Selected Writings:
Anti-Fascist Alternatives for Youth
A People's Voice Pamphlet
November 10, 1995
By Chris Frazer
About this pamphlet
Chris Frazer, a prominent activist in student and youth movements since the early 1980s, gave the speech printed here at a public forum on "Anti-Fascist Alternatives for Youth" on Friday, November 10, 1995. Held at the Centre for Socialist Education in Vancouver, the event was sponsored by People’s Voice, the monthly communist newspaper published in east Vancouver, as one of a series of forums on fighting fascism in Canada today.
The speaker was a member of the editorial collective of Rebel Youth from 1986 to 1990, when the publication was Canada’s most widely-read socialist youth magazine. Frazer began his involvement in student politics as president of the Mount Royal College Students’ Association in Calgary. He was a fieldworker for the Federation of Alberta Students, and served one term as a national executive member of the Canadian Federation of Students.
During the late 1980s Frazer was the leader of the Young Communist League of Canada. He was also a key organizer of the World Youth Festival movement, which brought tens of thousands of youth activists from all democratic perspectives to huge festivals, such as in Moscow (1985) and Pyongyang (1989).
Today he is working towards his PhD in Latin American history at Brown University in Rhode Island. He received his BA and MA in history at the University of Calgary, where he was also a member of the Graduate Students’ Representative Council and helped to build student struggles against tuition increases.
Anti-Fascist Alternatives for Youth
Comrades and friends, brothers and sisters, thank you very much for inviting me to Vancouver tonight to speak on the subject of anti-fascist alternatives for youth.
The timing of this meeting is fortuitous. For one thing, it coincides with my current research interest, which is the role played by Canadian communists in the defeat of fascism during World War Two. More important, however, this is the eve of Remembrance Day, when all Canadians should honour the memory of countless thousands of young people whose lives were squandered in the imperialist military adventures of this century, and to reflect upon and honour the courage and sacrifices made by the young people of this country to halt Hitler and Mussolini, and their fascist allies.
I would like to propose that we take a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Canadian anti-fascist fighters who fell in the struggles to defeat fascism in the Spanish Republic and during the Second World War.
(One minute of silence).
This meeting is also fortuitous for the fact that the fascist threat is rising once again, not only in Canada, but throughout the world. For some time now, in fact, the fascists have been active in this country, and it is obvious to anyone who is in the least bit aware, that the fascists are making a serious effort to rebuild and expand by recruiting young people to their ranks. It is crucial therefore that communists, and the left and democratic forces in general, including the labour movement, undertake the utmost efforts to confront the fascist challenge and win the struggle for the hearts and minds of young people in Canada.
I hope that this meeting can make a positive contribution to the anti-fascist struggle. First, I would like to discuss briefly what fascism is, and how I see the fascist danger in Canada today. Finally, I would like to consider the ways we might go about fighting fascism in our country, including how to organize and present an anti-fascist alternative to young people.
What is Fascism?
It may seems strange to ask, "what is fascism?" After all, the very
word "fascism" evokes a very clear set of images and ideas in the minds
of most people. For example nearly everyone will think of swastikas,
Nazis, Hitler, the Gestapo, extreme racism, genocide, and so on. But
these images and ideas only tell us how fascism can appear, and what
fascists will do and advocate. Most of us react to these images and
ideas with moral revulsion, and this tells us that we should oppose
fascism.
But to fight fascism, we need to understand where it comes from. This is the crucial point, for a failure to understand the roots of fascism will lead to confusion and disunity, undermining the ability of the left and democratic forces to resist and defeat fascism. I would like to illustrate this by discussing two approaches to defining fascism.
Generally speaking, there is first of all a bourgeois concept of fascism, which is unfortunately fairly widespread today. In this view, fascism is seen as simply one of two kinds of totalitarian ideology, as a counterpoint or "twin" of communism and socialism. In the bourgeois concept, fascism is often explained as the result of a frustrated middle class and lumpenproletariat, or as a social-psychological phenomenon such as a popular desire for authoritarian leadership, or as a significant political counterforce which arises whenever communist and socialist movements become strong.
Most Marxists, including communists, see fascism in a much different light. Fascism is not merely some kind of free-floating ideological choice or a social-psychological phenomenon. Quite to the contrary. Fascism is rooted in the very fact of capitalist society, and in the class relations that characterize capitalism. In this respect, it is important to emphasize that neither the ideas nor the methods of fascists are the sole property of fascists and their organizations.
To give you but one example. A psychologist named Richard Herrnstein
and a political scientist named Charles Murray recently published a
book called The Bell Curve, in which they justify official racism,
sexism, and class exploitation, by claiming to have scientifically
demonstrated the "fact" of genetically-based differences in
intelligence between social classes and so-called races of human
beings.
Now Herrnstein and Murray have been linked to racist and neo-fascist movements, and their work is clearly being used by racists and fascists to advance their cause. For this reason it is tempting to try and counter Herrnstein and Murray by arguing that they are simply "pseudo-scientists" disseminating fascist propaganda. But in my view this is not good enough.
Science is not simply an objective discipline which always leads to one objective conclusion to explain phenomena. Under capitalism, at least, it is an arena for political and class struggle. Scientists like Herrnstein and Murray may be fascists or fascist sympathizers, but in the larger sense their work doesn’t just aid the purpose of fascists, but coincides with a defense of the status quo.
It is an argument against those who fight against racism, sexism, and exploitation, and so their work has utility not just for fascists, but for the capitalist class, the capitalist state and its governments.
Fortunately, Herrnstein and Murray are sloppy scientists, and it is not too difficult to demonstrate the total fallacy of their argument. Equally fortunate, there are those in the scientific community, for example Stephen Gouold, who are prepared to rise to the challenge and debunk the myths of reactionary science.
But it is crucial to understand that the arguments of scientists like Herrnstein and Murray have a long, tragic, and ignoble history in the scientific and intellectual community of capitalism, dating back to at least the nineteenth century.
Many prominent scientists, with no connection at all to fascism, have pushed similar views. They have done so because there is a reactionary community of opinion which arises not from fascism itself, but from a failure, or refusal, to understand that social divisions and crises are the result of a society based on class exploitation and oppression, and that the capitalist ruling class creates and benefits from social division and crisis.
Fascist movements seize upon these reactionary ideas and use them to promote and justify their own extremist ends. The fascist alternative acquires a scientific justification and a mass appeal under conditions of social crisis, and this allows them to seduce people who are confronted directly with crisis into engaging in a sort of social cannibalism by blaming other groups – whether immigrants, or Blacks, or native people, or queer people, or workers, or unions, or communists – for the problems they face, rather than capitalism itself.
Their solution is not to fundamentally change and ultimately overthrow the capitalist system, but to take active, violent measures that lead to a complete denial of democratic and social rights under capitalism.
Fascists come to power when capitalists, or at least their dominant section, monopoly capital, decide that in the face of social crisis and growing working class opposition, it is no longer possible to achieve their ends through a parliamentary democracy. This was the case in Franco’s Spain, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and in every subsequent case where fascists have come to power, whether in Chile or in El Salvador.
This is not to say that capitalists, in these instances, are themselves always fascists. In fact they may despise the fascists they crawl into bed with as often as they sympathize with them. But regardless of whether capitalists resort to fascism while holding their noses, history has shown us repeatedly that they have been, and are still, prepared when necessary to use fascism as their chosen instrument for maintaining and reinforcing capitalist class rule.
This pamphlet has been updated and revised. Please feel
free to repost and reprint it, with due acknowledgement
to the author and Peoples Voice.
Copies of this pamphlet are also available from:
People's Voice
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Vancouver, B.C.
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