In this morning's Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson said:

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

Heather was right to draw attention to this, but it was not the first time she had done so. She also did so in May 2023, when I wrote the response I share again below.

It's important to note why I wrote in the way I did then. "Woke" was then the favourite term of abuse for the far-right Trump supporter, and being "anti-woke" was how they defined themselves, but as I argued then and will still argue now, "anti-woke" was code for being fascist, which is what they were then, and now.

And let's be clear what being woke means. It can be defined as being "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)." If you are woke, then you are not only aware of injustice but also want to address it.

So what are you if you are anti-woke and so oppose "important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)"? First, you are a proponent of injustice. Second, you support a society that is based on prejudice, othering, and hatred of the person you define as having that characteristic. That is what the fascist does. This is what being "anti-woke" means.

And that's why being woke is important: those who are woke oppose what fascists do, but they do not just oppose them; they seek to remedy the harm fascists cause in society. The term still has value, as does the clear line it helps us draw.

The US Army knew that anti-wokeism was fascism in 1945. Why don't we acknowledge it now?

I am grateful to today's edition of Heather Cox Richardson's 'Letter from an American' for pointing my attention to an extraordinary publication from the US Army in March 1945. It looked like this:

That is some introduction.

What followed were five pages of discussion on the dangers of fascism, intended to inform US troops on the attitudes that they might meet in Germany, which they were close to part-occupying by then.

Some of the highlights are:

And this:

Then they moved on:

The next section was:

There are reams of thought that flow from that, and the current oppression of wages in the UK.

The paper moved on to:

This is particularly telling:

I have included most of the next section; it resonates so much:

And so the paper moved to its conclusion:

In support, the paper says:

I stress, this is a slightly edited version of the paper.

But what it says is one very clear thing.

Unless we are 'woke', we cannot beat fascism.

And 'anti-wokeism' is fascism.

The US Army did not use that term in 1945, but it might as well have.

We should use it now.

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