Gabriel Kuhn is an Austrian-born writer, translator, and union organizer living in Sweden. His latest book is Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe’s Far North. He blogs at lefttwothree.org.
The 1931 Workers’ Olympiad in Vienna was an inspiring example of mass-scale sports, free of corporate influence. These photos from the games show how the workers’ movement promoted collective joy and class pride, even outside the factory gates.
Austrian socialist Julius Deutsch was a key figure in Red Vienna’s workers’ sports clubs. Founder of the Schutzbund workers’ militia, Deutsch and his comrades used the class pride built on the sports field to mobilize against rising fascism.
Germany’s AfD poses as a defender of the “common man,” but seeks to impose an authoritarian form of neoliberalism.