Noam Chomsky Quotes

You can read it in history books now, but they often suppress the fact that the U.S. government tolerated [Nazi]. It's really remarkable because they claim that [Franklin] Roosevelt was impeded by the Neutrality Act. On the other hand, he bitterly condemned a Mexican businessman for sending several guns to the Republic. If you look back, oil was the one commodity that [Francisco] Franco could not receive from the Germans and the Italians, so that was quite significant.

The character and fight against fascism moved centre stage when, in 1936, Franco attempted to overthrow by force the Popular Front Government of Republican Spain.

As a Catholic priest, I state that no worse outrage could be inflicted on religion than the Te Deum to be sung to the glory of [Spanish Dictator] Franco in the church at Guernica …

Francisco Franco’s military uprising against Spain’s elected government was an attempt, not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism.

After the Spanish Civil War against Franco, a group of us got together: a group of well-to-do people who were sympathetic to the lost cause of a Republican state. We bought a convent in Toulouse and converted it into a hospital run by the Unitarians. It took care of the Spanish refugees who fled to Toulouse.

The news of the open military help to Franco from Hitler and Mussolini, and the heroic resistance of the people of Madrid, Barcelona and the big cities fired a widespread wish to help the Republic and its people.

It is alleged that half a million Spanish men, women and children fled to France after the Franco victory.

Although the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July, 1936, was followed by a far-reaching social-revolution in the anti-Franco camp -- more profound in some respects than the Bolshevik Revolution in its early stages -- millions of discerning people outside of Spain were kept in ignorance, not only of its depth and range, but even of its existence, by virtue of a policy of duplicity and dissimulation of which there is no parallel in history.

The Spanish Lenin

The two dictator states [Italy and Germany] are creating a third ; and by recognizing General Franco’s government, they have committed themselves irretrievably to making a success of his venture, thus limiting niceties as to means.

Negotiating with Franco is like having your teeth pulled.

Historically, countries have made big energy shifts only when confronted with acute fossil-fuel crises: oil embargoes, debilitating pollution, or wars.

We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.

Legend has it that when Franco's troops crushed Catalonia in 1939, relegating it for the next thirty-five years to abuse and neglect, one of his generals was asked what more he could possibly want now that he had Barcelona.

We hear about the successful "Texanisation" of the Republican party. And doesn't Texas sometimes seem to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions?

I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II. After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the U.S. entered World War II? Hitler and Mussolini jumped in on the side of Francisco Franco and his Spanish nationalists, sent them vast amounts of military aid, airplanes, tanks - and Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops as well - because they wanted a sympathetic ally in power. So I think it really was the opening act of World War II.

There's an interesting question, whether the anarchists had alternatives [in Spain]. If they did tend to support the government that had been destroyed, what were the alternatives? There was actually a proposal by Camillo Berneri, an Italian anarchist who was in Spain at the time, which is not a crazy notion in my opinion. He opposed participation in government and was against the formation of an army, meaning a major army to fight [Francisco] Franco.

Now, in answer to the question would we use force in the Middle East. I don't know...I hope not. We have no plans to, it is conceivable, I guess. It would be almost as bad as the seven days in May. You conjure up a situation where there is another oil embargo, and the people in this country are not only inconvenienced and uncomfortable, but suffer.

Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain [during the Spanish Civil War], and it was, by far, the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war. I think they were primarily people who were deeply alarmed by the menace of fascism. They saw this on the horizon. I quote one volunteer, Maury Colow of New York, who said, "for us it was never Franco, it was always Hitler."

And the whole Bush family, from Texas, should be boiled in poisoned oil.

I also learned from reading the left-wing press about the [Franklin] Roosevelt administration's indirect support for Francisco Franco, which was not well known, and still isn't.

[Francisco Franco] said they should resort to guerrilla war. Which has a history in Spain.

God gave the Angels wings and humans chocolate. Mrs. Miracle

I understand the impact of those kinds of factors on job creation. I will have a very different policy. My policy on energy is to take advantage of coal, oil, natural gas, as well as our renewables, and nuclear - make America the largest energy producer in the world.

One cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.