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A review by gnatroberts
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor
3.0
Beevor's account of the Spanish Civil War is so thoroughly researched that it deserves to be called comprehensive, but unfortunately the book is tainted by many of the logical fallacies all too common among authors who claim without ideology. The largest of which, is the claim that ANYONE can write without ideology. Ideology is the lens through which we see the world, the schema into which we fit all new information. To claim objectivity is simply a cover for ideology, it's better to be open about how you will approach to information. That way you can be aware of the mistakes you're likely to make, and the reader can at least trust that they know where you're coming from. The non-ideology ideology that Beevor describes in his introduction to the book is closely tied to what's commonly called "nihilistic centrism," a poorly thought out morass of wishy-washy prejudices best left to a South Park episode.
The problems with this allegedly "non-ideological" ideology are readily apparent in the way Beevor frames ideological differences and describes the persons involved in the war. Often, Fascists are described as genteel or refined and their objectionable politics come as a shock to the narrator, much like a serial killer's neighbors bemoaning "He was such a nice young man!" Most socialists and communists are framed as ambitious and power-hungry, and doubtless some were (especially by the end of the war) but not all. Their ideological differences are dismissed and their actions accredited to personal motives. Beevor presents the anarchists sympathetically, but patronizingly. It seems at best the anarchists were good natured idealists incapable running an effective state. This despite the effectiveness of the anarchist administration of Catalonia before liberal and communist elements of the Republic interfered. All of this is capped off by Beevor's final chapter, in which he eschews assigning motives to fascists to avoid becoming "a long-distance psychiatrist." I don't think that Beevor is in anyway sympathetic to the Fascists or Fascism as an ideology, far from it. But by failing to recognize and accept his own frame of reference, he's let himself overcompensate for our natural distaste for the Fascists in an attempt to present "both sides equally." The rejection of ideological analysis does not further the academic rigidity of Beevor's work, instead it hampers it.
The problems with this allegedly "non-ideological" ideology are readily apparent in the way Beevor frames ideological differences and describes the persons involved in the war. Often, Fascists are described as genteel or refined and their objectionable politics come as a shock to the narrator, much like a serial killer's neighbors bemoaning "He was such a nice young man!" Most socialists and communists are framed as ambitious and power-hungry, and doubtless some were (especially by the end of the war) but not all. Their ideological differences are dismissed and their actions accredited to personal motives. Beevor presents the anarchists sympathetically, but patronizingly. It seems at best the anarchists were good natured idealists incapable running an effective state. This despite the effectiveness of the anarchist administration of Catalonia before liberal and communist elements of the Republic interfered. All of this is capped off by Beevor's final chapter, in which he eschews assigning motives to fascists to avoid becoming "a long-distance psychiatrist." I don't think that Beevor is in anyway sympathetic to the Fascists or Fascism as an ideology, far from it. But by failing to recognize and accept his own frame of reference, he's let himself overcompensate for our natural distaste for the Fascists in an attempt to present "both sides equally." The rejection of ideological analysis does not further the academic rigidity of Beevor's work, instead it hampers it.