Preliminary Programme

Wed 4 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 5 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30
    19.00 - 20.15
    20.30 - 22.00

Fri 6 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 7 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.00 - 17.00

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Wednesday 4 April 2018 16.30 - 18.30
O-4 POL04 Anarchists and Antifascism during the 1930s
PFC/02/026 Sir Peter Froggatt Centre
Network: Politics, Citizenship, and Nations Chair: Bert Altena
Organizer: Tom Goyens Discussant: Bert Altena
Morris Brodie : ‘Crying in the Wilderness?’: Emma Goldman, the CNT-FAI and the Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista in London
Accounts of British support for the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War tend either to focus on volunteers fighting in the International Brigades or the efforts of (largely Communist-run) Aid Spain Committees to raise money and supplies for Spanish workers. This has meant that other British political groupings, notably ... (Show more)
Accounts of British support for the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War tend either to focus on volunteers fighting in the International Brigades or the efforts of (largely Communist-run) Aid Spain Committees to raise money and supplies for Spanish workers. This has meant that other British political groupings, notably anarchists, have been largely ignored. Equally, studies examining the role of anarchists during the conflict tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the Spanish anarchist organisations, the CNT and FAI, at the expense of the (albeit significantly smaller) international movement. However, there was a consistent anarchist movement in London and elsewhere in Britain during the 1930s which bloomed with the advent of the Spanish Civil War. The neglect of these activists is partially explained by the attitude of the CNT-FAI representative in Britain, the legendary Russian-American anarchist Emma Goldman, who made no secret of her antipathy to the British working class, anarchist movement, and weather.
This paper will examine the work of Goldman in her quest to highlight the plight of the Spanish anarchists to the British public and her relations with the ‘native’ anarchist movement. Contrary to her reports to the CNT-FAI, which were themselves tinged with modesty about her own role, the British movement mobilised in numerous ways to help their stricken Spanish comrades. The CNT-FAI London Bureau coordinated various speaking tours and rallies, and provided anarchist representation at the May Day celebrations in Hyde Park for the first time in several years. The British section of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (SIA), the international aid organisation created by the CNT in mid-1937, also raised money to help alleviate the refugee crisis in Republican Spain caused by the steady loss of territory to Franco’s Nationalists. It will be shown that, far from being a ‘wilderness’, the British anarchist movement was committed and successful in helping their Spanish comrades in difficult circumstances. Although the victory of the rebels cast a shadow across the international movement for a substantial period, many of those who cut their teeth during the late 1930s in Spanish solidarity activities became stalwarts of the British movement in the years to come. (Show less)

Montse Feu : Jesús González Malo: Antifascism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in the United States
The antifascist organization headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (Confederation of Hispanic Societies, SHC), politically and financially aided refugees of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the underground resistance during the Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Anarcho-syndicalist Jesús González Malo (1903-1965), one of the most esteemed editors of the Confederadas’s ... (Show more)
The antifascist organization headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (Confederation of Hispanic Societies, SHC), politically and financially aided refugees of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the underground resistance during the Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Anarcho-syndicalist Jesús González Malo (1903-1965), one of the most esteemed editors of the Confederadas’s periodical España Libre (Free Spain, 1939-1977), established a system of covert communication between the United States and Spain that avoided interception by the Francoist censors and FBI counter-measures. His leadership facilitated the publication in exile newspapers of Franco’s regime-censored news and enabled transnational dialogues about the meaning of anarchism, revolution, and liberty among Spanish exiles and the underground resistance in Spain. González Malo was an avid reader and a dedicated editor and activist; his epistolary and editorial work discloses the transnational and cross-political influences on González Malo’s postwar approach to anarchism, which embraced cross-coalitions with antifascists as a strategy of generating collective practice and thought in the precarious Spanish Civil War exile. As editor of España Libre, González Malo dedicated his life in exile to advance workers at the forefront of the antifascist fight.
In this respect, this paper examines González Malo’s essays in CNT Francia (Toulouse), Communidad Ibérica (Mexico City), España Libre (Brooklyn), España Libre (Toulouse) and his manuscript La incorporación de las masas (1952) with the goal to contribute to the recovery of a lost period of Spanish anarchism. After the defeat of the Spanish Revolution, González Malo was concerned about the survival of anarcho-syndicalism and vehemently protected the sovereignty and legitimacy of Confederadas’s members. He often reminded readers that self-taught workers had evolved from representation to incorporation into the body politic, proving their ability to confront hierarchical power. He foregrounded the possibility of radical change with his vision of anti-authoritarian, egalitarian, participatory, and self-managed post-fascist societies. Although it is generally accepted that Franco’s state terrorism dismantled Spanish anarchism, González Malo’s papers demonstrate Spanish anarchists continued to contribute to the movement’s thought and practice in exile periodicals.

Works Cited
Comunidad Ibe?rica. Me?xico City, 1962.
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. CNT Francia. Toulouse, 1900s.
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. Espan?a Libre. Toulouse, 1940.
Espan?a Libre: Organo Del Comite? Antifascista Espan?ol De Los Estados Unidos De Norte Ame?rica. Brooklyn, N.Y: Comite? Antifascista Espan?ol de los Estados Unidos, 1939-1977.
Feu, Montse. Correspondencia personal y política de un anarcosindicalista exiliado: Jesús González Malo (1943-1965). Santander: Colección Cuatro Estaciones. Universidad de Cantabria, 2016.
González Malo, Jesús. La incorporación de las masas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Americalee, 1952. (Show less)

Tom Goyens : Against the Current: Robert Bek-gran and the German Antifascists in New York
In 1938, Robert Bek-gran and Ernst Mareg founded the Club Deutscher Antifaschisten in New York, which published a newsletter, Der Antifascist. A few months later, Bek-gran and Rudolf Rocker launched Gegen den Strom, an anarchist, antifascist, and anti-Stalinist magazine that ran for twelve issues. Not much is known about Bek-gran's ... (Show more)
In 1938, Robert Bek-gran and Ernst Mareg founded the Club Deutscher Antifaschisten in New York, which published a newsletter, Der Antifascist. A few months later, Bek-gran and Rudolf Rocker launched Gegen den Strom, an anarchist, antifascist, and anti-Stalinist magazine that ran for twelve issues. Not much is known about Bek-gran's activities in New York and even less about this small circle of exiles and immigrants.
Born in 1894 in Munich and trained as a printer, Bek-gran was a participant in the short-lived 1919 Munich Soviet alongside Ernst Toller (immigrated in 1936), Erich Mühsam, and Gustav Landauer. In 1920, he published a pamphlet, Vom Wesen der Anarchie. After immigrating in 1923, Bek-gran worked as a teacher. In 1930, he became a citizen and joined the Communist Party. The brutality of Stalin's regime caused him to leave the Communist Party. He started Brookside Press, a small Manhattan print shop, before teaming up with Mareg and Rocker in 1938.
This tiny group of German anarchists in New York formed a minority within a much broader antifascist movement in the United States (and particularly in New York), that had since 1935 coalesced under the umbrella group Deutsch-Amerikanischen Kulturverbandes (DAKV) led by another (erstwhile) anarchist Otto Sattler who had been in the U.S. since 1901.
This paper explores the intellectual fabric of this group, and attempts to find connections between these individuals in New York and other international exile groups fighting fascism and Stalinism, such as perhaps the German radical immigrants of Porto Alegre (Brazil) who put out Der freie Arbeiter, edited by Friedrich Kniestedt. Were there perhaps contacts with Spanish or Italian immigrant groups in the New York area? The New York antifascist anarchists maintained contacts with English-language groups. Bek-gran, for instance, wrote for anarchist periodicals such as Challenge (1939) and Retort and politics (1940s). Rocker contributed to Vanguard and his Nationalism and Culture was published by friends in Los Angeles. Toller toured the U.S. as a celebrity in 1936.
This paper also suggests that this loosely-connected German radical network during the 1920s and 1930s may be seen as another missing link between the "classical" period of German (or indeed immigrant in general) anarchism in the U.S. and the new anarchist activism during the 1940s and 1950s. Otto Sattler is of particular interest, and may be seen as a transitional figure. As head of the big-tent DAKV in the late 1930s, he surely knew Bek-gran and Rocker. This continuity, unknown or unappreciated for too long, has been conclusively established by Andrew Cornell's book Unruly Freedom. (Show less)

Victor Lundberg : "The Antifascist Kick". Aspects of Antifascist Violence in Sweden
All over Europe, violent confrontations between fascists and antifascists became more and more common during the 1930s. Beside organized rallies, demonstrations and manifestations in protest against the growing fascism, some antifascists also encountered fascists with riots, fights, assaults, sabotage and assassinations. This relation was in some countries in practice a ... (Show more)
All over Europe, violent confrontations between fascists and antifascists became more and more common during the 1930s. Beside organized rallies, demonstrations and manifestations in protest against the growing fascism, some antifascists also encountered fascists with riots, fights, assaults, sabotage and assassinations. This relation was in some countries in practice a form of civil war while it in other was considerably more tense and supressed. This was the case in Sweden, where the political climate was unstable and changing and the democratic system young and fragile. In this paper, I focus antifascist violence in Sweden during the 1930s, and more specifically the violent strategies that were elaborated by antifascist groups on the political left. First, I argue that this violent strategies, for example the “well-aimed kick”, in this formative era was established as an approved part of antifascist practice which would be of significant importance in the future when some antifascist groups was legitimizing their use of violence in society. Second, I argue that this use of violence from the 1930s and onwards also has functioned as a subcultural “kick”: a strong, internal, and emotional force, bonding the antifascist group together against various enemies (not only actual fascists). To conclude: the antifascist “kick” is historically ambiguous. It could be both (paradoxically) used as a defensive democratic bulwark and function as an offensive group dynamic that in fact transcend the borders between democracy, antifascism, and anarchism. (Show less)



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