Harry Targ
(Monthly Review Press, 2022)
From this valley they say we are going
But don’t hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle of Jarama
We’ll, set this valley free before we’re
through
(words by members of the International
Brigade
Sung by Woody Guthrie; posted with a
graphic in
Brigadistas!)
The 1930s was a time of political ferment. Communists,
socialists, pacifists, anarchists rose in opposition to poverty, racism, and an
ideology that only capitalist markets could serve humanity.
Michael Denning wrote about a “cultural front.” For
him the moving force behind the ferment was working class mobilization,
particularly in the newly formed trade union confederation, The Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO). Communists played a leading role in promoting
and developing working class militancy in the CIO and on the streets. And
Denning suggests, the spirit of militancy, even the idea of class struggle,
permeated a broad spectrum of political culture: folk music, jazz, proletarian
fiction, photography, paintings, and murals. It was a revolutionary age; at
least a potential one.
Some of the radicalism was inspired by worldwide revolutionary
ferment, perhaps an idealized image of the former Soviet Union, rising
anti-colonial struggles in Asia and Africa, and struggles to defend democracy
from the threat of growing fascism. No struggle captured the imagination of
radicals everywhere more than the desperate effort of Spanish loyalists who rose
to protect their fragile democratic system from the counter-revolutionary
forces of General Francisco Franco who fought, ultimately successfully, to
overthrow Spanish democracy. Franco’s support came from large landowners, the
leaders of the Catholic Church, the military, and most important, fascist
regimes in Germany and Italy.
And it is the desperate effort of the defense of
democracy in Spain that 40,000 mostly young leftists from 50 countries joined
in the military effort to defend democracy. Some 3,000 Americans traveled to
Spain to fight fascism. They became known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In a
brief forward to this volume Fraser Ottanelli (“The Civil War in Spain and the
American Volunteers”) provides a succinct background to the Spanish struggle.
Following the forward this engaging graphic novel, Brigadistas!
tells the story of three young communists from Brooklyn who believed the
struggle for socialism at home was inextricably connected to the fight against
fascism in Spain. And they came to the view that they had an obligation to join
the campaign to defeat fascism and racism in Spain.
The graphic novel takes the reader through the life of
Abe Rubinoff and his two Communist friends from street protests in Brooklyn and
fighting housing evictions by landlords, to debates about pacifism with the
iconic Catholic pacifist, Dorothy Day, to the battlefields of Spain. Set
against this background the story is largely taken from real characters, real
events, and real passion for justice. And the graphic novel, the words and
images, brings to life this historic moment that planted the backdrop for
political movements in the United States and Europe to follow: defeating
fascism in World War Two, supporting communist revolutions in China, Vietnam,
and later Cuba, joining the anti-colonial struggles from the 1940s until the 1960s,
and defending progressives from anti-communist campaigns in the United States. Survivors
of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade became involved in virtually every campaign
against imperialism since the 1930s.
The reader/viewer becomes engaged in the organizing
efforts of members of the Young Communist League, Catholic pacifists (“Catholic
Workers Against Nazi Fascism”) against rising fascism in Europe, and the
growing consciousness of young activists about the inextricable connections
between war and fascism abroad and the threats to workers at home. The
combination of the text, written by Miguel Ferguson, and the artwork, by Anne
Timmons, take the reader vicariously back to those days of struggle, triumph and defeat, a consciousness of class and
racial solidarity, and internationalism.
As an educational and activist tool, Brigadistas!
is first-rate. Virtually every graphic image and piece of dialogue lends itself
to thought and debate. For example, on page eleven, Abe and his comrades discuss
the international situation, displayed in one panel image, At a political
meeting comrades proclaim that “Hitler’s gotta be stopped,” “Mussolini aint
just sittin’ around neither,” (as Italy was mobilizing for invasion of Ethiopia) and “Roosevelt ain’t gonna do nothin.”
Abe in the panel reports that he read Mein Kampf and says that Hitler “means
every word he says.” And finally, he says to his friends that despite
Roosevelt’s inaction “that don’t mean we’re gonna sit on our asses while Hitler
carries out his plans.” Virtually every panel, as this one, is rich with
insight, history, and a topic or topics for discussion.
Paul Buhle, a co-editor of Brigadistas! (with
Ottanelli), provides a useful afterword, “The Comic and the Spanish Civil War.”
concentrating on the graphic novel genre. It gives a succinct history of the
comic format, with its historic artistic roots as far back as Goya’s war
paintings, to the war comics of the second World War, to the profusion of
graphic novels in our own day. He makes an important point about graphic novels
and documentaries of relevance to educators and activists alike: “The emergence
of nonfiction comic art as a medium in which to describe historical events and
personalities is recent, by most measures, and within the culture of people
under thirty, the genre has taken on new and important roles.” (He notes recent
publications of a Black Panther Party comic and a three-volume graphic history
of the life of John Lewis).
In sum, Brigadistas! is a valuable, accessible
textual and visual representation of history. It is recommended for those who
are familiar with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Spanish Civil War, and the
left of the 1930s and would find refreshing a reminder of its history. And,
even more, Brigadistas! can serve as a vibrant tool for political
education for those who would be new to the subject. The volume is a useful
both for the classroom and the study group.
