The U.S. doesn’t have a multiparty system, a proportional representation electoral arrangement, or a historical memory of what direct fascist rule looks like. That means the tactics and messaging will be different here and the alliances less formal, but it’s worth remembering that the popular front strategy has strong roots in our country, too.

BACK WHEN THE COMMUNISTS WERE IN THE UNIONS AND HAD THE THIRD LARGEST PARTY IN THE FUCKING COUNTRY AND HAD DUAL POWER STRUCTURES IN EXISTENCE AND HAD THE COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE COMINTERN TO DRAW FROM IN ORGANIZING A COMMUNIST PARTY What the fuck do you have now, CJ? A party ran by geriatric liberals who's only experience is phonebanking for democrats, eating brunch with mimosas, and lie. Your entire constitutional convention, pile of shit that it is, was literally about starting from scratch all of the party organs the party leadership liquidated for 24 fucking years. My party's fucking ahead of you and has everything you've destroyed, and I'm sure all the other comrades here in other parties can attest that they have equivalent levels of development, if not better in some fields more than others. I've read the main report of the 32nd National Convention of the Communist Party USA as presented by Joe Sims and read every single thing that he said he wants to build in CPUSA and said variations of "Yeah, you liquidated that, yeah we already do that, holy shit how aren't you doing that already" absolute fucking embarrassment of a party. a veritable corpse marionetted on strings to dance for the Democratic party.

In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression and with World War II looming, communists, labor activists, liberals, Democrats, and other progressives came together to block the road to fascism in America. (Along the way, they also organized unions in the major industries and won Social Security and unemployment insurance.)

look at the last paragraph and read the first line that was written in all caps

In the U.S., the strategy was called “the People’s Front.” Drawing on the experiences witnessed in places like France, the U.S., Germany, Britain, and others, Dimitrov pulled together the lessons learned from both victories and losses in the struggle against fascism to craft the popular front strategy, which he presented at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International in 1935. U.S. Communists helped craft the global left’s turn that Dimitrov put into writing.

and all the communists of that time would roll in their graves if they knew how their theories were being bastardized by faux communists

At the core of the popular front strategy is the idea of broad-based coalition politics, and it’s formulated around a couple of key strategic questions. First, it asks what goal, if won, can change the relationship of forces and open up the possibility for advance. Second, it sets out who are the main opponents and possible allies in the struggle to achieve that goal. This means determining who has the self-interest to fight for the goal and assessing their organization, consciousness, and capacity to join in the fight.

For the People’s Front of the 1930s, the goal was the containment of fascism and the defeat of the anti-New Deal section of capital and the Republican Party. As delegates to a convention of the Communist Party heard in June 1936, “There are two chief and opposite directions of possible development in political life…. All parties and groups must be judged by their relation to these two fundamental political tendencies.”

To win a people’s recovery program in the Great Depression, this meant lining up all the forces of progress on one side to take on the forces of reaction on the other.

A December 1936 document followed up: “Our country, in common with the rest of the capitalist world, is threatened with reaction, fascism, and war…. Everything that organizes and activates the working class and its allies is progress toward socialism; likewise, everything that weakens and discourages the forces of reaction goes in the same direction.”

Nothing you are doing is activating the working class or its allies nor progresses towards socialism. What does that leave?

There were two main camps, and those who cared about stopping the worst assaults of the reactionary right and opening a way forward had to pick sides. The CPUSA has followed some variation of the People’s Front strategy ever since, making adjustments as circumstances demanded – right up to the present day.

And to varying degrees it was necessary in the past when the party was under communist leadership

Today, in 2024, we face a challenge similar to that of the 1930s. Whatever may happen within the Democratic Party when it comes to the question of Biden’s candidacy, the task for the labor, left, and people’s movements is still to stop Trump and MAGA fascism. If the latter win, all bets are off when it comes to the question of whether any democratic space will remain for us to organize, mobilize, and resist going forward.

I bet you were crying into your midnight margarita treats for the 4 years under biden thinking america suddenly nazi germany.

A major part of building the unity that’s needed, of course, is also fighting for the Biden administration to dump its own reactionary policies, like backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its Trump-like immigration policies. The White House’s approach on these issues puts unity in peril.

YOU ARE YEARS TO THE PARTY TOO FUCKING LATE CJ. Much like the american political system awakens and falls dormant in a cycle like a bear living through years of its life, your entire political strategy revolves around becoming active during presidential elections when it's too late affect the results and talk about how its needed to build coalitions, then completely fucking disappear the moment the new president is sworn in and wait until it's time to stomp for the democrats again to bring out the same empty platitudes and the same revolutionary in form reactionary in essence organizational plans.

Black voters and their organizations, by and large, understand the threat facing the country and serve as an example to follow. Surveying the recent string of reactionary Supreme Court rulings, the NAACP, for instance, blasted out the warning: “Elections have consequences. This is what Trump was able to do in the last term, what would the next look like?”

badgering black americans to vote for your bluemaga candidate who's done nothing for them except spit in their face and tell 'em to be thankful he's not the other guy is surely a winning strategy. Especially when its the guy that's spent his entire career tearing apart their lives. what a winning strategy, CJ.

What is to be done next?

Knowing it's CJ writing the article, it's gonna be "VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO OR YOU'RE A FASCIST!"

For the left and democratic forces in France, they now move on to the next step: figuring out how to govern and implement a pro-working class policy agenda, starting with picking a prime minister. They’ll have to cooperate with Macron and his center forces while also contending with a larger far-right bloc in parliament.

Man, the last thing the popular front in France should do is cooperate with the fucking hindenbergs. Either Macron bends the knee to the Left, or he reveals to the French working class that he's a fascist collaborator. Simple as.

But because they followed a popular front approach, they have preserved and expanded the space for progressive advance and democratic struggle. The fascists were beaten back for now, and there are real opportunities to make new gains for workers, women, people of color, immigrants, and youth in France.

The Lesson CJ learned from France is that when you beat fascism back, you have to back the status quo that allowed fascism to rise and do absolutely nothing else except make sure nothing fundamentally changes.

Here in the U.S., we’ve still got to a lot of work to do in the months ahead. We have to fight to preserve and further build unity among the anti-MAGA majority. We have to resist the media’s temptations to sink into a contest of personalities that the Biden “replacement debate” has sparked. Instead of getting too caught up in the speculation of who might replace the president at the top of the ticket, what we need to fight for right now are replacement policies on issues like Gaza and the border.

A lot of work that hasn't been done with little time left. and you'll spend every second of it saying Genocide Joe's still electable even though currently he's crumbling into dust signing blank checks to fund international fascism. Also your cute line about fighting for "replacement policies on issues like Gaza and the border." is fucking cute. Who's doing the fighting? You and what army, jackass?

And above all, we need to keep highlighting the threat posed by MAGA fascism; the dictatorial desires of Trump and his enablers in the courts, Congress, and right-wing-controlled state legislatures; and the Project 2025 schemes being drafted on behalf of the capitalist class by outfits like the Heritage Foundation.

BUZZWORD BUZZWORD BUZZWORD

French workers showed us what can be done: The popular front strategy is still our best hope to block fascism and open the road to new victories.

Best of luck to parliamentary systems that can actually utilize it in countries that actually have communist and socialist parties. We have none of those here, and by the looks of it that'll continue to be the case.

As with all op-ed and news analytical articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the opinions of its author.

What a load of shit

France proved the popular front strategy is the way to beat fascism

Myopic. Fascism is a social movement caused by material conditions that can't be "defeated" through any means other than eliminating the conditions that give rise to it.

The conditions that give rise to fascism are the increasing proletarianisation of the petit-bourgeoisie against a backdrop of increasing deterioration of proletarian quality of life producing a rising threat of socialism, this combination forms the motivation for the bourgeoisie to fund fascists as a violent force to destroy the rising threat of socialism (kill the communists) and the material forces from which to build their base (the squeezed petit-bourgeoise feeling threatened).

You can not "defeat" fascism. You can only remove the conditions that give rise to it. This is achieved either:

1. Eliminating the socialists after which the bourgeoisie willingly transition the fascism back into liberalism because it's a more efficient means of profit extraction (as seen everywhere that fascism won).

2. Massive socdem reform to rescue capitalism from itself and alleviate the conditions building the left and right.

3. The socialists winning and removing the bourgeoise entirely.

Claiming this is a "defeat" of fascism is just nonsense. It's a temporary setback to them that won't result in number 2 happening because the country is split into thirds almost perfectly.

Damn I didn't know Brandon was in a coalition with the Communist Party.

Bit idea: run for office on a platform of banning the communist party but don't tell anyone it's just this shitty pro-genocide lib wrecker party that you're gonna destroy