On D-Day, American troops land on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. The Allied invasion of June 6, 1944 finally opened the Second Front against the Nazi empire that the Soviet Union and American progressives had been defending for years. | US Army via AP
On June 6, 1944, American and Allied troops finally crossed the English Channel, opening a second front against the Nazis in Europe. The opening of that second front was a demand long formulated by the Soviet Union and by progressive forces here at home.
The predecessor of this newspaper, the Daily Worker, was among those demanding the opening of that second front. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war against Hitler’s fascism during the three years prior to the Allied landings in Normandy. It was the Soviet-American union. After that, the cooperation and support of anti-fascists around the world ended in victory over the Nazis.
American and other veterans travel to Normandy this week to remember the history they made. Tragically, imperialist-backed wars today loom like dark shadows over the celebrations in Normandy.
It is a shame that the Biden administration has rebuked the French for inviting Russia to the celebrations. American and Soviet troops met and celebrated at the Elbe River in Germany when they defeated the Nazis in that country. The Soviet Union lost 27 million in that fight.
The modern wars waged today by the United States, not Russian assistance to the Normandy events, are the things that truly insult the memory of the fight against fascism in World War II.
The Biden administration claims the war in Ukraine disqualifies Russia from attending. So why has the United States attended these celebrations every year, even as it destroyed and killed country after country since World War II, including Vietnam, Serbia, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and many others? Neither Russia nor anyone else has called for the exclusion of the United States from the ceremonies for its blatant support of genocidal policies in Gaza.
Now, during the celebrations in Normandy, it is time for the American people to demand that our legislators honor the victory over fascism by combating the danger of fascism in our country today. How can the United States claim leadership in the fight against fascism when right-wing MAGA extremists and their enablers operate with impunity here at home?
No right to legacy
Politicians who dismantle the achievements resulting from the fight against fascism in the 20th century have no right to claim the current anti-fascist legacy.
The United Nations, the right’s favorite punching bag, was itself the result of that noble fight against fascism. A country could not join the UN unless it could demonstrate that it had fought against the fascist power structures in Germany, Italy and Japan. Support for cooperation and friendship between countries such as the United States, Russia and China was another requirement for a country to want to join the respectable international community of nations.
The sacrifice of their lives by World War II veterans gave us this new path to replace world war with peace and fascism with democracy. It has never worked perfectly, but the level of opposition to peace and progress in America today is rising to dangerous levels.
It is essential to treat the history of the fight against fascism with respect. Instead of arguing why countries should be excluded, the United States should remember all the major victories against fascism in World War II, including not only D-Day but also the heroic battles of Stalingrad and the Soviet liberation of Berlin itself. Heroic anti-Nazi liberation movements emerged across Europe and around the world, many of them led by communists. Those should be celebrated too. American veterans were part of all this.
Today’s right-wing politicians, including MAGA Republicans and some Democrats as well, have forgotten the achievements of that fight over the last century. After World War II, respect for immigrants was fostered. Millions of people were displaced by that war and special measures were taken to care for them.
Today, MAGA Republicans in the United States, and sadly now the Biden administration, are supporting anti-immigrant policies at the southern border of the United States, another massive insult to the legacy of the fight against fascism of the 20th century, a legacy that supports the immigrants instead of denigrating them. .
The 1951 Refugee Convention established universal obligations towards refugees due to the repression to which they had been subjected. Those obligations are what our government is now trying to forget. The countries of Europe are joining the United States in trying to erase these obligations towards immigrants.
This and all the rest of right-wing politics in the United States betrays the heroic veterans who landed in Normandy and what they had fought for.
Attacks on the right to abortion and labor rights and all other needs of the people also betray veterans.
The lack of respect and teaching of the true history of the fight against fascism covers up the theft of the people’s wealth by a small corporate elite. Help erase the cause of the rise of far-right politics, a politics of grievance and hate funded by billionaires.
The real commemoration of D-Day should be organizing against the purveyors of hate. The struggles for peace and socialism are the best way to remember D-Day and its meaning.
Morning Star contributed to this article.
John Wojcik is editor-in-chief of People’s World. He joined the staff as labor editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a union steward and member of a UFCW contract negotiation committee. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, the newspaper’s predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.
