Anti-Fascist Forum in New York a ‘Huge Success’
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=By= Mike Kuhlenbeck
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he “Stop the Drive towards Fascism and War” public forum in New York City on January 30 is being heralded as “a huge success.”
Manhattan Theater Club
Revolutionaries and reformers gathered at the Manhattan Theatre Club for a panel discussion on how to build an “anti-war, progressive, democratic movement” to counter the threats of fascism and war at home and abroad.
Speakers included journalist Caleb Maupin, Tax Wall Street Party delegate Chris Rieth, Occu-Evolve co-creator Sumumba Sobukwe, Bernie Sanders supporter Paul Shepard, New Afrikan Communist Party member Dakem Roberts and Party of Communists USA delegate George Greene.
The meeting in midtown Manhattan was international in character, with participants traveling from as far as China, Germany and Greece to attend. There was even a special appearance by Benjamin Lawton, a cousin of the late Eric Garner who was murdered by New York City Police on July 17, 2014.
After panel members shared their ideas, audience members were invited to participate in the discussion. As a result of the meeting, a new coalition was born, a New People’s Front against fascism and imperialism.
On Saturday evening, the group called for defeating “the fascist threat at home,” including special reference to the Republican presidential campaign of real estate heir Donald Trump, whose racist and reactionary rhetoric has caused great concern for those who stand on the progressive side of human affairs.
Chris Rieth, a member of the New York Local of the TWSP, said if Trump is elected his policies would amount to a brutal police state in America. In a proposal delivered by Rieth at the meeting, he said:
CC BY-SA by Gage Skidmore
“Trump demands the immediate deportation of 12 million Latinos. Trump wants to stop all Moslems at the U.S. border. Trump wants a registry of Moslems, obviously, as a preparation for concentration camps. Trump says that wages are too high and that the minimum wage should no longer exist.
“Trump is the classic fascist billionaire, a type who ought to be familiar to everyone from the catastrophic experience between the two world wars of the last century. He uses Gestapo tactics at his rallies, inciting his goons from the podium to beat up protesters. The coalescence of the Trump campaign with the armed fascist gangs in Oregon is already beginning, through the mediation of radio programs like Michael Savage’s Savage Nation. Historical experience shows that fascist movements and organizations must be nipped in the bud, before they become too strong to be dealt with.”
The group also advocates the defeat of ISIS by “cutting off their supply lines in the Jarabulus corridor, a 60-mile stretch across the Turkish-Syrian border. Through supply lines stemming from Turkey, ISIS and other terrorists receive ammunition, fuel and other means of support. The group also blasted Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s “blatant support for terrorism.”
The Pentagon has had a pivotal role to play in this dangerous game as well. The conservative law group Judicial Watch obtained a declassified government document dated August 12, 2012 showing that “Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad,” as noted by journalist Nafeez Ahmed.
It is important to note that President Barack Obama’s 2017 budget request includes $583 billion for military spending.
The group is calling on the US, Russia, Iran, China, France, Germany and other nations to block the Jarabulus corridor. By doing so, the “ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/IS/Islamic State/Caliphate will collapse, since the anti-Assad forces fighting in Syria receive logistics and personnel from abroad, especially from Turkey,” Rieth said.
The forum was inspired by the People’s Front of the 1930s and 40s. As reported by The Greanville Post, the People’s Front was “a strategy of organizing the working class around a common program of struggle against fascism, inspired by a 1935 speech by Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International.”
Caleb Maupin, who organized and moderated the forum, said some “exciting things are happening.”
Continuing meetings and actions of the New People’s Front will be organized in the near future.
Here are videos of the event:
Stopping War and Fascism – A New People’s Front? Part 1
Stopping War and Fascism – A New People’s Front? Part 2
MIKE KUHLENBECK, currently serving as a special roving correspondent for The Greanville Post, is a journalist, photographer, researcher and media critic based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Writers Union UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO.
Kuhlenbeck works as a reporter for Iowa Free Press and as a freelance journalist. Besides The Greanville Post, his work has appeared in publications such as The Des Moines Register, The Humanist, Z Magazine, Foreign Policy Journal, Eurasia Review, People’s World, The Palestine Chronicle, Paste, Little Village, Industrial Worker, Earth First! Journal, Intrepid Report and the National Writers Union newsletter.
His extensive and wide-ranging reportage has covered a myriad of subjects including news, politics, social issues, entertainment and local events. His work has been published nationally and internationally, and has been translated into numerous languages.
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