Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
just as it is, with all its living diversification, and not academically; we must educate it as
teachers do. We must not try to make everyone conform to one pattern." 59
In recasting Leninist thought, young communists came to the harsh realization that
past Leninist tactics had ultimately failed in mobilizing youth. The Popular Front YCI
rebuked the Leninist Generation for its "memorized and stereotyped Communist formulas
and slogans" that caused YCLs to live "a life separate from that of the broad masses of
youth." 60 Young communists were urged to learn from the French and American Leagues
who had learned to "speak the fresh, vivid language of the youth;" this language did not
condemn the "fine sentiment and noble ideals" of youth, but instead appropriated them to
prevent the fascists from utilizing them. 61 Dimitrov's redefinition of fascism and Leninism
enabled divergent forms of youth propaganda, facilitating the construction of a new
communist youth identity centred on anti-fascism.
The British-American Context
The British and American YCLs embraced the Popular Front with considerable initiative
and enthusiasm, focussing their political identity on the values of anti-fascism. 62 The
national political climate of Britain and the United States presented very different contexts
and challenges for youth politics. The form of British and American communist
youth propaganda followed similar dynamics while developing a distinctive national
content. The challenge of the British and American YCLs was to define and isolate
domestic fascism within their distinct national political culture while winning youth over
to the internationalist positions of the Popular Front.
The main pressing social issue in Britain during the inter-war period was that of unemployment.
This trend was severely amplified by the international economic crisis
unleashed by the American Wall Street crash of late 1929. Keith Laybourn contends that
by the mid thirties "there may have been at least half the population of Britain existing at
a standard of living which was insufficient to maintain healthy lifestyle." 63 Unlike other
Western industrial economies, Britain successive National Governments rejected the idea
of budget deficits to expand the economy and in the end "there was no serious attempt to
tackle unemployment and the social and economic problems of the depressed areas." 64
When the global economic crisis first started to impact Britain, a second Labour government
was in power under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. Contrary to the hopes of
many British workers, MacDonald and the Labour Party did not advance any radical
socialist measures in state policy to deal with the economy or the scourge of unemployment.
The British Fascist movement was born from this disillusionment, rejecting
Labour's sentimental ideas about a future "economic paradise" by promoting a program
centred on action "to escape an economic hell." 65
Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist movement personified itself as a movement of the youth
against the incompetence of the "old world." In his statement announcing the formation
46