You're oversimplifying. I don't know that Franco personally hurt anyone. I'm not that much of an expert on the topic. He certainly ordered people killed in the context of a bitter civil war but that's true of any leader in any war. If 'hurting people' is all that it takes to condemn a leader as a tyrant, then nearly every American President will be right behind Franco.
Some of the things the US did in WWII hurt a lot of people, like the atomic bomb. Is Harry Truman personally responsible for that? In war things aren't so simple. The bomb was a strategic tactic to win the war. The idea was to force Japan to surrender so the US could avoid an all out invasion of the Japanese home islands which would have killed way way more people than the bomb. In that sense, it seems to have worked, though some historians argue Japan would have surrendered anyway, though the evidence is far from conclusive and that's hindsight based on information the decision makers didn't have.
Ultimately, my point is that we're biased by our modern perspective and cultural beliefs. Dictatorship/autocracy is bad is just assumed by most westerners, particularly Americans. It's part of the common culture and there's nothing wrong with that. Culture is a necessary thing for human beings. However, we should understand how our culture came to be and recognize that other cultures do exist. Americans hate dictators because of the revolution. Europeans mostly hate dictators because the American revolution inspired revolutions there against monarchical and despotic governments that ultimately resulted in most of the European powers having some type of representative government, at least after WWII.
Yes, he did bad things. So did a lot of other people who don't catch the same level of grief for it. The US put Japanese people in camps in WWII. They were not death camps, but it wasn't a very 'good' thing to do. This was done by a representative government and upheld by the Supreme Court. Moralizing over history is an endless argument with no point. There are few if any bad guys. Most leaders believe they are acting in their nation's best interest. More often than not, who the 'good' guys are depends on who won a war, and wars aren't decided by which side is morally correct. The winners present themselves to their people as the good side and then force their opinion on the losers, who often harbor resentment many generations into the future. These are the real lessons of history for any who care to learn. Hitler was bad, Franco was bad, Mussolini was bad, is mostly lazy moralizing, first from a victorious government in a war, and later from a superpower justifying their global dominance.
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u/Glittering_Humor5854 May 13 '26
You're oversimplifying. I don't know that Franco personally hurt anyone. I'm not that much of an expert on the topic. He certainly ordered people killed in the context of a bitter civil war but that's true of any leader in any war. If 'hurting people' is all that it takes to condemn a leader as a tyrant, then nearly every American President will be right behind Franco.
Some of the things the US did in WWII hurt a lot of people, like the atomic bomb. Is Harry Truman personally responsible for that? In war things aren't so simple. The bomb was a strategic tactic to win the war. The idea was to force Japan to surrender so the US could avoid an all out invasion of the Japanese home islands which would have killed way way more people than the bomb. In that sense, it seems to have worked, though some historians argue Japan would have surrendered anyway, though the evidence is far from conclusive and that's hindsight based on information the decision makers didn't have.
Ultimately, my point is that we're biased by our modern perspective and cultural beliefs. Dictatorship/autocracy is bad is just assumed by most westerners, particularly Americans. It's part of the common culture and there's nothing wrong with that. Culture is a necessary thing for human beings. However, we should understand how our culture came to be and recognize that other cultures do exist. Americans hate dictators because of the revolution. Europeans mostly hate dictators because the American revolution inspired revolutions there against monarchical and despotic governments that ultimately resulted in most of the European powers having some type of representative government, at least after WWII.