Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
After disbanding The Young Worker in April, 1936, the YCLUSA began publishing
three distinct periodicals: The Champion of Youth, the Student Advocate and the aptly
named Young Communist Review. Champion was a short lived Popular Front venture
that was supposed to represent the united interests of "factory youth, young farmers,
sharecroppers, students and anti-fascist, anti-war church youth in their battles." 61 Champion's
political line was "couched in patriotic American terms." It asserted that the broad
progressive values of the youth movement represented the true "American dream." 62 The
Student Advocate was the offspring of a merger between the communist National Student
League's Student Review and the socialist Student League for Industrial Democracy's
Student Outlook during the formation of the American Student Union. The Student
Advocate was dominated by members of the YCL and became the liberal mouthpiece for
the Popular Front rhetoric of the ASU. New Deal politicians regularly utilized the
Student Advocate to propagate "for President Roosevelt's policies." 63 During the early
part of 1938, the Student Advocate ceased publication to distance the ASU from its
radical origins when it was perceived to be "a communist organization in opposition to
the national will." 64 Though Champion and the Student Advocate took similar nationalist
stances, their articles reflected the political vision that the YCL and their allies shared in
forging a national alliance between youth and Roosevelt's New Deal administration.
The Young Communist Review was published primarily for the general membership of
the YCL, unlike Champion and the Student Advocate that were directed towards the
larger youth movement. The first issue of the Young Communist Review stated that as the
"official organ" of the YCL, the Review would "afford us the opportunity to popularize
our policy, tactics and educational problems among our membership." 65 A later article
stressed the importance of the magazine was to translate the lessons of the Popular Front
to YCLers; the Review would help members "to change our methods of work in accordance
with our [new] perspectives." 66 The Young Communist Review was a vital educational
tool to facilitate the transition to the Popular Front.
Popular Front propaganda utilized history as a strategy to legitimize American communism.
Earl Browder set the tone for American Popular Front nationalist rhetoric with
his 1936 slogan stating, "Communism is the Americanism of the Twentieth Century." 67
Such slogans enabled the YCL to adopt a historical nationalist rhetoric that was traditionally
used to marginalize American socialists. 68 The YCL recognized the strategic importance
of co-opting American history positing, "History is a weapon of struggle." 69
While traditional YCLUSA propaganda embraced the same revolutionary figures as
the YCLGB, the Americanism strategy prompted the YCL to emphasize American
"historical heroes." YCL Popular Front rhetoric highlighted the lives of Washington,
Lincoln and Frederick Douglas every February to draw parallels between their struggles
and the contemporary struggles of the YCL. Deferment to the legacies of these men was
used to legitimize YCL positions with statements like, "Our history is studded with really
liberating, really revolutionary events, such as the Revolutionary War of 1776 and the
70