‘The Franco Way’: The American Right and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9

The following article is an intellectual and cultural history of the American supporters of Francisco Franco (hereafter referred to as American Francoites) and the Nationalist Movement during the Spanish Civil War. This article examines political pamphlets, magazines, radio broadcasts, journal articles, and books to reconstruct the American Francoite worldview. Like pro-Franco Catholics across the globe, American Francoites insisted the war was not between democracy and fascism but communism and Christianity; as Americans, they believed that supporting Franco was critical in fulfilling a patriotic and providential duty to protect Western Christendom from godless communism. Investigating the American Francoite worldview contributes to a recent body of scholarship detailing the rise of transnational anticommunism and nationalism as a constellation of culturally contingent reactions to the growth and spread of international communism. American Francoites emerged as one peculiar form of anticommunist American nationalism. In conclusion, this article argues that the political myths perpetuated by the pro-Franco argument – that the war was a battle between godless communism and Western Christendom – survived both the Spanish Civil War and Franco himself, merging easily into the ‘new conservatism’ of the postwar period and continuing to inform the beliefs and attitudes of the present right.

Iconic war images and the myth of the ‘good American Soldier’

This article explores the ‘good American soldier’ as a gendered ideal type shaped by, and reproductive of, myths about American military success, romantic notions of small-town working and white America, notions of heterosexual virility, and ableist stereotypes about personal resilience. Drawing from an analysis of 10 years of media coverage of an iconic image dubbed the ‘Marlboro Marine’, the article outlines three specific myths linked to the ‘good American soldier’, in order to provide an insight into ideals of militarized masculinity and the gendered myths that shape American nationalism and identity. In developing this analysis, the article extends existing work on military masculinities by introducing the ‘good American soldier’ ideal type and explores the multiple myths associated with this ideal type. The article also demonstrates how a media narrative analysis that covers an extended period of time makes it possible to observe shifting narratives associated with the ‘good American soldier’.

The Old and the New Israel: The Cultural Origins of the Special Relationship

Understandings of the new American nation as a “Second Israel,” and a prevalent political discourse devoted to the narratives of the Old Testament, were a distinct trait of the early United States. Indeed, the images and narratives of the Old Testament were as common in the formative decades of the United States, in the words of the great historian Perry Miller, as “the air that the people breathed.” This attachment to the Old Testament, and the fact that American nationalism and twentieth century Zionism crystalized around the biblical history of the Israelites, bears considerably on the relationship of the two nations. The “special” bond between the modern countries, which is commonly understood in terms of pragmatism, interests, and shared ideologies, thus rests on a deep cultural connection. The American public’s consistent backing of the State of Israel (one that far surpasses the constituency of evangelical Christian Zionists), which politically translates into a robust, lasting and bi-partisan support that defies the arithmetic of appeals to Jewish voters (or donors) seems puzzling at times. It becomes more intelligible in light of the centuries-long tradition of American public speech describing the nation as a new incarnation of biblical Israel. This usable biblical past, which continues to influence American culture in meaningful ways, adds an important dimension for our understanding of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.

The Chosen People: The Hudson River School and the Construction of American Identity

This article considers nineteenth-century riverscapes of the Hudson in relation to the formation of American identity. It argues that riverscapes in the United States contributed to welding a national identity to a Christian one, although officially the identities were distinct. I examine the role of the Hudson River School in the creation of the ‘wilderness’ as an image of American homeland, and how this construct incorporated the iconic figure of the Euro-American Christian ‘pilgrim-pioneer.’ America looked more to the future than to the past for its national narrative, and an orientation to the future was symbolized in art by the flow of the Hudson toward distant horizons, while the pioneer identity was extended to embrace the entrepreneur-developer. The pioneer has remained an iconic figure for American nationalism, but is now more firmly located in the nation’s past; Janus’s gaze has been adjusted, demonstrating the potentially fluid character of nationalist discourse.

Imagining a New Volk: German-American Nationalism in the Age of the Revolution

German colonists who participated in the American Revolution did so in a number of ways that were comparable to their Anglo-American neighbors. Yet German Patriots also had a unique method of expressing American nationalism: their vocabulary. While using the German language in the New World was often a means of preserving identity and cultural institutions, it also provided an avenue through which they could assert a hybrid German-American identity: the word Volk. This paper focuses primarily on the changes in the writings of Henry Miller, the foremost German-American who cast his lot with the Patriot cause. It tracks a shift in his use of language during the American Revolution and demonstrates how he used the concept of Volk first to assert a distinct colonial identity and later to invent an America nation for German consumption.