Reviewing Two Anti-Communist “Documentaries”

This weekend I watched two anti-communist documentaries from the early 1960s. One of these documentaries, entitled "Only the Brave Are Free," is an outright pro-fascist film, seeking to justify the 1936 fascist coup in Spain which led to a three-year civil war, and ultimately to fascist victory and the massacre of all Spanish progressive forces.

The pre-republican Spain, before 1931, when Spain was ruled by monarchs, feudal landlords, and reactionary and obscurantist clergy, is described by the film as being an idyllic, lovefilled place in which everyone happily knew their place and revered backward and oppressive traditions. When a republic was declared, the narrator tells us, these allegedly wonderful traditions and social and productive relationships started crumbling. Workers started agitating for rights and even for political power. Atheists challenged the dictatorship of the Catholic clergy and demanded a secular state. There were people demonstrating in the streets and everyone was becoming politicized. This is all horrible and dangerous to reactionaries and fascists. They do not want the masses to become politically conscious or to reflect on their own worldview. They prefer working people and oppressed people in general to take comfort in myths and fairy tales rather than to live and act in the real, material world.

The film showed wonderful footage of women communist soldiers parading and training to protect to republic. The narrator used ominous tones, in the belief that surely good people will be utterly repulsed and shocked at the very sight of women fighters who are prepared to wage war for the people. Of course, according to fascists and other reactionaries, women’s place is in the home, in which their greatest glory can be to produce sons and to serve their husbands in the role of veritable maid and concubine.

The film, instead of acknowledging the large level of support for Communist Party of Spain, alleges that its political work is subversive, and any workers supporting it are in fact duped and led astray from Spain’s fine, feudal, Catholic traditions. To "restore" backward Spain it would take a true "champion," a man in the image of Hitler and especially of Mussolini, and that man was Francisco Franco, the man who headed the fascist coup against the elected progressive government of the republic. Later, in power, after the second world war ended, Franco attempted to present himself as some sort of religious conservative nationalist, but early on, Franco was openly a fascist. He never did abandon the Nazi-fascist salute, which was used on Spain under Franco until his death in 1975. This film, being aimed at English-speaking anti-communist audiences, does its best to avoid any footage with the Nazi-fascist salute, which is nearly impossible. One notices that the film continuously cuts away right as the assembled clergy or other fascists are beginning to raise their arms in the salute of evil.

The documentary dwells at length on the role played by the International Brigades, the groups composed of volunteers from around the world organized to come to Spain to fight the fascists and to protect the democratic republic. They are slandered and presented as interlopers preventing Spain’s "rescue" by the fascists. Meanwhile, the film only passingly mentions that Franco’s fascists obtained massive assistance from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Of course, the assistance was given because the Spanish fascists were Italy and Germany’s ideological soulmates. The film makes no mention of the fact that whole divisions of Italian troops fought on the side of the Franco fascists. German air force planes bombed anti-fascist positions.

The end of film presents scenes of reactionaries celebrating the victory of the fascists, again careful to avoid showing the ever present fascist salute. Spain is now presented as allegedly free and at peace. It is the peace of the cemetary. The freedom is for the capitalists, feudal landlords, the oppressive clergy and others who maintained a rule of terror until Franco died.

I recommend those interested in the struggle of the Spanish progressive forces during the civil war to read the Autobiography of Dolores Ibarruri: They Shall Not Pass. Ibarruri was known as La Pasionaria, and was the most important woman leader of the Communist Party of Spain. It is a moving account of the class struggle in Spain from the beginning of the 20th century through the loss in the civil war.

The other documentary, called The Truth About Communism, was narrated by Ronald Reagan, who was then being groomed by CEOs for his later political career.

One of the recurring themes in this documentary is that communists are dangerous because they seek to incite so-called "hatred" in different groups of people, specifically in working people and in the oppressed nations and nationalities. Of course the bourgeoisie is against so-called "hate." They have no reason to hate, being the ruling class and having strategic control of the society. It is only the propertied classes who are rightly contented under the current setup. Others are simply deluded by escapism, religion, drugs, or some other intoxicant of mind or body.

Reagan decries the danger of the communists in socialist countries educating children in communism, and allegedly turning them against their parents. Part of what this complaint reflects is the belief of the reactionaries that children are the property of their parents. They fear their children rejecting their worldview and asserting themselves independently of the patriarchal family. They fear new forms of social organization becoming more spiritually important than the traditional family (in the materialist sense). Likewise, the film rails against atheists asserting their worldview. The film shows good footage of a Soviet street theater group mocking Orthodox clergy and other medieval characters, the presentation of the footage being meant to shock the sensibilities of the audience.

The documentary details the Soviet-German nonaggression treaty of 1939, and the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland when Germany invaded from the west. Reagan bitterly reviews these details, as he should. The non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was a brilliant stroke of Soviet diplomacy, that in one blow smashed the machinations of British imperialism, which sought to goad Nazi Germany eastward. British Prime Minister Chamberlain, the man who engineered the 1938 Munich agreement, allegedly in the attempt to appease German imperialism by giving away Czechoslovakian sovereignty, always fondly thought of the Nazi regime as a good anti-communist force that could be used as a battering ram against the Soviet Union. Stalin and the Soviet communists knew this, and took the appropriate diplomatic measures to bide their time to prepare for the ultimately inevitable German invasion.

Reagan quotes Lenin talking about the false and deceiful nature of diplomacy, insinuating that Lenin was referring to the diplomacy of socialist states. Of course, Lenin was talking about the secret treaties and other deceitful diplomatic measures of imperialism, of those seeking a greater share of the world’s markets. On the other hand, it is indeed up to the socialist state to take all measures to frustrate the ambitions of imperialism, such measures like the treaties employed by the Soviet Union during the 1930s. There’s nothing wrong in that.

The two films are filled with bombast, syrupy sentimental music, and crude propaganda techniques that render them ineffectual for a modern audience. But the ideological threads are still present within the anti-communism of today. Therefore, they are a worthy teacher by negative example.