75 Years Since the Victory over Fascism - The Decisive Blow to Colonialism

By Tyson Riel Strandlund

When asked to reflect on the defeat of fascism, the images that come to mind for most are set in Europe, either on the bloody battlefields of World War II, or behind the barbed wire of the concentration camps. For liberal and otherwise revisionist historians, the Holocaust and other atrocities by the Nazis are depicted either as the result of Hitler’s personality or “insanity”, or worse, as an inevitable response to Soviet “totalitarianism”. As historical materialists, we understand that “great man” history or psycho-history of this kind which ignores the material and social forces at play in any historical setting is idealism, and reflects a disdain for the working class on whose shoulders history is truly carried. Indeed, there is some truth in the assertion that German fascism grew from a response to the Soviet Union, but not, as is falsely claimed, a response to Soviet aggression or attacks on personal liberties. For the 75th anniversary of the heroic victory over fascism, for which the Soviet people sacrificed as many as 30 million lives, it’s my hope to help make the case – which at one time was well known – that this victory, for the vast majority of people in the world, was a victory over the forces of colonialism and imperialism.

Death Does Not Dazzle the Eyes of the Partisans

By Adrien Welsh (translated from the French by Bronwyn Cragg)

February 21, 1944, Mont Valérien, 3pm. Nazi rifles detonate and shoot down 23 resistance fighters, half of whom are under the age of 25. All are part of the Manouchian group -- Manouchian, leader of the Partisan Snipers of the Main-d’œuvre immigrée. All but two are foreigners, many are Eastern Europeans, many are Jewish, and others are Spanish Republicans in exile. All are communists.

Anti-communism and Vice Media : is all alternative media really progressive?

Special to RY 

This article is a response of the YCL-LJC Canada to an article published on July 24th by Vice Media.

In an article published online on July 24th, the so-called alternative media reported on two young men, Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky, both researched by the RCMP in relation with two murders that occured in BC on July 14th. Reporting on facts revealed by the Globe and Mail linking these two individuals to ultra-right, neonazi and violent groups especially, the Vice article also states that « on Facebook, Schmegelsky also liked the Young Communist League of Victoria page » before continuing to enumerate his gun loving activities.

Big Corporations Win the French Presidential Elections

Adrien Welsh

On April 23rd, the French people were called to chose two out of the eleven candidates running for the Presidential elections who would make their way to the second round and aspire to be the next tenant of the Élysée palace.

In France, the first round for Presidential elections has never been a moment of great suspense. For decades, the two main political parties, the Socialists (PS) and the right (Les républicains and, formerly, the UMP or RPR) usually get to the second round with a comfortable margin. Polling institutions have an easy job in predicting who the two aspiring presidents will be. However, this year, until the last minute, four candidates  were polling at around 20% in the first round, namely Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen, François Fillion and Emmanuel Macron.

Harper’s History Lesson: anti-communism and war

Brendan Campisi

The Harper government's planned 'Memorial to the Victims of Communism', which will take its place in Ottawa between the Supreme Court and Library and Archives Canada, has come under scrutiny lately because of the significant and growing cost of the project. Shirley Blumberg, an architect who was on the jury that selected the design for the 'memorial', said in December that there is no way it will be completed for the government's estimated cost of $5.5 million. A growing chorus of establishment figures have criticized the project for its costs, the aesthetic damage they say it will do to central Ottawa, and the (at least) questionable necessity of such a memorial. The government has committed to paying $3 million of the cost of the project, while the rest is supposed to be paid by Tribute to Liberty, the anti-communist organization formed in 2008 to advocate for the project. However, they have so far had trouble raising the money. In fact there seems to be very little public interest in or support for the memorial, as any glance at the comments under a story on the project will reveal. Even many Canadians with no particular sympathy for communism cannot understand why the Harper government wants to spend several million dollars to put up a memorial to the victims of communism on prime central Ottawa real estate.

Attacks on young communists in France, Serbia and Venezuela are the latest violent examples of growing fascist threat

Communist Youth of Venezuela respond to attack
targeting their office and activists

By Drew Garvie

General Secretary, YCL-LJC of Canada

In late October, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a global anti-imperialist federation of youth organizations founded after the fascist defeat in Europe in 1945, issued two statements condemning fascist violence in both Venezuela and Yugoslavia. These attacks had occurred in the preceding weeks.

In the early morning hours of October 21st in Caracas, members of the Communist Youth of Venezuela (JCV) were finishing their work at their central offices. Several firebombs were launched at the building and a fire was started in their meeting room. Fortunately no comrades were injured in the attack and the fire was extinguished.

The JCV Executive Committee released a statement contextualizing the attack against them: "This deed occurs within the framework of violence imposed by fascism since February of this year carried out by mercenaries and paramilitaries serving the extreme, pro-imperialist right." This references an upsurge in right-wing protests that took place from February through June, which led to the deaths of 43 people. Most recently, Robert Serra, the youngest parliamentarian elected in Venezuelan history, and a member of Venezuela’s Socialist Party (PSUV), was murdered with Colombian paramilitaries being implicated.

On the dangerous developments in Ukraine

A sign at the 18th World Festival of Youth
and Students in Quito, Ecuador

Central Executive Committee,
Communist Party of Canada

The deepening political crisis in Ukraine and the threat of regional conflict, possibly an even wider war erupting over the fate of Crimea, is extremely alarming. The "war of words" emanating from Washington and Brussels is inflaming international tensions and could in turn provoke a global catastrophe. This crisis has been stoked by the ongoing imperialist strategy of the U.S. and NATO to encircle Russia, as seen in the installation of anti‑missile systems in Poland, and the integration of Georgia into the NATO alliance. Their goal is to isolate Russia and China, neutralizing potential obstacles to the drive by transnational capital based in the NATO countries to exploit the resources and labour power of the entire planet.

It is appalling that the Harper Conservative government has been playing an active role in this dangerous escalation, and that the mainstream media continue to whip up lies and distortions around recent developments in Ukraine. The claim by right‑wing forces that the March 16 referendum on the status of the Crimean Autonomous Republic is equivalent to the 1936 Nazi occupation of Sudetenland is particularly odious. The unchecked expansion of Hitler fascism led to World War Two, which killed some 60 million people, including over 27 million citizens of the USSR. As an autonomous republic, Crimea has the legal right to determine its status, free from all foreign interference.

For a peaceful and just resolution to the crisis in Ukraine, no to the ultra-right coup!

International commission,
Young Communist League of Canada
March 12th 2014

Recent events in Ukraine show the urgency for youth to fight for peace and genuine internationalism, and against imperialist alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO and the European Union, supported by US and Canadian imperialism, are backing reactionary elements in Ukraine, dangerously threatening the stability of the region and the world.

The Western corporate media and the Harper Conservatives are portraying the new Ukrainian government as democratic; however, the real story is that an ultra-right coalition including fascist groups staged a "regime-change" coup against a democratically elected government.

Is the U.S. Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?

Exposing troubling ties in the U.S. to overt Nazi and fascist protesters in Ukraine

By Max Blumenthal

Reposted from Alternet – Feb 24, 2014

As the Euromaidan protests in the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev culminated this week, displays of open fascism and neo-Nazi extremism became too glaring to ignore. Since demonstrators filled the downtown square to battle Ukrainian riot police and demand the ouster of the corruption-stained, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, it has been filled with far-right streetfighting men pledging to defend their country’s ethnic purity.

White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev’s occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin. After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established “autonomous zones” in and around Kiev.

CBC Radio One airs: "The Spanish Crucible"

An incredible story is being aired on CBC Radio One over the next few days and is now available online.

In the mid-to-late 1930s, about 1600 Canadian men and women left for Spain, to fight against the Fascist coup led by General Francisco Franco against the democratically elected Popular Front government.

Why did they go? How did they fight? How did they die? And when the survivors came home why were they harassed and spied on? These questions and more are addressed by the CBC interviews.

While Britian and the US declared 'neutrality' and quitely supported the fascists, the Soviet Union and countries like Mexico supported the Popular Front. Many forces were represented in the Popular Front government, and the disorganization of the army (including trying to organize units along the abstract principals of anarchism) helped contribute to the fascists making a rapid advance.

Although only a small part in the Popular Front government, the Communist Party of Spain worked together with the international communist movement to form a well organized and disciplined army of volunteers from around the world, know as the intentional brigades. The Communists and their allies earned tremendous respect.

The Canadian government of the day, however, made it illegal for any Canadian to join the war. Despite this, the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League, grass-roots members of the CCF, progressive organizations, and Canadian trade unions facilitated the movement of hundreds of Canadian fighters to join the tens of thousands of international volunteers to fight in a civil-war that helped shape the entirety of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Many of them travelled officially as tourists to France and then made the hard trek through the mountains. Eventually so many Canadians arrived they formed their own battalion and named it after the leaders of the democratic uprising against British colonial domination in 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau.

The first Canadian to die in Spain was a member of the Toronto YCL. While that young man's name is forgotten, history has remembered Dr. Norman Bethune who invented the MASH unit or mobile blood transfusion unit.

The MacPaps fought heroically but after several years of hard fighting the forces of fascism won -- with the help of fascist Italy and Germany. Germany sent the entire Condor Legion to Spain and spent over two hundred million US dollars (in 1939 currency) while Italy sent over 700 air planes, over a hundred tanks, four destroyers, submarines and put 90 additional naval ships into the ocean around Spain in a blockade.

Coming home, the battalion received a heros welcome in some parts of Canada, while fascist-sympathizers attacked them in other places. When war broke out with fascist Germany, many were interned in concentration camps as dangerous radicals and communists.

Never recognized officially as veterans of the just war to defend democracy in Spain, the Mac Paps sacrifice wakened millions of people to the danger of appeasement to fascism. This was perhaps epitomized by the 1938 non-aggression treaty between Chamberlain and Hitler (signed right after the Munich deal).

Years later, Jouranlist Mac Reynolds travelled Canada in 1964 and 1965, looking for Mac-Pap vets, and recording as many as he could. He made over 50 interviews and recorded 150 hours of tape. Reynolds himself had been a supporter of the cause at that time, in Britain and Canada, and a friend of the CPC.


CBC archives contain a letter from Reynolds to the legendary producer and CBC executive Robert Weaver, asking about airtime. But there was no reply on file, nor any evidence that the material had ever aired. Instead the tapes were mothballed.

A campaign in the late 1990s saw some small plaques erected for the Mac Paps in places like Victoria, Ottawa and Toronto. Several books, including by veterans, have been written about the Mac Paps although the total literature is relatively small.

In Spain, however, the Mac Paps are heros and have been awarded many honors -- even honorary citizenship.


As to the tapes, no one but the CBC archivists knew the material was there, or had paid it any mind, until CBC producer Steve Wadhams recently rediscovered the files. “Forty-plus years of doing radio, and I have never stumbled into a treasure trove like this,” Wadhams told the Globe and Mail newspaper.

The CBC Radio programme "Living Out Loud" aired these accounts in a two-part documentary titled " The Spanish Crucible".

These interviews are already available online - http://www.cbc.ca/livingoutloud/

This article combines reports, sources and articles by Kate Taylor, F. Ahmed, Joe Fiorito and D. Rankin

Fascism rears its ugly head among forces against Québec student strike

The original article, click to read a PDF

Students, unions and other progressive voices in Quebec are condemning the statements of a high-level Québec civil servant from last week, but the provincial Charest Liberal government doesn`t seem particularly bothered that one of their staff proposed pro-fascist movements inspire the resolution of the student strike.

Bernard Guay, head of the tax office in the Municipal Affairs Department, recently wrote a vehement online letter against the on-going student protests, which have rocked the province.

The letter was published on the website of the Quebec City-based Le Soleil -- but generated such an outcry, including a street protest outside the paper`s offices, that the newspaper withdrew it and apologized to readers. You can read the original article, in French, here in PDF.

The text was titled, in rough translation, "For an end to the student strikes." Among other things, Guay urged opponents of the student strike to:

• draw on the "fascist movements" of the 1920s 30s to deal with "leftists" what the author terms "their own medicine";
• find the  "means" to remedy this "wasteful and anti-social" situation by  cabal, by organizing a secret political clique or faction (his word was `cabal`)
• the cabal would mobilize masses of students to cross their picket lines, and also assault the wearers of the symbolic red square
• when you see someone in the street wearing a red square, confront them, respond to the `bullying` of the students with a challenge
• "people who oppose the views in the left-wing controlled media (sic) must develop their own media... (such as the) popular radio stations in the regions of Quebec (which) worry our leftists, so they are constantly trying to discredit them by calling them trash-radio."

We must do everything, he says, to "overcome the tyranny of Leftist agitators" he writes.

Facism in Lithuania

On the signs of revanshisme and facsisme in Lithuania

On 9th of June, 2009 the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania gave his initial approval, and at the autumn session which starts in September it plans the final approval of the amendments to the Penal Code of Lithuania which will criminalise public approval, negation, belittling or justification of „genocide committed by communism and facsisme“. The draft amendments, if approved, will also criminalise the public “blackmail” of so-called „members of Lithuania‘s freedom fights movement – volunteer fighters, who in the years 1944 – 1953 were fighting with weapons against soviet occupation“. The amendments to the article 154 of the Penal Code, submitted by members of the party „Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian democrats“ Paulius Saudargas and Petras Luomanas, foresee a fine, or a limitation of person’s freedom, or arrest, or jailing for up to 3 years.

If these amendments come into force, the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, which is currently dominated by Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian democrats, will: a) equally treat communism and facsisme which are incomparable; b) forbid to raise doubts about the reputation and investigate the biographies of members of so-called “Lithuania‘s freedom fights movement”, although a big part of them were nazi collaborators and took part in mass killings of civil population of Lithuania during the WW II thus committing crime against humanity; many of them, having no choice as the war was coming to its end, were trained by the retreating nazi army and special services for the diversion ant terrorist fights, which they perpetrated also during the post-war years, mainly against the civilians.

Bearing all this in mind, the mentioned amendments should be regarded as signs of revanshisme and facsisme, as a direct assault against freedom of opinion and human rights, to which there should be a categorical negative reaction. One cannot allow the coming into force of the amendments. The political party „Frontas“ and Socialist party of Lithuania appeal to all progressive organisations in the world, to all Parliaments and Governments, to human rights organisations, in particular to those that chase and help bringing to justice hiding war criminals and those that committed crimes against humanity, with the request to react to the intentions of the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania to approve the mentioned amendments to the Penal Code, by using all possible legal pressure and influence so that the regrettable and shameful amendments do not come into force. We suggest and immediate creation of International Commission for investigation of biographies of „members of Lithuania‘s freedom fights movement”, investigating on a case by case basis and without bias, using information available in different countries. Only by going this way shall we stop the resurrection of facsisme and revanchisme.

Presidium of the political party „Frontas“ Board of Socialist party of Lithuania

Contacts: + 370 698 772 42; + 370 686 902 93; algirdas.paleckis@gmail.com