Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
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YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM<br />
Roosevelt has called them, the Jews must unite with all other progressives, and participate<br />
in progressive political activity.... Likewise in the United States, the Fords, Girdlers,<br />
DuPonts, and other industrialists and financiers, support and sponsor anti-Semitic<br />
movements, to prevent the people from spotting them, the responsible instigators of the<br />
present economic crisis. "Let us divert the fight against the Jews, and that will keep the<br />
people from all getting together to fight against us." 109<br />
The YCL posited that the most effective way to combat such anti-Semitic and general<br />
devise tactics was to facilitate the greatest youth unity around the Roosevelt administration.<br />
By uniting youth around Roosevelt, the YCL hoped to offset the influence of "the<br />
Liberty League and Hearst" who were using "the unholy trinity of Coughlin, Lemke and<br />
Townsend… to ensnare the masses of youth." 110<br />
The YCL's National Student League (NSL) was the driving force of populist tactics in<br />
the pre-Popular Front period. During the initial Depression years, most university<br />
campuses retained much of the a-political American collegiate culture of the twenties.<br />
As the economic crisis began eroding middle-class savings in 1932, undergraduates<br />
perceived that upon graduation they potentially "would face downward rather than<br />
upward mobility, and experience poverty rather than prosperity." 111 Gil Green reflected<br />
that the Great Depression changed the outlook of American university students, necessitating<br />
a new YCL approach to student politics:<br />
A changed approach to student and non-proletarian youth in general, became necessary.<br />
Previously these sections of youth had kept aloof from any issues of struggle. Vitally affected<br />
by the crisis and the general decline of capitalism, they became drawn into the<br />
stream of the progressive movement.... In this fashion, slowly but surely we emerged<br />
from our internal crisis, began to find our path to the masses of youth through new forms<br />
corresponding to the new conditions. These tactical changes came from a growing realization<br />
that no longer were we alone, no longer were we the sole and only active group<br />
working in the interests of the masses of youth, in the interests of progress. Millions<br />
were becoming progressive in thought and action. These were our friends. 112<br />
During the Popular Front era student politics became the central focus of YCL Popular<br />
Front initiatives. The NSL became the primary outlet for expressing student disillusionment<br />
and frustrations in the fall semester of 1932. Unlike the socialist's Student League<br />
for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the NSL saw itself not as an academic debating society,<br />
but as an active force in radical youth politics.<br />
The rise of international fascism and domestic "red-baiting" campaigns transformed<br />
university democratic culture. American universities rejected the anti-intellectual and<br />
anti-cultural elements of fascism and students and progressive faculty began to actively<br />
organize and identify with anti-fascism. 113 As students and faculty became more active<br />
and visible in radical anti-fascist and peace campaigns, confrontations with university<br />
officials and vigilantly groups became prominent features of campus life, especially<br />
within New York City. William Randolph Hearst capitalized upon this dynamic to<br />
promote an academic "Red Scare" in 1934. One headline article that appeared in 1934 in<br />
The Syracuse Journal entitled "Drive All Radical Professors and Students From the<br />
University" carried the following personal message from Hearst:<br />
52