Yep. Some of the clergy absolutely were active participants in the civil war on the side of the fascists.
Your comment illustrates exactly why religious groups are included in the legal definition of genocide and it dovetails directly into legal stuff on collective punishment.
Look, I'm not going to armchair quarterback history and I'm not about to defend the legacy of the Catholic church or historians like Preston or Beevor but what I have illustrated in broad brushstrokes above is there is a idealised notion of an immaculate revolution that some people blindly cling to while they hypocritically denounce the excesses of other revolutions which they deem to be from the wrong team.
I explicitly avoided discussing matters like the checas and the assassination of the journalist Josep Maria Planes i Martí by the FAI forces (because they didn't appreciate his investigative journalism into the links between anarchists and organised crime in his work Els Gàngsters de Barcelona) because of the likelihood of inciting partisan bickering by talking about it and because this stuff requires people to actually dig into the historical scholarship surrounding these events and you can't arrive at a position on the matter especially from English-language historical sources by just reading one author - it requires a historiographical approach to the literature because most of the major historians are libs.
In the same way that I don't engage in discussions with people who invoke the Kronstadt Rebellion or the Great Purge or the execution of the Romanovs with people who don't understand anything beyond the name of the event and the spoonfed, boogeyman narratives about them, I don't engage with discussions about the details of the Spanish Civil War because people approach these moments in history as static, isolated moments with a partisan lens and they make their minds up about what happened before they even understand what happened and the context surrounding it.
The point of my comment isn't about arguing that the good side was actually bad and the bad guys were really the good guys. That's the one of the exact mentalities that I reject, and I'm trying to illustrate the lack of engagement with history when people fall into this way of thinking.
The original meme was clearly made by the type of person who is ideology-first when engaging in history: communist bad, anarchist good therefore whatever communists did was bad and whatever anarchists did was good.
A deeper level of this same mentality is to engage with history but to then retreat to an ideological position: Catholic church bad therefore whatever was inflicted upon the Catholic church is good.
That's still a problematic way of approaching history. It's still idealism, inherently.
If you're going to be a historical materialist then you need to engage with history on the terms of history and then to develop a political ideology from that point. Marx didn't start Capital from the position of "Capitalism bad therefore everything capitalism does is bad", far from it, and he also didn't start with the position of "Capitalism bad therefore whatever opposes it or seeks to replace it is good". He started by examining capitalism as it functions and developed political analysis from that place.
If you aren't able to hold that two things can be true at once then you aren't going to get very far.
Was the assassination of Planes by the FAI bad? Yes.
Was the assassination a violation of anarchist political principles? Yes.
Was the assassination a political necessity? Maybe. I know that I don't know enough to come to a conclusion on that.
Were the deep connections between the FAI and organised crime bad? Yes.
Were these connections a political necessity? Yes.
Were the conditions that produced these political connections bad? Yes.
Was the overthrow of the system and the conditions which produced these political connections by the FAI good? Yes.
Good guys do bad things, bad guys do good things. This is even more true when you expand that to groups such as organisations.
Did the clergy in Spain actively participate on the side of the fascists? Yes.
Did all of the clergy in Spain actively participate on the side of the Fascists? No.
Was the suppression of the Catholic church a political necessity? Yes.
Was it a political necessity to burn clergy alive in their churches? No.
Did every member of the clergy who was killed by the Republic deserve to die?
I don't know enough to make that call but you'd have an easier time convincing me that there were people who were killed that were essentially innocent than you would convincing me that no innocent clergy were killed, especially if we draw upon historical scholarship surrounding this.
Soup for brains, your claim was not merely that there are complexities to the issue of violent reprisals towards a cultural institution, but that it was genocide. The answer to that is that it fucking isn't.
I don't really care if you disagree with the modern definition of genocide as established in international law and plenty of examples of national law. That's your prerogative. As is whether you agree or disagree with the persecution itself. The contents of your head aren't my concern.
It does meet the definition of genocide though.
Does the UN & ICC definition of genocide state that "Genocide means any... acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such killing members of the group"?
Were the members of the clergy killed by people in the Spanish Republic targeting a religious group with the intent of destroying it?
Were FAI defence committees operating ghost cars that targeted clergy for assassination using blacklists?
No it doesn't, you're just wrong. People were not targeted for being catholic, but for being part of an institution that was feeding kill lists to fascists and had participated in the systematic repression of people for centuries. No one but you considers this a genocide. I am not arguing with the UN, international law, or scholars, I'm arguing with one person who has soup for brains.
People were not targeted for being catholic, but for being part of an institution
People weren't being targeted for being catholic, they were being targeted for being catholic religious leaders. Okay?
I guess it must have felt really important for you to make that distinction.
I am not arguing with the UN, international law, or scholars, I'm arguing with one person who has soup for brains.
I said that it meets the definition of genocide. I have provided the definition of genocide that I'm referring to.
You can't tell the difference between a statement of fact and a statement of opinion. I literally said "skirting around the editorial commentary, this meets the formal definition of genocide" to say that I'm not engaging in statements of opinion on this.
The point was obviously lost on you there.
If I said "The execution of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks meets the formal definition of regicide" do you think I'm saying "I personally condemn the act of executing the Tsar" or do you think I'm saying "This act met the criteria for regicide"?
I'm arguing with one person who has soup for brains.
You're shadow-boxing and you've convinced yourself that you're actually engaging in argumentation.
I guess it must have felt really important for you to make that distinction.
it is in fact very important to make the distinction between the crime of genocide and revolutionary violence targeting an institution that is itself engaged in genocide, yes. That's important. I don't know why this is confusing to you.
The majority of the people involved in revolutionary violence against the fascists were themselves of the same population group as the targeted priests, sharing the same ethnic and religious background.
If I said "The execution of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks meets the formal definition of regicide" do you think I'm saying "I personally condemn the act of executing the Tsar" or do you think I'm saying "This act met the criteria for regicide"?
Again, this does not meet the definition of genocide. It is not genocide. No one but you thinks this is genocide. The fascists have not made that case, the catholic church have not made that case, historians don't make this case, the UN doesn't make this case, the ICC doesn't make this case, no one but you. You are sitting on an argument so fucking stupid that you are possibly the only person who has ever made it, and declaring how actually if you call this argument dumb you're arguing with consensus reality.
You're shadow-boxing and you've convinced yourself that you're actually engaging in argumentation.
You're an idiot and trying to flip the script on who the idiot here won't save you from being a fucking moron.
it is in fact very important to make the distinction between the crime of genocide and revolutionary violence targeting an institution that is itself engaged in genocide, yes.
Where have I said that "targeting an institution is genocide"?
The Catholic church was suppressed through legal and extralegal means. In many cases churches and religious orders were liquidated. Nowhere did I mention these things as being part of genocide.
The majority of the people involved in revolutionary violence against the fascists were themselves of the same population group as the targeted priests, sharing the same ethnic and religious background.
Hutu militias targeted Hutu moderates during the Rwandan genocide.
Sharing an "ethnic and religious background" isn't some escape clause for genocide. Most of the people on this site have a "Christian background", however the fuck you're actually going to define that tortured phrasing, but that doesn't mean that they are Christians.
If I said "The execution of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks meets the formal definition of regicide" do you think I'm saying "I personally condemn the act of executing the Tsar" or do you think I'm saying "This act met the criteria for regicide"?
Again, this does not meet the definition of genocide. It is not genocide.
Regicide is different to genocide but go off.
No one but you thinks this is genocide.
Like I said, it meets the definition of genocide. Why are you still confused between statements of fact and statements of opinion?
I can tell you what beliefs are heretical to the Catholic church. I can literally tell you whether something you believe would meet the definition of heresy to a Catholic. That does not mean that therefore I think that your beliefs are heretical or that you are a heretic.
[CW: SA]
Up until recently in law it was legal in most countries to have unconsensual sex with your wife.
If someone asked me "Do you think that in America, a husband forcing his wife to have sex in 1953 met the definition of rape?" I would say no.
If you asked me if I believe it was rape, I would say yes.
Yelling out loud meets the definition of ejaculation. I don't think that people exclaiming things is ejaculation.
Are you so incapable of grasping the distinction between statements of fact and statements of opinion or are you just unable to hold two separate positions on a topic as being true in your mind?
You are sitting on an argument so fucking stupid that you are possibly the only person who has ever made it, and declaring how actually if you call this argument dumb you're arguing with consensus reality.
Yep. I sure did say this and I sure did claim that the consensus reality is that it was genocide. Good point, shadow-boxer!
It fucking doesn't. It especially fucking doesn't when the clergy were active participants in the civil war on the side of the fascists.
Yep. Some of the clergy absolutely were active participants in the civil war on the side of the fascists.
Your comment illustrates exactly why religious groups are included in the legal definition of genocide and it dovetails directly into legal stuff on collective punishment.
Look, I'm not going to armchair quarterback history and I'm not about to defend the legacy of the Catholic church or historians like Preston or Beevor but what I have illustrated in broad brushstrokes above is there is a idealised notion of an immaculate revolution that some people blindly cling to while they hypocritically denounce the excesses of other revolutions which they deem to be from the wrong team.
I explicitly avoided discussing matters like the checas and the assassination of the journalist Josep Maria Planes i Martí by the FAI forces (because they didn't appreciate his investigative journalism into the links between anarchists and organised crime in his work Els Gàngsters de Barcelona) because of the likelihood of inciting partisan bickering by talking about it and because this stuff requires people to actually dig into the historical scholarship surrounding these events and you can't arrive at a position on the matter especially from English-language historical sources by just reading one author - it requires a historiographical approach to the literature because most of the major historians are libs.
In the same way that I don't engage in discussions with people who invoke the Kronstadt Rebellion or the Great Purge or the execution of the Romanovs with people who don't understand anything beyond the name of the event and the spoonfed, boogeyman narratives about them, I don't engage with discussions about the details of the Spanish Civil War because people approach these moments in history as static, isolated moments with a partisan lens and they make their minds up about what happened before they even understand what happened and the context surrounding it.
The point of my comment isn't about arguing that the good side was actually bad and the bad guys were really the good guys. That's the one of the exact mentalities that I reject, and I'm trying to illustrate the lack of engagement with history when people fall into this way of thinking.
The original meme was clearly made by the type of person who is ideology-first when engaging in history: communist bad, anarchist good therefore whatever communists did was bad and whatever anarchists did was good.
A deeper level of this same mentality is to engage with history but to then retreat to an ideological position: Catholic church bad therefore whatever was inflicted upon the Catholic church is good.
That's still a problematic way of approaching history. It's still idealism, inherently.
If you're going to be a historical materialist then you need to engage with history on the terms of history and then to develop a political ideology from that point. Marx didn't start Capital from the position of "Capitalism bad therefore everything capitalism does is bad", far from it, and he also didn't start with the position of "Capitalism bad therefore whatever opposes it or seeks to replace it is good". He started by examining capitalism as it functions and developed political analysis from that place.
If you aren't able to hold that two things can be true at once then you aren't going to get very far.
Was the assassination of Planes by the FAI bad? Yes.
Was the assassination a violation of anarchist political principles? Yes.
Was the assassination a political necessity? Maybe. I know that I don't know enough to come to a conclusion on that.
Were the deep connections between the FAI and organised crime bad? Yes.
Were these connections a political necessity? Yes.
Were the conditions that produced these political connections bad? Yes.
Was the overthrow of the system and the conditions which produced these political connections by the FAI good? Yes.
Good guys do bad things, bad guys do good things. This is even more true when you expand that to groups such as organisations.
Did the clergy in Spain actively participate on the side of the fascists? Yes.
Did all of the clergy in Spain actively participate on the side of the Fascists? No.
Was the suppression of the Catholic church a political necessity? Yes.
Was it a political necessity to burn clergy alive in their churches? No.
Did every member of the clergy who was killed by the Republic deserve to die?
I don't know enough to make that call but you'd have an easier time convincing me that there were people who were killed that were essentially innocent than you would convincing me that no innocent clergy were killed, especially if we draw upon historical scholarship surrounding this.
Soup for brains, your claim was not merely that there are complexities to the issue of violent reprisals towards a cultural institution, but that it was genocide. The answer to that is that it fucking isn't.
I don't really care if you disagree with the modern definition of genocide as established in international law and plenty of examples of national law. That's your prerogative. As is whether you agree or disagree with the persecution itself. The contents of your head aren't my concern.
It does meet the definition of genocide though.
Does the UN & ICC definition of genocide state that "Genocide means any... acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such killing members of the group"?
Were the members of the clergy killed by people in the Spanish Republic targeting a religious group with the intent of destroying it?
Were FAI defence committees operating ghost cars that targeted clergy for assassination using blacklists?
No it doesn't, you're just wrong. People were not targeted for being catholic, but for being part of an institution that was feeding kill lists to fascists and had participated in the systematic repression of people for centuries. No one but you considers this a genocide. I am not arguing with the UN, international law, or scholars, I'm arguing with one person who has soup for brains.
People weren't being targeted for being catholic, they were being targeted for being catholic religious leaders. Okay?
I guess it must have felt really important for you to make that distinction.
I said that it meets the definition of genocide. I have provided the definition of genocide that I'm referring to.
You can't tell the difference between a statement of fact and a statement of opinion. I literally said "skirting around the editorial commentary, this meets the formal definition of genocide" to say that I'm not engaging in statements of opinion on this.
The point was obviously lost on you there.
If I said "The execution of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks meets the formal definition of regicide" do you think I'm saying "I personally condemn the act of executing the Tsar" or do you think I'm saying "This act met the criteria for regicide"?
You're shadow-boxing and you've convinced yourself that you're actually engaging in argumentation.
it is in fact very important to make the distinction between the crime of genocide and revolutionary violence targeting an institution that is itself engaged in genocide, yes. That's important. I don't know why this is confusing to you. The majority of the people involved in revolutionary violence against the fascists were themselves of the same population group as the targeted priests, sharing the same ethnic and religious background.
Again, this does not meet the definition of genocide. It is not genocide. No one but you thinks this is genocide. The fascists have not made that case, the catholic church have not made that case, historians don't make this case, the UN doesn't make this case, the ICC doesn't make this case, no one but you. You are sitting on an argument so fucking stupid that you are possibly the only person who has ever made it, and declaring how actually if you call this argument dumb you're arguing with consensus reality.
You're an idiot and trying to flip the script on who the idiot here won't save you from being a fucking moron.
Where have I said that "targeting an institution is genocide"?
The Catholic church was suppressed through legal and extralegal means. In many cases churches and religious orders were liquidated. Nowhere did I mention these things as being part of genocide.
Hutu militias targeted Hutu moderates during the Rwandan genocide.
Sharing an "ethnic and religious background" isn't some escape clause for genocide. Most of the people on this site have a "Christian background", however the fuck you're actually going to define that tortured phrasing, but that doesn't mean that they are Christians.
Regicide is different to genocide but go off.
Like I said, it meets the definition of genocide. Why are you still confused between statements of fact and statements of opinion?
I can tell you what beliefs are heretical to the Catholic church. I can literally tell you whether something you believe would meet the definition of heresy to a Catholic. That does not mean that therefore I think that your beliefs are heretical or that you are a heretic.
[CW: SA]
Up until recently in law it was legal in most countries to have unconsensual sex with your wife.
If someone asked me "Do you think that in America, a husband forcing his wife to have sex in 1953 met the definition of rape?" I would say no.
If you asked me if I believe it was rape, I would say yes.
Yelling out loud meets the definition of ejaculation. I don't think that people exclaiming things is ejaculation.
Are you so incapable of grasping the distinction between statements of fact and statements of opinion or are you just unable to hold two separate positions on a topic as being true in your mind?
Yep. I sure did say this and I sure did claim that the consensus reality is that it was genocide. Good point, shadow-boxer!