What We Need Is a Popular Front Against Fascism
As fascism’s grip only grows tighter, the popular fronts of yesterday can become blueprints for solidarity today.
J. Patrick Patterson
pop • u • lar front
noun
1. a broad political alliance united against fascism or authoritarian rule
2. a big, messy group of people affiliated through common cause
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. In Chicago, a “companion front” developed through a radical Black cultural infrastructure with institutions like the Chicago Defender and the South Side Community Art Center.
To Mullen, this front was “mutually constitutive,” meaning the cultural and political fed each other. You couldn’t separate the protest from the poetry.
What’s this got to do with now?
A lot. Democracy is being hollowed out in real time — through voter suppression, surveillance, the criminalization of protest, the scapegoating of migrants, anti-LGBTQ laws, book bans. The far right is openly organizing to take permanent power, not just win elections.
A popular front today wouldn’t mean everyone is suddenly best friends. It means movements stop playing defense in isolation and start fighting together, as if something bigger is at stake. Because it is.
What would a modern popular front look like?
It’s the Movement for Black Lives linking arms with climate activists and unions, knowing their fights are connected. It’s the People’s Climate Movement bringing together frontline communities and labor to take on big polluters. It’s housing coalitions in Seattle, Chicago and LA organizing with immigrant rights activists and elected officials for social housing.
It looks like survival. The other side already has a front, known as the Heritage Foundation.
Isn’t this just “lesser evilism”?
Not if done right. A popular front isn’t about diluting politics, but sharpening priorities. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we do need to agree that authoritarianism, white nationalism and rule-by-billionaire are worth fighting — and we can’t fight alone.
This is part of “The Big Idea,” a series offering brief introductions to progressive theories, policies, tools and strategies that can help us envision a world beyond capitalism.
J. Patrick Patterson is the Associate Editor at In These Times. He has previously worked as a politics editor, copy editor, fact-checker and reporter. His writing on economic policies and electoral politics has been published in numerous outlets.
