Anti-racism

Bill Mullen is the co-author with Jeanelle K Hope of The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition. He spoke to Judy Cox about anti-blackness, fascism and resistance.

The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition

In our book, Jeanelle and I wanted to show the history of black anti-fascism in the United States and around the world.

The black anti-fascist tradition connects all significant black movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Black people have often been the first and most deeply harmed by fascism, whether it was Italian fascism in North Africa, American Nazis attacking civil rights protesters, or white supremacist groups targeting Black activists. Lives Matter.

Black resistance to the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 was visible in London, the Caribbean and New York, led by black communists like George Padmore.

More than 100 black Americans fought against General Franco during the Spanish Civil War by joining the Lincoln Brigades.

For young black men growing up in the South, fighting fascism was an internationalization of the black struggle for freedom.

Black leader WEB Du Bois was in Germany in the 1930s, where he wrote articles analyzing and warning against the Nazis.

The Black Panther Party organized a United Front Against Fascism conference in 1969. Some 5,000 activists showed up. They developed a black power anti-fascism.

Each of these moments helped generate new ideas and a new awareness of the threat posed by fascism.

Today, fascists target abolitionists and Black Lives Matter groups.

This is crucial to understanding Trumpism and the rise of the far right since the Charlottesville protests and the 2017 murder of Heather Heyer.

There is a pernicious history of racism and the far right in the United States, and globally we are seeing the rise of neo-fascism and authoritarian parties. We must rediscover this black radical tradition to fight back.

We also show that anti-blackness is a key element of fascism. Walter Rodney and Aimé Césaire both wrote about how fascism emerged from European colonialism in Africa.

Césaire argued that tactics used against black populations in Africa carried over into fascist movements in Europe.

The Nazis banned Jews from intermarriage, restricted their right to use public facilities, legalized workplace discrimination, and deprived them of their right to vote.

This all comes from the Jim Crow laws that imposed segregation in the American South.

The erasure of Native Americans was also a great source of inspiration for the Nazis.

The very idea of ​​lebensraum – the Nazi term for military expansionism – was Hitler’s version of this ethnic cleansing.

This was made possible by laws allowing the theft of land, the suppression of rights, the breaking of treaties, and the betrayal of the very idea of ​​legality.

The slave codes of the 18th century enshrined the fight against blackness in the law. Slaves were not allowed to grow food, learn to read, or earn money. Slavery played a founding role in establishing racial laws and influenced fascism on a global scale.

After slavery, new laws sanctioned white supremacy, supported by racial terrorism and lynchings.

To understand fascism, we must look beyond interwar Europe and refocus on Africa and North America.

Whatever fascism, whatever it may be, it will always be a white supremacist and nativist movement. Contemporary white power movements in the United States have all made the Black Lives Matter movement their target.

A few weeks before January riots at the Capitolthe same people marched in Washington DC, a predominantly black area.

They went to a church associated with Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist activist. They tore down and burned BLM signs.

Trump is the embodiment of white supremacy and far-right politics.

Anti-blackness is intertwined with the history of colonialism and both generate fascism. This is why we have Fortress Europe. Closing borders with former colonial subjects is at the heart of the new extreme right. Anti-black sentiment fuels anti-Muslim ideas and Islamophobia. It targets our darker brothers and sisters.

In France, anti-black fascism is based on the history of North Africa and Algeria in particular. It is the fear of the return of colonial represses. The rhetoric speaks of dark people who come to rape our wives and mothers. Ideas like these are deeply rooted in the history of colonialism and slavery.

There are constant ingredients in fascism, such as hostility toward mixed-race relations, nativism, and attacks on the working class – and anti-black sentiment is another essential ingredient.

In 1951, a group of black radicals in the Civil Rights Congress organized the We Charge Genocide petition.

He applied the United Nations’ new definition of human rights to the United States’ treatment of black people — slavery, police brutality, lynching — which it said constituted “slow genocide” or “untimely death.” .

The Civil Rights Congress grew out of Communist Party groups and was led by black activists like Du Bois and Claudia Jones.

In 2013, a small group of black radical activists in Chicago wanted to draw attention to police torture in their city. They also named their band We Charge Genocide.

We now have the charges of genocide brought against Israel by the International Court of Justice. We believe the original We Charge Genocide petition helps people understand the value of these accusations, especially since they come from South Africa, an epicenter of anti-blackness in the 20th century.

Cedric Robinson argued that living under and resisting racial capitalism made black radicals “prematurely” aware of the history of fascism.

Thus, Ida B Wells – active from the end of the 19th century – was “prematurely anti-fascist” when she associated lynching in the southern states of the United States with pogroms against Jews in Europe. She predicted the political future of racist violence.

The fight against blackness has always played an important role in fascist movements.

Historically, fascism aimed to destroy working class organizations. Racism means that black people have always been more likely to have working class jobs. It follows that many of the most important figures in the black anti-fascist tradition were socialists and communists who wanted to break down race and class hierarchies.

In the 1970s, Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker argued that fascism was a counter-revolution aimed at preventing a socialist transformation of society.

The rise of fascism is not an isolated event, a coup d’état, it is a long-term social process.

Fascism feeds on state repression of black, Puerto Rican and Chicano communities. It thrives on racial capitalism and the incarceration of countless hundreds of black and brown workers as well as anti-immigrant racism.

Ukrainian refugees were welcomed into the United States. At the same time, Trump gave a speech against immigration from what he called “shithole” countries, that is, the Global South. He told the crowd: “We should welcome more people from Norway. » He stopped just short of saying “Nordic Aryans.”

Our book focuses on how the black anti-fascist tradition developed strategies of resistance, revolution, and survival. It is a tradition of creating life in opposition to fascism’s march toward genocide.

The Black anti-fascist tradition is about challenging fascism, building and maintaining radical forms of solidarity, and creating new ways of life.

The Democratic Party has been a huge catalyst for the right. Over the past ten to fifteen years, he has stood idly by while white supremacists consolidated their power. He made peace with Trumpism during Trump’s first term.

Kamala Harris was one of the main voices of the genocide. It helped enable racial terror and state violence in Palestine. Her support for the genocide is a big reason she lost.

The Republican Party has a fascist undercurrent. He is trying to conquer hegemony.

Trump did not act like a fascist during his first term. But he is a master in the art of whistling fascists and neo-fascists to integrate them into his movement.

Trumpism is a very successful right-wing social movement. He wants to break down the door to an authoritarian regime as much as possible. Anti-fascists must now be ready to take to the streets again.

The law will not save you from fascism. Germany and Italy had sophisticated legal structures. But the courts side with the ruling class.

The Supreme Court is on Trump’s side. It is possible that he will attempt to implement a legal-bureaucratic takeover. One thing we can say is that fascism is fundamentally undemocratic and Trump is highly undemocratic.

Now that Trump has won, we will also see new layers of people who feel disengaged from official politics and turn to the left.

No one will come to save us. We must save ourselves.

Bill Mullen is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue University in the United States. He is a member of the revolutionary socialist organization Socialist Horizon and the American Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.