Yesterday, on Father’s Day, Mike Klonsky posted a tribute to his father, Max Robert Klonsky, who went to Spain in 1937 to fight fascism as part of the legendary Lincoln Brigade. He was a “premature anti-fascist,” the saying at the time. The Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for World War II. Only genuine leftists understood that Franco and Hitler were preparing for a wider attack on the democracies of Europe.
Mike says proudly that his dad was a true antifa. The current antifa lives mainly in Donald Trump’s nightmares.
I was born in 1938 and grew up in Houston, which was super-conservative during the 1950s when I first became conscious of political matters. I never heard of the Spanish Civil War until after I graduated college in 1960. It was not taught in any of my American or European history classes. I learned about it living in New York City, where contemporaries debated left wing politics. I learned about it working for a small democratic-socialist (and decidedly anti-Communist) magazine called “The New Leader,” where writers argued about the Rosenberg case, Alger Hiss, HUAC, Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Cannonites, Schactmanites, and other issues and personalities of the left. I learned about it as I studied Picasso’s “Guernica.” I learned about it listening to Pete Seeger singing songs of that war (I still remember the lyrics of the song about The Valley of Jarama, where Mike’s dad fought).
Reading about Mike and Fred Klonsky’s father made me sense a part of history come to life.
He was a premature anti-fascist.
In World War II, all Americans were anti-fascist.
I am anti-fascist. Aren’t you?
CORRECTION: Typo: I was born in 1938, not 1948 (Department of Wishful Thinking).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I learned about the Spanish Civil War back in the early 1980s when I read Hemming’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
“During the 1930s, no event was more absorbing or galvanizing to Ernest Hemingway than the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway was passionately devoted to the cause of the democratically elected Spanish Republic and he spent much of the war reporting from its front lines, producing a deeply political body of work that illuminated the conflict and presaged the world war to come. In the end, his immersive journey into the turbulent world of the Spanish Civil War resulted in For Whom the Bell Tolls, a landmark in American political fiction. This book offers a fresh account of Hemingway’s adventures in Spain during the Civil War, stressing his embrace of radical political action and discourse in defense of the Republic against the forces of Fascism. On the eightieth anniversary of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gilbert H. Muller reconsiders Hemingway as an engaged artist, political actor, and visionary.”
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When I taught high school government , I used show a Studs Terkel narrated film called “The Good Fight” which was about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. It can be downloaded on Prime. Well worth watching again. The highlight the kids always liked was when Bill Bunker, I believe that’s his name, described coming back to the U.S. and sneaking on a cruise ship docked in New York to cut the Nazi flag down and “watch the son of a bitch flutter into the water”, at least that’s how I remember it. Thanks for sharing Mike Klonsky’s story. Hard to believe “premature anti-fascist” was an official reason to deny people from serving in WWII.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085610/
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Kind of amazing that the short hand for anti-facsist is used by Trump as a prejorative… It then not really. It was meant to suppress progressive dissent in the 1930s and again today.
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Well observed, Arthur!
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He was born in 1938. I thought you had gotten Sheldon Cooper’s life story mixed in with Mr Klonsky’s, who graduated from college in 1960. 🙂
On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 10:02 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Yesterday, on Father’s Day, Mike Klonsky posted a > tribute to his father, Max Robert Klonsky, who went to Spain in 1937 to > fight fascism as part of the legendary Lincoln Brigade. He was a “premature > anti-fascist,” the saying at the time. The Spanish Civil ” >
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I was born in 1938. My brother Sandy, the only sibling who reads the blog, immediately wrote to correct my error. Than you, Sandy!
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Some years ago I visited a church where my old pastor served in Nashville. As usual, I went to Sunday School. There I met an old gentleman who related to me his involvement in the Methodist protests against selling scrap iron to Japan after the 1931 invasion of Manchuria. They were seen as wingnuts, of course.
The American people were at once very conservative and very liberal during the Great Depression. The popularity of Father Coughlin and Huey Long highlight the extremes of political thought. Communist Parties grew up on college campuses. Modern conservatives often paint FDR as a liberal extremist, but he was actually fairly conservative, dancing a fine line between those who wanted him to create a socialist state and those who wanted him to double down on Hooverism.
Those who were concerned enough to go to the Spanish Civil War to fight fascism were a tiny minority, just like the missionaries who demonstrated against the Japanese. Seems to me they were right.
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After WWII, Franco was marketed and sold to the world as some kind of smiling, benevolent and gentle dictator who was just a little strict with leftists and other dissidents. In actuality, he was a vicious and bloodthirsty tyrant who committed crimes against humanity. He should have been tried for war crimes and met the same fate as Mussolini. The big anti-communist right wingers (such as William F. Buckley) were in love with Franco. They just blithely ignored all the screams of the thousands of victims of Franco’s torture chambers, how convenient for people like Buckley. There are mass graves all over Spain from the Franco reign of terror. Spain has yet to come to grips and have a reckoning of all the damage and slaughters of El Caudillo who terrorized the country from 1 October 1936 to 20 November 1975. The thug died of natural causes at age 82, may he rot in hell for several eternities.
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Amen to this.
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And, according what I remember from the early days of SNL, Francisco Franco is still dead.
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I freaking love everything about this post. So right. So well written. Thank you, Diane!
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Why, thank you, Bob.
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If, oddly enough, you are a Trump voter and have happened onto this blog, there’s something I would like you to think about. You are planning to vote for the same person that U.S. Nazis are planning to vote for. Seriously, you need to think about that. We fought a war against such people in the middle of the last century. Do you really want to be one of them?
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Donnie is our president
Although he did not win
A popular plurality,
And that is just a sin.
Ask me what I think of him.
Oh, where do I begin?
He’s a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
It ought to be a clue that he
Has such great popularity
With skinhead Aryans.
Wink wink it’s not an accident
That one so twisted and so bent
Should be a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
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Historians will look back upon this time and say, “Every time President Trump said something ignorant or insane, his people would say, ‘Oh, that was just a joke.'” Inject disinfectants. Buy Greenland. Windmills cause cancer. Russia, if you’re listening. It’s just going to go away, like magic. Nuke the hurricane. That East Coast hurricane is going to hit Alabama. I told them to ease up on the testing. Jokes.
And every time, one could simply watch the video, and he clearly wasn’t joking. He was deadly serious. Obviously, clearly serious. And so the only thing that was a joke was his presidency, but it was a very dark and disturbing joke played on this country by some very disturbed people who enabled and made excuses for him.
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It must be embarrassing to people like Quaalude McANinny to have to repeat such obvious lies. She knows he was serious. Everyone does. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT SHE IS LYING. But she has to stand at the lectern and repeat the lie.
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