It's more nuanced than that, the UK specifically was definitely cool with Franco, and barred any coup/intervention demands from France (with approval from the US). But yes, we know the end of the story, turns out that """liberalism""" can get pretty cozy with fascists next door, especially when the big red bad guy was looking scary.
Which brings me onto my conclusion : Stalin shouldn't have stopped.
I honestly think they might literally say they were wrong to oppose the Nazis with another few decades of propaganda. They already do ceremonies for Nazi collaborators and whitewash their crimes. You can tell that a lot of people really don't want to say the Nazis were bad but know they have to because that's the only way their anti-Soviet lies will be taken seriously.
There's something super heroic about freeing your own people from monarchy and then running it back to free other people from fascism - killing a bunch of Nazis in the way.
But they restricted economic freedoms and took land from the local small business entrepreneurs, the Kulaks.
Very bad people those Judeo-Bolsheviks, I tell you.
It's gonna be the easiest thing for European fascists to completely take over the EU
The eastern euopean fascists are going to be the end of Europe at this pace.
This what you get for letting the UK sabotage you for decades and giving unmerited power to easily bribed microstates.
Unironicly we are going to have to learn from the Americans, Portland style.
I remember a few months back, a picture, I believe from Poland, made the front page of Reddit of a march holding up a sign crossing out both the hammer & sickle and the Nazi swastika. The top comments were horseshoe theory centrists applauding it, and you had to scroll down a bit before getting to the comments saying “y’all realize this is a fascist group holding up that sign?”
I swear to fucking God if I'm not a tankie yet I'm about to become one. The more I learn about Stalin, the more I am just fucking outraged at the lies I've been told about him my whole life. Most of it is literal Nazi propaganda that's been warmed-over for an American audience since the war. Knowing that I went for so long with that many brain worms in my head makes me feel absolutely disgusted and violated. Oh, and also, fuck you Khrushchev, even some of your lies made it all the way across the ocean and into my childhood brain.
Thank you to every person here and on the old sub who engages in honest criticism of a very complex historical figure about whom I don't know anything that I didn't hear from his enemies.
They're doing it in Canada too.
No to the Anti-Communist Monument! No to Black Ribbon Day!: Information Picket Against the Glorification of NazismNo ribbons for the millions dead in Africa, Asia, or the Americas huh
Yes well it's no surprise. The EU is a neoliberal institution
At least the Council leadership rotates every 2.5 years. Since December 2019 the Belgian prime minister Charles Michel is leading it.
The last social democratic government of Germany was terribly neoliberal (third way), but at least their foreign policy while not left made sense. They did not follow the US/UK into Iraq and for a country that was supposed to be a US sattelite that was quite a lot and propably the thing that saved their reelection. They also strengthened our ties with Russia/China. Has Germany continued on a path of friendship with Russia all these eastern european neofascists could be reigned in rather easily. Having good realtions with Russia is basically always good for Germany, that is a simple geopolitical truths, but our administation is full with transatlantics. Now the EU is a broken ship even less able to react to problems then the US as constantly one groups blocks every strong response. Germany has worse relations with China and Russia and Trump didn't even offer something in exchange for that. I guess they just wait for Biden to win so the Empire can return to normalcy.
I hate the fact that this is the state of the European left. A bunch of toothless socdems who won't do anything meaninful to oppose capital.