SPANISH NATIONAL LEFT

SPANISH NATIONAL LEFT Flavio Goncalves interviews Alfonso Beltran

Alfonso Beltran is a long-time Spanish revolutionary and one of the individuals behind the now-defunct National Revolutionary magazine, “Resistencia”, who now partoicipates in the Antagonistas blog in the wake of a small incursion within Movimiento Social Republicano, a Spanish NR party. He was also a friend and a comrade of Norberto Ceresole, revolutionary personality that is allegedly behind the Hugo Chavez Venezuelan revolution.

FG: Maybe a short introduction is in order, perhaps relating to your political background? When did you become aware of revolutionary politics?

AB: I’m 42 years old. I’ve been an activist in several Falangista and National Revolutionary groups ever since my teenage years and youth.

FG: I read in a interview you gave that the collective that founded “Resistencia” had by its only common platform a contempt for the Right-wing groups, be they the System’s or the “national right”, that were commonly labelled by the media as “far right”. Can you tell us more about this?

AB: The Spanish national right has been used as cheap “labour” by the politicians of the Democratic Transition; the same way that the Franquista regime had used the Falangistas for 40 years. In both cases the manipulators had the same first and last names; they used the same myths and the same lies to keep the youth sections of the political movement static, frozen and in ignominy until converting them into a residual part of the System itself. That was and that is the reality of the Spanish far right. Nothing more.

FG: “Resistencia” was a magazine like no other I have read, comparable perhaps only with the French “Rebellion”. Were you inspired by some foreign publication when you founded the magazine?

AB: No. We were an autonomous and self-built initiative, the fruit of a common political, cultural and generational experience – of a radical type.

FG: The Spanish editorial market is quite vast, with magazines like “Nihil Obstat” and “Manifiesto” still being printed. Do you believe that a return of “Resistencia” is possible?

AB: Not likely, given today’s circumstances. But nothing is impossible.

FG: How do you view today’s parties, like the Russian National Bolshevik Party of Edward Limonov or Dugin’s path? Is Russia an example for the European national left? Is Putin a revolutionary patriot?

AB: To be honest I don’t follow the news on Russian radical politics. I was never part of the “National Bolshevik” trend promoted by the French Nouvelle Droite. I value important aspects of Dugin’s philosophical work. Regarding Putin, his way of action always seemed “dubious” to me. I don’t trust much in any sort of pan-nationalism.

FG: We feel that the recent victory in France by Sarkozy was due to “politically correct” forms of racialism, islamophobia and anti-immigration, but at the same time he is a supporter of both Israel and Zionism. Do you think that the influence of Euro-Zionists like Guillaume Faye, for example, was assimilated by the French system, including Sarkozy?

AB: In truth must be said that it happened just the opposite. It was the French far right that was used by the power system of the French state. These days the islamophobic Euro-Zionist speech is a speech of state and a part of that sort of European Jewish-Christian Front that stands more towards the left than it seems. For the politically correct neo-racism, the incorrect ions and racial phobias of Petain, Le Pen, Vial and Faye are useless. They are disposable. That’s the reason for the outcome of the recent French elections.

FG: How did the collaboration of Norberto Ceresole with “Resistencia” come about? How does the present revolution by Hugo Chavez Bolivarian in Venezuela look to you?

AB: We knew Ceresole via our contacts in the Islamic community of Madrid, in exile from Palestine and other collectives. At that time Ceresole was committed to promoting the reality of the Chavez Bolivian revolution (of which he was its first and main ideologist) and that’s how, through him, we knew the reality of a revolutionary movement that – in my humble opinion – is heading the right way, against all the odds, to be converted into a focus and a model of liberation for the peoples of Latin America.

FG: More often than not, Spanish patriots retained good relations with Muslim countries, to the point that a magazine named “Handschar” was published. Do you think that countries like Lebanon, Iran and Syria are a good source of opposition against the global hegemony of the USA?

AB: To this effect I do believe that today, as always, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the main political, strategic and spiritual reference that can raise the peoples of the world against the global hegemony of the World-Eaters: United States, Israel and their international accomplices and lackeys.

FG: Do you perceive that Islam without Saddam Hussein will be revolutionary Sunni in nature? Or will the future of revolutionary Islam, be it in Iraq or Syria, also be Shiite?

AB: For sure, there exists in the Sunni field a few Islamic currents and movements of a revolutionary type. Let me name Hamas in Palestine and the Justice & Faith neo-Sufi movement in Morocco. But it’s true that the Shiites are in the vanguard of both theory and praxis of revolutionary Islam.

FG: Once upon a time you were a member of the MSR, when this party seemed to us to be a legitimate National Left party. Today, you view as a possibility the return of the MSR to the trenches of the National Left? Is there space for the creation of a new nationalist Left-wing party in Spain?

AB: I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them, and I say that with all due respect: we can never lose hope. Today, to create a National Left sort of party that you mention we would need subjective conditions, more than objective, which for now are lacking in Spain. We need a bigger “critical mass” and more political responsibility, something we don’t have today.

FG: Do you view Spain as a viable country or it will be forced to deal better with the realities of its separatist nationalisms (Galicia, Basque Country, Andalucia, etc.)?

AB: Spain is as viable as any other country these days due to globalization. But Spain as a community of national destiny, as a Fatherland, will only be a reality in the measure that it will transform itself into what it needs to become a revolutionary folk and nation: a Federal Republic.

FG: Do you know anything about the Portuguese realities? “Resistencia” had a Portuguese readership, have you ever visited Portugal?

AB: Sadly, I never visited Portugal. As a youngster I studied the Portuguese Rolao Preto’s National Syndicalism and the parallel evolution of the Iberian “New States”: in other words the Salazar and Franco states. I fear that the social and political reality in both Portugal and Spain are not that much different these days. But you’re correct, “Resistencia” had Portuguese friends and subscribers. I remember there was a fluid relationship with a revisionist magazine published in those years that went by the name of “Justica & Liberdade” (Justice & Freedom).

FG: Do you keep in touch with other National Left groups and organisations abroad? Are you familiar with National-Anarchism in its English form, promoted by, amongst others, Troy Southgate, Welf Herfurth and Peter Töpfer?

AB: No. I’m not familiar with any of those groups.

FG: I remember seeing a picture of Dr. Ernesto Guevara - the “Che” - in one of your publications. Can Guevarism still be viewed as a revolutionary attitude today? Or does it belong to the past?

AB: I don’t remember using the “Che” fetish. I think “Guevarism” these days is – as you stated – an attitude that is outdated.

FG: Have you ever considered publishing the texts of “Resistencia” in a compilation, maybe even in a book? Is the “Antagonistas” blog is a continuation of “Resistencia”?

AB: The “Antagonistas” blog holds the same line of principles that were part of the basic guidelines of “Resistencia”, but without falling into dogmatism and “has-been”. The line of “Resistencia” is still alive and well; we should not bury it in any book. But that’s just my opinion.

FG: Portugal has been facing a strong economic crisis, the far right and the far left are protesting on the streets and people are getting poorer and poorer as unemployment rates rise. Do you think we will be able to change national economic policy without the dismantlement of the European Union and giving up the Euro currency?

AB: Relating the political with the economical multi-national forces in the European Union is a policy of growing and the dynamics of international Big Business, it’s not Utopian to believe that the System’s model can collapse by itself at any time. We should prepare ourselves for that eventuality.

FG: Do you believe that the Identitarian creed as developed by Pierre Vial and Guillaume Faye is a Trojan Horse for Zionism? Does it bring back outdated myths of racial and civilisational supremacism?

AB: That’s something that very few well-intentioned Identitarian activists can hide nowadays. They were unmasked. And we – and I say this with no false pride – have collaborated with that unmasking.

FG: Aznar - the former Spanish prime minister - visited Portugal recently and criticised the politics of immigration and multi-culturalism. Do you think he will use the alarmist narrative of Sarkozy in order to get his party back into power in Spain? Do the Spanish patriots still allow themselves to be fooled?

AB: The “Spanish patriots” – or those claiming to be such – are always “fooled”: it suits them. Aznar was, whilst in power, the main figurehead for those “occasional patriots” and saloon Identitarians. They are not innocent. They are part of the social and ideological plot of the Spanish Right. They are scum.

FG: If you wish to add something, please feel free.

AB: Nothing else to add besides saluting our Portuguese brothers and wishing the best of luck to Flavio Goncalves and all of his revolutionary initiatives.