“Georgian Dream” propagandist Zaza Shatirishvili claims that part of the youth is “redundant” and should leave Georgia – “just as the communists left the Basque Country during Franco’s regime”. He praised the Spanish dictator and said that “Georgian Dream” likewise defends religion.
Speaking on Radio Sivrtse, Shatirishvili said that many opposition supporters are already emigrating.
“The fact that no wing of the United National Movement is participating [in the municipal elections] is the result of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s policy to fragment the opposition until it practically ceased to exist. The second factor is despair – they’ve lost hope.
I haven’t spoken to anyone directly about emigration, but from what I see around me, many UNM supporters are leaving the country. And that’s absolutely right – it always happens this way. When the communists suffered a serious electoral defeat in Greece, many of them left. Likewise, during the civil war, many communists fled the Basque Country,” Shatirishvili said.
He added that “while the vast majority of Georgian youth are Orthodox Christians, Generation Z is uneducated. For example, he argued, enrolling a child in Ilia State University automatically means indoctrination”.
“So yes, it’s correct to say Gen Z has been dumbed down. If you send your child there, of course they’ll be dumbed down. Some part of society must be stupid.
You can check the statistics – there are 73,000 students, and at the peak, just over 3,000 of them took part in protests. That’s nothing.
So I remain absolutely optimistic about the youth overall. Georgia is a country of traditions, where respect for elders and many other values matter. But there is this part that is redundant, and it should leave for emigration – just as the communists left the Basque Country for the Soviet Union, when Franco defended religion in exactly the same way we are defending it today.
Because terrible things were happening… and he did the right thing, since there was no other way out at the time, when thousands of believers were killed over three years, bishops were slaughtered, churches destroyed. By the way, it was a far more severe moment than the Bolshevik persecution,” Shatirishvili said on Radio Sivrtse.
He also said that, for him, Franco is a “hero who saved Spain from anarchism, the deep state, liberalism, Trotskyism, and so on.”
“But of course it was a personal tragedy. Families left, men stayed there, women came here.
Many of our fellow citizens are of Basque origin…
When there is no way out, you have to leave.
What’s very important is that we didn’t have a hot civil war here. And when you’ve lost all hope, you have to emigrate, right? And then, after some time has passed, you might return – like Salome Zourabichvili did,” Shatirishvili said.
For context: Francisco Franco’s nationalist regime in Spain claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. According to the Spanish government, 114,000 civilians disappeared, presumed killed by Franco’s forces during the war and throughout the dictatorship.
