Against Fascism
Why We Are In D.C.
The following statement was written and distributed by members of Jewish Solidarity Caucus who traveled from across the country to be in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. in solidarity with local communities resisting fascist terror.
A year has passed since the first Unite The Right rally in August of 2017. On the 12th of August, 2018, the day of the second Unite The Right Rally (now in Washington, D.C.), a year will have passed since Vanguard America member James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into a crowd of antifascist counter protesters, injuring at least nineteen and murdering Heather Heyer (הי״ד). Fascists now think they are welcome to return to Charlottesville, and to rally in D.C. as well. Our comrades in the Shut It Down D.C. Coalition and in Solidarity Cville have called for solidarity in the face of fascism, and we are compelled to answer the call with action.
As an organization of Jewish antifascists and internationalist socialists committed to universal liberation (a universal, as Aimé Césaire remarked, “enriched by every particular”), we remember clearly the refusal of the police to guard the local Charlottesville synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, on that weekend in 2017. Forty congregants attended Shabbat services on the morning of the 12th, while Nazis paraded past with flags bearing the swastika and hurling antisemitic abuse at the shul’s main entrance. With a single hired security guard, congregants were forced to leave services quietly through a back entrance. The police and state demonstrated that their loyalty to the cause of white supremacy transcends any concern for the safety and dignity of the Jewish community.
It is apparent that as Jews we cannot depend on the state in the struggle against fascism. Yet we cannot struggle against fascism alone; our fierce defense of our communities cannot stop at the boundary between Jew and non-Jew. It is only in solidarity with all who struggle against capitalism, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, that we might be victorious. In antisemitic conspiracy theories, Jews are imagined as the secretive force of “degeneracy” behind other groups’ liberation struggles. Fascist cries of “Jews will not replace us” at last year’s Unite the Right rally highlighted the urgency of the need for solidarity between Jews and all others who suffer under the boot of fascism.
The fight against fascism transcends every border, national and social. Fascism is the inevitable outgrowth of capitalism and imperialism. As the contradictions sharpen between the owners and managers of capital and the autonomy of the working class, between white supremacy and the freedom of People of Color, between hetero-patriarchy and the liberation of people of all genders and sexualities, between empire and the self-determination of indigenous peoples, all social relations increasingly become relationships to capital. The sorting of humanity into the owners and those whose only possession is their labor accelerates. As the alienation of capitalist social relations eats into the so-called “middle-class,”, small business/land owners and better-off working class individuals seek to restore their slipping sense of control over their lives. That control has always been the product of systems of domination, and the means to restore it presented and valorized to them by bourgeois society is to intensify the subjugation of the oppressed peoples of the world.
As the United States and Western Europe parisitize the Global South and immigrants and refugees seek safety and economic security in imperialist states where imperialism originates, while at the same time social safety nets across the US and Europe fray due to neoliberal austerity policies, the response of the increasingly alienated white “middle class” has been to authorize the expansion of state powers to surveil and police second class citizens and non-citizens and to militarize borders. Tools used to discipline and control colonial holdings, such as Puerto Rico, and the subjects of neo-colonial proxies, such as Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, come home. The absolute power of the colonizer over the colonized manifests at home. Capitalist imperialism turns inward and emerges as fascism. The abolition of capital and empire are thus necessary in the fight against fascism. Reform cannot be our goal.
Sadly, the American Jewish establishment does not recognize that there is no “moderate” road to be taken in the struggle against fascism, which threatens every Jew without respect to our economic position, our race, or our political loyalties. ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt’s tweet following the first Unite The Right rally typifies the ambivalence Jewish institutions and their leaders have shown in this struggle. He wrote “Whether by #AltRight or #Antifa, no excuses for violence […]” Fascist rallies are grounds for further organizing within right-wing groups and are a way to build their power. Their goals are genocidal. There is no equivalence between fascists and those who fight fascism. This smear hamstrings our ability to organize and places us in danger. Both as Jews and socialists we know that fascists must be stopped by any means necessary and with every tool at our disposal.
All communities targeted for violence by fascists share this entitlement. The attacks on us are connected, so we will join with whoever fights for the justice, and freedom that is theirs to take to fight fascism. The JSC draws inspiration from the legacy of Jewish radicals who fought fascists in Catalonia and on Cable Street in 1936, in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, and in the woods of Eastern Europe throughout the 1930s and 40s. And we draw inspiration from our comrades today in the Muslim Jewish Antifascist Front, Jewdas and all those engaged in antifascist action, who fight for the lives of their own families as well as ours.
The Jewish Solidarity Caucus is dedicated to Jewish liberation and the liberation of all people within and across all borders, and we will fight for it. We are compelled to confront fascist elements in the United States and to commit to the struggle for an emancipated international working class. The imperative is clear. We choose safety and justice over the notion of civility. As our platform states: Love and the certainty that together we will all be liberated motivate us.
Can you help JSC get to DC? This weekend a cohort of JSC comrades from across the country will gather in DC and Cville to support local antifascist efforts against UTR2. Help defray the costs of travel for JSC and coalition partners by donating or sharing this fundraiser.
