Identity and fascist discourse in the rebel propaganda during the Spanish Civil War (original) (raw)

The Spanish Civil War was a total war, framed in the context of development of a new type of conflict were the boundaries between civilians and military became totally blurred. A war in which soldiers needed the essential contribution of propaganda in order to reinforce their moral and willingness to fight. Something that was especially important regarding the sphere of violence in the rearguard that was implemented by the combatants over the civil population. In this sense, as historians like Omer Bartov have highlighted, propaganda played the crucial role of creating mental frameworks and survival strategies for these soldiers, so they were able to implement the eliminationist tasks the were ordered to, as it happened both in the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War. Connected to this, fascism provide this sort of psychic tools through the permeation of the frontline propaganda, making the front and the war experience as ideal socializers of this ideology. On this basis, the aim of our paper is to analyze fascist discourse codified in frontline propaganda during the Spanish World War, focusing, as it cannot be in other way, in the rebel side. Thus, we have to start from the consideration of the low specific military frontline propaganda in the rebel side, as we can only identify few newspapers and newsletters that were focused on the combatants. Because of that, in our study we will work with rear press, mainly due to it was taken to the frontline and distributed among soldiers. Therefore, we are going to analyze the specific front press, like La Ametralladora or Boletín de Campaña de los Requetés, but also the rear press like ABC Sevilla, El Noticiero or Unidad. Diario de combate nacionalsindicalista, trying to explore the different points of view of falangists, carlists, and right wing catholics, considering all of them parts of the same project, the fascist one. In conclusion, we will tackle the issue of propaganda during the Spanish Civil War trying to determine if it worked as a socializer of the fascist discourse –of fascism itself-, analyzing how this propaganda was made and what were the main ideas in which it was based. Then, we will compare it with the main characteristics of Spanish fascism –mainly the same as Italian or German, but adapted to the Spanish context-, that it to say, Catholicism, myth of national palingenesis –for the Spanish fascism, resume and actualize the “glorious” times of the Spanish Empire- or the need of social prophylaxis to “heal” the nation, among others, taking always into account using a comparative and transnational perspective what happened in the other fascist experiences, and also what did the Spanish soldiers thought –studying memories, in this case- about the nature of their fight. Thus, we will analyze propaganda during the conflict of 1936-1939 as a mean of shedding light over the process of building of the fascist regime in Spain, in which we consider propaganda –linked with war experience itself- played an essential role.