Jewish and anti-Nazi youth clash with fascist Silver Shirts in Chicago over the winter of 1939.

‘To the Young Anti-Fascist Fighters of Chicago’ from Challenge of Youth (Y.P.S.L.). Vol. 3 No. 1. January, 1939.

Chicago Youth Break Up Silver Shirt Meeting

CHICAGO. The Chicago branch of the labor-hating, Jew-baiting, fascist Silver Shirts is holding a special meeting for its national “fuehrer”, Roy Zachary. The latter is in the midst of his speech, spewing forth hatred upon the CIO, the “reds”, the Jews, the Negroes, and promising to “clean up” this country when the fascists take power. “This is a white man’s country,” shouts Zachary, “a rubber hose and castor oil will teach the radicals and Jews their proper place. Once we’re in power…”

…Suddenly outside the meeting- hall, a 100 cars converge from different. directions. Five hundred boys get out and rush into the hall. Armed with rubber hoses, sawed-off cue-sticks, baseball bats, and other such weapons, they being flaying the fascists left and right. One group starts at the front of the halls, beginning on Zachary himself. The other group takes care of fascists making a hasty departure through the rear doors.

Meeting Smashed

The police arrive and arrest a few of the boys but the Silver Shirts have been scattered far and wide with no hope of hearing the rest of Zachary’s poison tonight.

This is an action picture of the new, sensational organization of Jewish youth in Chicago, the “Vigilantes” which has broken up some five Nazi and Silver Shirt meetings in the last month. The movement has a simple program, “Break up the anti-semitic meetings.” It has only one means of organization, phone calls from pool room to pool room giving the time and place for the attack.

This movement is the result of the lessons that the Nazi campaign to wipe out Jewry has taught the Jewish youth in America. They feel that the time to stamp out the fascist vermin is now-before they become too powerful.

Unfortunately, a group of cheap, ward-heeling politicians, who run the corrupt Arvey machine on the West Side, are cashing in on this sentiment of the Jewish youth by assuming the leadership of the movement. They have tied up the movement to the Arvey-Kelly machine, notorious for its police brutality to strikers. They keep their hold over the movement by using their “pull” to release any of the boys that are arrested.

FOR UNITY IN ACTION!

Greetings! And congratulations on a job well done.

You are using the only method that can stop the fascist gangs–smash them wherever they raise their heads.

If the German working class had done the same when the Nazi movement started, their unions would not have been smashed and their best fighters would not be in concentration camps today.

Instead of direct action, the German workers formed a People’s Front with the liberal politicians–“democrats” like Hindenburg. These fakers always sell out the anti-fascists at the first opportunity. Daladier, the former People’s Front leader, is doing it in France today.

We must learn a lesson from this. DON’T TRUST THE OLD PARTY POLITICIANS. They will use us for their own ends and then kick us out on our ears.

Roosevelt poses as an enemy of fascism. But when put to the test, his anti-fascism is only skin deep. WHY DOESN’T HE OPEN THE DOORS TO THE REFUGEES FROM FASCIST TERROR? All he wants to do is use the anti-fascist feeling of the people to build a big army and navy which will be used to protect Standard Oil Co. property in China, United Fruit Co. plantations in South America, and Wall Street investments in Cuba.

Jake Arvey also poses as an enemy of fascism. But how can he successfully fight fascism when he supports Mayor Kelly in brutally smashing strikes and weakening the labor unions? Isn’t this exactly what the Nazis and the Silver Shirts and the labor-hating capitalists who finance them want?

Was is not the Kelly-Arvey administration that brutally massacred the steel strikers on Memorial Day of 1937 and dealt a stunning blow to the C.I.O. movement in Chicago?

The main purpose of fascism is to smash the trade unions and lower the wages of the working class. That is why the German capitalists supported Hitler. The issue of anti-Semitism is used to divide the workers and the middle class along racial lines.

THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE IS A FIGHTING LABOR MOVEMENT. IF THE TRADE UNIONS ARE WEAKENED, THE FRONT LINE DEFENSE AGAINST FASCISM HAS BEEN UNDERMINED.

BEWARE OF ATTEMPTS TO USE YOUR MOVEMENT AGAINST THE C.I.O., THE A.F. OF L., OR THE “RADICALS”. If you are used for this purpose, you are opening the gates for fascism. Zachary and his Silver Shirts will follow you in and “clean up” on everybody–including yourselves.

In Minneapolis, the truck drivers’ union, Local 544, answered the organization of a Silver Shirt gang by organizing a Workers Defense Guard. YOU MUST UNITE WITH THE PROGRESSIVE UNIONISTS IN CHICAGO AND DO LIKEWISE. This is the only way to forge a solid fighting front against the fascist gangs.

This is the only way to prevent the fascists from making it merely an issue between Jews and Gentiles.

This is the only way to strike at the money-men who finance the fascist gangs–for a strong labor movement will raise wages and reduce the profits of the bosses.

We offer you our out-stretched hand of friendship and all the help we can give toward realizing the above aims. Our Chicago comrades–Jew and Gentile, black and white–stand ready to the last man to fight in your front ranks. We offer you the services of our lawyers and our legal defense machinery. Our members in the unions will demand that labor support your fight.

LONG LIVE WORKERS DEFENSE GUARDS! LONG LIVE DIRECT ACTION AGAINST FASCIST GANGS!

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL YOUNG PEOPLE’S SOCIALIST LEAGUE (FOURTH INTERNATIONALISTS)

Challenge of Youth was the newspaper of the Young People’s Socialist League. The paper’s editorial history is as complicated as its parent organization’s. Published monthly in New York beginning in 1933 as ‘Challenge’ associated with the Socialist Party’s Militant group (the center/left of the party around Norman Thomas). Throughout the 30s it was under the control of the various factions of the YPSL. It changed its name to Challenge of Youth in 1935 and became an organ of Fourth Internationalists, leaving to become to the youth paper of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. In the split of 1940, the paper like the majority of YPSL went with the state capitalists/bureaucratic collectivists to become the youth paper of the Workers Party.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/challenge-of-youth/390100-challengeofyouth-v03n01w10.pdf