|
|
|
Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943
Daniel Geary
| In 1935, the California magazine Pacific Weekly published "Jewish Fascism," an article by the young Los Angeles lawyer Carey McWilliams.1 Calling the Jewish leaders who tied their opposition to Nazis to a defense of capitalism "fascists" might have seemed strange even to the readers of that left-wing magazine. Yet to McWilliams, a central figure of the California left of the 1930s and 1940s, fascism was a concept that could be applied broadly. Under the rubric of fascism, McWilliams described such American phenomena as union busting, anti-Semitism, nativism, militarism, capitalist exploitation, scapegoating, lynching, red-baiting, and vigilante justice. Although McWilliams's use of the term fascism lacked theoretical rigor, it allowed him to piece together in a coherent agenda the astonishing range of political activities he actively pursued as a lawyer, journalist, activist, and government official. Antifascism, as a political posture that called for radical reforms toward economic reconstruction and racial equality in a democratic constitutional order, provided McWilliams with a basic continuity of political instinct. |
1
|
|
Many scholars have viewed left-wing antifascism as a movement that directed its attention solely to international developments, such as the Spanish Civil War, at the expense of domestic concerns. For instance, Richard Pells has argued, "As writers and politicians grew more and more preoccupied with the talk of devising a suitable response to the fascist menace, interest in domestic issues correspondingly waned."2 In general, historians have assumed that antifascist rhetoric was too closely connected to Communist party policy to be useful in advancing a vigorous left-wing politics genuinely rooted in the American political situation, but a study of McWilliams from 1934 to 1943 reveals that a broad range of liberals and leftists applied the metaphor of fascism to American society. McWilliams's antifascist language was spoken by the wide range of California organizations with which he was involved from 1934 to 1943, such as the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and the Citizens Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth. Despite leftists' loose definition of fascism, their antifascist rhetoric was powerful enough to shape not only what the Left opposed but also what it supported from the 1930s to World War II. |
2
|
|
McWilliams's antifascism was rooted in the political environment of California, which had a history of repressing dissident political expression; for example, the state's Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919 allowed it to prosecute those whose beliefs it found subversive. As Kevin Starr has recently argued, because many of the state's most powerful figures violently opposed the unionization drives of the 1930s, the fascist scenario was vividly played out in California during that decade. Even the most elementary assertion of labor rights incurred vigilante and legal repression. The organization of farm workers in the state, with which McWilliams was closely involved, encountered a particularly brutal suppression of a predominantly minority work force. Moreover, much of the California press, particularly that controlled by William Randolph Hearst, gave unqualified support to repressive anti-union and racist measures.3 Thus, California leftists were more likely than their East Coast brethren to see parallels between the rise of fascism in Europe and the rise of reaction at home and to define their own positive program against the specter of fascism. |
. . . |
There are about 11840 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
