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(More customer reviews)Mr. Glazer has written a personal account of how the American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War were and are remembered in the US. He also ruminates at length(perhaps a bit too much) on how these efforts at nostalgic reminiscing bolster the present leftist and progressive efforts to promote social justice. He also tends to beat to death the place that nostalgia has in the psychological framework of peculiar communities maintaining linkage with a mythos that crystallized the movement in its halcyon days. I enjoyed the discussion of the commemorative gatherings and the opinions of the surviving veterans (most would be in their 80s aor 90s now), and less so the philosophizing about memory, performative remembrance and ritualization. What I found a bit intellectually disingenuous was the omission of serious discussion about the Stalinization of the Civil War and how that effected the Loyalist outcome from the perspective of the veterans. True, Glazer states up front the book is not a history of the war per se, but to exclude discussion about a very real source of fragmentation and dissipation on the Republican side is to romanticize the idealism that motivated the Americans to defy their government and fight in a foreign war and that was ultimately betrayed by the very cause they were ready to die for.
But to a certain extent I understand this book is part of the mythmaking process, and any mention of the unpleasantries detracts from the purpose these commemorations have for today, which is definitely not to re-fight the war but to energize a movement sadly lacking in popular appeal. George Bush, however, will probably wind up being as big a booster of leftist causes as he is of military-industrial corruption and islamic fundamentalism. And Dubya is proving to be very effective at laying the groundwork for an American civil war in the latter part of this century.
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Nostalgia can serve as a vital tool in the emotional reconstitution and preservation of suppressed histories, rather than sentimentally privileging the past at the expense of present concerns and limiting a culture's progressive potential. Between 1936 and 1938, responding to a military coup in Spain led by Francisco Franco with the support of both Hitler and Mussolini, over 2700 US anti-fascists joined 30,000 volunteers from around the world to form the International Brigade. They came together to defend the democratically elected Spanish government against this early manifestation of the fascist Axis. After three bloody years, Franco's rebellion succeeded, and his dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975.From the moment the first American volunteers returned home, and to this day, they have been holding commemorative events recalling the struggle. For nearly seventy years, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade have cited and re-cited their activist past in theatrically eclectic, highly emotional commemorative performances, a site for both nostalgia and progressive politics. Literary recitations, scripted dramaticpieces, songs, films, photographs, and celebrity appearances have been juxtaposed with speeches, fundraising, and a rigorous attention to pressing political and social concerns of the day. The history and content of these events is detailed and analyzed here based on a combination of archival and ethnographic evidence. The exemplary role of songs from the war, as both nostalgic triggers and historical artifacts, is also examined. Commemorations of the Spanish Civil War have provided necessary anchors for a period in US history when views now thought extreme were an accepted part of mass political discourse. Through this rich, inter-generational performance practice, a marginalized, vernacular political minority has deployed radical nostalgia as a necessary corrective to an official culture disinterested in America's leftist past, and threatened by its implications.
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