Anti Fascists

"the Young Lords' emphasis on group advancement provides a compelling counternarrative to the politics of liberal individualism."

"As Iris Morales notes, "Even those who disagreed with our tactics had to agree the injustices we pointed to were clear.... The organization touched people of conscience in our community.""

"Of the various organizations that constituted the Puerto Rican movement, the Young Lords left the most lasting legacy."

"1. WE WANT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR PUERTO RICANS—LIBERATION ON THE ISLAND AND INSIDE THE UNITED STATES. For 500 years, first spain and then the united states have colonized our country. Billions of dollars in profits leave our country for the united states every year. In every way we are slaves of the gringo. We want liberation and the Power in the hands of the People, not Puerto Rican exploiters. QUE VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!"

"The concept of Protracted War best describes the history of the Puerto Rican people. For many centuries our people have been invaded by one nation or another. Two oppressors were successful, the spaniards in 1493, and the yankees in 1898."

"4. WE ARE REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISTS AND OPPOSE RACISM. The Latin, Black, Indian and Asian people inside the u.s. are colonies fighting for liberation. We know that washington, wall street, and city hall will try to make our nationalism into racism, but Puerto Ricans are of all colors and we resist racism. Millions of poor white people are rising up to demand freedom and we support them. These are the ones in the u.s. that are stepped on by the rulers and the government. We each organize our people, but our fights are the same against oppression and we will defeat it together. POWER TO ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE!"

"Its effectiveness in using the mass media helped the Young Lords to organize some of the largest and most successful demonstrations of the Puerto Rican left (including a 1970 march of 10,000 from El Barrio (East Harlem) to the United Nations to protest police brutality and the colonial status of Puerto Rico)."

"While Chicanos in the Southwest sought to emulate the paramilitary style of the Black Panthers by forming groups such as the Brown Berets, it was Puerto Rican organizations like the Young Lords that most self-consciously modeled themselves on the Black Power movement."

"the Afro-Caribbean origins of Puerto Ricans make them people who have had to continually negotiate the black-white racial divide, both in the United States and in Puerto Rico. In the organization's analysis of race, the Young Lords explored the differences between Afro-Boricuas (Puerto Rican blacks) and Jibros (light-skinned Creoles). Capturing this distinction between light-and dark-skinned Puerto Ricans, Pablo Guzmán claimed, "before they called me a spic, they called me a nigger." The resignation of Young Lords leader Denise Oliver and her subsequent membership in the Black Panther Party is further testimony to the close and interconnected political and racial relationship between Puerto Rican and African American leftists during this period."

"The Young Lords understood themselves to be a revolutionary nationalist party with an internationalist vision. According to Melendez, three texts formed the core of the Young Lords' political education program: Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book, and Che Guevara's Man and Socialism: Transformation of the Individual. Grounded in Mao's critique of nationalism and Fanon's analysis of colonialism, as well as Vladimir Lenin's writings on imperialism and the national question, the nationalism of the Young Lords was much more ideologically explicit than that of most Chicano leaders."

"Inspired by Che Guevara, the Young Lords sought to engage the internal struggle of the individual "to manifest change within himself in order to create a revolution in society.""

"In the name of Stalin we always won, in the name of Stalin all victories will be ours."

"We know that our struggle is not easy, that it will still be long and hard because the big capital is determined to betray the fatherland and to commit all kind of crimes just to save its privileges; yet we know that the path showed us by Stalin is the right one and that following this path we'll be able to conquer victory."

"We had seen that the Black liberation struggle would be, as it had always been, a spark, a catalyst pushing forward the whole working-class and people’s struggle in the U.S. Far from being simply a struggle for reforms, as the revisionists claimed, it was, as Chairman Mao called it, a clarion call to all oppressed peoples throughout the world to rise up and defeat imperialism."

"Behind Trotsky's revolutionary rhetoric was a simplistic social-democratic view which regarded the class struggle for socialism as solely labor against capital. This concept of class struggle did not regard the struggle of peasant against landlord, or peasant against the Czar, as a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. This was reflected as early as 1905, in Trotsky's slogan, "No Czar, but a Workers' Government," which, as Stalin had said, was "the slogan of revolution without the peasantry."9"

"The drive of the ghetto petty-bourgeoisie for a Black controlled economy is a main dynamic of the most vocal, aggressive current within Black nationalism today - the Black Muslim movement, led by Elijah Muhammad. Profit and business, enterprise is one of the most important aspects of Muhammad's teaching."

"It is clear that the Muslim leader conceives the projected Nation of Islam as a neo-colonial dependent of the dominant white power elite, and that with all their professed hatred of the white devils they are unab1e to transcend the idea of natural white overlordship."

"Their emphasis upon strict separation of the races, their rejection of support of all whites, is in itself a capitulation to the white racist doctrine of inherent racial antagonism. Objectively, this dogma lays the basis for practical agreement with the most rabid Negrophobes, the troglodities of the fascist right, the Birchites, the American Nazi Party, the White Citizens Councils and the KKK. The racist, ultra-right has already acknowledged their unholy kinship with the Black Muslims."

"In a situation of deepening misery, when a great population becomes restless and anxious for change, the door is open not only to struggles against the capitalists who are responsible for their sufferings, but also to a mobilization of the masses against their own interests, and in the interests of the most predatory section of the capitalist class. this is the danger that we face in the United States today. It would be foolish to think that the monopolists and bankers in the Liberty League, with their tremendous resources, cannot win a mass following for fascism. Already reaction has produced a whole series of semi-fascist demagogues , and has even, in fear of its own creation, assassinated one of them. These demagogues make the wildest promises to the toilers and by playing on their discontent hope to rally them behind the black banner of reaction. To underestimate this grave danger is to commit a crime against all toilers, since it would mean failing to warn and organize them against the fascist menace which would destroy their living standards, their civil liberties, and all their organizations - economic, social and cultural, which would, in short throw humanity back into the dark ages."

"The close connection between local political machines and control of election machinery by gunmen, is an organic part of the political set up. The murder and wounding of hundreds of strike pickets in the last three years are another feature of the same development. The lynching of Negroes, especially in the South, is part of the whole menacing complex of political reaction. The assassination of Huey Long is thus the eruption of this underworld into the upper circles of the ruling class which has long made organized use of it as a daily part of their rule over masses."

"It is obvious to everyone that the capitalist system is breaking down, that millions of people are condemned to a life of slow starvation because the capitalists can profitably operate only a small part of the existing means of production. But it would be a fatal mistake to conclude that the capitalist social order will simply collapse under its own weight, or that the capitalists will peacefully surrender their present power and then all of us will join together in the building of a new social system. No ruling class group has ever behaved in such peaceful fashion. As the crisis becomes worse, the more desperately will the capitalists cling to their property and their power, the more murderous will become their attacks on the masses of the people. It must be emphasized that capitalism will not simply come to an end; it can only be ended by the organized actions of the working class in collaboration with its allies from other sections of the population."

"The revolutionary tradition is the heart of Americanism. That is incontestable, unless we are ready to agree that Americanism means what Hearst says - slavery to outlived institutions, preservation of privilege, the degradation of the masses. We Communists claim the revolutionary traditions of Americanism. We are the only ones who consciously continue those traditions and apply them to the problems of the day."

"The greatest figure of them all in the American tradition, Abraham Lincoln, became great because he, despite his own desire to avoid or compromise the struggle, was forced by history to lead to victory a long and bloody civil war whose chief historical significance was the wiping out of chattel slavery, the destruction of private property rights in persons, amending the Constitution in the only way it has ever been fundamentally amended."

"Among the most important allies of the American working class are the Negro people. There can be no proletarian revolution unless it is accompanied by the liberation of the Negro people who, more than any other section of the population, are doubly oppressed and exploited by capitalism."

"Every one of these Negro workers was murdered as a direct result of the class struggle as expressed in his demand for wages or better conditions from the white landlords who exploit take Negro masses with even greater animosity than they rob of white workers."

"The truth is, if you insist on knowing, Mr. Hearst, we Communists like this country very much. We cannot think of any other spot on the globe where we would rather be than exactly this one. We love our country. Our affection is all the more deep in that we have watered it with the sweat of our labor- labor which made this country what it is: our mothers nourished it with the tears they shed over the troubles and tragedies of rearing babies in a land controlled by profit and profit makers. If we did not love our country so much, perhaps we would surrender it to Wall Street."

"The Soviet Union has come forward in truth as the helper and inspirer of all the oppressed, because it has never wavered in its loyalty to the great teachings of Marx and Engels, because it has Lenin as its founder, and because after Lenin's death it found in Stalin a worthy successor and continuer of Lenin's work, who could not only guide the actual construction of socialism but also protect it against every enemy, at home and abroad."

"We in America are a mongrel breed and we glory in it. We are the products of he melting pot of a couple hundred nationalities. Our origin as a nation acknowledged is debt to a Polish Kosciusko, a German Von Steuden,, a French Lafayette and countless other "foreigners"."

"If one wants to fight against fascism and war, the first battle that must be Won is to drive out Trotskyism and its influence from the ranks of the workers, farmers, and intellectuals. Without this victory over every Trotskyist influence, unity in the fight against fascism and war-unity which is the condition for any success is impossible."

"On every issue, Trotskyism enters as the poison to block unity among the workers and their organizations, to break- up the People's Front, to help the reactionaries and fascists, and, above all, to prepare the ground for war."

"This ego-maniac firebrand is running through a world full of war-explosives, applying his torch wherever he may, hoping for nothing so much as a new world war from which alone he sees his hopes of glory and power."

"We are determined to save our country from the hell of capitalism."

"The "white supremacists" insist on presenting the Negro question as one of race. This makes it possible for them to "justify" the notorious color-caste system in the name of spurious race dogmas which depict the Negros servile status in American life, not as the result of man-imposed prescription, but as a condition fixed by nature. Negro inequality is supposedly due to natural inherent differences. In this credo, Negroes presumably are a lower form of organism, mentally primitive and emotionally undeveloped. "Keeping the Negro in his place" is thus allegedly prescribed by nature and fixed by Holy Writ. Color of skin is made an index to social position. Race, a strictly limited biological concept, becomes a social factor and used as an instrument for perpetuating and intensifying Negro subjugation. The Negro problem is explained in terms of natural conflict between races, the result of inborn peculiarities."

"Every town along the Mediterranean shore was empty and deserted. The road was jam-packed with peasants evacuating toward the north, on mule-back, in donkey-carts, afoot. They looked at us in the cab of the truck, moving against the stream they made, and they kept moving. Hundreds were camped along the roads; hundreds were plodding north toward Barcelona, their few possessions, mattresses, blankets, household utensils, domestic stock, on their backs, in wheelbarrows or on their burros backs. Little children were walking, holding onto their mother's skirts; women carried babies; older children were driving goats, sheep; old men were helping old women along the road; their faces were impassive, dark with the dust of the roads and fields, lined and worn. Their eyes alone were bright but there was no expression in their eyes. Looking at them you knew what they were thinking: 'Franco is coming; Franco is coming.'"

"You know what I got half a mind to do?" the driver said. "What?" "Head this damn junk for the border." "Have a cigarette," I said. I wondered if he would head for the border and what I would do if he did, but he didn't. "The detail's all fucked-up," he said. "Where's the Lincoln? Where's the Macpap? The British? The Franco-Belge? Nobody's seen fuck-all of 'em. The bastards are driving to the sea," he said. "Maybe they've got to Tortosa already; we'll find out. If France don't come in now, we're fucked ducks. Mucho malo," he said. "Mucho fuckin malo."

"Below us there were hundreds of men from the British, the Canadian Battalions; a food truck had come up, and they were being fed. A new Matford roadster drove around the hill and stopped near us, and two men got out we recognized. One was tall, thin, dressed in brown corduroy, wearing horn-shelled glasses. He had a long, ascetic face, firm lips, a gloomy look about him. The other was taller, heavy, red-faced, one of the largest men you will ever see; he worse steel-rimmed glasses and a bushy mustache. These were Herbert Matthews of The New York Times and Ernest Hemingway, and they were just as relieved to see us as we were to see them."

"You cannot really believe in the existence of a foreign country until you see it."

"Whenever the mind has led the body to an important decision, events have a way of assuming, momentarily, a half-symbolic nature. The mind plays that trick on you, and everything you see seems to partake of the quality of the decision you have made."

"And towering above each town, generally built on a height commanding it, stood the church, its finger pointed to heaven, its masonry rich and heavy, permanent and menacing, a constant reminder of the domination of the Church down all the ages. For although these deeply Catholic people had been burning their churches for centuries, the Church and its allies had always reasserted their power over the people, and this power was in dispute again to the endless hills, carved from root to summit with stone-shored terraces to hold the olives and the vine fields, quiet evidence of thousands upon thousands of grinding hours of man and woman labor. Sunny Spain, land of mañana, where nothing was done today that could be put off till tomorrow!"

"Hemingway was eager as a child, and I smiled remembering the first time I had seen him, at a Writers' Congress in New York. He was making his maiden public speech, and when it didn't read right, he got mad at it, repeating the sentences he had fumbled, with exceptional vehemence. Now he was like a big kid, and you liked him. He asked questions like a kid: "What then? What happened then? And what did you do? And what did he say? And then what did you do?" Matthews said nothing, but he took notes on a folded sheet of paper. "What's your name?" said Hemingway; I told him. "Oh," he said, "I'm awful glad to see you; I've read your stuff." I knew he was glad to see me; it made me feel good, and I felt sorry about the times I had lambasted him in print; I hoped he had forgotten them, or never read them. "Here," he said, reading in his pocket. "I've got more." He handed me a full pack of Lucky Strikes."

"I was four years in the war," Merkel said. "German army." "What was it like?" "It ain't bad," he said. "It ain't bad at all; you get used to it. You never see the enemy; you shoot and shoot and you never see 'em. It ain't bad at all." We talked of the World War and the Spanish War. Merkel told us that he had done underground work in Germany, and of the discontent among the German workers. "Every ship what comes to Hamburg," he said, "brings literature for 'em; they eat it up. I fight against Hitler, that bastard," he said. We talked of conditions back home; of Roosevelt's popularity and liberalism, and of the reactionary opposition they were trying to whip up again; of its chances of success. "In the end," Merkel said, "you can't fool the workers. Takes 'em maybe a long time to wake up with the newspapers saying lies all the time, but you can't fool 'em."

"The free meal was bad, and 'Lopez' wasted a lot of time sending a cablegram signed 'Hy' to some one in America. But we got to the Committee at two, and sat on low benches in a lecture hall. There were other men there; one I recall who was wearing a blue beret and a leather glove on an obviously artificial hand. "You guys just get back?" he said, and we said, "No, we're just going." "Oh," he mumbled, "more suckers." We looked at him but he retired into himself, sitting in the back of the room for a time, and then suddenly leaving."

"We switched out the light and tried to sleep again; the windows were clouded with steam as the train shrieked along the tracks, and we thought of the thousands from all countries who had traveled this way before, and of those who had not come back. We thought of the volunteer organizations throughout the world that were helping to get these men to Spain; we thought of the men from Fascist countries, who had known the enemy at first hand, had escaped from their own countries and traveled thousands of miles to get to Spain to fight the enemy on another front, and who would have no homes if they survived the war. We were optimistic of the outcome."

"We have long memories. We have developed a relative immunity to the endless barrage of propaganda, slander and outright lies that has been laid upon us. And especially, we are immune to the Big Lie that destroyed Spain and which Hitler developed to such a point of perfection that it was necessary for millions of human beings to die to achieve the defeat of the Axis. Yet the Big Lie survives and flourishes mightily in our own country today. As it is promulgated daily, hourly and every minute of the day through every medium of communication, so it must be answered- until our own people see it for what it is and explode it in their own good time."

"Those Americans who went to Spain to fight Franco and stave off World War II have never minded being called "premature anti-fascists." They were proud of the label."

"Whenever we hear it said that Communism threatens us from within and without; whenever we are told that the Soviet Union menaces our "way of life" and wants to conquer the world; whenever we are summoned to a Holy Crusade that- if it is allowed to begin- will ravish the entire earth, we recall the following simple facts of history: Mussolini killed whatever democracy existed in Italy by claiming that Italy was threatened by Communism; Hitler destroyed the German Republic with the same weapon; Tojo broke the resistance of the people of Japan by using the identical thesis; Franco murdered the Spanish Republic in the name of the "Red menace"; The Axis launched World War II under the slogan of saving the world from Communism."

"Here were students, dock-workers, clerks and labor-organizers, farmers. Most were unacquainted with each other, but they came together now with the warmth and familiarity of old friends; they told each other of their work in their respective countries; of their friends and families. They spoke of the European political scene, of the imperative necessity for the Loyalist Government to drive the foreign invader from Spain; you felt that with each of them, no matter how diverse his previous training, the Spanish struggle was a personal issue, something deep and close. This in itself, considering the disparity of their origin, was a major political phenomenon. They spoke no word of the actual business of war; they did not speculate on the nature of artillery or air attacks, of machine-gun fire. You felt: many of these men will never see their friends or families again; they don't know what they're getting into; their idealism has blinded them to the reality of what they will have to face. And you knew immediately that you were wrong; that they were so far from being blind that it might be said of them that they were among the first soldiers in the history of the world who really knew what they were about, what they were going to fight for- and that they were ready and eager to fight. Their very presence on the French frontier was an earnest of their understanding and their clarity; no one had made them come, no force but an inner force had brought them."

"The Swede who had walked in his sleep- he had not been wounded. Before we went into Batea he was in our peloton with Tabb and Moish Taubman and Johnson and Sid... He seemed to be stupid, but he wasn't. He never spoke, he never asked questions, but he had a face like a snake- he had the attentive expression of a reptile, pale, hard, unmoving eyes, a wide thin mouth, an impassive face. They said he had refused to retreat; he had set up his machine-gun on a hill, and told the others he was with, "Go on, I cover you." They left him there on the hill alone, his machine-gun banging away as the tanks came up."

"Hemingway did not seem discouraged, but Matthews was. Hemingway said, sure, they would get to the sea, but that was nothing to worry about. It had been foreseen; it would be taken care of; methods had already been worked out for communication between Catalonia and the rest of Spain; by ship, by plane, everything would be all right. Roosevelt, he said, had made an unofficial offer- or so he had been told- to ship two hundred planes to France, if France would ship two hundred planes to Spain. That was one of the best things we had ever heard of Roosevelt, but where were they?"

"You're never too old to become an 18th century villain."