This is a good piece, and I’ve had similar thoughts. It’s hard NOT to see parallels between the 1930s Spanish left and antifa/BLM/Democrat party. The author’s novel insight here is that antifa/BLM/Democrats demonize “white privilege” and “whiteness” in the same way that the Soviet-backed Spanish left demonized Catholicism. The Spanish left sought to erase every vestige of old Catholic Spain in the same way that antifa/BLM/Democrats seek to erase American history, tear down monuments and remake society all toward the supposed goal of erasing “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” If brain-dead Joe wins, we will likely be at a point similar to where Spain was in 1931 with the beginning of the 2nd republic.
I’ve often described the situation in the US today as “1936 Madrid”; there are definitely parallels.
The lessons the American left’s leadership should take from the Spanish Civil War is that the left simply couldn’t work together; they could only put together a “popular front” by promising autonomy to two of the main zones (Catalonia and the Basque country), and within a year the communists had eliminated the leadership of the anarchists (who had more support at the onset of the war).
Franco wasn’t initially the leader of the coup, but ended up leading it when two of the main conspirators died/were killed early on; he controlled the best troops (in the south) but had no influence in the north. The leader of the rising in the north (General Mola) had no problem with accepting Franco’s leadership; he was commanding religious militias that would have a hard time projecting force outside of the region (though they did send troops into areas around them).
Today the left in Spain is erasing Franco himself; he delayed the erosion of Western Civilization for a few decades (while it was besieged in other Western countries, including our own).