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.

The history of student union federations in English-speaking Canada (1)

A history of student struggle for unity
by Drew Garvie

The student movement has a long, proud history of struggle across Canada. This issue of Rebel Youth is going to print as the Canadian Federation of Students, English Canada’s largest and only independent student union federation, finds itself facing crises on several fronts: a split with the “BC Federation of Students” (what was left of CFS-BC) and attacks from Ontario’s Doug Ford government which threaten to defund a large part of their remaining base in Ontario.

Communist Women in Canada: Revolutionary Bios

1927: left to right: F Custance, E Lawrence, B Buhay & A Buller

Marianne Breton Fontaine & Drew Garvie

In 1917, International Women’s Day in Russia helped to launch the Russian Revolution, which ended up inspiring working people around the world, including many working women in Canada.

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was founded in 1921 in Canada, in a barn in Guelph, Ontario under conditions of illegality. The Young Communist League of Canada was founded soon after in 1923. In this article Rebel Youth takes a look at some of the women that led the major struggles of their day and continue to inspire the struggle for full gender equality and for socialism.

Canada’s $15 Billion Saudi Arms Deal: What History Can Tell Us

TJ Petrowski

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it is a “matter of principle” that Canada follows through with a $15 billion armaments deal with Saudi Arabia, a totalitarian state which funds international terrorism, stones women to death for the crime of being raped, and that leads the world in public beheadings. This decision has been sharply criticized by journalists, activists, and international organizations. In a public statement Amnesty International said that it has “good reason to fear that light armored vehicles supplied” to Saudi Arabia by Canada “are likely to be used in situations that would violate human rights” in both “neighbouring countries” and for ‘suppressing demonstrations and unrest within Saudi Arabia” [1]. Montreal students and a former Bloc Quebecois MP and law professor have filed a class action lawsuit to block the deal, citing that by selling weapons to countries with poor human rights records Canada is violating its own laws [2].

63 years since the Cold War murdered Ethel & Julius Rosenberg

"Save the Rosenbergs" rally in France

Brendan Campisi

Today it will have been sixty-three years since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. While I believe that the actions the Rosenbergs were accused of -- helping the USSR break the US monopoly on nuclear weapons -- were an act of service to humanity, the details of what they did and did not do are, in the final analysis, not that important.

Remembering Canadian Imperialism: a brief history

Brendan Campisi

The first major campaign of the Canadian military was crushing Métis and First Nations resistance in 1885.

In the Boer War, Canadian troops fought for Britain's control of the gold and diamonds of South Africa.

In the First World War, Canadians fought and died to keep Britain on top of the imperialist food chain. The people of Quebec resisted conscription for a war they opposed,and four people were killed by troops suppressing protests. BC working class leader Ginger Goodwin was hunted down and murdered while resisting conscription.

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.

¡REVOLUCIONARIAS!

Róisín Lyder

Rebel Youth presents 10 biographies of revolutionary women!

Angela Davis

“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?”

Angela Davis first became involved in the black liberation and communist movements in the late 1960s as a professor at the University of California Los Angeles. As an outspoken critic of US imperialism and white supremacy, Davis was targeted for persecution and was imprisoned in 1970 on charges of murder and kidnapping. After a massive mobilization across the world demanded her freedom, Davis was acquitted in 1972. She has continued her political work to this day, as well as pioneering theoretical work on the relationship between race, class, and gender and on incarceration. Lefties today are sometimes still spotted sporting a nostalgic ‘Free Angela!’ button.

Quiz time

The YCL and Rebel Youth have developed a new quiz as part of our ongoing series to honour the history of our movement. All communists are from the 1920s to 1940s.  Check it out below! or click on the link here.

Newspaper stories telling the history of the YCL during the cold war, 1951-1954

During the cold war the Young Communist League was known as the National Federation of Labour Youth.

One of its main campaign issues was against a nuclear holocaust and third world war, working with organizations such as the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Democratic Youth of which the NFLY was a founding member.

One of its major efforts was petition for the Stockholm Appeal.

On March 15, 1950, the World Peace Council approved the Stockholm Appeal, calling for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. The appeal was initiated by the physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a nuclear scientist and Nobel Prize winner. The text of the Appeal read:

We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples. We demand strict international control to enforce this measure. We believe that any government which first uses atomic weapons against any other country whatsoever will be committing a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as a war criminal. We call on all men and women of good will throughout the world to sign this appeal.

Here are some newspaper stories from the Pacific Tribune, the west coast edition of the Canadian Tribune; Both newspapers were published by the Labour Progressive Party, as the Communist Party of Canada was then know.