The Fight Against Fascism in the USA
By James P Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, Joseph Hansen, Leon Trotsky & Murray Weiss
Resistance Books, 2004
$19.95,
REVIEW BY SIMON BUTLER
In January this year, a small race-hate organisation, the Patriotic Youth League (PYL), called a racist demonstration in the Newcastle suburb of Islington. Its target was the local Sudanese community, the majority of whom are recent arrivals seeking refuge from their war-ravaged homeland.
But the racist provocations sparked an inspirational response from concerned anti-racists in the city. In a matter of days, more than 800 people participated in two counter mobilisations, denouncing the PYL and supporting the right of the Sudanese to live free from racist intimidation and violence.
The racists have been isolated politically and have not had the confidence to organise further public events or actions so far. The successful counter-protests also proved to many activists that organised racism can be driven back by organised mass action.
But this far from settles the matter. Doubtlessly, the PYL and other similar far-right fringe groups around the country will raise their heads again, and anti-racists will be called upon to respond.
How do we most effectively fight against fascism and racism? What strategy and tactics are necessary to strengthen the anti-racist movement and confront the far-right political groups like the PYL? How can we best prevent them from gaining a receptive audience for their abhorrent cause?
The Fight Against Fascism in the USA, is an extremely useful resource. The volume is based on the experiences of the Trotskyist US Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the mass anti-fascist struggles of the Depression era through to the height of the Cold War witch-hunts of the 1950s. The book concludes with instructive examples of the tactics applied by socialists to counter incipient fascist organisations active in the 1960s and '70s.
To begin with, anti-racists must correctly identify what kind of force they are up against in a campaign. It would be a mistake, for instance, to characterise tiny fringe groups like the PYL as a real fascist threat.
Fascism is not a tiny, alienated fringe group on the margins of society, but a mass social movement based on widespread terror and organised violence against working-class institutions and minority groups.
Furthermore, fascism can't be explained as merely a nefarious system of ideas or an immoral crime against humanity — even though it is both of these things. In the final analysis, fascism is a form of capitalist rule stripped of its democratic facade. Historically, fascism has arisen and come to power as a last ditch effort by ruling elites under capitalism to save the profit system and destroy working-class institutions and political parties that threaten to carry out a socialist revolution.
Mussolini and Hitler rose to power in Italy and Germany respectively with the political complicity and heavy financial backing of wealthy industrialists, bankers and other Â鶹´«Ã½ of the propertied elite.
A distinctive feature of fascist movements is that they rely on mobilising the middle classes that stand in between society's two most powerful classes — capitalists and working people. Disenfranchised by the crisis of the system in the 1920s and '30s and its accompanying inflation, mass unemployment and bankruptcies, the middle classes (including small business owners, technicians, farmers, professionals, managers, and even some skilled workers) proved to be a fertile recruiting ground for the growing fascist movements in Italy and Germany.
The classic fascist tactic is to denounce the hardships of the system and claim to be speaking up for those suffering in times of economic and political uncertainty. Fascists combine demagogic attacks on the wealthy with crude nationalism, mysticism and extreme racial chauvinism. But the anti-establishment rhetoric of fascists is only a ruse — the real goal is to shift the blame for the social crisis away from the exploitative elites and instead scapegoat racial minorities, women, queers and the organised labour movement.
Nothing was inevitable about the victory of fascism in Italy and Germany. In both cases, fascism was unable to develop into a formidable mass movement until after the working-class movement had suffered severe setbacks and failed to take advantage of earlier opportunities to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratic socialist society.
In the wealthy imperialist countries, with relatively stable economic and social conditions like Australia and the US, there is currently no need for the ruling classes to resort to fascism to keep the profit system intact. But although not an imminent threat right now, fascism will remain the last resort to protect the political and economic power of the capitalists in any capitalist country — including Australia.
History has demonstrated that the rise of fascist groups occurs with the help of so-called "democratic" capitalist government policies. Policies resulting in rising inequality, poverty, exploitation and discrimination all lay the basis for ultra-right organisations to target minority groups as scapegoats for these social problems. Campaigning against the discriminatory, racist and anti-social policies of neoliberal governments is a crucial component of undermining the ability of small fascist groups to win an audience for their reactionary politics in the future, during times of capitalist crisis.
The US SWP had a long and proud history of campaigning against incipient fascist organisations. The book includes a selection of articles covering SWP campaigns against Father Coughlin, the reactionary "Radio Priest", and the dictatorial mayor of New Jersey in the 1930s and '40s — "Boss" Hague. A later section deals with the campaign against the infamous cold war witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s.
The SWP advanced the strategy of countermobilisation, advocating mobilisations to counter incipient fascist and ultra-right groups, and the formation of workers' self-defence guards to defend working-class institutions.
This contrasts to the typical liberal approach to resisting fascist groups. Liberals tend to rely on formal legal mechanisms or even the police force — rather than the mobilisation of working people — to save them from the fascist threat. Others go out of their way to defend the "democratic rights" of the Nazis to operate, and argue against counter-protests on this basis.
The Marxist strategy of countermobilisation directly focuses on the democratic right of anti-fascists to mobilise and protect themselves against the violence of the fascists. Their tactics ranged from peaceful protest marches, to mass pickets outside fascist meetings, to physical confrontation with fascist groups bent on breaking up progressive meetings or attacking racial minorities.
The SWP also consistently opposed any government prohibition of fascists or fascist demonstrations, which was sometimes called for by liberal-minded opponents of fascist groups. The SWP did so with the understanding that these same capitalist governments will inevitably use any restriction of democratic rights against working-class radicalism.
A particularly illuminating section of the book discusses a question that often arises in the socialist movement concerning the "right" of fascists to speak. A mistaken approach by ultra-left organisations tends to argue that fascists have no right to speak publicly about their racist ideas. The role of the anti-fascist movement, therefore, should revolve around the principle of denying these groups a public platform. However, it is a tactical mistake for socialists to put themselves in the position of seemingly denying democratic rights for the fascists but reserving these rights for themselves.
This approach is also an ineffective way of combating the rise of ultra-right groups because it poses the question incorrectly. It implies that the fascists' speaking is what actually does the harm. But it is the violence of the fascists that must be mobilised against, not their words.
Focusing on the positive right to countermobilise against the fascist threat also makes it hard for the capitalist government to suppress the democratic rights of the left in the name of even-handedly suppressing both sides.
Finally, it is important for socialists to unite the broadest possible forces — rather than looking to confront the fascists on their own, isolated from the masses. Any campaign focused on denying free speech to Nazis or ultra-right groups creates a tactical problem for socialists in uniting with the more liberal forces who oppose restrictions on free speech in general. It is the free speech for anti-fascists and right of anti-fascists to countermobilise that is tactically the key issue to promote and organise.
This book contains these and other important lessons for socialists and anti-racists.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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