Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

THE POPULAR FRONT GENERATION
YCL meetings. 101 "Phrase mongering" was a major problem that of the early thirties.
One YCL steel worker chastised his comrades for using "high sounding revolutionary
phrases" stating, "When you ask a worker to join a union, do so with the desire to teach
him to fight for his own needs before you talk revolution." 102 Another YCLer complained
that many comrades in his fraction felt content simply shouting "revolutionary phrases"
instead of actively participating in organizing work. 103 As a result, the YCL openly
recognized that their Bolshevik jargon about dictatorship and revolution held little
resonation with American youth. These articles facilitated a greater element of selfcriticism
within the YCL concerning the effectiveness of their propaganda. By 1935 the
American YCL was commended for its ability to "speak the fresh, vivid language of the
youth." 104
Though the YCL had internal discussions critiquing their techniques, the Young
Worker continued to publicly propagate social-fascist rhetoric. In March, 1934 a leading
Young Worker article on fascism criticized the SYI for "training its young generation in
the spirit of the defense of the bourgeois fatherland and bourgeois-democracy." 105 The
same article reminded YCLers that their chief task was to expose "the real nature of
bourgeois-democracy" and to "bare in mind the directives of the Communist International"
that there existed "only one path of struggle." 106 Gil Green laid out a six point
characterization of American fascism, prompting the YCL to "counter-act every expression
and form of nationalism and chauvinism in the ranks of the toiling youth:"
First, the fact that American Imperialism is the most powerful in the world. Second, the
existence of remnants of feudalism in the South with its oppression of a whole nation of
people – the Negro people. Third, we must fight against all "anti-foreigner" propaganda
which, already used in the last war, was used to whip up nationalist hatred against the
foreign born workers. Fourth, we must fight the activities of the various fascist movements
among the youth of foreign-born parentage in the US. Fifth, we must expose
those who appeal to the young generation to "change the world." Sixth, we must react to
every stop of government transition to fascism. 107
Dimitrov's analysis of fascism enabled the YCL to revise most of Green's positions,
facilitating new forms of anti-fascist rhetoric and activities that coincided with many of
the YCL's existing internal critiques. The YCL adopted a progressive nationalist rhetoric
of democratic citizenship to combat domestic fascist and reactionary influences instead of
positing traditional general denunciations of the nation. 108
The Popular Front YCL identified domestic fascism with reactionary forces that
sought to split the progressive movement in order to undermine Roosevelt's New Deal.
YCL propaganda identified the parallels between Nazi anti-Semitism and techniques
utilized by American reactionaries. A 1938 article in the Young Communist Review
addressed elements of this evolving YCL analysis of fascism:
These reactionaries promote anti-Semitic movements as part of their tactic to oppose
Jew against Gentile, Negro against white, farmer against worker. From the decadent
fount of Big Business springs the Ku Klux Klan, Silver Shirts, and anti-Semitic Father
Coughlin. To protect democracy from the onslaught of the "feudal few" as President
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