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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 23, 8 June 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Taking the stand in defense of his fascist activities, John Cassidy, New York leader of the “Christian Front,” has admitted in Federal Court that he had more than 500 police in his organization in the single borough of Brooklyn alone.
This must have come as a severe shock to workers and anti-fascists in New York. Many of them must have recalled that Mayor LaGuardia had ordered an investigation into the police department with regard to membership in the “ChristianFront” and that the investigation supposedly revealed that only about 400 police in the entire city had at “one time belonged” but now about 27 were still in its ranks. The mayor has done nothing about these fascist cops.
The mayor’s reaction to Cassidy’s revelation was confined to a statement that: “We must not be misled by subversive organizations or any other actions seeking to divide our people. Those creating hatred among the races and religions are not loyal to this country.” Such fine moralizing will not drive the fascists back one inch! The thousands of workers who voted for LaGuardia on the Labor Party ticket expected something more than mere sermons!
This attitude on the part of LaGuardia is in sharp contrast to the one he takes whenever organized labor goes on strike. He showed it in his fight against the effort of the Transport Workers Union to preserve their rights when the city assumed operation of the subways.
Asked by the prosecution why such a huge number of police had joined his organization Cassidy replied that they joined because they were fearful of their jobs and for economic security and because “communists were trying to smear them.”
It is, however, a notorious fact that the New York cops are among the highest paid in America that they are provided with pensions, vacations, and all sorts of extra services. LaGuardia’s economy axe which has cut so deeply into the living standards of poor civil servants, has left entirely intact the police department.
Why, then, did so many police really join the fascist “Christian Front?” The answer has been given in preceding articles in the Socialist Appeal. It is worth repeating in brief.
During the so-called era of prosperity, graft and corruption flourished in the city. It fed a constantly growing network of racketeers, gangsters and all sorts of underworld elements. But with the coming of the crisis it had to be eliminated as a measure of economy. The LaGuardia administration made it its task to “cleanse” the city. Everyone knew of the inseparable connection between the underworld and the police department; but to “cleanse” the latter publicly would discredit in the eyes of the masses the “forces of law and order.”
Hence a different method was used – the method of attrition, quiet dismissals, resignation and retirement. The police force became very jittery with every new expose of the criminal underworld. A wave of suicides in the force totalled more than 100. With such a mood prevailing among the police, some one was bound to take up their defense. The Coughlin-Curran-Cassidy fascists had their connections with the cops. They knew their sentiments, and fears. They took up the cudgels for them. But they could not defend their case on the merits. Hence the insidious campaign of a “Jewish plot,” “persecuting Catholic policemen,” etc.
A great many workers are under the impression that the trial of the 14 “Frontists” in Brooklyn Federal Court is a prosecution of the Christian Front as an organization. No greater illusion could be had on that score. The Christian Front is not under indictment and is not on trial. The crime with which the defendants are charged is not that of being fascists, or purveyors of anti- Semitism, or of organizers of assaults upon workers and their organization. As a matter of fact,
hostility to the working class, its mass organizations, its press, and the spreading of the most virulent anti-labor propaganda, under the mask of “defending the United States against the Red” is the primary defense upon which the fascist defendants rely – and is conceded to be a virtue by the prosecution as well as the defense!
There is not the slightest reason to believe that the capitalist government cracked down on these 14 fascists because it wanted to fight fascism. The trial was staged not as a part of a struggle against fascism, but as part of a unified scheme carried out jointly by the FBI and the “anti-trust” Division of the Justice Department, as a supplement to their moves against the trade unions. The trial was conceived to give the appearance that the government was fighting both against the “left and the right.”
But even this small sacrifice seems to be too much for the capitalist government. As the course of the whole trial nears its conclusion it becomes evident that the whole case is being converted into a farce.
The so-called conspiracy to “overthrow the government” is being shifted entirely on the shoulders of one man, Bishop, a relatively insignificant figure, who is being made the scapegoat while the real leader of the “Christian Front,” Cassidy, is made extremely inconspicuous.
All of the jurors who are to try these defendants are residents of Brooklyn, where the Christian Front has the greatest number of members and is considerably aided by the Catholic hierarchy of the Brooklyn Diocese, whose organ, the Tablet, has been consistently taking the side of the defendants. The defense consists of very able and experienced Catholic attorneys, one of whom has been decorated by the Pope. Harold McKennedy, the prosecutor, is also a Catholic. The Catholic Hierarchy of New York has to date failed to express itself on the trials.
In all probability, some of the defendants will be acquitted, light sentences imposed on the others, while the scapegoat Bishop bears the brunt of attack. And the Christian Front will go right on.
The lesson of the Christian Front Trial is that only the working class, led by a militant revolutionary party, can successfully fight fascism.
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Last updated: 3 February 2019