One of the supreme achievements of the victory against 20th-century fascism was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As 21st-century fascism increasingly threatens humanity, emboldened as it is by the capture of state power in Russia and, most alarmingly, rising authoritarianism in the US, it is useful for anti-fascists to reflect on this supreme achievement. It provides us with a solid foundation to both defend humanity, and as a base to expand upon – we must ensure that what was won is protected, but also make its promise real today.

The Universal Declaration sought to make concrete the anti-fascist vision that united the Allies in their struggle against the fascist Axis powers. This was articulated by President Roosevelt in his 1941 address as “the Four Freedoms”. These were: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, and as the full scale of fascist brutality was exposed from the Holocaust, to the rape of Nanjing, to the inhumanity of concentration camps, these aims hardened and were expanded by the Allies with the aspiration of preventing a repeat of such inhumanity in the future. The Allies convened representatives of the various antifascism ideologies together to create the Universal Declaration – including Christian Democracy (represented by Charles Malik), Confucianism (represented by Zhang Peng Chun – also a student of Islamic philosophy), Marxism and Liberalism. It was also strongly influenced by the burgeoning national liberation movements that grew in strength during the antifascism struggle.

The Universal Declaration is one of the supreme achievements of humanity, and I encourage everyone to take the time to read it – I personally ensure it is the focus of my Sabbath meditations around World Human Rights Day (December 10, the date of its signing in 1948). The rights outlined in it were late expanded in two international covenants (Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), which have the force of law for their signatories. Bermuda, through Britain, is a party to both of these.

Of course, pieces of paper in and of themselves don’t mean anything if they are not enforced. Ultimately, their implementation depends on people themselves forcing their implementation. In this, it is fundamentally part of the class struggle, and labour unions play a key role in pushing for their realisation, above and beyond the specifics of their particular members more immediate concerns. The Universal Declaration sets out what we, as a species, have decided are our rights, collective and individual. They came about through a fight to the death against 20th-century fascism, and they can only be realised through continual struggle – that is, they depend on people power insisting on our rights to be not simply aspirational but made real.

The realisation of the Universal Declaration was undermined by the Cold War, and we have seen how, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the US has weaponised civil and political rights for imperialist reasons, while ignoring – and, especially since Reagan, actively waging war against – the economic and social rights of the declaration. Indeed, it is largely due to the hegemonic influence of the US on Bermudian thinking that many of us are largely ignorant of the economic and social dimensions of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration and expanded in the international covenants. That being said, I would like to give thanks to Bermuda Is Love for consistently highlighting these economic and social human rights.

This of course doesn’t mean that other countries have a clean record when it comes to human rights. The point I am making is solely how the US, as leader of the Anglosphere, as well as with its unique status as (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) the global superpower, has weaponised some aspects of human rights for imperialist reasons – be it to legitimise military force, economic warfare or the nature of structural adjustment programmes (most notably the shock therapy applied to the former Soviet Union, but also developing countries as a whole).

The Universal Declaration outlines civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. These are supposed to be concrete – in the dual sense of the word. That is, they are supposed to be rock solid and to grow together (from the Latin con- ‘with/together’ and crescere ‘to grow’). The various rights are inherently interrelated and the realisation of any one of them is dependent on the realisation of all of them (and the lack of realisation of any one of them serves as a limiting factor to the realisation of all). And, together, they provide a solid foundation for the full realisation of human potential.

The civil and political rights include (but are not limited to) the right to self-determination, the right not to be deprived of the means of subsistence, right to legal remedies for the violation of rights, rights to life, freedom of thought, conscience, religion and personhood, freedom from torture and slavery, prohibition of inhuman or degrading punishment, freedom from non-consensual medical or scientific experimentation, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention ensures procedural safeguards around arrest, ensures detainees the right to be treated with dignity and humanity, the rights of the accused, the right to a free trial, equality before the law, freedom of movement and asylum, rights to privacy, freedom of assembly and the rights of minorities (ethnic, religious and linguistic).

The economic, social and cultural rights include (but are not limited to) the right to work (under just and favourable conditions), rights to join labour unions, rights to social security and social insurance, rights to family life (including parental leave and the protection of children), right to an adequate standard of living (including rights to food, clothing, housing and ‘the continual improvement of living conditions’), rights to health (to ‘the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health’), the right to education at all levels (for ‘the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity’) and the rights (and thus access) to participation in cultural life. These are supposed to be realised progressively (Article 2 of the international covenant), recognising potential resource constraints, but with the intention to realise them as fully as possible all the same.

We are confronted today by a resurgent fascist threat, and we are seeing an unprecedented attack on human rights and international law globally, spearheaded in my opinion by the US. In the US itself, we are seeing a massive assault on civil and disability rights, the discarding of civil and political rights and the roll-out and expansion of concentration camps. In the face of this onslaught we can take inspiration from the antifascism victories of the 20th century, and the Universal Declaration provides us with a key foundation for the antifascism struggle of today. We must defend the gains of the past and build upon them in the hope of building a better world, and for the collective future of our species and planet.

Human rights are the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, and, as Harvey Milk noted, “rights are not given, they are taken” – freedom isn’t free and must be fought for and expanded by each generation.

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University