History and Analysis of ETA

or
Continuing Our Series on Asymmetric Warfare; Basques, Bombs, and Bickering

Before we begin this thread, I must get some disclaimers out of the way again.
First of all, talking about violence is not an endorsement of violence. M'kaaaaaaaay?
Secondly, talking about an organization is not an endorsement of their ideology.
Lastly, I will be writing about ETA under the assumption that they existed. If you think that they were just a conspiracy and that all their attacks were really just a Fascist psy-op to do whatever-something-blah blah-martial-law-or-whatever then please just make your own thread. If you really think that everything is a conspiracy, I'm not going to argue with you. This thread is about analyzing things and I guess I'm just not woke enough to see though the illuminati conspiracy.
If everything is a conspiracy, then there is no way to analyze it logically.

Like the PIRA struggle in Northern Ireland, the Basque independence struggle can trace its roots back to the early 20th century and even before that. I'm not going to get into the Carlist Wars or even into the agitation for nationalism in the early 20th century but suffice it to say that, like many conflicts the Basque struggle has a lot of history.
For brevity sake, I will be analyzing the 20th century struggle that officially ended only recently with a permanent ceasefire in 2010.

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Other urls found in this thread:

archive.is/SW2MK
web.archive.org/web/20050215052026/http://www.911review.org/Wget/www.jackblood.com/index/id28.html
mapadelolvido.blogspot.com/2012/06/luis-carrero-blanco-madrid-comunidad-de.html
noticiasdegipuzkoa.eus/2018/03/04/sociedad/euskadi/vecinos-de-hernani-rechazan-las-pintadas-racistas-en-la-mezquita-del-pueblo-
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Origin
The origin of the ETA is found in Spanish Civil War. As we all know, the Falangists won the conflict and smashed the USSR backed government. During the Republic's shaky and short existence, the Basque nationalist party negotiated themselves autonomy within the Republic. After Franco crushed the republican regime, the Basque nationalist party fled to Paris and set up a government in exile. Little guerrilla action of any note transpired during this time. Eventually, an organization of nationalist and leftist students was formed called the Society of Basque Students (EIA). They did not engage in revolutionary actions other than encouraging strikes and disobedience to the new regime. And in 1950, the Fascist government were able to infiltrate the organization right up to the top and arrest its entire leadership in detail.
The men who survived this catastrophe learned to be very picky about who they allowed into their ranks.
ETA founder José Luis Álvarez Emparanza remarked, "The ease with which we were arrested and… the almost total destruction of the organization… made it clear that serious and continuous work was required to improve our security standards."

The ETA leadership would emerge out of the students who survived this roundup.

Long story short, several student led organizations of Basque youth began meeting again and became disillusioned with the government in exile's inability to do anything concrete to resist the regime. In addition, they were viewed by many as sellouts to the Republic for not demanding full independence and for refusing to declare Basque the official and exclusive language of the future Basque homeland. Eventually, the ETA was formed from these disgruntled and radical youths in 1959.
Their opening acts were to simply spraypaint "ETA" on the walls of buildings in Basque cities and to distribute pamphlets. These small acts of defiance gave little idea what destruction they would wreck upon Spain in the next decades.

During the next few years, far more effort was spent on infighting between three main factions within Basque nationalist thought. The first were simply Basque nationalists who also wanted lite socialism for Basques. They were colloquially known as the "Nationalist Workers". They sought to create an exclusively Basque national homeland regardless of class or occupation. They opposed alliance with other Spanish organizations as they felt that to do so would simply invite betrayal at the end of the struggle, as has happened before.
Opposing them were the more marxist-y marxists who were colloquially known as "the Trotskyites." They didn't care much for Basque nationalism or even language or culture. They mostly just wanted to kill fascists and Basque capitalists and openly advocated alliance with non-Basque insurrectionists. They didn't care overmuch if the Basque people got a homeland out of their struggle. Only that the workers' revolution happened. They were your average, bland, run of the mill marxists that were fashionable in the 1960s.
Lastly there was a very interesting faction led and founded by a German, of all people named Federico Krutwig. He analyzed the situation that the Basque people were in and surmised that the Basque were effectively a colony of Spain and that they must conduct a colonial war along the lines of Vietnam or Algeria to rid themselves of their colonial oppressors. This faction was very violence oriented, very nationalistic, and very anti-capitalist. Essentially, they were NazBols who didn't understand the JQ. They sought an ethnic-class war. And they opposed any alliance with non-Basque insurrectionists on the grounds that they would betray them.
Naturally, the NazBols eventually won the internal civil war among Basque nationalists. First driving out the marxists and then absorbing the nationalists.

Attached: ETA celebrating a holiday.jpg (586x390 40.88 KB, 234.08K)

In my opinion, Krutwig's analysis of how to wage a nationalist struggle is correct. I may not agree with all his political ideas, but his strategy of waging economic warfare seems correct to me. He sought not to defeat Spain militarily but economically. By making the cost of continuing to suppress Basque nationalism higher than the economic benefit of keeping them in the Spanish "empire." This, my friends, is how you get the elites to give into demands. By smashing their greedy fingers over and over and over again until they let go. However, as we shall see, some mistakes were made that doomed his struggle.

In 1961, the Falangist authorities became aware of the group's existence when ETA conducted their first attack against the regime. They attempted (and failed lol) to derail a train that was carrying some Fascist political leaders in San Sebastián. However, with the alleged assistance from traitors, the Spanish authorities rounded up 110 members, tortured them a little, and sentenced them to 15-20 year prison sentences for subversive activity. Apparently, they had not learned quite how to properly vet their recruits.
Oh btw, this is going to be a recurring problem with ETA so bear that in mind. Perhaps they had loose lips. Or maybe the Falangists were just really efficient at police work.

Once again, the survivors fled into France where they spent the next years infighting. By the end of 1966, the Third Worldist faction (the NazBol-ish one) had cemented their control over ETA. The marxists were expelled and attempted to form their own rival organization that simply faded into obscurity. (True to form, the marxists showed their contempt for the People and quickly dropped all pretense of fighting for Basque independence as soon as they formed their rival ETA.) For now the revolution would be a Basque one.
Furthermore, the NazBol faction left in command of ETA laid out a plan to defeat Spain that fans of Dr. William Pierce will recognize; The plan was to conduct attacks upon the Spanish government and institutions intended to provoke the Regime to overreacting. The idea being that if the regime committed atrocities against the Basque people in retaliation for ETA attacks, it would rouse the non-combatant populace around ETA and allow the terrorist organization to progress into a guerrilla army.

In 1967 the newly consolidated ETA conducted their first direct attack on the Spanish military. One year later, in response to the Spanish response to their attacks, they assassinated Melitón Manzanas who was a Basque himself and also a police commander and strong Spanish nationalist.

As the ETA had hoped, these actions compelled Franco to react immediately and harshly by declaring martial law first in Basque country and then for all of Spain. Basque celebrations and political activity was harshly repressed.
Finally the ETA had successfully escalated the war.
Now everything came crashing down…

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Mistakes were made
After the slaying of Mansanas, literally thousands of Basques were arrested on suspicion of disloyalty. Many were tortured into making confessions. Unfortunately for ETA, one of the people swept up in the raids was Gregorio López, a high ranking member of ETA and his wife. Lopez happened to actually be the man who had assassinated Manzanas. However, they could not prove it due to lack of evidence. So he was released but for whatever reason, his wife (pregnant) was kept for further… "questioning"
During the torture and imprisonment she suffered a miscarriage and after nearly a month in police custody, Lopez decided to break into the prison to rescue her. He solicited a fellow ETA agent and both men tried to break into the jail and rescue her but were caught. Like an idiot, Lopez was carrying the very same weapon used to assassinate Manzanas and ballistics testing quickly determined this and he was charged with the murder.
Naturally, the men torturing his wife began to torture Lopez and within months, Spanish police captured the entire leadership board of the ETA Central Committee. Many of the arrests were made in their own "safe houses" so I think it's safe to say that Lopez talked under torture.

Let's take a step back from this so we can analyze went wrong during this mess.
First of all, the obvious; Lopez did not get rid of his weapon after assassinating Manzanas. Always get rid of your weapons after doing anything with them in a hypothetical political warfare situation. But for the love of god, don't use the same pistol to break into a jailhouse.
Secondly, Lopez was high enough ranking to know the locations of dozens of ETA safehouses and virtually its entire command structure. So he should not have been involved in the rescue of his wife. Breaking into a prison is one of the most dangerous actions a terrorist can undertake.
Thirdly, once Lopez had been arrested the ETA should have abandoned all safehouses immediately. Even if your pal is arrested and then released, you should do some basic bitch op-sec like this just in case. In fact, I maintain that if someone is arrested and released, they should be considered radioactive by the organization and all contact terminated immediately just in case he is being followed by the police or worse, has defected. Perhaps after months of monitoring, he can be readmitted into the organization.
And lastly, though I'd rather not get bogged down in a MGTOW argument about how womyn are the devil, I kind of want to point out that Lopez's wife was tortured for an entire fucking month and she did not mention the fact that her own husband was a high ranking member of ETA. Yet Lopez broke almost immediately under torture and revealed the names and locations of the entire leadership of his own organization, thus crippling the war effort for years.
I've never been tortured so I am not calling into question Lopez's integrity. But his wife deserved a fucking metal.

Back to our story…
With the decapitation of ETA's leadership in Spain, things only got worse. Due to talking among those captured and plain bad luck for operatives in the field, dozens of other operatives were rounded up and arrested in just a few weeks.
Now, virtually the entire leadership of ETA in Spain had been decapitated so the few remaining members fled (yup, you guessed it) across the border to France again and called another assembly to figure out where to go from here. And this, THIS is the really demoralizing part. ETA's remaining leadership now immediately descended into a civil war over what to do. With the old leadership largely sitting in prison, the marxists came back and argued against Basque nationalism and that the ETA (which btw, stands for "Basque Homeland and Freedom") should really be a multi-cultural worker's party. The Marxists then began expelling everyone not a Marxist and the remaining Third-Worldist NazBols fired back and declared them illegitimate. To which the marxists charged the remaining leadership of ETA of being "racist and bourgeoise!"
This more than anything demoralized and disheartened the remaining revolutionaries on the Spanish side of the border.
Too, it was clear that the strategy of provocation and response could no longer be maintained. The ETA were incapable of even responding to these crippling arrests. Amidst the debate between the Third Worldists and the Marx-faggots, there emerged a debate over whether ETA should even be a violent organization at all. Many argued that it was impossible to resist the regime when provoking it caused such a vicious crackdown. The remaining NazBols amazingly became even more adamant that violence must be escalated, completely convinced that they could force the regime to take even more alienating retaliation against the population through violent action. But given the crippled state of ETA, their calls seemed hopelessly utopian.

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Soon, these ETA leaders were tried in Spanish courts and sentenced life imprisonment or death. However, Francisco Franco intervened and commuted the sentences to around 30 years each.

Anyway, back in France the leadership of ETA broke up into several splinter groups… again. One of which was, yup, you guessed it; a marxist faction that loudly and arrogantly argued that ETA must abandon Basque nationalism for some more bland, boring MaRxIsM.tm
However, once again these class obsessed, effete, intellectual bobos were hopelessly out of touch with the working class Basque that they hoped would do their fighting for them. The Basque were no friends of capitalism, but they were also highly nationalistic. And the ETA-VI faction lasted less than 2 years before they also split between the Trotskyites and various other sects of communism. They faded into obscurity.
That is what happens when effete, marxist bobos ignore the real working class and obsess over frivolous trivialities like marxism. Real men are loyal to their families, their traditions, and their nation. Not your dumb book.
This tangent has a purpose. I know that about 20% of the anons who post here will not bother reading my thread and will simply write "HEY!!! Did u kno that tha EtA wuz marxists???? I'll bet u didnd kno that!!!!"
However, I want those who do read this to understand one of the key weaknesses of marxist terrorist organizations. The man on the ground who does the fighting for marxist intellectuals almost never actually believes in all the vain balderdash that the marxist elites yammer about. The only reason that men allow these effete marxist intellectuals to lead them is because they have chanced upon a few solid points about the injustice of capitalism. However, these soulless marxist intellectuals also have no respect for the traditions and families that constitute the backbone of ALL human groups. Most working class men bitterly resent these arrogant assholes trying to deconstruct their culture and existence. To the marxist, nationalism is simply "flag worship" and they actually cannot even see the distinctions between people. They are blind to all the beautiful cultures and traditions that make humanity interesting. They have no souls and thus cannot see other people with souls. All they see are interchangeable worker units. Just like the capitalists. But people don't like being interchangeable worker units. People are Basques and Bretons and Germans and Danes. The marxists think that this is just flag worship, and they fail to even comprehend that a nation is far more than a fucking flag. Almost all successful marxist movements combine loads of nationalism with their bland marxism.

Tangent over. Back to our story…

ETA-V
Of the many splinter groups that formed in 1969-70, one started out with nothing and soon became synonymous with ETA. This group was the remaining Third-Worldist faction which split off from the marxist one to call themselves ETA-V. Soon, their nationalistic and anti-capitalistic appeal galvanized the Basque patriots and their ranks swelled. Soon, they had recovered their strength and immediately set about where the old ETA failed; escalating the conflict.
First they conducted assassinations against "traitors" and collaborators. They burned down the homes of politicians. And for funds they robbed banks. They engaged in shootouts with police and conducted bombings of symbolic targets.
The violence paid off.
Here is just one example of terrorism working for analysis;
In 1971, a Basque capitalist and collaborator Zabala had pissed off some striking Basque workers and 154 men found themselves replaced by Spanish immigrants. Within days, Zabala was kidnapped outside his office and a Basque newspaper published ETA-V's demands; Rehire all the Basque workers, give them a raise, and a few other minor demands.
The company leaders met a few days later and agreed the demands.
One thing that I have noted is that corporations are far more susceptible to terrorism than governments are. The more profit-oriented an institution, the more likely it will negotiate with terrorists.

After this kidnapping, ETA-V (who we'll now just call ETA) went on to conduct attack after attack. In August 1972, they were conducting an average of one per day. Things would only get worse for the government.

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The Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco
In the Autumn of 1972 ETA received information that heir apparent to Francisco Franco; Luis Carrero Blanco had established a pattern of attending Catholic Mass via a specific road. At first, ETA planned on kidnapping him but later decided to simply assassinate him in the hope of bringing down the regime.
In early 1973, an ETA cell stormed a powder factory in Hernani and stole 3000 kilos of explosives. That Autumn, a three man cell rented a basement apartment parallel to the rout that Blanco was known to take to church. Over the course of a month or so, these men dug a tunnel out into the road directly underneath where they hoped Blanco would be driving. They explained to their neighbors that they were artists and they were making a statue in the basement. This explained the chiseling noise.
The hole underneath the road was then loaded with 80 kg of Goma-2 explosive to be detonated by a remote controlled device. A metal slab was placed underneath the bomb to force the explosive force upward. On the day of the assassination, the three men had parked a car along one of the lanes to force Blanco's driver to drive directly over the site of the IED. Disguised as electricians, they observed his travel from the road and detonated the bomb as he passed over it. He and his driver died in the explosion.

This act more than any other event doomed Fascist Spain to democratization. It would, in the regime we live under, be akin to assassinating Hillary Clinton in 2015. Not to imply Francisco Franco was Spain's Barrack Obama.
Just put that into perspective.
That is power. That is using violence to defeat a repressive government.

However, there was a worm in the apple for ETA.
As a social experiment, I want all of you to pause reading and take a wild guess what ETA did after this astonishing accomplishment. Just stop for a minute and take a guess at what happened next.

That's right anons; They held another assembly in France and purity spiraled over ideological differences and split into multiple different competing factions. What else would they do?

The Decline and Fall of ETA
During the chaos of the post-Franco era and the various splinter factions of ETA, a deadly paramilitary force named GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación) was created under the new leftist government to hunt down and disrupt ETA in their bases in France. The effects were devastating as this counter-terrorist organization was well trained and often relied on professional terrorist hunters. They managed to assassinate several high ranking ETA agents.
In addition to this new threat from counter-terrorist organizations, ETA embarked upon a new strategy that proved devastating in the long run for the organization. This strategy involved detonating car bombs in economic areas of Madrid, Barcelona, and other Spanish cities.
Normally, I'd say this is a great idea because I love that shit. However, for whatever reason ETA cells began to attack shopping malls. ETA claimed to have given the police warnings before the bombs went off (some going off at peak shopping hour) while the police claimed that they had not received warnings with adequate time to evacuate shoppers. In any case, casualties soared and economic damage to the new regime was minimal.
ETA attacks against the regime became less frequent but deadlier to civilians. Attacks appeared to be intended to cause high civilian body counts. This played right into the hands of the media corporations that found no shortage of bloody bodies to plaster on television and break the resolve of the civilian population, Basque and Spaniard alike.
In 1997, ETA kidnapped Miguel Ángel Blanco, a Spanish politician in Biscay and demanded the release of ETA prisoners in exchange for his life. The democratic elites couldn't care less about a nameless low level political leader and refused. Blanco was executed and used as a martyr by the regime who suddenly could remember his name to rally the public against ETA.
Stymied and outsmarted at every turn, ETA continued conducting attacks against shopping malls, football stadiums, and parking lots. Failing to cause significant damage to the regime, failing to provoke serious repressive retaliation by the democratic government, failing to force the government to make concessions, failing to avoid civilian casualties.
By 2010, their cause was exhausted and this once mighty terrorist organization meekly surrendered to the democratic government.

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Analysis
What can we learn from ETA?

One, racking up high civi body counts is not the path to victory. It is the path to isolation and defeat. A guerrilla must always be mindful of how his actions are perceived by the public. If one cannot control the message through propaganda, then the regime may use it against them. Caution must be taken against this dangerous failure.

Two; One of ETA's primary weaknesses was it's seeming inability to weather ideological differences within the organization. Every time they suffered a setback or even a victory, personal animosities and ideological discrepancies boiled over tp the surface and led to self destructive infighting. At times, ETA attacks would stop completely to the confusion of the police. Later it would be discovered that the reason for this was that ETA had been focusing its energy on personal disputes between its leadership in across the border in France.

Three; If I described every breach of ETA's security, this thread would actually be a book. For whatever reason, ETA was absolutely terrible at keeping secrets from the police. This led repeatedly to their entire command structure being arrested at once. This sent the organization into chaos and caused more infighting between the new leaders.
Actually, I'll tell you why I think the police often had an edge on ETA. I believe that it was the fucking marxists. I suspect that every time that the marxists within the organization didn't get their way, they went to the police to sabotage their "comrades." After all, if I can't get MY way, then NO ONE should survive.

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Anyway, unlike my PIRA thread, I will not be posting an ETA folk video because they tend to be pro-marxist trash made by effete socialist students who never fought with the organization. However, I will post this nice Basque folk song. It's nice. And yes, a lot of Basque folk-music is this neat halting according music. Kinda catchy.
So here is some thread music.
Here is a disclaimer Don't do drugs or sluts
Here is the TLDR; Basques wanted freedom and came close but they couldn't get their act together but at least they have a lot of autonomy.
And I'm done.
Please forgive any typos.

Damn, this is high quality. You clearly did your homework. Love it. This war is only to be won with intelligent moves.
Do you still have the link to the analysis about Pira? Can not find it anymore.

Sure thing, user
archive.is/SW2MK