OccupyForum // Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It

OccupyForum presents…

Fascism: What It Is, and How to Fight It

With Gerald Smith

Capitalism is in trouble. Therefore, conditions are being recreated that are nourishing a reborn fascist movement. This, in spite of the fact that internationally, the fascists were thoroughly defeated and discredited by the end of World War II.

How is this possible? First, after several generations, participants and witnesses to the struggle against fascism have died. Secondly, Scientific Socialism has lost the allegiance of the most politically active members of the working class internationally. Faced with declining profit levels in the sixties and seventies, the ruling class has pursued a variety of strategies to enhance its share of national income, including exporting industrial production to less developed countries, which in turn undermines the bargaining power of the most organized
sections of the working class.

In tandem with this, many of the most advanced capitalist states either overtly (Brasero program in the U.S., Gastarbeiters in Germany, etc.) or covertly (destabilization of third world countries and purposely lax enforcement of border controls, etc.) encouraged mass immigration of poorly paid and legally precarious workers from less developed regions, and bureaucratically distorted state-owned economies. This in turn feeds resentment of increasingly beleaguered sections of the working-class, often providing a fertile recruiting ground for neo-fascists.

Before a serious reactionary trend can be successfully eliminated, it is necessary to understand the phenomenon: its origins, its essence, its mutations.

Gerald Smith has a long history in the Black Liberation and Workers’ movements. He is currently involved with the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia, Liberated Lense, and the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality.


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Monday, March 7th from 6 - 9 pm at Global Exchange
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