I teorici dello sterminio: le origini della violenza nella Guerra civile spagnola

Abstract

The Theorists of Extermination: the Origins of Violence in the Spanish Civil War

In the early XX century, when the agrarian oligarchy and the middle class felt threatened by a militant industrial and rural proletariat, the extreme right disseminated the notion that a contubernio of Jews, freemasons and the working class Internationals was conspiring to destroy Christian Europe, with Spain as a principal target. By examining the stances of several right-wing personalities, nourished after 1932 by the dissemination of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the article analyses how anti-Semitism in Spain mounted after 1917 and how the hatreds of 1917- 1923 developed into violent enmity of the Church, the Armed Forces and landowners against the Republic, seen as the product of a Jewish plot. This tense and uncertain climate turned into widespread violence, with the uprising of Africanistas who had been occupying key positions from May 1935.