Nance ’22 is Orwell ‘37
From one corner of Europe to the other, the combat service of international volunteers has defended citizens against organized murder, and in so doing, sounded the warning of world-class immanent danger.
From Spain in ’36 and from Ukraine in ’22, two notable international brigade fighters reported to attentive citizens about the immanent perils of an advancing army of fascistic, hyper-destructive invaders.
In 1936, George Orwell left England to defend the people of Spain against Fascist forces destroying that country.
In 2022, Malcolm Nance left the USA to defend the people of Ukraine against Putinist forces destroying that country.
In 1938, Orwell wrote a book, a military memoir, Homage to Catalonia, about his experience defending the government of Spain against Franco’s fascists. Later, he wrote two other books, now world famous, Animal Farm and 1984. Both novels direct public attention to the mind-control tactics by which hyper-socialist regimes control their workers. Ultimately, Orwell was joined in his literary reporting about military defense. Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, also about the Spanish Civil War.
Now, in 2022, history, though not repeating, “rhymes”. . . as reporter Malcom Nance explained to Joy Reid, his decision to “stop talking” and start fighting, to join the Ukrainian International Legion, in defending Ukraine against the Rus-cist fascism of Vladimir Putin’s invading wehrmacht.
This is what Malcolm said to Joy Reid on MSNBC’s ReidOut:
“The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, ‘I’m done talking, all right? It’s time to take action here,’” said Nance. “I am here to help this country fight… what essentially is a war of extermination. This is an existential war and Russia has brought it to these people and they are mass murdering civilians, and there are people here like me who are here to do something about it.”
I learned about this from Manny Otiko’s recent posting on Medium:
Malcom Nance’s decision represents what it truly means to be a hero, in the literary sense but also in this real damned world.
The man stopped talking about the problem until he had done something about it. . . something to resist the evil that now threatens Ukraine and possibly the rest of Europe if not the whole world. And very important is: Malcolm had the military experience, thanks to our military forces of our United States of America, to actually do something about the problem by opposing it directly on the field of battle. In serving as a volunteer in the Ukrainian International Legion, he is sparing our nation the perils of official US intervention against Putin’s threat of nuclear weapons.
I mean, who knew, in 1937, that the Fascists of Spain were being backed up by Hitler’s newly-constructed wehrmacht and Mussolini’s fascist fighters? And look how long all of that took to run itself out, eight years of world war.
Who knew?
April 26, 1937, Hitler’s luftwaffe bombed the living daylights out of Guernica, Spain.
April, 2022, Putin’s fascist forces are are destroying Ukraine.
Just now, Mariupol 2022 is Guernica of 1937!
And Malcom Nance has gone over there to do something about it.
God bless Malcolm and those with whom he joins to run the Rus-cist hordes out of Ukraine.
And like Orwell, Malcolm Nance has written a book, but it is not (yet) about Ukraine:
They Want To Kill Americans. It is about the connection between Putin’s Ruscist fascists and some similarly dangerous criminals in this, our fair country, the good ole USA.
In old news, my novel Smoke, published in 2017, is a story about that gathering storm of war in Europe in 1937.
