“The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond”

This workshop, offered by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), introduces a carefully curated set of compelling primary sources allowing teachers to develop a history-based curriculum about human rights and world fascism, starting with the experience of antifascist US volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through World War II and the Cold War to the present day. ALBA’s workshops encourage teachers and students to focus on ten essential questions: Why should we care about events that happen far away, or that happened a long time ago? How do we decide who is on the right side of an armed conflict? When do we stand up for what we believe in? What are our obligations in the face of injustice? How do we resolve competing loyalties? When is it right, or necessary, for a powerful country like the US to intervene in a conflict going on elsewhere? How do images and texts shape our view of the world—and how can we use them to shape others’ views? How can we understand people and events of the past in their context? When—and how—is it appropriate to judge people and events in the past? When do historical analogies apply? And what does fascism look like today?