National DSA Antifascist Working Group Announcement
We are the official and NPC recognized Democratic Socialists of America National Antifascist Working Group (DSA AFWG). We are the main conduit for fighting the far right in the DSA at a national and local level.
Currently, the far right and outright fascists organize on multiple fronts inside and outside of the United States. The far right organizes across national boundaries using both traditional organizing strategies such as elections as well as attempting to infiltrate cultural spaces to make their political agenda palatable to mainstream audiences. In some countries, street-fighting fascist groups are growing, such as Shiv Sena in India, or the Proud Boys in the U.S. While the defeat of Trump and the ongoing government crackdown of the January 6 insurrectionaries has led to a period of fracture within the far right in the US, historically these groups have used such times to organize underground networks that will reappear when the liberal hegemony has weakened. Any future disappointment with the Biden administration could help the U.S. far right grow in a hardened anti-state direction.
Fascism exists as a specific political tendency that needs to be countered, while the far right is a broader political layer that intersects with many of DSA’s existing working groups and campaigns. The DSA AFWG seeks to work in coalition with existing groups in DSA, especially the Afrosocialist and Socialist of Color Caucus and Immigrant Rights Working Groups to fight the far right in their attempt to brutalize BIPOC communities. The recent surge of anti-Asian violence is another area of organizing for antifascist work within the DSA.
The DSA AFWG believes that Antifascism takes many forms. One part of fighting the far-right is building the left alternative, which all of DSA is involved in. But when fascist groups are growing, and when they threaten targeted communities, a direct response is needed. We believe a specifically socialist response is called for, as is working with broader, and larger, layers.
Antifascism is democratic community defense. A priority for our work is organizing local chapters of antifascists in DSA. We also seek to foster political education at a national and chapter level to inform on the nature of the far right and fascism in our contemporary political context, and how the DSA can help fight against it. We aim to assist in planning self-defense, monitoring and counter-protests against the far right across chapters.
While the far right exists as grouplets outside of the capitalist state, many far right individuals are employed by the state in the ranks of the police, border security, prison guards and other organs of state violence, including the military. The AFWG supports the Defund and Abolish the police campaign as well as supports the work of prison and border abolition as well as anti-war and anti-imperialist campaigns inside the DSA, including the work of the International Committee (IC).
Socialism rests on worker power, and fascism aims at wiping out all vestiges of worker’s power and independent unions. The DSA AFWG wants to foster work in the labor movement to root out support for the far right in unions, and involve organized labor in the fight against fascism.
Fascism grows out of a sexist, homophobic and transphobic culture, while in turn contributing to that culture. Fascists seek to limit bodily autonomy and enforce rigid sex roles. This is accomplished through the supreme court restricting abortion access, through a concerted anti-trans agenda in the far right media, to outright violence. The right to an abortion and bodily autonomy is central to the antifascist project. The AFWG seeks to work with the Socialist Feminists in their campaigns to protect the right to an abortion.
When fascist or fascist-adjacent far right individuals or parties participate in elections, electoral campaigns are also important in isolating them and reducing their support.
Antifascists do not rely on state power to stop fascists. Mass mobilization by the DSA, however, can act as a bulwark against the ever radicalizing Republican Party. Although fascism relies on its violent street movement, historically, fascists have mostly come to power not through coups or insurrections, but by winning elections. Currently, the far right holds power through legally legitimate political parties like Narendra Modis’ Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, Jair Bolsanaro’s Social Christian Party in Brazil and potentially Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. At times in the United States, the Republican party has served as a vehicle for outright fascistic politics — -for example KKK member David Duke’s election to the Louisiana legislature in 1989. It is the responsibility of the DSA to join in the fight against the radicalization currently under way in US politics.
Under capitalism, the far right is only one election away from gaining power and immiserating the lives of the working class. It remains a threat to BIPOC, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ+ folk, and the working-class everywhere. If you would like to get involved in the fight against the far right, please join us!
DSA Members can join the AFWG by filling out this form.
If you are not a DSA member yet, please join!
Death to fascism! Freedom to the people!
Solidarity comrades,
Democratic Socialists of America National Antifascist Working Group
