A fascinating moment from the post-World War One era in which progressive veterans based in Minneapolis, World War Veterans founded in 1919, organize themselves in opposition to fascism, the American Legion, and the use of ex-soldiers against the interests of workers.

‘World War Veterans in Fight on Fascism: Seek to Organize Ex-Soldiers to Prevent Use Against Workers’ from The New Majority (Farmer Labor Party, Chicago). Vol. 9 No. 8. February 24, 1923.

Minneapolis. — The World War Veterans is undertaking a nationwide campaign of organization of ex-servicemen to prevent the marshalling of former soldiers by the captains of big business into a “fascisti” in the United States to defeat the workers.

Over the signatures of Jack Bradon, President, and Herbert A. Suman, National Publicity Director, the organization has issued an appeal for funds to enable it to put the organization drive across, requesting that voluntary contributions be sent to the World War Veterans, P.O. Box 516, Minneapolis, Minn. Following is, in part, the text of the appeal:

World War Veterans Letter.

The Fascisti are organizing in America! Do you wish them success?

Mussolini’s 15th Century condottieri have spread to the United States and now claim a membership of 200,000. Col. Alvin Owsley, Commander of the American Legion, recently declared “the Legion would not hesitate to take things into its own hands — fight the reds as the Fascisti of Italy fought them. Do not forget that the Fascisti of Italy are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States, and that Mussolini, the new premier, was commander of the Legion — the ex-servicemen of Italy.”

Perhaps more notorious is that secret and clandestine organization, the Ku Klux Klan, with its “super-government” supported by cowardly punishments, that prohibits the free play of opinions, foments civil and religious strife, and seeks to divide America into two classes — one to rule, another to obey. This they call “100% Americanism.” When Edward Young Clarke, chief organizer of the membership drive, learned that the chief of the United States Secret Service was being urged to arrest him, he commented thus:

“Burns may be persuaded to arrest me, and if so, I shall not be constrained longer to keep off the dogs of war; it may mean a revolution, for I believe the Klansmen would stand by me.”

A more recent example of the Fascisti spirit occurred in Arkansas when a few hundred “citizens” seized by force of arms an entire community, with lynchings and maltreatment drove out the railroad strikers and their families and sympathizers, deposed regularly elected officials, and now proclaim to the world that organized labor is forever expelled from Harrison, Arkansas.

The ex-soldier swings the Fascisti club in Italy. Shall he swing it here?

There are 3 million unorganized ex-servicemen in America. Reactionary organizations, subsidized by bankers and Chambers of Commerce, are trying to inveigle them under their control. With strong financial backing they are enabled to spread their lying propaganda through numerous publications.

Whoever practices free speech or questions the divine right of present industrial and political dictatorship is denounced as a “red,” “radical,” and “un-American,” held up to an unthinking public as an immoral degenerate, and mobs of ex-servicemen are incited to believe that such a beast richly deserves tar and feathers or Judge Lynch’s noose.

There is one ex-soldiers’ organization that declares fearlessly for industrial and political freedom and real lawabiding Americanism. We of the World War Veterans live up to our principles. Our record is clean — so no banker contributes to our welfare; no government diverts funds to our treasury.

Help us save the nation from disaster and reversion to medieval feudalism. Back us in our fight for liberty, justice, and progress.

The New Majority was the paper of the Federated Farmer-Labor Party, founded in 1918 as the Minnesota Labor Party, and published weekly by the Chicago Federation of Labor beginning in 1919. Mostly edited by Robert Buck, as well as party and labor union activities the paper reported on the vibrant co-operative and workers’ education movements of the time. The Party was did not survive the 1923 attempt by the John Pepper-led Workers (Communist) Party to take over the F.L.P. The F.L.P. attracted many non-Communist leftists in the workers movement and the paper is a rich source on labor activity and union history those years.