in the newspaper “La veu de Catalunya”

[Josep Pla was a supremely important figure in 20th century Spanish and Catalan letters; after studying the law and being elected to Catalunya’s parliament, he served as a foreign correspondent for most of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, then returned to Madrid to report on the Cortes until the Civil War broke out. He wrote a history of the Second Republic as well as a tremendous body of work which first began to be translated to English in the 2010s. - KD]

October, 24 1934

After a careful investigation I can say the movement in Asturias was initially a socialist movement mainly promoted by the Socialist Youth. The strike began the 5th and it was, in general, peaceful and calm. But it begun taking a truly revolutionary aspect by the evening of the 6th when many began to know what was happening in Barcelona and what the representatives of the Generalitat said. A little before midnight, this region was in open revolt. Mine workers formed large groups and occupied Gijón, Oviedo, Avilés and the most important cities in the province, staying in them for several days. From the first moments they showed a clear militaristic and political organization but they were quickly dispersed. Since this movement begun there is little clear information about the terrible events that happened in Oviedo. Events that make the most dramatic disasters in political history pale in comparison. Today, Oviedo lies in ruins.

Once the revolutionaries regrouped in towns that they could easily take over they committed a heinous crime: giving weapons to criminals. These people began sacking and looting immediately.

The occupation tactics were as follows: besieging the local Guardia Civil and Guardia de Asalto garrisons. Innumerable slaughters. Takeover of food shops and stores. Abolishing money through the implementation of a government issued coupon system in order to obtain food, beverages and clothing. In certain towns this system was respected and transition was relatively peaceful. In many others this system was quickly discarded and substituted by plain mass looting. In Oviedo the city was completely sacked and razed.

[…]

There are many imponderable causes that led to this seditious movement. The ponderable causes were the abundant money sent from Madrid, the large weapons caches, machine guns, the cannons stolen from the factories of Oviedo and Trubia (the traitors managed to seize 12 artillery cannons and a vast amounts of ordinance from military factories), and in general, the weakness of the government of Samper during the summer, that allowed all of this to happen.

Naturally all of this was thrown out of the window thanks to the aforementioned cause of arming criminal elements. We just have to look to one fact that gives us the insight we need: during the 9 days that Oviedo was seized by the traitors, it had 3 revolutionary committees. The first completely socialist, the second socialist and communist and the third completely communist.

[…]

Despite everything, the military statements are very optimistic. The Asturians know their miners. They know they are hardy. But in other parts the movement was mainly led by the youngest miners. The most incensed and tough. They always have the option of fleeing into the mountains and resist as much as they can. In Asturias the easiest option is fleeing into the countryside since most back doors lead to a forest or a mountain. Usually, when troops arrive to a town or village they only find women and children. All men have fled. The same has happened in the most dangerous regions of Basque Country.

A detail that accelerated the pacification in Asturias, corroborated by many, was that the movement lacked a leader. It was a gregarious and spontaneous miner uprising. Many committees, as feeble as wet paper, attempted to take control. But it was impossible. The initial reports of the revolutionary troops being in uniform and trained was not confirmed. Miners were simply armed. After sacking shops and warehouses, they had slightly better clothes. The only thing they have in abundance is munitions and explosives.

The first Alianza Obrera (Worker’s Alliance) committee that presided over Asturias was mainly formed by Socialists. Said committee went into hiding after a few hours. The second, led by socialists and communists, lasted for a few days. The third was entirely communist. It gave out orders and seized anything in the name of the revolutionary movement. This committee, as it is reported, had some clear aims and strategy behind its actions.

[…]

These are the works of socialism and communism that is in league with Esquerra Catalana. They sow destruction, grief and misery. When you see Oviedo like I see it, there is no possible justification for the politics that caused this destruction. When I leave the city the Guardia Civil stops me and tell me to enter their barracks, which has been turned into an improvised hospital. While I sign the documents, I hear the screams of the wounded, some of them tied to their beds. When I leave, I see in a blood soaked stretcher a 12 year old girl, blond and beautiful, with a pierced lung. I can’t bear to look.

October 26, 1934:

The miner’s rebellion in Asturias can be considered finished. The occupation of all points will take just a matter of days. Miners didn’t gave a sign of resistance. General Lopez Ochoa has stated that he will enter towns with a slow military formation without firing a shot.

The monarchy has received numerous criticism, and with good reason, for its frivolity and irresponsibility. But I do not believe they had a worse precedent than what the Republic has shown. When you examine the works of Azaña in regards to the army, one questions whether this man is incapable, or just plain foolish. The dire events in Asturias are a bloodbath caused by the works of a man with a deranged mindset.

The events in Asturias are unfathomable. They overwhelm reason or any logical explanation. The last strike had no basis, or reason to be. Unemployment was almost nonexistent in Asturias. All worked, as people said, at full power. The minimum wage was 9 pesetas. The average wage was between 12 and 15 pesetas. Minimum wage was given to all labor done outside of the mines, in open fields. Asturias was truly a prosperous region. The land of a wealthy middle class open to many prospects. Coming from Castille, Asturias is an oasis of life, activity and health. The food, while being simple, is popular and hearty.

Knowing all of this we must face the reality that Asturias was a land saturated by communism and socialism. Walls are caked with truculent messages. Book stores offer nothing but leftist literature. The word “Revolution” is the most repeated word in the region in these last years. We just have to say that Mr. Melquíades and reformism are considered fascism. Since the Republic was born, Asturias had worse and worse governors.

October 27, 1934:

By the morning of the 6, after the region was in the hands of the revolutionaries, young miners departed for Oviedo to fight. In each town a central revolutionary committee was formed, subdivided into other committees: war, politics, rationing, hygiene... A great bureaucratic apparatus was born. When they took over the leadership of a town the central committee sent a single manifesto decreeing that private property was abolished, giving workers property and management rights of their workplaces and reminding that all tenants in rental properties, be homes or land, are now owners. At the same time currency was abolished by creating a coupon system. Many manifests also stated that whoever spreads false information (in other words, against the revolution), with be put to death. At the same time all cafeterias and bars were closed in order to fight against alcoholism and illiteracy.

[…]

The central committees gave two types of coupons: for individuals or families. The first ones had a value of 2.4 pesetas a day while the family ones were calculated considering the number of people. A family of 7 would have a stipend of 12 pesetas. With these papers many carried out great abuses, and the death penalty was instated for those who attempted fraud. People, rich and poor, went to stores in order to obtain food, clothes and services of all kind. Shopkeepers wrote down the value of this legal theft with a smile. Because the businessmen had to be paid by the committees, and they refused to do so, so they demanded payment from the military authorities. In few words: everyone lived for free for 15 days. Stores ended up empty and all sorts of professionals had to provide their services for free.

[…]

When troops arrived to many areas they found the barracks of the Guardia Civil and Guardia de Asalto in ruins. Everything else was mostly untouched. When they arrive to these places they have a realization that makes their blood run cold. 90% of all men have taken direct part in the revolution. All except businessmen, friars, women, children and the elderly. Who hasn’t been part of it? The socialist movement in Asturias runs deep and it will give us many questions without answers.

[The socialists, communists and anarchists treated the arrest of participants in this bloodbath and destruction as a great injustice in their propaganda - KD]

October 28, 1934:

It is precisely due to the control the socialists exerted over the masses that the movement was led and had a clear objective. Even more, in the towns dominated by communists order was maintained more sternly than those led by socialists. Such was the case of La Felguera. One must see clearly when you talk about Asturias because you must separate Oviedo from the mining areas. Oviedo is now in such a state that words would do little to describe it. I do not need to invent anything after seeing the great disaster in the capital of Asturias.

[…]

Meanwhile in Oviedo things were much different. In Oviedo the revolutionaries found a great enemy. The patrols of the 3^rd regiment, a small detachment of Guardias de Asalto and a handful of armed civilians resisted for 9 days in a way that very few people would be able to. 9 days with no food and little sleep. It was their resistance that led the revolutionaries to desperation and made them demolish most of the city. But the garrison endured and that is what happened in Oviedo. Airplanes caused minute damages since they didn’t drop only fliers and smoke bombs. But summarizing, there was pure open war in Oviedo. Nothing less. And it lasted until General Lopez Ochoa mobilized the army and took over the city. If in the whole mining area there was a level of resistance as it was in the capital of Asturias, every single town would be nothing but a smoldering ruin.

30 of October 1934:

Many ask now “Where are the culprits? Have they been arrested? Are they in prison? Where are they now?” In Oviedo some of the most notorious socialists like Teodomiro Menéndez and Javier Bueno have been arrested. There are also many other prisoners, some of them being tried at the moment. And some other important people in the movement were killed with their weapons in hand. But the truth is that those most responsible for the revolution have not been found. Those that led central, local and the innumerable subcommittees have fled into the mountains. All of them left hours before the army arrived and it would be difficult to know if anyone that is truly responsible for what happened in the mining areas has been jailed.

[…]

They talk to me about the governors that Oviedo had in the last years. In all records of this country you cannot find worse than them. The last one was at the opening ceremony of a picture gallery in Gijón when the revolutionaries were at the gates of Oviedo. Plain foolishness and frivolity. And where were the police? In the mining area, with a large population, the standing garrisons were minute. There were towns with 400 or 500 armed miners where all security tasks were in the hands of less than 10 members of the Guardia Civil. If you add the demilitarization of weapons factories (thanks to the reforms of Azaña) and lack of control on communist and socialist propaganda (that should not be tolerated in any civilized nation) you find the explanation as to why Asturias fell like a house of cards.

The gentry is also to blame for what has happened. The intellectuals don’t dare speak. The University of Oviedo paid dearly for nurturing the breakdown it promoted. Everyone here was a “democratic liberal” and people were proud of their “moderate leftism” and “advanced progressivism”. The nobility and the bankers gathered around Teodomiro Menéndez, filling him with sweet adulations that begun to erode the principles, characteristics and structure of society. All these fools had vain pretensions of becoming like England or France. The result is obvious. The result was war and the destruction of Oviedo. You may go to the cinema to see what has happened. You may read in the paper narrations about these events but it will be a far cry from all this destruction. The events of Asturias, Barcelona, Basque Country and Madrid are the logical and fatal consequence of the political process initiated in 1931. A process that seems unfinished.

“An ambitious youth. Foreigner or an outsider. Completely alien to the social and cultural reality they live in. Little political knowledge or ideological convictions. Sadistic and lacking initiative but with blind obedience to their superiors. Usually middle or upper class, from the city. Elegant and well dressed. Always with plenty of money they earn from the cut they get from the property they seize. Living a scandalous and dissolute way of life among people stricken by poverty and misery.” This description has probably drawn something in your mind - a face, maybe even someone you can name. This quotation describes a specific type of person seen in the Republican zone during the Spanish Civil War, a type of person who prowled the streets of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. A badge carrying grim reaper who would make you disappear if you drew their attention – an agent of the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, the Military Intelligence Service, or SIM.

A lengthy war between the right and the left was lost by the right long ago: the battle for the narrative. The left churns out unending hit pieces and propaganda almost constantly via a gargantuan apparatus of publishers and authors in order to direct every event and every person toward a meaning which justifies their ideas. For a very long time, we have been bombarded with lies from cradle to grave to keep us from turning from our supposed saviors. While our tale began during Spain’s Civil War, the bulk of this lesson played out after it ended, a period in which communist propaganda to discredit the Franco regime, and an arisen Spain’s victory, intensified greatly. We shall see, once more, that the modern left is not much different from what it was from the 1930s through the 1960s.

With this I will give some context to what we are going to address, mainly what the SIM was, and a typical member, such as the infamous Julián Grimau.

The Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, or SIM, was created August 9, 1937, shortly after the resignation of Largo Caballero as the Spanish Republic’s Prime Minister by his socialist colleague Indalecio Prieto. The SIM’s mission was espionage and counter-espionage, focused upon stamping out enemies of the Republic: Nationalist spies, foreign intelligence agencies allied with Franco, and any “disaffected” organization which survived persecution under the Republic. The SIM was intially under the command of Indalecio Prieto, but the organization was almost immediately co-opted. By the middle of August, communist military commander Gustavo Durán Martínez was appointed to a leadership position within the SIM and proceeded to deputize and turn loose hundreds of communist militants and sympathizers. Despite his quick dismissal, the damage was done, and hundreds of communists had the authority to carry out arrests. Soonafter, the commander of NKVD forces in Valencia demanded that Prieto explain why Durán was removed from SIM leadership, to which Prieto answered that he needed all of the seasoned officers he could get in the army. NVKD operatives begun to pressure, then threaten, socialist SIM members to follow their orders rather than those coming from the Republic. Indalecio Prieto commented in his memoirs that Lieutenant Manuel Uribarri, appointed in place of Durán, was constantly pressured and threatened by the Soviets for several months until he yielded to their demands and ultimately betrayed Prieto; Uribarri abandoned the fight and fled to France in April 1938.

The SIM were, paradoxically, the government sanctioned secret police working largely at the behest of NKVD agents, now walking on eggshells since the Events of May; their destruction of the POUM had made all non-communists extremely wary of their presence and activities. The anarchists were the most vocal faction, as usual, in this case due to the SIM’s part in ending anarcho-libertarian rule in Catalonia and southern Aragon. The communists knew that they had overplayed their hand against the POUM, and another swift and brutal action like that would trigger a second civil war within the Republic. To succeed, they would need to slowly and steadily eliminate their allied opposition, showed disaffection or voiced their criticism against them. A way to slowly grind the anarchists and other organizations persecuted by the communists to dust.

The SIM had a considerable amount of agents, but among them, several were infamous for their cruelty or enormous amounts of arrests. One of them was Julián Grimau, a man fairly described as “torturer,” “murderer,” “thief” and “rapist.” Julián Grimau García was born in Madrid in 1911. The son of a Republican police officer, his life was unremarkable until the creation of the Republic in 1931 where he became a militant for the center left, which led him to join law enforcement. In October 1936 he joined the PCE and, thanks to his law enforcement background, he was appointed as squad leader for the Criminal Brigade of Madrid. Now an enforcer for the communists, his career saw a meteoric rise on the ranks where in spring of 37 he became General Secretary for the Criminal Investigation Brigade in Valencia. He earned many honors in the Republic’s sham justice system, such as a commendation in November 1938 for his zeal and tireless fight against “the Trotskyist menace”.

With the creation of the SIM in August and the appointment of hundreds of communist sympathizers, Grimau was among those recommended to for appointment as an agent; he was given a badge and assigned to Barcelona, where he led the infamous checa of Berenguer Square. He not only carried out arrests, interrogations and torture, but he also appeared as a qualified witness in the so called “Popular Trials”. In other cases, when an arrestee could not be killed without causing retaliation from other leftist organizations, they were forcibly conscripted and sent to the front. These unwilling conscripts usually ended up in the units of communist officers like Valentín Gonzalez or Enrique Líster, officers who had orders to make sure these people didn’t leave the battlefield alive.

Grimau’s deeds as an agent of the SIM are only known thanks to the many victims who suffered at his hands - sometimes for months. Several of these testimonies can be found in the book Los Papeles Reservados (The private papers) published in 1985 by journalist Emilio Romero Gómez where the inhuman treatment of prisoners, tortures and lengthy hours of interrogation are told. One of the victims reported:

Grimau used an electrical device tied to a chair. He also used a violin string that, when pressed against the throat, made the tortured go mad. Other interrogations were performed with the prisoner tied to a barber’s chair with two men right behind him. Grimau made questions with a bright light pointed to their face and if the answer was not to his liking, the two men struck the prisoner at the same time in the back. They knocked the wind out of him and struck him with an atrocious fear, leading to any confession that was desired be it true or not. One of the arrested was castrated in the barber’s chair by placing electrified metal plates on his testicles, giving him gruesome burns.

His most important feat in the SIM which catapulted him into the good graces of the NKVD and the Soviets was the investigation of the murder of Polish NKVD agent and captain of the International Brigades Leon Narwicz. His hit, in February 1938, was a joint operation between the anarchists and members of the POUM in retaliation for the arrest and murder of Andrés Nin. Due to the enormous importance of this murder, Grimau led the charge with a number of arrests among the anarchists of Barcelona and several members of the International Brigades. He arrested a total of 7 men were arrested and subjected them to torture and lengthy interrogations over a month until a confession was extracted from one of them; they were sent to the Modelo Prision. The real culprits fled to France and were never apprehended.

This action, along with his work under the tutelage of NKVD agents, earned Grimau a privileged position. He was a priority exile for the Soviets along with Dolores Ibarruri and Enrique Lister, who remained in the USSR where he received further training as a professional infiltrator and political agitator. By 1944 he was working in Cuba at the behest of Santiago Carrillo, acting as a liaison between the communists on the island and the Soviets, laying the groundwork for the future communist movement, earning him an even higher position in the PCE. It wasn’t until 1957 that he returned to Spain under a false name with the objective of developing subversive organizations and leading operations against the Franco Regime. Fortunately, he was arrested during a routine documentation check November 7, 1962, though there are rumors that he was reported by one of his associates. It wasn’t until his identity was later confirmed that law enforcement understood they had captured one of the most egregious torturers of the Civil War.

Some authors argue that his assignment to Spain and subsequent arrest was planned by the leaders of the PCE, namely Santiago Carrillo. After all, they knew that Grimau was a man wanted by the Spanish state, and if he was captured he would be executed for his crimes. Per this theory, the plan was not to eliminate an undesirable element in their midst, but rather a ploy to put the Franco regime in a difficult position in which no move would be positive. In essence, this was a planned compromise of one of their operatives so as to damage the reputation of the Franco regime in all of Europe when he was justly executed. This theory is strengthened by Grimau quickly acknowledging his real identity to the authorities, his communist affiliation, his plans and his total lack of regret or guilt when he confessed to some of his crimes. He also resisted arrest theatrically, later jumping out of a window then claiming that the police mistreated him.

Upon his arrest, all of the communists in Europe sprang into action, unleashing a massive propaganda campaign in favor of Grimau and slandering the Spanish regime. A gargantuan machine began to churn out lies in several languages on behalf of a man who, until the previous day, barely a handful of exiled Spaniards knew anything about. Such details are related in an article published April 19, 1963 in the newspaper Madrid the very day of his trial:

It was precisely the day after his arrest when an intense and constant campaign in favor of Grimau began in all communist radio stations and papers of Europe. Ever since, a day doesn’t go by without references to his arrest consisting of rigorously false events and truculence of any kind. At the same time, communist movements in every western country which still allow their existence mobilize to protest. These include a myriad of protest letters to the relevant authorities, telegrams, messages to the Catholic church, manifestations among intellectual circles, protests against Spanish embassies, speeches by the most notorious communist leaders, pledges to the “Red Aid” in favor of the victims of the Spanish regime....

This so called “Operation Amnesty” is also noticed day after day. Campaigns in which they plea for clemency and freedom for the imagined thousands of political prisoners in Spanish jails, always pointing specifically the case of Grimau.

It is also quaint the curious chapter of the always-evoked “monstrous torture” to which prisoners are subjected. Among them, as usual, the unique figure of Julián Grimau. With his name they have attempted, through massive and excessive reiteration of slanderous propaganda, that the constant attitude of terror, oppression and unimaginable viciousness is associated with the Spanish authorities. To this end they always use imagined fables accompanied by words such as vicious claws, zealotry, executioners, barbaric methods, torture, police brutality, inhuman treatment, tireless antifacist struggle or repressive measures. At the same time they qualify Grimau as an “advocate for democracy” appealing to what the communists call “honest church representatives” in favor of Grimau against “those who imprison people whose only crime is to fight for the freedom of their people”.

The most notorious radio stations, some with day to day coverage of the arrest of Grimau until today, are: Radio Moscow, Radio Prague, Radio Belgrad, Radio España Independiente and Radio Warsaw. Many publications have done this in the same way such as L’humanité from Paris, L’Unitá in Italy, Literaturnaya Gazeta, Poliktica, Rude Prado, Tribuna Ludu, Seinteia, Avanti, Pravda, Neues Deustchland, Daily Worker.,.. A campaign that culminated April 17, 1963 with a long transmission coming from Radio Moscow parroting the following slogans: “There is still time to save Grimau,” “Solidarity with Grimau” and last, “Saving Grimau is the demand of all the Soviets,” proving the close and known ties of Grimau to communism.

We arrive at the moment that, according to the communist propaganda methods, women must come into play. Ready to pull the heartstrings of many they send letters, pleas, telegrams, moving petitions, passionate praises... They even dared to say that Grimau was executed without trial a week ago while singing his virtues despite his many crimes, brutal executions and tortures that he carried out in Spain. Last night Radio Moscow made a broadcast saying the following: “Grimau is the embodiment of the highest virtues of the Spanish man. Modest, simple, stalwart and selfless. His life is an example of righteousness, good will and total commitment to the cause of his people. To the cause of freedom.”

This precise and calculated campaign by the communists was intended to force the Spanish government to make a hard decision: execute Grimau for his crimes, and be slandered to all western countries as a brutal and oppressive regime that kills people for wanting freedom and a better life, or to let him go, show weakness to their people, and potentially let the communists roam their country once more now that they have seen they can make the regime fold to their lies. Many fell for the constant torrent of well-presented lies cooked by well-trained propagandists. Franco received a large number of telegrams and letters from European leaders, pleading for Grimau and asking for a pardon. Even Queen Elisabeth herself was fooled and sent a telegram to Franco asking him to pardon Grimau, to which Franco answered: “I am amazed by your innocent goodwill. But Grimau is the author of many horrible crimes and thus, I am afraid I cannot grant such pardon.”

The trial was carried out before a military court; Grimau had the aid of both military counsel and a civilian lawyer. During the trial he plead his innocence; he denied his work for Soviet agents, denied that these agents were in Spain during the war, and explained that his meteoric rise among the Communist law enforcers was due to his excellent work arresting common criminals, allegations which made a number of people in the courthouse laugh. The trial itself lasted for around 5 hours, after which the judge handed over his verdict to be ratified by the prevailing judicial authority for execution. By the end of the day, it was known that Grimau was found guilty of illegal arrest, theft, torture and murder and he would be executed the following day.

Franco had a lengthy discussion with the Foreign Affairs minister due to the sentence and his intent to carry out the execution of this criminal; they collectively believed that this incident would cause great damage to the image of Spain abroad. Despite knowing the risks and the likely subsequent Communist propaganda campaign following the execution, it was carried out. Franco later told his cousin: “It was painful to approve the sentence, but it was our duty to do so. Many times the sentences are commuted when a lengthy period of time passes after the crime is committed. But this was a special case. He was the leader of a checa that callously murdered and tortured countless Spanish citizens whose families still live and demand this vile beast to pay his due debt to justice. There was no other option but to approve it, and the council agrees. It is true that the Foreign Affairs minister addressed us, saying that a propaganda campaign against the regime and myself would be unleashed abroad. But I answered that despite it being lamentable and unfair, our duty was to carry out this sentence. Neither military or civilian ministers raised an objection. All agreed.”

The day after the trial, Grimau was led to the Training grounds of Carabanchel for execution. He appeared to be calm and collected, and he refused last rites from a priest. As expected, the propaganda campaign by the Soviets and the PCE intensified, with Santiago Carrillo claiming that this execution was an attempt by the Franco regime to destroy their plans for “National Reconciliation”. Even Nikita Kruschev insulted Franco and denounced the unjust persecution of leftists in Spain. This campaign was met by a chorus of voices who supported the execution, such as the Colombian businessman Arturo Rey, who denounced Grimau as responsible for the torture and death of seven brothers of the Hospitaller order of San Juan de Dios in Barcelona. Meanwhile, in Spain, nobody advocated or pled for the innocence of Grimau, since very few people even knew who he was.

On April 22, 1963 an interesting article by writer Tristán La Rosa was published, aptly titled “Between foolishness and cynicism” that I present translated in full:

The trial and execution of the communist leader whose only reputation is tied to the tragic renown of the old “checa” of Barcelona has raised many voices in protest beyond our borders. Grimau enlisted in the PCE in October of 36 and a year later he joined the “Criminal Investigation Brigade.” By 1939 he was the leader of it and solely responsible for the “checa” in Barcelona. When the war ended he fled to France and Mexico, later living in Russia and eventually returning to France. In some countries he perfected his techniques for political agitation and in others, by his own words, carried out his duties as a professional Communist.

A few months ago he arrived in Spain undercover. His only real credential was as a member of the Spanish Communist Party. He tried to restart his usual activities in our country but he was arrested. A couple of days ago he was tried and convicted by the competent authorities. He is an obscure man that is unknown to most Spaniards. Even most of the people that he martyred and tortured rarely heard his name. The same applies to the relatives of those he murdered. Beyond our borders (except in Moscow and a few places) nobody knew about him. Today communists all over the world say his name with a tone of strange admiration. Small choirs of oafs join their voices to theirs. That tender foolishness pulls on their heartstrings. They are shaken by the sharp cynicism of others.

Several times we have witnessed the Communists attempt to turn the most foul and disgraced beasts into martyrs. Before the perfect indifference of international leaders they present their lives as pure heroism and when they pay their ultimate debt to justice it is portrayed as the unfair culmination of a life dedicated to pure ideals. Their attempts have failed time and time again.

That last statement drew my attention. Their attempts have failed. But have they really? After all, their propaganda machine has worked tirelessly and endlessly since the end of the Civil War to discredit the cause of the Nationalist movement, and many more causes. Even today they employ clinical dialog, an overabundance of euphemisms, and curated and careful presentation of the miracles, deeds and passions of their saintly thugs, murderers and agitators to pull at our heartstrings. Our empathy becomes our weak point, and they work constantly to exploit it in one way or another. It worked with Grimau all over Europe. Later it worked with Salvador Puig Antich, anarchist thug and robber executed for the murder of a police officer. The same worked multiple times with the terrorists of ETA, considered by their propaganda apparatus as martyrs of the nation.

Still today it keeps happening all around us. How many people have been presented as so-called “champions of civil rights,” but we soon discover that they are lowly criminals or sexual deviants of the worst kind? How many “victims of unfair profiling” or “police brutality” were deranged and violent criminals under the effects of drugs or actively resisting arrest? How many times will these people protect the criminally insane, people that are incapable of living in free society, letting then roam free among innocent people who will be the target of their outbursts? They protect people who, in a sane society, should be vilified and taken away to make them the victims of an allegedly abusive society, socioeconomic factors, unfair profiling, persecution or oppression in order to excuse whatever violent behavior they exhibit, escaping their righteous punishment. Quite often, they take the initiative and flood us with their lies before the facts are clear. In many cases they do everything in their power to hide damning evidence which they cannot defend or excuse, such as the Nashville troon shooter, where the police did everything in their power to prevent the public from accessing the shooter’s manifesto.

This article is intended not only to remind you that they lie, since we all know that. Their lies are their finest art: thoughtful and well-crafted. Disregard them and remember; remember their names and remember their crimes. The left will gladly bury their memory, clean up the blood and quickly swallow their own sweet lies, as in most cases, reality doesn’t conform to their beliefs. In other cases, they want monsters to roam the streets, pretending that they can be reformed, or they have even more nefarious objectives. What matters is that you know the truth, unmovable and undeniable. You must remember that truth is the only thing which can break their lies, much like bodycam footage breaks the illusory lies of police brutality and unfair profiling. So, remember that truth, and remember it well, for unmovable and undeniable will be the wall their lies are dashed upon.

The extremely grave situation the nation is going through, due to an electoral pact that made the government the hostage of revolutionary organizations as a direct consequence, has fatally led Spain to a chaotic situation. There is no other way to avoid it but through violent action. For this, all elements that love the nation must forcibly organize themselves into open rebellion with the object of conquering power and imposing, through order, peace and justice. This organization is eminently offensive and its duties must be carried as soon as possible according to the following basis:

Base 1: The takeover of power must be done taking advantage of the first favorable moment with the army being a key part. This will be done in conjunction with any support, manpower, material or elements of any kind provided by political groups, societies and individuals that do not belong to unions or sects that receive foreign inspiration (Socialists, masons, anarchists, communists, et al.)

Base 2: For the execution of the plan there will be two linked organizations that will act independently: Civilian and Military. The first will be provincial and the second will encompass the territory of the organic divisions.

Base 3: In each province there must be a Provincial Committee (first order) formed by a variable number of members elected from law enforcement, militias affected to our cause and representatives of economic entities. This group must be as small as possible. They must:

• Designate a supplementary committee, organize the judiciary (second order) and dictate the norms through which them and the township committees (third order) must abide by.

• Name a president, a secretary and a liaison with the Military garrison or the Territorial committees depending on if the province is or not the leader of the Organic Division.

• Designate individuals with military training, belonging or not to the counter revolutionary militias to reinforce the armed forces in the moment of our mobilization, asked by the military committees through our liaisons. Within reason, said individuals must be willing to fight and die for our Holy Cause.

• Designate technical and worker personnel in due moment to take over municipal services such as mail, phone, telegrams, train stations, radios (these three under the responsibility of military engineers if possible), water, power, gas, electricity, food rationing and everything required for the population to live regularly. Public officials and workers under the administration will be prioritized as long as we know with confidence that they are enthusiastic collaborators.

• Prepare auxiliary personnel from law enforcement whenever its necessary to increase their manpower or to partially or completely substitute the officers.

• Prepare people that must take charge of the government in each province capital and approving the proposed names for each town.

• Quickly make an inventory of all vehicles of mechanical or animal traction and designate those that must join the armed forces along with their drivers. This requisition must be done by the military committees.

• Organize defenses against public altercations in towns where there is no standing garrison. Said defense can be delegated to second and third order committees.

• Designate, according to the leader of the Territorial Military Committee, the person that must lead the Civilian Government in the province when the movement takes place. It is preferably that said person is the most characterized member of the Guardia Civil in the province. If that person is not a staunch individual with stern values, a civilian will be preferable.

• Aid in whatever it is required by the military authority once the movement takes place. Specially all concerning the supplying of troops and animals.

• Facilitate whatever resources are needed before and after the movement. These must always be justified and as limited as possible. Careless expenditures lead to abuse.

NOTE: Forming second and third order committees is not mandatory. They will only be organized in those provinces that, due to their special situation allow it. But we must not forget to organize a committee in all populations where there is a garrison even if it isn’t the province capital.

Base 4: In the capital of each Organic Division a Military committee (with regional authority) will be created. Said committee will be formed by the most characterized members of each branch of the armed forces that support our cause and led by the highest ranking officer. In the garrisons where there is no Division head there will also be a Local committee that will be analogous and dependent from the regional one. Where there is only one army branch, the committee will be formed by the three highest ranking officers that supports the movement. The Military committees have as duties:

• To publish official communications declaring the state of war, prepared requisition sheets and study their plans for mobilization. With forward thinking, army staff must be increased from 25% to 75% of their total numbers with personnel recommended by the Civilian committees. In the populations where these committees would be arrested or rendered ineffective, a Supplementary committee [consisting of military personnel] will be established.

• To study and requisition vehicles and drivers for troop and materials to the First Order committees. In first order, transportation for two thirds of the mobilized troops from each garrison must be prepared along with their weapons, munitions and any required supplies. All of this must be done with trucks and it will require a vehicle reserve equivalent to one fourth of what we need. Each 50 vehicles will need a mobile reserve of 1000 liters of fuel and 100 of oil.

• To keep in contact, through the designated liaison, with the representative of the First Order Civilian committees.

• To write, broadcast and execute the mobilization order.

• To keep in contact, through their leader, with the headmaster of the movement or the person designated as his representative.

• To organize a military defense of the territory and movements against the indicated target according to the instructions received from the headmaster or, in case of not receiving orders, those that are considered the most appropriate.

• To seek the support and even the collaboration of the Navy whenever it is convenient.

• To request to the Civilian committees whatever aid necessary as it is indicated in Base 3. These requests will be anything that is strictly necessary in regards to economic support.

Base 5: Once the movement has taken place and the State of War has been declared, both Civilian and Military committees will be joined into one. This will be done in every place where there is a garrison, to follow in common agreement, the aims and orders of the Headmaster of the movement. Once this takes place, the Provincial civilian-military committees will be subordinate to the head of the Division.

It is of importance that our actions must be extremely violent in order to take down our enemy, for they are strong and well organized.

All directive boards and leaders of political parties, unions and societies that do not adhere to our movement will be jailed and given exemplary punishments with the aim of stifling any rebellious plans or strikes.

Base 6: Once power has been taken, a military dictatorship will be put in place with the aim of reestablishing public order, enforcing the rule of law and strengthening the army to consolidate our position, which will become the new government.

Base 7: Second Lieutenants and sub officers that take part in our movement will be rewarded with immediate deployment or assignment to a non military position if they wish so, with a salary equivalent to their current position. Corporals in the same situation will receive a reward in cash for life or assigned to non military duties with honors. Privates will receive stable employment with a salary according to the situation of the province they originate from.

Base 8: These tasks must be performed within a maximum of 20 days. Circumstances demand so.

Noteworthy Leaders of the Uprising

Emilio Mola Vidal, known as the Headmaster. He was the man in charge of writing and sending the orders as well as negotiating with the Carlistas. He was in charge of sublevating (leading the uprising of) the 6th organic division from Navarra, where he was posted. Despite all his work and preparations, he always believed that the uprising had an extremely small chance of succeeding. After Casares Quiroga resigned from the presidency, the new president Diego Martinez Barrio tried to negotiate with Mola to stop by promising him a much better position in the army. Mola answered, “It’s too late for that.”

Below is Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer, the oldest and highest ranking officer among the conspirators. One of the first to join the conspiracy, he was in charge of leading the uprising with the 5th division in Zaragoza. Being the oldest of all generals, he presided over the National government committee until Franco was elected. Surprisingly enough, he was a socialist.

Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra was perhaps one of the most influential men among the uprising. While not a general, he was in charge of leading the garrison of Sevilla in the uprising. He was a man that the Republic did not suspect in the least due to his personal animosity toward the Primo de Rivera family and friction with other officers, yet he was nonetheless one of the first to join the conspiracy.

Finally, a lesser-known martyr, General Manuel Goded Llopis. He was Puerto Rican; with the loss of that colony to the United States in 1898, his family moved to Spain. He joined the Spanish army, where he became a captain at the age of 17 on war merits. He was a great military genius, veteran of the North African campaigns, an amnestied Sanjourjadista, and led forces against the 1934 rebels in Asturias. Unfortunately, he was tasked with leading the uprising in Mallorca and Barcelona. The uprising failed in Barcelona; he was captured and executed by the moat of the castle of Montjuic.

Thank you very much to readers and friends who help keep this project going. Stay tuned!

My thanks,

Karl Dahl

Part One:

Spreaker

iTunes:

Part Two:

Spreaker

iTunes:

Falange Militiaman armed with Astra 903 Machine Pistol. Wiped B&W background and colorized subject, interspersed with yoke and arrows (“las flechas de mi haz”). Arise!

GOON FACTION. Damn the onanists - politics has reverted to armed GOON FACTIONS and I'm here for it. Gather your GOON FACTION. Fresh rendering

https://karl-dahls-mercaderia.myspreadshop.com/men+t-shirts?q=P22