This largely abstract question has been debated by generations of activists, and will probably continue to be. With militant anti-fascists and Marxists generally answering firmly in the negative, as a long-time militant the old Anti-Racist Action myself, I could argue this in my sleep, and probably did. A fine short summation of the ‘No’ position.

‘Should Fascists Be Allowed the Right of Free Speech?’ from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 3 No. 12. March 3, 1939.

It seems that the only point of importance that the Professional Liberals and Democrats could see in the big mobilization of the Nazis at Madison Square Garden last week, was their “right of free speech and assembly.”

Mayor La Guardia kept reiterating emphatically that his attachment to Democracy compelled him to grant the Fascists the right to hold their meeting and provide them with extraordinary police protection.

The American Civil Liberties Union rushed into print to insist that the right of free speech be extended to the Hitlerites.

One of the numerous committees of the Jewish bourgeoisie, anxious to demonstrate that it loves fairness above all else, did likewise.

Even the wretched little Jewish anarchist weekly published in New York indignantly reproached the Trotskyists for the lack of sense in “demanding the right of free speech and assembly for oneself and at the same time trying to prevent the freedom of speech of our opponents…”

FREEDOM FOR NAZIS BUT NOT FOR PICKETS

Before going further into the consideration of the question of “free speech for Fascists,” it is interesting and important to record the fact that all the above-mentioned who showed such touching concern for the “democratic rights” of the Nazis, are entirely unconcerned with the brutal police suppression of the picketing rights of the workers who assembled outside the Garden.

The Mayor simply refused to see a delegation which came to protest against the violence of the police who rode down and slugged the picketers.

The American Civil Liberties Union, apparently exhausted by its noble efforts in behalf of the Nazis, didn’t utter a peep about the democratic rights of free speech, assembly and picketing being denied the 50,000 anti-Fascists who came to protest the Nazi rally. Ditto for the Jewish committee.

As for the anarchist Freie Arbeiter Stimme, it says not a word about the police assaults, but villainously insinuates that the Terrible Trotskyists were really at fault because, Mr. Police Commissioner, they planned a violent attack on the Nazis who were innocently celebrating Washington’s Birthday. Unbelievable, but here are its exact words:

“But there are times when people who endeavor to do social work must reflect ten times, a hundred times, before they come out with an appeal for acts of violence.”

WHAT THE PROBLEM REALLY INVOLVES

The question of “democratic rights for the Nazis” cannot be resolved on the basis of Liberal phrasemongers. All such a discussion can produce is a bewildering tangle of words and abstractions. At a more decisive stage. as all recent experience has proved, it produces a first class disaster not only for the working class but also for the Professional Liberals and Democrats themselves.

How many of them, indeed, are there in the concentration camps, in prison and in exile who are continuing the thoroughly futile and abstract discussion over whether or not the Fascist gangsters should be granted the “democratic rights of free speech and assembly”!

And what is most decisive–this is the point which leads us directly to a solution of the problem that seems to agitate so many people is the fact that in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Spain, the Democrats were so concerned with preserving the “rights” of the Fascists that they concentrated all their attacks and repressive measures upon those workers and those labor organizations, which sought to conduct a militant struggle against the Fascists and for the preservation and extension of their truly democratic rights and institutions.

It is when the bourgeois “democrats” like Giolitti in Italy and Bruening in Germany, had done all in their power to smash the most progressive and active sections of the working class-as La Guardia and his police tried to do on a smaller scale in New York last week–that the Fascists concluded successfully their march to totalitarian power. Whoever forgets this important lesson from abroad, is a fool. Whoever tries to keep others ignorant of this lesson, is a rogue.

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Let us take a simple example which every worker has experienced dozens of times.

A strike is called. The authorities promptly, jump into the situation in order to protect the “democratic rights” of the scabs and the company gunmen who guard them. The “right to work” of the scab, which is guaranteed by the capitalist government, amounts in reality to his “right” to starve out the striking workers to helpless and reduce them pawns of the employers.

Millions of workers have learned the futility and deceptiveness of the academic discussion of the scab’s “democratic rights,” as well as of appealing to the government and its police to “arbitrate” the dispute involved. They try to solve the question, as they must, in the course of struggle. The workers throw their picket-lines around the struck plant. The conflict between the scab’s “right” to break a strike and the workers’ right to live, is also settled in the course of struggle–in favor of those who plan better, organize better, and fight better.

SAME RULE APPLIES ON BROADER SCENE

The same rule applies in the struggle against the much bigger scab movement that Fascism represents.

The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis’ “democratic rights”–to say nothing of working themselves into a lather in defense of these “rights”–will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.

The workers who delude themselves and waste their time begging the capitalist Democrats in office to “act” against the Fascists, will end up in the same place, just as the workers of Italy, Germany, and Austria did.

The workers have more vital concerns. They are and should be interested in defending and expanding their democratic rights. But not in any abstract sense. These rights are the concrete rights of free speech, assembly, press, the right to organize, strike and picket, without which an independent working class simply cannot exist.

A decaying capitalism–of which Fascism is only a natural product–seeks constantly to restrict and destroy these rights, which are not truly genuine even in “normal” times. These rights can only be defended from the assaults of capitalism and its ugly offspring, Fascism, in the same way in which they were first acquired: by the tireless, aggressive, unbending, independent struggle of the working class.

The wailing and weeping about the Nazis’ “rights” can safely be left to the prissy Liberals and the phony Democrats. The self-preservation of the working class demands that it cut through all abstract chatter and smash the Fascist gangs by decisive and relentless action.

There have been a number of periodicals named Socialist Appeal in our history, this Socialist Appeal was edited in New York City by the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party”. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists did not have an independent publication. However, Albert Goldman began publishing a monthly Socialist Appeal in Chicago in February 1935 before the bulk of Trotskyist entered the SP. When there, they began publishing Socialist Appeal in August 1937 as the weekly paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” but in reality edited by Cannon and other leaders. Goldman’s Chicago Socialist Appeal would fold into the New York paper and this Socialist Appeal would replace New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the newly constituted Socialist Workers Party in early 1938. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, and Albert Goldman. In 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/v3n12-mar-03-1939.pdf