Ask not for whom the MAGA trolls cheer, you don't want to know. (It’s Franco.)
The American right’s current hero is the Nazi-backed Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, whose war to implement religious authoritarianism in Spain claimed the lives of 500,000 people and heralded a world war against the global spread of fascism, according to a new Guardian analysis.
“These far-right voices make a direct comparison between Spain in the 1930s and the U.S. today – claiming that both feature a totalitarian, violent left that is prepared to overturn elections – and look forward to an authoritarian leader who will resolve the crisis,” writes Jason Watson.
There’s just one problem: “The comparison makes no sense.”
That’s the opinion of historians who told Watson Franco’s fleet of far-right fans — among them a self-proclaimed “warlord” soap-maker and an ammunition supplier to government agencies — don’t seem to know what they’re talking about.
Rutgers University antifascism professor Mark Bray and Oberlin professor Sebastiaan Faber reportedly said the comparison is nonsense.
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“The US now and Spain then are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of government stability, not to mention political culture,” Bray said.
“We have political violence but not on the scale of what Spain experienced: political violence was much more palatable to the left and the right in the '30s.”
Faber also noted an important math problem that doesn’t add up for Franco fans comparing the Spanish Republic to ours.
“When the civil war broke out,” Faber noted, “Spanish democracy was less than five years old.”
But that hasn’t stopped conservative outlets from lauding him. The American Reformer, a far-right Christian website, asked, "Is a Protestant Franco inevitable?” and if Franco would “have the judgment and fortitude to do what was needed to stop the communists?”
And on X, the article was picked up by multiple right-wing figures, the Guardian reported.
Faber argues the real problem is cowardice on the side of the American right, so frightened by a government that they cannot control completely that they’re willing to trade it in for fascism.
For them, “social order is more important than democracy,” Faber said. “And democracy is a threat to social order.”
