High life
Unfashionable thoughts
Taki
In the summer of 1975 I was on board Stavro Niarchos's massive gin-palace, the Atlantis, lying off the coast of Spain. We were a jolly little group of about 20 and it got jollier when the then Prince Juan Car- los and his brother-in-law, King Constan- tine of Greece, came on board accompanied by their wives. During lunch I got into an argument with Princess Sophia, now Queen of Spain, about the three Greek colonels who had been condemned to death (later commuted to life) the previ- ous day. She was not exactly in mourning. I was.
General Francisco Franco, who had carefully prepared Juan Carlos to succeed him as head of state, was on his last legs but still clinging to power. The mood on board the Atlantis was that the caudillo should exit gracefully. My opinion that he was by far the greatest man of the 20th century was heard without comment. Juan Carlos made a face but, being the gentle- man that he is, said nothing. Ditto King Constantine. Philip Niarchos asked for another round of stiff drinks to be served. If memory serves, I was Mr Unpopular for the day.
Twenty-one years later, I still believe that Franco was among the greatest of men, pulling off a miracle for Spain and its peo- ple by first beating Orwell's 'sandal-wear- ing goofs', then bluffing the Axis powers and remaining neutral. Last week some of Franco's foes returned to Madrid for the 60th anniversary of the start of their inglo- rious defeat. The Big Bagel Times put the news of their return on the front page, hail- ing them as romantic heroes. Far worse, the Spanish parliament made them hon- ourary Spanish citizens, all 380 of them representing 29 nations. Admittedly, they did go and fight, which is something their Sixties counterparts did not. In the spirit of reconciliation, perhaps the Spanish govern- ment is right in honouring them.
What puzzles me is why Franco is never given his due. Although the role of the intellectual is to think independently, European and American academics have failed this test miserably. These supposed free-thinkers are anything but. Terrified of dissenting this odious bunch of peaceniks sneers at Franco as if he were a monster like Mao or Stalin, only much worse. One often reads of journalists, artists or writers shamelessly calling themselves Maoists, even Stalinists, without anyone batting the proverbial eyelid. Not so where Franco is concerned.
Yet how does one talk sensibly about a horror beyond comprehension? How does one use ordinary vocabulary to describe something so immense and so absurd as the deaths of 100 million persons in the name of making Russia and China safe for communism? Easy. By denying what they know to be true. As George Orwell said, `The sin of nearly all left-wingers is that they have wanted to be anti-fascist without being anti-totalitarian.'
Basically, I think it's purely fashion. There are those who value fashion over the truth, and this rather large group includes most of our cultural elite. The Big Bagel Times alluded to Mao's monumental crimes by calling them 'excesses'. Walter Duranty denied Stalin's enforced starvation of the kulaks outright. The Pulitzer prize he received for his foulest of lies is still Lawrence of Suburbia proudly displayed in the paper's hall of dis- honour.
I'll go even further. Fashion dictates that all tyrants are good as long as they're anti- West. This week, the heads of Latin Ameri- can states are in Chile discussing how to expand democracy in their hemisphere. This includes Fidel Castro. The butcher of Cuba and expert in shooting down unarmed airplanes knows as much about democracy as I do about cross-dressing. A couple of months ago I was booed while giving a speech for saying that Pinochet not only saved Chile, but compounded the good he did by getting rid of Salvador Allende. By the reaction I got I guess it was a very unfashionable thing to say to a most fashionable audience. A bit like passing wind during one of the silences in a Harold Pinter play. A real no-no. Arriba Franco, Arriba Pinochet! Arriba Salazar!
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