Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

THE YOUTH STRUGGLE AGAINST WAR
to understand and define fascism from a new youth perspective. Fascism was not an
economic system, but an ideology that utilized mass propaganda to mobilize nations for
the sole purpose of war. Fascism rejected all notions of internationalism and egalitarian
premises of human brotherhood that were central to the maintenance of peace. 4 Fascism
declared international law and disarmament initiatives aimed at peace anathema to their
movement. 5 War was not a by-product of fascism; war was the goal of fascism.
Dimitrov declared that a larger fascist world war was not inevitable. Since capitalist
competition was a source of modern warfare, Dimitrov contended that capitalist cooperation
could be utilized for maintaining peace if it was forged in alliance with the Soviet
Union. Dimitrov identified that not all segments of the capitalist class supported fascism;
fascism represented the interests of a small ultra-imperialist clique of the capitalist class.
By exploiting this internal division, a unified working-class movement could lead a broad
Popular Front against fascism and war to successfully halt fascist aggression. Peace
would cause fascist regimes to collapse under their own internal contradictions without
the need of a larger anti-fascist war.
Fascism was portrayed as a rejection of civilization. Communists were portrayed as
defenders of civilization. Youth were the future of civilization. World war threatened to
decimate all aspects of modern civilization. The Popular Front identified where the
interests of the capitalist democracies, the Soviet Union and the youth aligned on the
issue of anti-fascism. Peace was the paramount issue to defend civilization, the future
and the youth. Anti-fascism represented a clash of two mutually antagonistic forms of
civilization. During the Popular Front, to be a young communist meant to be an antifascist.
Thus while the form and content of youth propaganda changed radically, both the
Leninist and Popular Front Generations justified their ideology through the vantage point
of war and peace.
By identifying this common thread of youth perspectives, we can understand how
propaganda informed communist youth identity through the complicated twists and turns
of inter-war Comintern strategy. When dramatic shifts occurred, the YCI consistently
invoked symbols of war and peace to justify their changed position. Bolshevik and
Stalinist political culture was not a faith based solely on blind obedience, but a complex
negotiation of political identities that relied heavily upon propaganda to legitimize
Comintern positions. When Comintern dictates appeared contradictory, communist
propaganda invoked themes of continuity to rationalize change. The large membership
fluctuations of the inter-war period, especially in the YCL's, reveal that communist
propaganda was often ineffective in prescribing Comintern legitimacy to the youth.
When youth did not agree with YCL positions, instead of mounting asserted internal
dissent that would lead to expulsion, they often simply quit the YCL. What is far more
fascinating in communist studies is not to identify these cases of dissent, but to address
the phenomenon of youth consent. How did young communist propaganda utilize the
theme of peace to maintain youth allegiance
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