World Press Digest

How should the Jews in America act in the coming struggle with Fascism in the United States?

James Marshall, young Jewish leader and member of the Executive of the American Jewish Committee, in an interview in the New York World-Telegram answers this question as follows:

First of all, they must rid themselves of the false notion that Fascism is their problem, that it is aimed especially at Jews. It is not, and all the Hitlers in the world cannot make it so. It will destroy the liberty of all people. It will suppress freedom of press, of speech, of action. It will crack down on all labor organizations and every rival political party, nothing could be more in violation of the spirit of the American Constitution and of the American Revolution than the pro – American programs and propaganda of our Fascist groups.

‘JEWS NOT A NATION’

Secondly, a large group of Jews must eliminate from their psychology and vocabulary the theory that the Jews are a nation. This is a ghetto survival, and the sooner it is forgotten the better it will be.

From the Jewish point of view it is ridiculous because it accepts the racial theory of nationalism of the Nazis. I do not mean that Jews should cease to be Jews. They have accepted the land of their birth and its institutions with devotion; they have loyally fought for it and helped develop it without abandoning this Judaism.

ASSIMILATION NOT SOLUTION

Assimilation has been demonstrated to be an impossible solution by the savants of Herr Hitler, who have told us that, ordinary laws of eugenics notwithstanding, it takes only one grandparent or a marriage ceremony to make a Jew.

In the third place, merely because a large proportion of Jews are middle class merchants and manufacturers and professional men, they must not permit themselves to be lured into the Fascist movement. They cannot hope to buy the salvation of their fellow Jews or— except rarely—of themselves. If there is anything which Germany teaches us it is that the support of Fascists, whether they be like the Hitler Nazis or like the Hugenburg Nationalists cannot offer escape.

AVOID MOVEMENTS

Not only must Jews not be drawn into Fascist movements such as the National Liberty League and America First merely because as business and professional men they are oppressed by taxation and labor costs, but they must not let themselves be brought in more to show that they are not Communists.

Of course, the Jewish banker and merchant are not Communists and there are many ways of showing their opposition, of illustrating that they are not disciples of Marx and Trotzky, without becoming converts to Hitler and Mussolini.

The fact that Italian Fascism is not anti-Semitic is due to the circumstances that there are few Jews in Italy. They form an inconsequential minority there. But in Italy, too, that freedom and democracy which are the result of the French and American revolutions has been destroyed, and it is in that freedom that Jews have thriven.

SHUN TIMIDITY

In America, however, Fascism will, if it comes, be different than in Italy. Here Jews will be lumped with other minorities, the Negroes, the foreign born and labor, as the special objects of Fascist animosity. The literature of the budding American Fascist movement gives ample proof of this.

Jewish people of America should not be either timid or inactive. They should not refrain from participation normally in the industrial, professional, scholarly and political life of the country in the hope that if they are demure the angel of death will pass their door. Retreat behind curtained windows will only result in psychoneurosis and a new ghetto.