SEATTLE, WA—Some vermin from the racist, nationalist group, the Proud Boys, confronted and attacked some anti-racist fans before a Major League Soccer (MLS) match in Seattle. The racists were responding to other anti-racist fans flying an anti-fascist, anti-Nazi flag at a previous game. Similar taunting and assaults have been taking place at soccer matches and clubs in New York (HuffPost, 3/9).
While ignoring the Proud Boys and their racist violence, the MLS bosses have instead put a league-wide ban against all political banners and signs at matches. Through this decision, they are effectively equating anti-racist politics with fascist hate speech, as both “extremist ideologies.” They are in fact giving a nod of approval to racism and fascism.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is involved in this struggle to carry on the communist tradition of organizing workers to crush racist and fascist garbage on the spot and to build a revolutionary movement to get rid of the capitalist system that breeds this garbage!
Anti-racists take action, defy league bosses
The anti-racist fans of MLS teams in a number of cities wasted no time in organizing a militant united response against both the fascist thugs and the MLS bosses. Portland and Seattle team fans came together during a game to protest against fascism. They started the game with 33 minutes of complete silence. The 33 minutes was to mark 1933, the year when the Nazi Party took power in Germany and immediately banned the iron front  anti-fascist symbol. After the silence, the fans played Bella Ciao, an anti-fascist song written by Italian partisans during World War II, for the rest of the first half.
Similarly, fans from the Chicago Fire team travelled to a game in Portland to show solidarity and support against the fascists. In defiance of the league ban, they flew anti-fascist flags from their seats in the stands and were thrown out from the game. Other fans have passed out leaflets in front of stadiums about the struggle. An MLS supporter group in which a PLP comrade is active is developing a petition to gather support from other community organizations, such as churches and schools, for the anti-fascist protests. In the face of threats and suspensions from MLS, working-class fans are keeping up the fight and members of PLP must be there pointing the fight towards workers taking power and running all of society! That’s communism.
Fascists fear the red flag most
But the iron front symbol (three arrows pointing down and to the left) reveals the contradictions in the anti-fascist movement. In 1930s Germany the Social Democrats used it to oppose monarchists, fascists and communists. Today it is used by the antifa (anti-fascist) movement and has been adopted by anti-fascist soccer fans. But a blogger on the website of the Portland Timber soccer team says “This simple symbol represents opposition to the three most prominent forms of totalitarian government: fascism, monarchy and communism” (timbersarmy.org, 9,9). This is a distortion of history. It is communists all over the world who have always led the fight against fascism. That includes the Italian partisans who sang Bella Ciao.
After the Iron Front was banned in Germany in 1933, it was communists who led the overwhelming bulk of the fight against the Nazis and other fascists in the years leading up to and during the Second World War. Mostly under the leadership of the communist Soviet Union, millions of ordinary workers and peasants were trained and fought as partisans in occupied countries across Europe, an essential complement to the heroic Red Army fighting the Nazi Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
The Nazis and the Italian fascists were defeated by millions of workers mostly led by communists. Today we salute the thousands of soccer fans protesting against fascism. But anti-communism and the anarchistic tendency of the antifa movement are losing strategies. Then as now, the red communist flag of the international working class represents the sharpest fight against racism and fascism. Only a mass PLP can organize the workers of the world into a movement for communist revolution that destroys capitalism and the racism and fascism that it breeds.
Take a stand, fight for revolution
Capitalism affects all dimensions of our everyday life, including sports. To say that sports can be “neutral” or should be free from politics just flies in the face of reality, as these events are already soaked in the capitalist bosses’ politics. This can be seen by games that start with national anthems, or salute to the imperialist war machine, or display sexist images and shallow consumerism.
As the crisis of capitalism gets worse around the world, comrades from PLP and other anti-racist fighters will need to continue to build the fight that not only denies free speech to racists, but that also attacks the racist capitalist bosses that protect and condone them. Fighting for communist revolution remains the only way to wipe racism and fascism from the face of the earth! From the stands to the streets to the schools, wave the red flag of communism!