Do we need a truth and reconciliation committee for anarchism?
There has I think for a long time been rejection and repudiation of the old style 'propaganda of the deed' anarchist terrorism. I could suggest that it might need to be more explicitly extended to include attacks by popular anarchists, such as Alexander Berkam on Henry Clay Frick, and members of Buenaventura Durruti's group on Cardinal Soldevilla Romero. But at least it has I think now been rejected.
More substantial is Catalonia, where, during the period it was more or less exclusively under CNT-FAI control, there were many executions of civilians. 38,000 civilians executed in all Republican Spain is the minimum figure given by historians (the range of figures goes much higher), and the Anarchist share of that could easily be in the 10,000 range. Most all of those would have been entirely innocent victims - many were simple parish priests.
The impact of such killings on the wider population - oppositionists, dissidents, CNT-FAI rank and file, workers - must have been substantial. Inconsistent with the ideal of a free society.
I would suggest that it is hypocritical to criticize Lenin, and his followers, for their terrorism, while not similarly criticizing and disowning the terrorism of the Spanish Anarchists. And doing so unequivocally.
But maybe I'm out on a limb here? What do the rest of you think?
OK, the numbers might be small beer compared to Stalin and Mao. But that would miss the point, put us in the same league as Trotskyists (whose atrocity numbers are also small when compared to the real monsters).
Two from the historical record, as an example:
Two Carmelite priests who once worked in Tucson [Arizona] are among 498 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War who will be beatified in Rome this fall.Both Tristany and Farré returned to Spain [from Tuscon, Arizona] and died there in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War — an era punctuated by strong anticlerical sentiment.
According to research by the Rev. Jose Luis Ferroni, who is the associate pastor at Santa Cruz, Tristany was shot in the back outside the Carmelite monastery in downtown Barcelona. He was 64. A mural commemorating Tristany can still be seen inside the sacristy at the Barcelona monastery, Ferroni said.
Farré was preaching a novena to Carmelite nuns in Tiana [near Barcelona], Spain, in July 1936 when he received news of the war and urged the nuns to leave the cloister. Ferroni says Farré took refuge in a nearby home for several days until he was confronted by militia and told them he was a Carmelite friar. He was taken away in a large truck and was never seen again. He was 39.
