Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
Roosevelt has called them, the Jews must unite with all other progressives, and participate
in progressive political activity.... Likewise in the United States, the Fords, Girdlers,
DuPonts, and other industrialists and financiers, support and sponsor anti-Semitic
movements, to prevent the people from spotting them, the responsible instigators of the
present economic crisis. "Let us divert the fight against the Jews, and that will keep the
people from all getting together to fight against us." 109
The YCL posited that the most effective way to combat such anti-Semitic and general
devise tactics was to facilitate the greatest youth unity around the Roosevelt administration.
By uniting youth around Roosevelt, the YCL hoped to offset the influence of "the
Liberty League and Hearst" who were using "the unholy trinity of Coughlin, Lemke and
Townsend… to ensnare the masses of youth." 110
The YCL's National Student League (NSL) was the driving force of populist tactics in
the pre-Popular Front period. During the initial Depression years, most university
campuses retained much of the a-political American collegiate culture of the twenties.
As the economic crisis began eroding middle-class savings in 1932, undergraduates
perceived that upon graduation they potentially "would face downward rather than
upward mobility, and experience poverty rather than prosperity." 111 Gil Green reflected
that the Great Depression changed the outlook of American university students, necessitating
a new YCL approach to student politics:
A changed approach to student and non-proletarian youth in general, became necessary.
Previously these sections of youth had kept aloof from any issues of struggle. Vitally affected
by the crisis and the general decline of capitalism, they became drawn into the
stream of the progressive movement.... In this fashion, slowly but surely we emerged
from our internal crisis, began to find our path to the masses of youth through new forms
corresponding to the new conditions. These tactical changes came from a growing realization
that no longer were we alone, no longer were we the sole and only active group
working in the interests of the masses of youth, in the interests of progress. Millions
were becoming progressive in thought and action. These were our friends. 112
During the Popular Front era student politics became the central focus of YCL Popular
Front initiatives. The NSL became the primary outlet for expressing student disillusionment
and frustrations in the fall semester of 1932. Unlike the socialist's Student League
for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the NSL saw itself not as an academic debating society,
but as an active force in radical youth politics.
The rise of international fascism and domestic "red-baiting" campaigns transformed
university democratic culture. American universities rejected the anti-intellectual and
anti-cultural elements of fascism and students and progressive faculty began to actively
organize and identify with anti-fascism. 113 As students and faculty became more active
and visible in radical anti-fascist and peace campaigns, confrontations with university
officials and vigilantly groups became prominent features of campus life, especially
within New York City. William Randolph Hearst capitalized upon this dynamic to
promote an academic "Red Scare" in 1934. One headline article that appeared in 1934 in
The Syracuse Journal entitled "Drive All Radical Professors and Students From the
University" carried the following personal message from Hearst:
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