It is not just United States Republican politician John McCain using songs by artists like ABBA, or Chuck Berry, who do not want their songs used for the US Republican party. It is not just the George W. Bush regime using music by Eminem and other Bush opponents for torturing prisoners.
From Rebel Frequencies blog in the United States of America:
Friday, March 27, 2009
There’s not enough Black in the Union Jack
Fascists and other variants of far-right knuckle-draggers have always attempted to dress themselves in populist (even radical) clothing. Much of the time, it thankfully doesn’t wash.
After it’s all over, though, one has to wonder just how thick-headed some of these groups are. The British National Party–heir apparent to the UK neo-fascist National Front–was recently served a cease and desist order by SonyBMG for attempting to use a song in a promotional video for the party. Incidentally, the song was by the Manic Street Preachers.
Anyone who knows the Manics will understand how laughable this could be if it weren’t so offensive. The Welsh group–who have considerably more widespread fame in Britain than here in the States–have spent the fifteen years writing their own brand of deconstructed post-punk from a decidedly socialist point of view. They have played shows in Cuba (one of the few British bands to do so), they have been open admiration for socialist union leaders like former National Union of Miners leader Arthur Scargill, and have written more than a few songs expressing a keen disgust for the kind of racist filth the BNP thrive on.
Even more sickening was the BNP‘s choice of song, which is entitled “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next,” a song about Welsh farmers who volunteered for the International Brigades and fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
Though it’s easy to roll our eyes at this kind of thing, there’s an undercurrent to this story that is a bit disconcerting. The BNP have gained a few seats in recent elections by presenting themselves as a respectable party looking out for the little guy while spreading their venomous anti-immigrant screed. The use of this song is a small part of their attempt to paint themselves as dynamic, hip, and compassionate. But make no mistake, if the BNP were in power, the Manic Street Preachers would be one of the first groups in front of the firing squad for creating “degenerate art.”
The Manics are well aware of this, and the video was promptly taken down from the BNP’s site after Sony served them the order. This small incident only highlights the need for groups like this to be fought tooth and nail.
See also here.
Update July 2013: here.
ANTI-FASCIST campaigners called for a national movement to defeat the far-right BNP on Thursday after its leader Nick Griffin defended a party leaflet which labels ethnic minorities “racial foreigners”: here.
Foreign and Cuban rock bands will come together on the stage of the fifth Brutal Fest 2013 Rock Festival, to take place February 14 to 24 in Cuba: here.
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Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Poles defend anti-fascist
POLAND: Progressives are fighting attempts by Poznan officials to remove a statue erected to commemorate the internationalism of General Karol Swierczewski, who fought and died fighting fascism as an International Brigader in Spain.
The Polish Citizens Movement for the Defence of Monuments and Traditions of the Left described plans to suppress the memorial as an “unprecedented act of historical vandalism.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/world/the_world_in_brief__137
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Thousands Of Children Stolen During Franco Rule
by Jerome Socolovsky
Listen Now [4 min 44 sec]
Uxenu Ablana, 79, was one of thousands of children stolen from leftist parents during the Franco er
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Jerome Socolovsky for NPR
Uxenu Ablana, 79, was one of thousands of children stolen from leftist parents during the Franco era so that they could be indoctrinated in fascism and archconservative Catholicism.
Morning Edition, April 1, 2009 · In recent years, there’s been a movement in Spain to dig up the dark secrets of the Franco dictatorship — but there’s one atrocity that is only now coming to light.
It involved the stealing of thousands of children from leftist parents so they could be indoctrinated in fascism and archconservative Catholicism.
Uxenu Ablana, 79, was one of those children. He is still afraid to talk about his childhood because it evokes a part of Spain’s past that many people in the country would rather forget.
The Fate Of The Children
On one particular day, Ablana sits in the corner of a restaurant, away from the other diners, in the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela. He takes out a faded photo album and begins his story.
In the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, the town where Ablana was growing up was overrun by right-wing insurgents seeking to topple the Spanish Republic. How his mother died remains a mystery.
“First they told me it was in childbirth,” he says. “But that was one of their many lies. Later, I found out from old folks in the town that the rebels had tortured her to find out where my father was.”
Ablana says his father was suspected of being a leftist and was imprisoned until long after the war ended. Ablana was shuttled between orphanages, where he got tuberculosis. He says the priests starved him, sexually abused him and indoctrinated him in fascism.
“I am a Falangist, and will be a Falangist ’til I die,” are words to one of the songs that he says still echo in his head. “They ruined me,” he says. “They stole my youth and my life.”
Ablana and thousands of other children were stolen in the early years of the dictatorship, when Francisco Franco’s victorious forces were killing, imprisoning and sending thousands of people to labor camps.
Stumbling Upon Forgotten Times
But the stolen children were forgotten until around a decade ago. A historian, studying the plight of female political prisoners, stumbled onto evidence that more than 12,000 of their children had been taken and sent to orphanages or given to families that supported the regime.
That historian is Ricard Vinyes, who was himself jailed by the Franco dictatorship. He says the regime was alarmed at how Spanish women had broken out of their traditional domestic roles under the prewar Republican government. So a state psychiatrist came up with a theory that politically active women were by definition morally degenerate, and should not be allowed to raise children.
“It was amazing to see all the letters and telegrams of congratulations he got from the senior military brass,” the historian says.
Vinyes helped make a documentary called The Lost Children of Francoism. In it, a voice reads from the diary of a prison chaplain who was troubled by what he saw. He recorded the mothers’ despair as their children were stolen, often just before their executions.
“They cried, ‘Please don’t take my daughter,’ or ‘Kill her along with me,’ ” he says.
Tyranny Of Silence
After Franco died in 1975, Spaniards decided not to rake over the past. But in recent years, volunteers have been digging up mass graves from the Civil War, and the last statues of Franco are now being torn down. A few months ago, an investigating magistrate called on the judiciary to investigate the stolen children.
Back at the restaurant, Ablana says he thinks the investigation won’t go far, because most people would rather forget about the dictatorship.
“The young, none of them know what happened. Even my own children who are in their 40s and 50s don’t want to talk about it,” he says.
The dictatorship may have ended more than 30 years ago, but for many Spaniards, the tyranny of silence endures.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102383364
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Apr 18, 2:11 PM EDT
Spaniards to erect monument to Leslie Howard
By HAROLD HECKLE
Associated Press Writer
MADRID (AP) — “Gone With the Wind” actor Leslie Howard will be honored as a war hero with a monument in Spain near where his plane was shot down by Nazi fighter pilots during World War II, a historical association said Saturday.
The propeller-shaped sculpture will be unveiled in July near Cedeira bearing the names of those who died aboard the commercial flight from Portugal to Britain in 1943, said the Royal Green Jackets association and author Jose Rey Ximena.
Association President Manuel Santiago Arenas Roca said the London-born Howard joined the Allies and campaigned hard against the Axis powers. Ximena said Germany’s government at the time apparently was worried about the negative impact the high-profile actor-director’s anti-Nazi publicity was having on its cause.
Many books have been written about KLM flight 777 which was downed by a squadron of Junkers 88 fighter planes, said Ximena, who believes the star of the 1939 Academy-Award-winning “Gone with the Wind” and the 1934 movie “The Scarlet Pimpernel” had been on “a secret mission” to stop Spain joining Germany and Italy in combat.
Spain, under the power of fascist dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, had formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government, which based German Luftwaffe warplanes on its soil.
The author said Howard’s contribution to winning the war is in danger of being forgotten.
Most of the books relating to his untimely death were published in the 1950s, and the association wants to pay tribute to a man who put his fame and communication skills to work combatting Nazi propaganda.
The monument will be simple: a partially damaged Douglas DC-3 propeller similar to those that were on the plane on which Howard died. It will contain the names of all the crash victims.
Ximena said there was considerable evidence that Howard was targeted specifically, thus becoming a war hero.
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