"No. I have already made my peace with God. I am already prepared to die for the revolutionary struggle. I am begging you to save your own soul, and turn away from this madness. But if you're determined to plunge this nation into darkness, hurry up and shoot me, and quit wasting my time."
— The last words of President-Elect Norman Thomas
"Comrades, I do not have to tell you that we are living through the American people's darkest hour. You have seen it first hand with the relentless march of the jackboot through our nation's countryside and great cities. Everywhere the forces of reaction tread, they leave suffering and death in their wake. Their collaborators, the faithless Junkers of American industry, who would sooner see the whole house burn down than part with a single coin, have at each and every step of the way enabled this atrocity.
This is a class war being waged against the American masses. It is conspiracy by the opulent and powerful and their hangers-on to drive the American worker into chains of slavery. And in this mad grab for power, this bourgeois reaction, helmed by the despot MacArthur, has waged war not only on the proletarians of all nations, but against all the hallowed institutions they claim to uphold.
The fascists have accused the class-conscious proletarians, schooled in the university of the working classes that is the Communist Party, of being godless. These same fascists have immolated churches, and their congregations of poor but pious Negroes, in a campaign of racialist reactionary terror. They have claimed to have protected the constitution by systematically destroying all its protections, and overthrowing the lawfully elected government of the United States. They respond to the democratic will of the people with bayonets. Make no mistake, fellow sufferers, this is not just a political conflict. They have waged a total war against human decency itself.
The senselessness of this war against democracy is a fitting end for the bourgeois epoch. Amidst America's stupendous wealth there is also stupendous poverty. Our industry, the great machinery of abundance, has left us in want. The great wealth piled high by centuries of unrequited toil is being squandered in fruitless war at the merest hint of political leveling.
But amidst this savagery, all hope is not lost. The Antifascist forces have fought on, enduring hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their freedom. The brave men and women of the Red guards and workers' militias have delivered several humiliating defeats to the Fascists. Their forces striking the great proletarian strongholds of the Northeast and Midwest have been routed.
The old world, mired in the hate, greed and bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress, is in its death agony. We have only to seize the moment and strike while the iron is hot. What the new world will bring is up to us, and right now we can safely say this is not a question of Left or Right. There is only forward. We must resist the temptation to give into the comforts of familiar evils and rebuild the corrupt and rotten old world. We will only be condemning our children and our children's children to poverty and misery, doomed to repeat the cycle of class conflict and revolution yet again.
We must have the courage to make a clean break with the past. We can no longer be satisfied with a simple fight to restore the old Constitution and the old world it represents. We must fight for a new world; a decent world that will give men good work, give youth a future, and give old age security.
Capitalism promised these things to the pious and hardworking. It could not fulfill that promise to the great multitudes, and in our current epoch it has failed to deliver its rewards even to the masters of capital. It never will.
It is up to the American worker to fight to fulfill that promise. In the name of democracy and socialism, let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, hate and intolerance. We shall cast aside the old order, and build a new world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. And under the leadership of the Popular Front, uniting all proletarian and liberal political forces, we shall tear down the despotic dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
To mark the beginning of this new dawn, we declare the formation of a Union of American Socialist Republics as a free association of the workers, soldiers, sailors, farmers and people of the United States."
This is a class war being waged against the American masses. It is conspiracy by the opulent and powerful and their hangers-on to drive the American worker into chains of slavery. And in this mad grab for power, this bourgeois reaction, helmed by the despot MacArthur, has waged war not only on the proletarians of all nations, but against all the hallowed institutions they claim to uphold.
The fascists have accused the class-conscious proletarians, schooled in the university of the working classes that is the Communist Party, of being godless. These same fascists have immolated churches, and their congregations of poor but pious Negroes, in a campaign of racialist reactionary terror. They have claimed to have protected the constitution by systematically destroying all its protections, and overthrowing the lawfully elected government of the United States. They respond to the democratic will of the people with bayonets. Make no mistake, fellow sufferers, this is not just a political conflict. They have waged a total war against human decency itself.
The senselessness of this war against democracy is a fitting end for the bourgeois epoch. Amidst America's stupendous wealth there is also stupendous poverty. Our industry, the great machinery of abundance, has left us in want. The great wealth piled high by centuries of unrequited toil is being squandered in fruitless war at the merest hint of political leveling.
But amidst this savagery, all hope is not lost. The Antifascist forces have fought on, enduring hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their freedom. The brave men and women of the Red guards and workers' militias have delivered several humiliating defeats to the Fascists. Their forces striking the great proletarian strongholds of the Northeast and Midwest have been routed.
The old world, mired in the hate, greed and bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress, is in its death agony. We have only to seize the moment and strike while the iron is hot. What the new world will bring is up to us, and right now we can safely say this is not a question of Left or Right. There is only forward. We must resist the temptation to give into the comforts of familiar evils and rebuild the corrupt and rotten old world. We will only be condemning our children and our children's children to poverty and misery, doomed to repeat the cycle of class conflict and revolution yet again.
We must have the courage to make a clean break with the past. We can no longer be satisfied with a simple fight to restore the old Constitution and the old world it represents. We must fight for a new world; a decent world that will give men good work, give youth a future, and give old age security.
Capitalism promised these things to the pious and hardworking. It could not fulfill that promise to the great multitudes, and in our current epoch it has failed to deliver its rewards even to the masters of capital. It never will.
It is up to the American worker to fight to fulfill that promise. In the name of democracy and socialism, let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, hate and intolerance. We shall cast aside the old order, and build a new world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. And under the leadership of the Popular Front, uniting all proletarian and liberal political forces, we shall tear down the despotic dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
To mark the beginning of this new dawn, we declare the formation of a Union of American Socialist Republics as a free association of the workers, soldiers, sailors, farmers and people of the United States."
— Provisional First Secretary William Z. Foster's "Red Dawn" speech, broadcast 1 May 1933.
"So it comes to this. Britain and France, who had every power to stop the Hun from arising in a new and more terrible form than ever; stand by and let the jackboot tread the steppes of Russia and damn hundreds of millions to certain annihilation and slavery. In our fear of Red America, China, and Russia, we have once again consigned millions to the fascist crocodile in hopes that they will be satisfied. And in their hopes to destroy Stalin, Jinwei, and Sinclair they forget that creatures like Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Hirohito's Japan and Salgado's Brazil will never be satisfied. Ever shall they look for more to devour, until the whole world is theirs, and even then I doubt that they will not lust for more.
We fear and hate America and the other red states so much that we can no longer see the true threat. The new system that America has created is far from beyond reproach, that is true. They accept their state's involvement in all things and have surrendered a right to free enterprise in the search of equality. They recklessly go forwards in hopes of finding Utopia without ever looking back and considering the path they are taking. Many have perished in their enthusiasm to break with the past and create their new system. And yet America remains a place where Liberty is cherished. There are open and fair elections in a multiparty system. You would not find Stalin's strongmanship there, nor Jinwei's lack of certainty for the future. Though we may disagree on economics and many moral policies, we still cherish liberty and democracy, and perhaps through America's influence, the rest of the Comintern can be guided away from the Stalinist model to something better.
And yet thanks to our short-sighted folly, we would risk allowing vast portions of the world fall into the darkness of hateful and greedy men. I am no friend of Communism, anyone who knows me is aware of that, and earlier in my career I have indeed made comments in favor of the Fascist system as a bulwark against Marxism, comments I now deeply regret. And yet when I think about the war engulfing Russia and China and the war that looms over South America and the war that the Americans are committing themselves too, I can only think about how millions are suffering or shall suffer. I can only see people rushing to defend their homes, people gathering around any source of news they can to see what future awaits them, human beings receiving the letter that all families dread to hear and looking over the horizon with terror of what may come from it."
We fear and hate America and the other red states so much that we can no longer see the true threat. The new system that America has created is far from beyond reproach, that is true. They accept their state's involvement in all things and have surrendered a right to free enterprise in the search of equality. They recklessly go forwards in hopes of finding Utopia without ever looking back and considering the path they are taking. Many have perished in their enthusiasm to break with the past and create their new system. And yet America remains a place where Liberty is cherished. There are open and fair elections in a multiparty system. You would not find Stalin's strongmanship there, nor Jinwei's lack of certainty for the future. Though we may disagree on economics and many moral policies, we still cherish liberty and democracy, and perhaps through America's influence, the rest of the Comintern can be guided away from the Stalinist model to something better.
And yet thanks to our short-sighted folly, we would risk allowing vast portions of the world fall into the darkness of hateful and greedy men. I am no friend of Communism, anyone who knows me is aware of that, and earlier in my career I have indeed made comments in favor of the Fascist system as a bulwark against Marxism, comments I now deeply regret. And yet when I think about the war engulfing Russia and China and the war that looms over South America and the war that the Americans are committing themselves too, I can only think about how millions are suffering or shall suffer. I can only see people rushing to defend their homes, people gathering around any source of news they can to see what future awaits them, human beings receiving the letter that all families dread to hear and looking over the horizon with terror of what may come from it."
— Winston Churchill in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Parliament
