Morning Star: On Victory Day, oppose the erasure of the international alliance that defeated fascism
Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’.
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During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican forces were made up of assorted factions such as communists, socialists, anarchists, and others with differing goals. Yet they were united in their opposition to the Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, who sought a return to pre-Republican Spain based on law, order, and traditional Catholic values.[9]
Guernica, a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country, was seen as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance movement and the center of Basque culture. This added to its significance as a target.[10] Around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the Nazi Germany Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)
There are many derivatives of ‘Guernica’ – often as public murals – since it has achieved iconic status of anti-war and anti-Fascist symbolism.
Morning Star: On Victory Day, oppose the erasure of the international alliance that defeated fascism
VICTORY DAY, celebrating the surrender of Nazi Germany, should be an occasion for international unity.
Time zone differences mean a surrender effective from 11.01pm Central European Time on May 8 1945 is celebrated on May 8 in the West and May 9 in the East, but it was the same victory, won by a people’s war in which the “big three,” Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, played the main military role.
Victory over fascism laid the basis of the modern international system. Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and China coined the term United Nations to describe the Allies in 1942, declaring a “common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”
To join the UN, a country had to declare war on Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan. International law as we know it flows from the anti-fascist war.
That system is under threat as never before. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become a proxy war, in which Nato weaponry, equipment, training and actual special forces are engaged.
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On Victory Day, we should strike a light against the gathering dark. Honour the memories of all who fell to defeat fascism. Oppose the rewriting of history, and the march to war.
Morning Star: On Victory Day, oppose the erasure of the international alliance that defeated fascism
The first fascists – and the first anti-fascists – in London 100 years ago
Historian ALFIO BERNABEI tells the remarkable story of how Sylvia Pankhurst and Silvio Corio railed against the fascist ‘camorra’ in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the aftermath of Mussolini’s seizure of power
IT WAS from their office near the British Museum at 98 Great Russell Street that 100 years ago the newly born branch of the Italian Fascist Party issued an invitation to a ball in the heart of London, the first such event in Britain.
The “Black Shirt Gala Ball” was to be held at the luxurious Cecil Hotel in the Strand on February 25 1923 “in aid of the fund for the fascista home in London.”
The eyecatching announcement in the Italian fascist weekly L’Eco d’Italia listed: DANCING from 8.30 P.M. (Evening Dress, Black Shirts for members of the Fascista Party), SUPPER at 10.30 P.M. and more DANCING TILL 3 A.M.
The wording made clear that the event was an official one organised “under the patronage of the Italian ambassador to the Court of St James, Marquis Della Torretta of the Princes of Lampedusa” with the Italian military and naval attaches in attendance.
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Everything was going well for the fascists — except for a pioneering movement of opposition born in London that was using language equivalent to a call to arms.
This movement was formed by a group of Italian anti-fascists centred around Soho who had launched their own publication, a weekly called Il Comento.
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