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