In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x
The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x
Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x
The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x
The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x
The differences between the US in 2021 and Spain in 1981 are obviously huge. I'm not proposing an analogy at all. But what I do notice is that some on the pro-Trump side apparently fear that what happened to Francoists in Spain after 1981 could happen to them after 2021. 6/x
The day after pro-Trump insurrectionists invaded the capital, apparently with a plan to lynch the vice president of the United States, Tucker Carlson was on Fox News worried about the terrible risk of persecution of Trump supporters. 7/x foxnews.com/opinion/tucker…
Similar concerns are being articulated by other hard-line and soft-line pro-Trump voices. They lament that real victims of the attempted violent overthrow of a US election will be ... those who sympathized with that attempted violent overthrow 8/x 8/x
Why, some of those who supported that attempted violent overthrow have already lost their book contracts and may have to republish instead with a less prestigious imprint! If that's not tyranny, what is? 9/x
But beneath the self-indulgent self-pity, these pro-Trump voices are saying something real and true. What was attempted on January 6 *is* discrediting in a democracy -and the disgrace will be shared to some measure not only by its participants, but by its sympathizers. 10/x
The discredit of Trumpism will not be unanimous, obviously - just as you can still find Francoists in Spain even today. But the balance of political and especially cultural power will shift. And Trumpists care even more about cultural power than about political power. 11/x
Trumpists often compare themselves to truly persecuted minorities: African Americans in the Jim Crow South, Jews under Nazism, Christians under communism. That's disgusting and also crazy. 12/x
But Trump's incitement of violence to overturn an election he lost - atop his horrifying mismanagement of the pandemic and the economic crisis in which so many Americans have suffered so much - will cast enduring, inescapable odium upon him and anything associated with him. 13/x
Trumpists already feel the chill of the thickening clouds of social disapproval. And the chill bites sharper because at some deep inner level, even the Trumpists must recognize - they deserve it. END
PS Spanish readers inform me that not all state support for the Catholic church was ended post-Franco. I stand corrected.

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More from @davidfrum

8 Jan
US Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona was shot 9 years ago today. I wrote shortly afterward 1/x

edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/0…
But I warned in 2011, this anti-violence taboo was being corroded by leading right-wing voices - who were providing advance justification for political violence. 2/x edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/0…
President Trump relocated the permissions office for right-wing political violence from TV and radio to the West Wing. Pro-Trump talkers argue that most Trump supporters would never themselves engage in violence. Of course that's true. 3/x
Read 8 tweets
3 Jan
You're hearing a lot of talk about "irregularities" in the election of 1876 that led to a "disputed" outcome. What is being referred to in this hazy terms?
Across the state of South Carolina, white conservatives had used terror and massacre to deter former slaves from voting in 1876. Here's the story of an attack upon the small town of Hamburg in July blackpast.org/african-americ…
Hundreds of black South Carolinians were killed by white conservative militias. Blacks fought back in many places, but they were out-gunned.

The killings were not spontaneous outbursts. They were part of planned campaign of anti-black voter suppression.

ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/…
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3 Jan
As Trump denounces his own party in Georgia, what are pro-Trump Georgians to make of ...
The super-close political ties between the governor Trump condemns as a "disgrace" governor - and the governor's hand-picked senator? ajc.com/news/state--re…
As Trump rails against "political corruption" among Georgia Republicans, pro-Trump Republicans are asked to vote for a political novice who got a Senate seat only because she promised to spend $20 million of her own money - much of it finding its way to Kemp-allied consultants?
Read 5 tweets
31 Dec 20
On the plus side, at least we'll be spared all that Inauguration Day bumpf about "the uniquely American miracle of the peaceful transfer of power."
Defeated Danish prime ministers do not try to hold onto power by inciting mob violence in the streets of Copenhagen. Defeated UK prime ministers trudge sadly out of 10 Downing Street to hail a taxi.
Helmut Kohl, accepting the peaceful transition of power in Germany, September 1998. alamy.com/stock-photo-dp…
Read 4 tweets
29 Dec 20
.@FareedZakaria is right and wise here. Past US complacency about China is now veering to a policy of confrontation that is a) excessively militarized and b) even more frightening to partners and allies than China's own bad actions.
@FareedZakaria Yes, stand up for human rights in China and Hong Kong.

Yes, challenge China's bad trade practices.

Yes, apply multilateral pressure to constrain China's environmental abuses.

But do all this while always extending the open hand of cooperation to China ...
@FareedZakaria ... because the present path leads toward conflicts as terrible as they are preventable.
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26 Dec 20
As of December 23, about 1.01 million Americans had received a first vaccination against COVID. As of today, that number has risen to 1.23 million. A 20% increase in 3 days, one of them Christmas. 1/x
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Here's the Israeli rate of progress, vaccinations / 100,000 people.
Read 4 tweets

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