Rampant Fascism in America – Marcus Graham (1935)

Two articles from ‘Man!: A Journal of the Anarchist Ideal and Movement’, June 1935, San Francisco

The march of fascism throughout the country goes on unabated. Teachers in schools, professors in colleges and students alike are being ousted from the “temples of learning”. Legislative bodies in State after State are enacting ordinances which doom any expression of free thought to total extinction.

The rampant chauvinism of the blackest sort of reaction, hiding its ugly face behind a vain patriotism, culminated in one of the most dastardly acts yet attempted by this rising spectre of fascism. We refer here to the treatment of Robert Minor, former editor of the Communist Daily Worker, and David Levinson, International Labour Defence Attorney.

Minor and Levinson went to Gallup, New Mexico, in order to offer defence to the victims of the recent unemployed mass protests which ended in the killing of several unemployed, a sheriff, and the wounding of about half a dozen workers. The government officials arrested over 30 workers, men and women who are now facing frame-up charges of murder.

The attack upon Minor and Levinson was carried out by a gang, well known to the local and State authorities of New Mexico. Sheriff D.W. Robertson was at once “sceptical” about the story of the attack. C.R. McIntosh, Assistant District Attorney, revealed a shameless, sinister attitude when, instead of investigating the attack, he did everything possible to create the impression that the story of the attack was a frame-up. Attorney General Cummings refused to intervene in the kidnapping affair on a technical excuse.

The action of the government officials can cause but very little surprise to the Anarchist, who repeats over and over again the fact that every governmental institution (as well as its officials) has been founded and is being perpetuated in the interests of one class against another, chiefly in the interests of those who live at the expense of what they steal “legally” from the immense wealth created with the aid of the greater part of mankind.

In the case of Minor and Levinson, the enemies of true freedom can point with glee at the fact that had either of the two dared to come forward in defending any dissenting Bolshevist, Social Revolutionist or Anarchist in Bolshevik-ruled Russia, their fate would not even have reached the outer world.

Whilst this is unfortunately true, it ought not to blind the people to a realisation that humanity has little, if anything at all, to gain from any country where a government exists, be it fascist or republican, nazist or bolshevist. The injustices being perpetrated under each and all vary only in degrees, according to the needs of the moment. In the final analysis all will be found ready to employ any means in order to maintain themselves in power.

It is just recognising the government for the enemy that it really is to the interests of true freedom, that the workers in this country ought to realise that the rising force of fascism has become now the threatening danger that faces every future struggle for a better world.

Wherever fascism shows its head, it should be met by boycott — as in the reading of its (Hearst) press, writing in it, or even setting it up. Vigilante attacks should be fought back. Fascism should be treated as the pest and scourge that it really is.

It is not yet too late to meet the cancerous pest of fascism, but this must be met by action, not by words alone.

Lynching and Law and Order

Every government official is supposedly a sworn upholder of “law and order”. In reality, no one disregards and flaunts the laws of the land any stronger than the very sworn upholders of the law. One need but look at the amount of brutality that is being displayed by any officer making an arrest, take a glance at a prisoner who has emerged from a, third degree ordeal, question prisoners on their experiences with jail officials, or witness any staged lynching — in order to become fully convinced of the dubious role played by the minions of “law and order.”

These aforementioned thoughts come to mind when one reads how the highest legislative body in the land, the U.S. Senate, talked to death an attempt to outlaw the ever so often brutal lynchings enacted in the South, particularly upon negroes, by whites.

No one has heard any outcry of protest from our “public opinion” purveyors — the press. Nor has there come a singular word of disapproval from the “liberal”-new-deal-phraseologist-parrot of the White House.

Lynching remains then as ever an evil threat to every negro, and many whites as well. They who transgress the very pitfalls erected by man, or who dare to question any injustice, remain as always a prey to frenzied-ignorant mobs and lawless officials. The highest legislative body in the land has given its approval for the continuanceof such a state of affairs.

Lynching mobs and the law and order brigade will continue to march hand in hand as long as the people cling to the belief in the need of the kind of a system of society as the one we now exist under, and which must be accompanied by the farcical laws and law enforcers that we have just spoken of.

Marcus Graham