Chapo Trap House: Matt Christman Explains The Spanish Civil War [FULL SERIES]

The Spanish Civil War series was started by Matt before his stroke, as a continuation of his "The Inebriated Past" series. It was envisioned as a four-part series but only three episodes were recorded prior to the stroke. Given that Matt can no longer record, these three episodes will be the completed series in recorded form for the foreseeable future. On a more positive note, the scripts for all four parts will be released as a book in a limited printing as a fundraiser for Matt, Amber, and their daughter. Please keep an eye out for the book printing and purchase the book to support our beloved boy.
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0:00:08 The Spanish Civil War: Part I
In this 14th installment of Matt’s (increasingly un-) Inebriated Past series, we begin what should be a 4 part look at the Spanish Civil War. In this installment, Matt guides from through the decaying Spanish Empire of the 19th century, through the social classes of village and city, the attempts for liberal reform in the early 20th century, the roots of Spanish anarchism and socialism, and finally the establishment of the 2nd Spanish Republic setting the stage for apocalyptic conflict.
[Chapo Trap House Ep.784 - Spanish Civil War, part 1: Pronunciamento y Pistolerismo, Released 11/23/23]
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1:09:21 The Spanish Civil War: Part II
Crisis strikes SPAIN’S 2ND REPUBLIC! As the various anarchist and socialist groups attempt to prevent fascism taking root in Spain, a tenuous POPULAR FRONT government is created. The forces of reaction - the Carlists, Catholic nationalists, disgruntled bourgeois, and the newly formed CEDA party - gather power, so do the COMMUNISTS, guided by the only workers party anywhere in the world to achieve state power - the mighty SOVIET UNION. Soon, the two forces will clash in a prelude to the greater conflict during the ‘34 ASTURIAN UPRISING. All the while, a cadre of REACTIONARY OFFICERS waits in the wings, waiting for their time to strike…
[Chapo Trap House Ep. 809 - Spanish Civil War, part 2: Falange y FAI, Released 2/22/24]
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2:23:24 The Spanish Civil War: Part III
CIVIL WAR! In the cities, fighting between CNT ANARCHIST MILITIAS and government forces breaks out, while NATIONALIST FORCES under General Francisco Franco bring the Army of Northern Africa back to the peninsula. Meanwhile, the arming of the workers leads to SOCIAL REVOLUTION in the Republican Zone, and the CNT and Generalitat enter into a fragile structure of DUAL POWER in Catalonia. Western governments turn their backs on the Republic, as Franco becomes GENERALISSIMO and lays SIEGE TO MADRID. Foreign brigades flock to Spain, while terror bombings culminate in the reduction of GUERNICA. Soon, the CNT must make a critical choice.
Keep your eyes out for more information on ordering Matt’s Spanish Civil War book, coming soon.
[Chapo Trap House Ep.847 - Spanish Civil War, part 3: No Pasarán!, Released 7/4/24]
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Special thanks to Travis from the (great) band Activity for the Spanish Bombs cover that anchors these episodes. Check out their latest release here: activity.bandcamp.com/album/s...
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Thanks for listening and please remember to keep an eye out for the limited edition Spanish Civil War book that is likely to be released in August 2024 so you can help to support Matt, Amber, and their baby. We love our beautiful boy!!

[@BenjaminGlatt]

We miss our big, beautiful boy, don't we, folks?

[@InvinciblKillerQueen]

Such a shame. His brain got too full of knowledge and popped 😢

[@blackedmirror5073]

I’ve taken his advice to heart and explored my grill for wisdom along with the vast spoils of American summer nature.

[@mattl6459]

We do

[@matthewfurnari-omara2079]

😢

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

What's the latest on his condition?

[@MH-dy5pb]

May Matt return more esoteric than ever

[@noah4822]

Check description

[@julymagnus493]

I'm honestly blown away by how much more advanced this is than typical history videos on KZbin. I thought I could listen to this in the background while I walked, cleaned, exercised, gamed, etc. But I actually have to focus on it because it doesn't follow a simple "person did thing then event happened afterward the person died." Matt's material analysis makes it harder to follow but also more rewarding.

[@robertusaugustus2003]

“Where is Matt Christman? Is he safe? Is he alright?”

[@noah4822]

Explanation is in the description

[@sevensicilies]

This is really good, but I miss Chris in these. They bounce off each other really well and go on some entertaining tangents that is missing here.

[@PuckeredMeatball]

I had a dream last night, in which Matt was livestreaming.

[@dylanemeraldgrey]

Thanks for this. We're hoping for the best.

[@SomethingImpromptu]

Great work overall. I could gripe about one or two things, but very well-articulated & researched. Setting aside a few spots, I think Matt did a really good job of walking the fine line of presenting the events in an honest, realistic way, mostly avoiding the tendency to do apologetics on behalf of the faction you most agree with as many are prone to do when discussing this subject. What I found really disturbing listening to this now, in 2024, is that we are plummeting towards fascism (undergoing a legalistic coup backed by billionaires & corporate sponsors, with the last 50 years of groundwork already laid- something INFINITELY better financed, equipped, & planned than General Incompetence’s little spectacle in Bolivia the other day… But comparing our material conditions to those in Spain is DISMAL. We have virtually no left organizations (no power at all in a plutocratic state which was designed to marginalize us to a VASTLY greater extent than the Spanish republic (at least they HAD left parties who were able to win elections- it wasn’t all bought & sold by a handful of major donors who could dump unlimited money into subverting any democratic “one person one vote” basis for an election. Despite the moderate resurgence of labor organizing in very recent years, we have very, very low union membership, & much of it is in highly class collaborationist, vertical labor unions like AFL-CIO who are sure to go along with most of the reactionary changes that will come down the pike as long as the wheels of their non-rank-&-file leadership remain greased (I wouldn’t be surprised if a fascist criminalized labor unions, but integrated them as the official fascist state-affiliated union, unless they decide even that is too much labor representation & just start a completely fraudulent one (like the CIA-funded “free trade unions” they seeded across Europe to prevent workers from coalescing around genuine worker-led labor unions). VERY little of our labor union membership is at actual radical labor unions with any kind of really serious long-term goals or class consciousness beyond the bare minimum that we shouldn’t have literally 0 representation, so unless we see a really big surge of organization, there’s not much prospect of having any kind of equivalent to the CNT-FAI defending workers from fascism, let alone seizing on a crisis to emancipate anyone. IWW has promise, so I hope people will join, but we’re running out of time rapidly & the membership is just not where it would need to be to marshal any kind of large scale labor actions (though if people DO join, just being able to organize strikes across sectors would be a huge boon). Most of the liberals have been bombarded with MSNBC/CNN propaganda & a lot of them wouldn’t resist fascism even if a dictatorship occurred- & because they’ve spent the last 40 years taking a very rigidly “guns are bad, don’t own guns” position, even the disorganized working class is overwhelmingly unarmed, except for the right wing, who have been encouraged to stockpile INSANE amounts of weaponry, so that even in a country with more guns than people, the working class majority (aside from those who have been indoctrinated into supporting fascism, breaking on the side OF a coup like this one, &/or Donald Trump’s own personality cult, won’t even be able to defend themselves on a personal level)… It is bleak. Very, very bad. And this isn’t even like Nazi Germany, in that when they fell to fascism, there were superpowers poised to actually defeat them & liberate the territory they occupied. The U.S. spends more on military than like the next 20 countries combined, has the CIA, has a military empire of over 750 military bases scattered across every continent & most countries… Imagine if the Nazis, or Mussolini, or Franco had had that (plus panopticon-like mass surveillance of everyone going back decades now; futuristic weaponry; a MASSIVE nuclear stockpile)… I pray the working class will react to what’s happening, that the American people at least believe enough in the values they claim to- democracy, justice, freedom, limited government (the fact that the country was founded to ESCAPE absolute monarchy, not to be an absolute monarchy/dictatorship)- enough to resist & not just take this absolute psychosis lying down. But we’re also so geographically dispersed, so marginalized from the levers of power. I think it would take a scale of mass organizing on a vast scale in a minuscule length of time to prevent this. However, that’s also what it would take to overcome climate change, so if we don’t, the species is kind of done- capitalism will have extinguished us from this planet. So the stakes are high, a lot can change very rapidly in this era, & I hope the people will rise to the challenge. Because even genuine, principled, well-intentioned “conservatives” cannot defend dictatorship. Cannot defend total presidential immunity to law. Cannot defend rule by decree, by dictation, which is a big tenet of Project 2025. These insane steps they’re taking will be decisive- will a lot of liberals wake up to the fact that this is not a normal election, that this is not just a “Oh just vote for Biden, we’ll be fine” historical moment? Will conservatives recognize that “Oh shit… They’re not just CALLING conservatives fascists… The “conservative” party has BECOME a far-right, authoritarian fascist party, & if I don’t want to back a dictatorship, if I actually care about the Constitution or anything I’ve been claiming I care about, then I need to re-evaluate my alignment.” Will we still have the freedoms necessary to even organize by then, given that a single statement from Trump (or whatever fascist ends up filling the dictator role when Project 2025 commences) is all it would take, with their “govern by decree” policy enacted & total immunity even if they violate the hell out of constitutional law/our rights, to criminalize all protest, all political opposition, all organizing efforts… I mean, I don’t see how such a hated, illegitimate government would be able to maintain an iron grip on such a vast country… It seems like they’re practically TRYING to cause the kind of civil war that the Tim Pools of America have been fantasizing about for so long, that that recent film… Claims to be afraid of, but also seeds in Americans’ minds in a way that I would not do if the goal was to avoid civil war… God, that’s the last thing I ever hope to see, although a fascist dictatorship & unmitigated worst case climate disaster also up there, & things are looking grim for the whole trifecta… Ultimately, it falls to the American people to prevent this dark future from coming to pass, because it’s clear that help will not be coming from above, from the ruling class NOR from any other country. Ugh it’s really depressing knowing that the people who most sincerely actually give a shit about the actual people of this country (or whatever country they’re from) are typically among the first to be criminalized &/or rounded up when fascists take over who only USE empty ultranationalistic rhetoric about love of country (& their deep-seated hatred for the rest of humanity) as a propaganda flourish & an excuse to exact violence on those very people… When in reality, let’s be frank. Fascists only love a completely imaginary fascist version of this country, or any country- a romanticized prelapsarian past that never was, & a particular hegemonic subset of the population. In America, they hate women (near half the population right there), they hate LGBTQ people, they hate immigrants & refigees (which, depending how many generations back you care to go, could include EVERYONE EXCEPT the few surviving indigenous people, or else still many millions of Americans). They hate progressives (when progressive laws & values also account for like 90% of what they have historically claimed makes us superior to all the OTHER countries they hate- that we have rights/freedom, that we “don’t throw gays off buildings” [even though they wish they could], that we let women vote [even though they’d take that away if they could]- on down the line). They hate poor people & the working class (& yet impose the reactionary economic policies that make workers poorer so a handful of billionaires & corporations, like the ones who own the Heritage Foundation who authored Project 2025, not to mention Trump himself, richer than ever before at our expense)…

[@SomethingImpromptu]

I mean, really think about it. What do they love about this country? They hate the people, they hate democracy & liberty & justice & everything good the country claims to stand for. They hate anti-nativist principles like “Give us your poor, your tired, your weary masses…” They hate liberalism, which is half the sanctioned, institutional politics we’re allowed to have in this two-party system… They hate “the culture” which recognizes LGBTQ people’s validity, & women’s equality, & allows non-white people in TV & movies, & in fact they’re trying to build their own bizarre parallel fascist media ecosystem with the Daily Wire’s idiotic streaming service & animated shows & shit (not to mention PragerU’s… Animated indoctrination content for children, which Florida now shows in schools as early as Kindergarten, so that’s some full-on Hitler Youth shit… But because they worship the flag, the state, the fascist billionaires who finance fascist propaganda & who will tell them what they want to hear (even when it’s lies), because they compensate for genuine love of the people of this country/of humanity as a whole with this ultranationalist bravado, they think they can just redefine “America” to mean their delusional fantasy, even though the large majority of Americans OPPOSE it. Do not want a dictatorship. Do not want fascism. Do not hate most other Americans… I just hope this contradiction can resolve without too much chaos & bloodshed, because good god… With today’s technology, with the stakes as high as they are, weakens as destructive as they are (not to mention with people of all political perspectives living next door to each other, not segregated geographically like during the actual American civil war… It would be an inconceivable horror. Between a darkness that never ends, fascism governing the dominant global empire, vs a conflict on that scale… Even if through some kind of protracted resistance & struggle, the people could beat the coup perpetrators, if fighting actually spread, it would be one of the worst events I can possibly imagine, & I would not wish that on my worst enemy. These fascists are seriously bringing us to the brink of an utterly unthinkable cataclysm… Even though the elites who are financing it essentially already control all the wealth of our entire society, own the entire economy, control the entire state… But that totalizing dominance leads to insecurity. They’re terrified that (as they cause a climate apocalypse which they refuse to address, as they impoverish & deprive more & more of the population, as they destabilize the economy & screw us over worse with each passing crisis, as they automate & outsource away all the jobs & leave a huge number of us chronically unemployed [having already shredded the safety nets that could keep us alive & for some reason insistently refusing to just pay a tiny fraction of their total wealth into a social safety net to stabilize the system, probably because they’re afraid to contradict the propaganda narrative that “there is no alternative,” that we couldn’t possibly just fund good social programs & improve ordinary people’s lives, easily]) if they don’t seize autocratic, basically totalitarian control, if they don’t “discipline” the desperate workers who are beginning to organize (through brute violence), if they don’t reassert their total dominance now, as the wheels fall off as a consequence of their own short-sighted profit-seeking, then people will cease to be duped by their propaganda (you can only contradict someone’s own lived experience so far before they call BS) & they’ll be facing actual revolutionary revolt, if we are allowed the rights to protest, assemble, organize, & speak freely, as we generally are (or were) under liberal forms of capitalist governance. They’re bringing about even more unnecessary death & destruction (DEVASTATING the vast majority of the country they claim to love), robbing us of our freedoms, in order to cover up for & prevent a justified response to the death & destruction their economic policies (designed to maximize the profit of the few) have already inflicted on the working class majority of Americans, & in so doing (because of the particulars of this historical moment), they, along with the neoliberals who helped them get us to this point, are effectively dooming the entire human species to a rapid decline & extinction, all to protect their class hegemony- their EXTREME power & privilege, & the ill-gotten loot of plundering the entire globe, & ultimately even plundering & sucking dry America itself. Truly a misanthropic, ego-dominated, myopia-embodying dystopian pathology. I shudder to think where this is heading if people don’t stand up & unite with iron-clad bonds of solidarity, universal compassion- throwing NO ONE under the bus, on principle, standing strong in the face of every propaganda effort to divide us against one another. Because the “first they came for…” poem was right. That’s a crucial lesson of the Holocaust- if you let them take this group, or that group- communist, & trade unionist, & Jew- just because you aren’t personally one of them, then that weakens the people’s total capacity to resist, until by the time they DO get to you, it’s too late. There will be no one left to stand in solidarity with you, because you threw them under the bus. So look out of each other, band together- the people united can never be defeated. Not sure how much more can I say. If you’re afraid, so am I, & that’s perfectly rational, but you must be afraid to be courageous. That said, if you think you’re in relatively immediate danger & need to flee, & you have the capacity to, that’s understandable. I’d never have encouraged a Jewish person to stick around in Nazi Germany. These are very personal, potentially very consequential decisions, so think about your options, what you have to contribute vs what you stand to lose; in a terrible situation, sometimes you have to consider what decision you will regret the least. Wishing everyone the best. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

[@blackedmirror5073]

Excellent points, my friend!

[@Christopher-gp9iv]

save it for your substack, nerd. I ain't reading all that.

[@pizzacheeseman2854]

Unlike the fascists and imperialists of the first half of the 20th century the fascists and colonial forces of our time are struggling to fight or address small urban or mountain rebellions despite massive investment.

[@pizzacheeseman2854]

But yeah it’s still very bleak but it always looks worse than it is

[@codymachado4645]

❤ thank you for this upload! 🎉

[@HedonisticBookWorm]

Man this is the good shit right here folks! Thanks for the video. Hopefully one day I can download this whole thing.

[@Garrett1240]

Read the description. Very sad.

[@juliettedemaso7588]

Heal up to full, Matt. We need you out here. ❤

[@BNardolilli]

maybe Chris can pull a Brian Herbert

[@wolvie_b]

The colloidal silver guerillas of medieval Espana

[@rorylynch1203]

Matt will reappear in Cuba I think

[@January99th]

Probably grilling in Havana with Assata Shakur and Tupac

[@varisleek3360]

My dad, matt, noam, my sky keeps getting lower 😕

[@cat_city2009]

What's his prognosis like? Will he ever podcast again or is he finished? At this point I'm glad he's not a vegetable.

[@forbiddenfruit1558]

According to Chris he is doing better every day, but it will be a while before he can return to podcasting as he’s suffering from aphasia.

[@Garrett1240]

@@forbiddenfruit1558wow very sad. I had assumed he was all better and was just taking more time off to be with his newborn.

[@NotoriousSRG]

@@Garrett1240name a person who has simple brushed off a stroke like it’s nothing. Don’t worry I’ll wait.

[@Benu54321]

​@@forbiddenfruit1558 fuck, aphasia is a really fucking shitty condition that takes one of our fundamental features as humans away from us, the ability to communicate and be understood. I'm glad to hear he's doing better and is improving further, and will look into getting a copy of the book.

[@RumHam5570]

1:27:40 Buenaventura Durruti sorta looks like Mayo Pete

[@NeptuneVA]

Say sike right now

[@coomr419]

Or as Adam would say, " Matt Yawehman"

[@TheLetsRead]

gobbless

[@noheroespublishing1907]

Anarchism and Spontaneity - The infancy of the Left still too idealistic and moralistic to be mature enough to succeed long-term.

[@uncleobscurenobody8861]

Or perhaps the clear sightedness and creativity of workers who won't give up their dignity and conscience in exchange for false promises

[@uncleobscurenobody8861]

@@DrDarkEnergyInfinito my dude what happened here, typing with gardening gloves on??