Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 galvanized a grassroots, transnational social movement known as the Hands Off Ethiopia campaign. Around the world, a broad multiracial coalition of antifascist, anticolonial, and antiracist activists engaged in mass meetings, public demonstrations, street fights, work stoppages, and strikes to challenge Fascist Italy’s pursuit of a new Roman Empire in the Mediterranean and Northern and Eastern Africa. The Black Left was at the forefront of these efforts, merging Pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and the Communist internationalism of the era to make a bold stand against Fascist imperial domination of a free African country. This panel explores the nuances and significance of the Hands off Ethiopia movement and the broader impact of the Black antifascist left in the interwar period.

It’s been five years since the so-called Alt-Right became known to the general public with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which sought to defend a Confederate monument. Please join us for a conversation with historians Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders and Karen Cox to reflect on the histories leading up to this moment and consider the extent to which Confederate memory and Neo-confederate ideas and politics contribute to a distinctly American form of fascism.

Sponsored by the April Institute with generous support from CU Boulder’s President’s Fund for the Humanities and the Departments of History, English, and Geography.

Public narratives about the history of fascism and antifascism in the United States are sporadic, uneven, and often distorted. This is due in part to the failure of state institutions to educate the public about past and present fascist movements, and in part to the successful campaigns of far-right groups to intentionally misrepresent those movements and their opponents. The result is that public understanding of contemporary fascist tendencies lacks the context of their deep historical roots, and those engaged in resistance are deprived of the insights gained by a long and successful antifascist tradition.