A bishop in a brothel and Ortega Smith in the Complutense
Ortega Smith in a public university paints the same as a bishop in a brothel: it only makes sense if you’re going to mess it up. We have seen him with a machine gun in his hand and lying on the ground shooting. It is more complicated to imagine him holding, with the sweetness of his fingers caressing the spine, a book where the letters join words and the words phrases and the phrases ideas. Ortega Smith is from the ideological trail of those who in Spain have always burned books. Why go to a public university with thug ways and screaming and kicking human rights?
Ortega Smith in a public university paints the same as a bishop in a brothel: it only makes sense if you’re going to mess it up.
One thing Ferdinand VII did in 1814, when he returned to the throne after his French vacation paid for by Napoleon, was to restore the Inquisition. He also hanged patriots and exiled intellectuals, derived from the same attachment to freedoms. In 1927, the University of Cervera sent that same Fernando VII, on his second return -in that case with the help of French mercenaries-, a well-known memorandum that read: “far from us the dangerous novelty of reasoning” (which Ortega y Gasset would popularize as “far from us the disastrous mania of thinking”). At the University there have always been enemies of ideas who, in the name of freedom, are the ones who end up, when fascism returns, making black lists and sending names to the Inquisitor. They go little by little. They begin by inviting the Torquemadas to give talks as if anything. They even seem like nice people. But they have the soul of Falangists.
The University of Cervera refused to think. As the Francoist university would do later, silenced by shots to the neck. A character like Pemán, glory of the Spanish right and author of an infamous lyrics of the anthem, dedicated himself to ratting out teachers, at a time when denunciations could lead to being shot. They rewarded him with public charges for those denunciations. There were snitching teachers and snitching teachers. Today we know, thanks to Manuel Menchón, that there is a high probability that Miguel de Unamuno was assassinated by a henchman of Millán Astray, that angry butcher who in Madrid is replaced by the Partido Popular and VOX. There have also always been students who point at teachers. They do it out of class instinct though. The servile professors are worse.
Pemán, glory of the Spanish right-wing and author of an infamous lyrics of the anthem, dedicated himself to ratting out teachers, at a time when denunciations could lead to being shot. They rewarded him with public charges for those denunciations
The book that gives more light is the book that burns
One of the things that the ideological predecessors of the PP and VOX did since the beginning of the 1936 coup was to burn books. Remember Eduardo Bravo in agent provocateur the words to ABC on September 26, 1936 by Bruno Ibáñez Gálvez, a lieutenant general of the Civil Guard and Chief of Public Order of Seville:
“The day after the movement of the Salvation Army of Spain began, by brave boys of the Spanish Falange, hundreds of copies of that scum of literature were collected from kiosks and bookstores, which were burned as they deserved.”
And they continued without stopping throughout the Spanish geography. After they “happened”, on April 30, 1939, the best way that occurred to the young people of the Spanish University Union to celebrate Book Day was, precisely, to burn books. There are young people who go to the university to learn and others to build campfires.
A window in the ground, burn books, burn people
A window in the ground, facing an empty library, in front of the Humboldt University of Berlin remember that the Nazis began their Third Reich by burning the works of Jews and leftists in the square, next to the opera where they would reinvent Wagner. Starting out burning books was a good advertisement for his love of fire. Those who burn books always end up burning people. Spain already had its own tradition. Didn’t the priest Pedro Pérez burn a good part of Don Quixote’s library? Didn’t he order Lazarillo de Tormes to burn the Holy Office, all the work of Erasmus, a lot of theater, mystical literature, La Celestina and up to 2,315 works? In the purge of books, university professors helped the Inquisition, in the same way that the barber lent a hand to the priest. When protofascist students go to the public university to redeem the erroneous, they also receive the help of some professors, who will end up dictating, if necessary, the new lists of books or people to purge in the fire.
Starting by burning books was a good advertisement for the Nazis’ taste for fire. Those who burn books always end up burning people. Spain had its own tradition before.
The newspaper Go Spain, at a time when Ana Rosa Quintana, Carlos Herrera, and Vicente Vallés did not yet exist, incited the burning of books from their pages “for God and for the country.” They are the same slogans that from time to time lead some fascists to Spanish public universities with an incendiary spirit.
Spanish right-wingers, Torquemada, long live death and down with intelligence
Perhaps the most relevant distinguishing feature of the Spanish right is its link to the Catholic Church. A church also linked to the monarchical institution which, in turn, has been linked, with the Austrians and especially with the Bourbons, to all the political setbacks that have made Spain a country different with respect to the north of the Pyrenees. One of the most obvious is that while social states were developing in Europe, in Spain a class dictatorship, guaranteed by military traitors to their republican oath, subjected the workers and ended all labor rights. Students who want purifying fire have taken a photo saying that with this government they are doomed to unemployment. One of them has photos riding a horse in his farmhouse. Social classes do not exist, but there are.
This union between the intransigent church, rentier and parasitic capital, swordsmen and an archaic monarchy is expressed by the Spanish right wing, both the original one and its split from VOX, increasingly further away from the European liberals and closer to the positions of the Orban, Salvini or Trump.
This union between the intransigent church, rentier and parasitic capital, swordsmen and an archaic monarchy is expressed by the Spanish right wing, both the original one and its split from VOX, increasingly further away from the European liberals and closer to the positions of the Orban, Salvini or Trump.
VOX has said that the coalition government of the PSOE and United We Can is worse than the Franco governments. Franco’s policemen went to the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Complutense to arrest professors and students. There were teachers and students who were informer. The people of VOX like to go to the faculties of public universities to say that they are going to reconquer Spain from their hatred. They don’t go to private ones, although in Madrid there are more private universities than public ones. Why don’t fascists go to private universities to shout?
Franco shot teachers and professors. Unamuno realized his immense and irreparable mistake when his companions and disciples were assassinated. There are people with bullfighting sideburns and feathers at the service of lies who are the pure image of those who go for walks hitting the back of the neck when the time comes. Because there is no fascism without advertisers. The press of the right and of the extreme right stir up the noise in the public universities. They are responsible for part of the rot that is seen in so many places today.
In the regime of hatred and cries against Franco’s intelligence that VOX defends and a part of the PP and Ciudadanos, books were burned. Some young fascist pups like to go to public places just to provoke to try to break the dams of sanity, concord, dialogue, respect and prepare the conditions for the next burning of books.
Democracy and your right to defend yourself
The “militant democracy” (militant democracy, in terms of Karl Lowenstein exiled during Nazism), is part of the German constitutional tradition. It is the one where the Parliament, the Executive and especially the Constitutional judges defend democracy from its enemies, in a balance that is not always easy between freedom and the defense of human rights.. Behind that defense are the same reasons why the CDU, from the same parliamentary group as the PP in the European Parliament, never negotiates with the extreme right. Unlike the recently “renewed” PP by Núñez Feijóo governing with the aftermath of Francoism in Castilla y León.
The public university does very well to defend itself against those who want to break the coexistence in the classrooms. Do those who defend an ideology contrary to human rights have the right to find facilities to blow up understanding?
The public university does very well to defend itself against those who want to break the coexistence in the classrooms. Do those who defend an ideology contrary to human rights have the right to find facilities to blow up understanding? Ideas are fought with ideas. The provocations, applying the law with which democracy is endowed so that the fascists do not return. If you do not respect human rights, democracy has the right to defend itself. Committed students in the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid have understood this perfectly. Just like most teachers and the dean team. Because we defend ideas, freedom of expression and trust in the power of words.
We have already seen what fascism does in the Spanish Parliament. What it does with the legitimate demands of farm workers or transport workers. What he does by turning a strike of the workers of the Sevillian booths, who are not willing to work for 450 euros, into a “strike of the owners of the booths”. That for lying does not stay. They are precisely the negation of the university.
The fake news, the post-truth, the hoaxes of journalistic detritus on social networks and on the news, and even the shield of a person convicted of harassment that appears the same in the house of Pablo Iglesias, in the demonstration of carriers or trying to create a scandal in a public university, they are rotting all areas of social life. Those who have always burned books are, as in the Transition, as in 1936 or as in the times of the Inquisition, ready to burn bookstores, libraries or faculties. It seems that in some places they have it clear. And they have been reminded that fascism is cured by reading and traveling.
But he has no right to break the sacred rules of dialogue that braid the very possibility of the university. For this reason, except in dictatorships, where rectors, deans, professors were generally so for embracing fascism -or at least not opposing it-, there is no room for those who defend the end of coexistence.
Of course, ideas must have space at the University. But respecting the rules of coexistence, not blowing them up. The university is not a space for indoctrination, but for debate. It is not an excuse for other ends, but an end in itself. Therefore, human rights are the minimum common to enter the classroom. Who, when he hears the word culture, reaches for the gun or undertakes it with head butts has other places to vent. But he has no right to break the sacred rules of dialogue that braid the very possibility of the university. For this reason, except in dictatorships, where rectors, deans, professors were generally so for embracing fascism -or at least not opposing it-, there is no room for those who defend the end of coexistence. And it is exciting that Politics and Sociology students have seen it so clearly. A beautiful reminder that there is always light at the end of the tunnels.
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