Source: In These Times
by J Patrick Patterson
“Has this ever worked? Kind of famously, yes — at least for a while. In the 1930s, as fascist movements stomped across Europe, popular fronts emerged to block the spread. In France and Spain, leftists, centrists and anti-fascist liberals joined forces to beat back the far right, sometimes literally. In the United States, the Communist Party helped bring broad, anti-fascist politics into public life, forming coalitions among Black writers, labor organizers and progressive cultural workers. As historian Bill Mullen writes in Popular Fronts, the period saw ‘an extraordinary rapprochement’ between Black and white members of the U.S. Left — not just in protest, but in culture, art and publishing. ” (10/29/25)