As the Democratic Party moves ever further to the left, it has become normal to see communists and socialists running for office on the party’s ballot line.
Usually, Marxists run for county commissions, school boards, state legislatures, and Congress.
Now they are starting to run even for the U.S. Senate in 2020.
Sema Hernandez is standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.
Hernandez, a health care worker, is an activist with the Poor People’s Campaign. She is also a member of both Houston Democratic Socialists of America and the Houston branch of the Communist Party USA.
Hernandez stood in the Democratic primary in 2018 against Beto O’Rourke and earned a respectable 250,000 votes—probably the best in recent times for a Communist Party comrade in Texas.
It’s still technically illegal to stand for public office as a communist in Texas—but it’s apparently OK for a communist to stand for office as long as they call themselves a Democrat.
Yana Ludwig is the only Democrat so far declared in the primary to stand for an open U.S. Senate seat in overwhelmingly Republican Wyoming.
Both she and her husband, Matt Stannard, the former debate coach at the University of Wyoming, are active in SE Wyoming Democratic Socialists of America.
A Laramie resident, Ludwig has been active in the “gay” and “feminist” movements since the early 1990s.
She has participated in numerous women’s marches, “peace” protests, and many “ecological activist actions,” including the People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014, according to her campaign website.
Ludwig has also been the director of numerous nonprofits, including Project Grow Community Gardens, Recycling Jackson, and the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture.
It’s hard work being a socialist in Wyoming and almost impossible to win statewide office as a Democrat—let alone as an open Marxist.
Betsy Sweet is standing in the Maine Democratic Senate primary in the hope of challenging left-wing Republican incumbent Susan Collins in 2020.
Sweet said that “a women’s right to choose, health care for all, and climate change” are the main reasons why she decided to challenge Collins.
Sweet lost the Democratic primary for governor in 2018, even though she had the endorsement and active support of the Southern Maine Democratic Socialists of America.
Sweet is a former director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine Commission for Women.
In the early 1980s, she represented the far-left Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom on the Communist Party USA-controlled U.S. Peace Council—an affiliate of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council.
Paula Jean Swearengin is standing in the West Virginia Democratic Senate primary to hopefully challenge incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito in 2020.
In the 2018 primary, she unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Swearengin was formerly active with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Keepers of the Mountain Foundation. She has addressed the United Nations and spoken at rallies and colleges across the country on environmental issues.
An early Bernie Sanders supporter, Swearengin attended the DSA-run Chicago People’s Summit in 2017. She was also the subject of a documentary alongside DSA and Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DSA Nevada congressional candidate Amy Vilela, and DSA and Communist Party USA-affiliated Missouri congressional candidate Cori Bush.
Swearengin was also supported in 2018 by far-left Justice Democrats and DSA-influenced Brand New Congress.
Cristina Tzintzun is, like Hernandez, standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on Cornyn in 2020. Of all the candidates profiled in this article, she is by far the one most likely to succeed.
Tzintzun founded and ran the Austin-based Workers Defense Project, a leftist immigrants’ rights group in the orbit of the Maoist-leaning pro-China group Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).
In 2013–14, Tzintzun spent a year studying with the FRSO-affiliated Rockwood Leadership Institute, an Oakland, California-based school for “community organizers.”
Tzintzun has worked closely with DSA activists in Austin, Texas, including Alice Embree, the Fetonte family, and the late Glenn Scott.
As the founder of Jolt Texas, Tzintzun organized the enrollment of thousands of new Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters across the state.
She was recruited out of Jolt Texas to stand for the U.S. Senate by well-connected former Bernie Sanders senior staffers Becky Bond and Zach Malitz and former ACORN Texas leader Ginny Goldman.
Bond and Malitz were both senior staffers in the 2018 Beto O’Rourke Senate campaign. They are also both colleagues of wealthy San Francisco socialist Michael Kieschnick—who is also a big fan of Tzintzun.
Bond is the co-author of “Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything.”
Malitz, a DSA affiliate, will serve as a senior adviser on the Tzintzun senate campaign. Goldman, lately a leader of the Communist Party USA-infiltrated Texas Organizing Project, will serve as Tzintzun’s campaign chair.
The other Democrats in primary, and probably Cornyn, are in for a tough race.
Feature photo: Community organizers Cristina Tzintzún Ramírez (L) and Brittany Packnett share how they’ve built a social movement, at The Summit on Race in America at the LBJ Presidential Library on April 9, 2019. Tzintzún is founder and director of Jolt, a Texas-based organization that builds the political power and influence of Latinos. Ralph Barrera/LBJ Library via Wikimedia Commons
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
In September, the United States’ largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), posted a list of “progressives” running for the House of Representatives in 2020.
The list, posted on a DSA Reddit page, names more than 100 candidates in over 30 states, from Alaska to Florida, California to Maine. The list includes many hopeless candidates, but also includes several who have a good chance of winning seats, or at least running their primary or general election opponents close.
In 2018, the DSA elected two members to congress—Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—plus two sympathizers, Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—collectively known as “The Squad.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) questions U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin as he testifies during a House Committee on Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
With an increased membership (now around 55,000) and considerably more electoral experience, the DSA could elect more members and several more supporters in 2020.
Some of the candidates are also closely aligned with two pro-China DSA allies, Liberation Road and the Communist Party USA.
Several on the list ran as first-timers in 2018 against well-established incumbents and lost in many cases by under 10 points. With “on the ground” and financial support from the DSA, Liberation Road, Communist Party USA, Working Families Party, Progressive Democrats of America, Our Revolution, and left-controlled unions such as the SEIU and National Nurses United, many of them will be competitive against Democratic and Republican opponents.
Comrade Candidates
In Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, far-left DSA-friendly Eva Putzova is mounting a serious primary challenge against incumbent moderate Democrat Tom O’Halleran.
In California’s 29th District, DSA comrade Angelica Duenas is aiming to replace incumbent Democrat Tony Cardenas, while DSA comrade Shahid Buttar is going up against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in California’s 12th District. Strangely, another DSA member and former Massachusetts state legislator, Tom Gallagher, is contesting the same seat.
In California’s 50th District, the DSA-friendly grandson of a Palestinian terrorist,Ammar Campa-Najjar lost narrowly to a scandal-plagued Republican incumbent Duncan Hunter in 2018. Campa-Najjar is back for a second shot, but his Republican opponent may be different this time.
Ammar Campa-Najjar (D-CA) speaks to reporters outside the Federal Courthouse in San Diego, CA, on Aug. 23, 2018. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images
In California’s 53rd District, Jose Cabellero is challenging incumbent Democrat Susan Davis with both DSA and Liberation Road support.
Florida’s 27th District likely won’t change much this cycle as low-polling DSA-friendly Michael Hepburn runs again against Democrat incumbent Donna Shalala.
In Georgia’s 1st District, DSA-friendly Lisa Ring is making a second attempt at sending Republican incumbent Buddy Carter to an early retirement. In Georgia’s 7th District, Nabilah Islam is running for the open seat, while Michael Owens is contesting Georgia’s 13th District against moderate Democrat David Scott. Both Islam and Owen have requested the endorsement of Metro Atlanta DSA.
In Illinois’s 3rd District, DSA congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and DSA Chicago Alderman Carlos Rosa have endorsed Marie Newman, who came within a whisker of defeating moderate Democrat Dan Lipinski in 2018. Overly optimistic DSA member Anthony Clark is running for the second time against far-left Danny Davis (himself a former DSA member) in Illinois’s 7th District. In Illinois’s 10th District, another DSA comrade, Adam Broad, is running hard against moderate Democrat incumbent Brad Schneider.
In Iowa’s 4th District, JD Scholten ran embattled incumbent Republican Steve King close—with DSA support. He’ll be lucky to come within 15 points this time around.
Top-ranking Democrat Steny Hoyer is probably not too concerned about losing in Maryland’s 5th District—even though his “democratic socialist” opponent Mckayla Wilkes has the endorsement of the more than 2,000-strong Metro DC DSA.
In Massachusetts’s 4th District, DSA-backed “democratic socialist” Ihssane Leckey has a narrow opening as her Democratic incumbent opponent Joe Kennedy III has decided to run for U.S. Senate. In Massachusetts’s 6th District, DSA-friendly Nathaniel Mulcahy has even less chance against Democratic incumbent Seth Moulton.
In Minnesota’s 2nd District, DSA supporter Johnny Akzam is making his second run for the Democrat held seat.
In Missouri’s 1st District, Pastor Cori Bush ran about 10 points behind leftist Democrat incumbent Lacy Clay in 2018. With probable DSA, Communist Party USA, and Liberation Road support, Bush could well pull off an upset in this district.
Nebraska’s 2nd District could possibly go left with Kara Eastman’s second run for the seat. In 2018 she won the Democratic primary with DSA help, then lost the general to a Republican. Moderate Democrats will fight her hard in the primary.
In New York’s 12th District, DSA member Lauren Ashcraft is fighting a longshot battle against incumbent Democrat Carolyn Maloney. New York’s 24th District is a bit more hopeful for the far left. DSA-supported Dana Balter came within 5 points of Republican John Katko in 2018. If Balter can get through the Democratic primary, she may have a shot.
North Carolina’s 1st District sees DSA member DeAndre Carter go up against far-left incumbent Democrat GK Butterfield. In North Carolina’s 4th District, Boy Scout and DSA comrade Daniel Ulysses Lockwood has even less chance against incumbent leftist Democrat David Price.
Ohio’s 3rd District could possibly see a shock result as DSA, and possibly Liberation Road-backed, Morgan Harper goes up against incumbent Democrat Joyce Beatty.
In Oregon’s 3rd District, DSA member Albert Lee has a good shot against incumbent far-left Democrat Earl Blumenauer. DSA-supported Mark Gamba has less chance against moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader in Oregon’s 5th District. Long-time Liberation Road affiliate Doyle Canning is even braver to take on far-left incumbent Democrat Pete DeFazio in Oregon’s 4th District.
In South Carolina’s 2nd District, DSA member Lawrence Nathaniel is valiantly challenging incumbent Republican Joe Wilson in one of the most heavily Republican districts in the country.
Texas’s 25th District sees DSA member Heidi Sloan competing against one other leftist Democrat in the primary for an open Republican seat. Support from around 1,000 Austin DSA comrades may well see Sloan through at least the primary.
DSA endorsee Stevens Orozco is standing in Texas’s 18th District to unseat the deeply entrenched Sheila Jackson-Lee. Houston DSA and probably the powerful local Communist Party USA branch will likely help out.
Jessica Cisneros is running a brace challenge in Texas’s 28th District against moderate Democrat Henry Cuellar. Cisneros’s campaign has borrowed DSA congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s DSA-friendly adviser Andres Bernal to help out.
Texas’s 10th District could see a possible far-left victory. Democratic candidate Mike Siegel, son of former Communist Workers Party leader Dan Siegel, came within 5 points of beating Republican Mike McCaul in 2018. With Siegel’s strong DSA and union backing, the Republican Party needs to take Mike Siegel very seriously indeed.
Over in Washington’s 10th District, DSA member Joshua Collins is challenging moderate Democrat Denny Heck. In nearby Washington’s 6th District, another DSA comrade, Rebecca Parson, is taking on left to moderate Democrat Derek Kilmer. The strong DSA and small Communist Party USA presence in these districts might help Collins and Parson a little.
Should We Worry?
While only a handful (if any) of the candidates on DSA’s list will get elected, their mere presence on the ballot will damage this country in several ways.
Firstly, they will serve to further legitimize socialism—something that should rank very near the top of the Evil Graph.
Secondly, election campaigns to communists are more about recruitment than winning elections. The DSA and its allies will win very few of the seats they contest, but they may end up seducing several thousand new souls to socialism. That will impact us all over time.
Thirdly, these candidates will serve to drive the Democratic Party even further to the left. That will benefit the Republicans in the short term, but in the long term, it makes the whole nation morally and politically poorer.
Democratic Socialists of America holds a rally in New York on Oct. 30, 2017. (Working Families Party/CC BY-NC 2.0)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
The Republican Party seems oblivious to a major threat developing in its Southern stronghold. Pro-China communists from the Liberation Road group are working to flip Republican-held states in the South one by one. Virginia has already fallen.
North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee are next on the list. If the communists can flip toss-up states Florida and North Carolina in 2020, President Donald Trump will likely be a one-term president and the Republican Party will be finished as a national force.
While probably numbering fewer than 2,000 members, the ultra-secretive Liberation Road may be able to remove China’s number one enemy from the White House for a measly few million dollars.
Known until April as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Liberation Road is an amalgamation of several Maoist and anarchist factions, some dating back to the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s.
Turn to Electoral Politics
In 2016, FRSO made a strong turn toward electoral politics in response to the electoral dominance of the Republican Party (especially in the South) and the election of President Trump.
FRSO/Liberation Road, like most parties of Maoist origin, is heavily focused on racial and sexual minorities. The Black Lives Matter movement is an FRSO front group. Ending “white privilege” is a major part of Liberation Road strategy. The proliferation of gender pronouns we now have to deal with also comes partially from Liberation Road.
According to Liberation Road, socialism will come to the United States by rallying minorities against “white capitalism” and minority voters against what they term “The New Confederacy.”
“The New Confederacy is the white united front that, building up over the past 40 years, has used white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and austerity to rally sectors of the white middle strata and white workers around the leadership of the most reactionary forces of capital. The Republican Party is its political instrument.”
Originally based mainly in Massachusetts, New York, and California, FRSO has been moving comrades into Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and other Southern states for some years. Mostly they fought the “New Confederacy” through protest and agitation. Tearing down Confederate statues is a favorite Maoist tactic, for example.
Now, after building considerable strength in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, Liberation Road is strong enough to influence elections and elect members and supporters to public office.
Grand Strategy
Liberation Road’s 2019 Main Political Report lays out the organization’s “line” and plans very clearly. If you can stomach the pseudo-scientific Marxist prose that is.
“The waves of protest that spread across the county after the 2016 election showed the force of the people’s rage and resistance. But this resistance has grown, for the most part without a strategy to contend for power. We need to move from protest to power. We need to build independent political organization.”
Liberation Road essentially blames the South for all that is wrong with America. They believe that without the South, the United States could soon become a non-racist, gender fluid, climate-change battling, non-patriarchal socialist paradise.
“With the power the New Confederacy has gained through the use of the Republican Party, holding trifectas in 22 states, they destroy unions, deny climate change, push the most homophobic and transphobic propaganda and policy, overrule progressive local movements or laws by state legislative ‘preemption’, and organize to repeal every last trace of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement.”
Liberation Road has the solution. The Republican stranglehold on the South must be broken county by county, state by state, by mobilizing the large black and Latino populations in the South in alliance with the existing white “progressive” minorities.
“In response, some new efforts by progressive forces have emerged, state by state, to bring together the multi-racial working class with minority nationalities and others to fight back. These efforts have several things in common.
“They have a broad vision of contending for power. They work in the street and in the election booth. They work inside and outside the Democratic Party. They fight austerity, white supremacy and/or cisheteropatriarchy. And they build on the strategic alliance of the working class – of all nationalities, races and languages – with mass movements based in communities of color.”
The question is, how can Liberation Road comrades use their manpower and influence to unite enough forces on the left and the center to defeat the New Confederacy? In their 2019–2022 draft Strategic Orientation plan, they state:
“We contend that it is only a united front led by an advanced layer of forces in opposition to white supremacy, austerity and cisheteropatriarchy that can defeat this enemy. A politics that both rejects and challenges—that offers a genuine alternative—to white supremacy, austerity, and cisheteropatriarchy is the only durable solution, and a united front must lead with those politics.
“The clearest path to organizing that united front is through engaging inthe electoral arena. Why do we place so much emphasis on the electoral arena in this moment? Because we believe this is the arena of struggle in which we are most clearly presented with the opportunity to construct the united front—to bring together social and political forces across and beyond self-interest. …
“Struggles become generalized when they enter into the broadest arena of politics. … The clearest and most practical way to do this is through elections, which necessarily involve and implicate the entire public.”
Working Through the Democratic Party
Liberation Road has learned from communist mistakes of the past and is committed to a very flexible strategy in its relations with the Democratic Party.
“Our approach is distinct from the Popular Front policy of the Communist Party prior to and during WWII, when it was a non-critical junior partner in the broad front of Left and center forces against Nazism and Fascism.
“That is, we are not calling for a political program that is just about electing any Democratic politician. Instead, we are calling for a clear progressive program that we fight for, through primaries, non-partisan races, and outside struggles; and commitment to a fight against our common enemy.
“This will look different depending on conditions: in Blue states, it may be the case that the advanced forces could struggle to a position to play a decisive leading role in a united front against the New Confederacy; in purple and red states, we may play secondary roles as we develop our forces and build organization and strength to ultimately contest for leadership in that front.”
The Power of ‘For All’
As serious revolutionaries, Liberation Road comrades know that the masses can best be unified around clear and meaningful slogans. Liberation Road has chosen two simple words to unify the base it wants to mobilize—“For All.”
This is already evident in Liberation Road’s newly created voter mobilization organizations: Richmond For All in Virginia and the more established Durham For All in North Carolina and Memphis For All in Tennessee.
“We believe that the way to build the ‘us’ is the For All. This represents a unity of the advanced and the link between the particular subjects of the united front.
“Here we propose that the For All frame be the generally adopted one for our organization, and that our work engage in the struggle for political power. We suggest that it is on the basis of For All that we can facilitate a broad unity on the foundation of the specific grievances of oppressed peoples that also invites a generalized public support and participation.”
Why We Must Have an Enemy
If anybody is wondering about the incessant propaganda from the left against President Trump, the Republican Party, conservatives, and traditional Christians—all components of the New Confederacy—Liberation Road makes its purpose clear.
“For there to be an us, there also has to be a them that we can define through relation to us. This is why it’s critically important to have an enemy—the racists-billionaires, the New Confederacy, and their political organization, the Republican Party. The naming of an enemy gives us the narrow target needed to direct the united front forces against. This in turn sets the foundation to define the lines of demarcation between the enemy and the people’s united front.”
Why the Republican Party Should Take Liberation Road Seriously
While they will never admit it, Liberation Road is working in the interests of China and the world revolutionary movement. They fully understand that the United States, and specifically President Trump, must be taken down if the revolution is to succeed.
Liberation Road’s many front organizations are richly funded through several major foundations and the Democracy Alliance—a network of more than 150 leftist billionaires and multi-millionaires including presidential candidate Tom Steyer, George Soros, socialist lawyer Steve Phillips, and many others. Liberation Road and their on-the-ground allies do not lack for resources.
Liberation Road has already flipped once reliably Republican Virginia. It took them 10 years, but they have already replicated much of their winning strategy in several other Southern states—some of which could go blue in 2020, or more likely 2022.
Liberation Road already heavily influences the local government in Durham, North Carolina’s most important city, and also has a strong influence in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Liberation Road is also influential in Jackson, Mississippi, a town run by radical mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
In Florida and Georgia, FRSO was a major part of the coalitions that almost elected Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams to their respective governor’s mansions in 2018. In Florida, FRSO and its allies lifted Democratic voting by around 40 percent, which normally would have guaranteed victory.
Only because President Trump ignored the Republican Party hierarchy and endorsed strong insurgent conservative Ron De Santis were the voters able to narrowly stave off a shock Democratic victory.
While Republicans seem to be focusing on the Midwestern states, the big shock of election night 2020 might come from the South.
Feature image: Freedom Road Socialist Organization supporters during an anti-Trump march in Washington on Jan. 20, 2017. slowking4/GFDL 1.2
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
The international communist movement just celebrated its 100th birthday at a gathering in Turkey.
Far from using the occasion to confess their responsibility for 160 million to 200 million deaths and their legacy of torture, famine, and oppression, the assembled communists look forward to a bright future, in which Marxism-Leninism rules every corner of the globe.
The “One-Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist International: The Fight for Peace and Socialism Continues” was held in Izmir, Turkey, on Oct. 18–20. The gathering drew at least 56 communist parties from more than 40 countries, including most of the world’s major Marxist-Leninist organizations.
The event was hosted by the Greek and Turkish communist parties, which may be significant because Turkey is increasingly also playing a leadership role in the overlapping world Islamist movement.
The Americas were represented by the communist parties of the United States, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Almost every communist party from Western and Eastern Europe contributed, with the notable exception of the French. Three communist parties from Russia graced the stage, as did the Ukrainian party.
From Asia, the communist parties of Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, and Tibet all attended. The Azerbaijanis were there, as were both of India’s main communist parties. The North Koreans were there, but the Japanese were not. China, though now in practice the leader of the world communist movement, skipped the event—but did get plenty of praise from other attendees.
Almost every party from the Middle East was present, including the Lebanese, Bahrainis, Iraqis, Syrians, the Communist Party of Kurdistan, and the Tudeh Party of Iran.
Africa was represented only by the Algerians—the quasi-ruling South African Communist Party was absent.
Oceania was represented only by Australia.
Growing Confidence
Judging by conference speeches, posted online, the general mood was confident and defiant. By all accounts, the communist movement is growing and confident of overcoming its opposition, which in many countries is weak or nonexistent.
The representative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was both upbeat and combative:
“Speaking of Russia, we can say with confidence that the left movement, led by the Communist Party, is also ‘on the rise.’ Our party was successful during the elections to many local parliaments. This year was one of the most successful election campaigns for our party.
“The capital international is cracking again – Trump’s trade wars, US and EU contradictions, EU contradictions, etc. Under these conditions, it is important to develop a unified strategy for the communists of different countries in order to use the split of the imperialist international for the triumph of socialism.”
Many in the West believe that because some ruling communist parties, such as in China, Laos, and Vietnam, have adopted some market-based economic policies, they have abandoned Marxism-Leninism. Any real student of Marx will tell you that “market” economics are regarded as a temporary phase to build wealth and military power, and are completely in line with Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
The Vietnamese contribution to the conference affirmed this oft-ignored point:
“On this occasion, the Communist Party of Vietnam would like to express its sincere thanks, deep gratitude to the communist, workers’ parties, progressive forces all around the world for their valuable support, sharing and help in our past struggles for national independence, reunification, as well as in our national construction and defense today.
“We look forward to continuing to receive your feelings, support, encouragement and solidarity in the new period of the development of our Party and country. We reaffirm our close solidarity with the international communist and workers parties.”
The Venezuelans appealed for international communist solidarity in the face of U.S. pressure:
“Today, the cause of the Venezuelan people demands the greatest levels of solidarity from the world’s revolutionary forces. We trust in the enormous power of the peoples’ solidarity to contain any war adventure against Venezuela and to denounce the criminal measures that the US and the EU impose against Venezuela’s sovereignty and the rights of the Venezuelan people.”
“The Tudeh Party of Iran would like to state categorically that the people’s movement in Iran needs the support and solidarity of the international communist and workers’ parties in preventing imperialist interventions in Iran and in defense of the people’s struggle for democracy and social justice.”
The Canadian communists have long been at the forefront of pushing for Western disarmament and de-industrialization through the “global warming” scam. Communists have always promoted peace through Western disarmament and surrender. They believe there will indeed be “peace”—when there’s no longer any opposition to communism.
“The climate strike demonstrations in October brought more than 1 million people into the streets in Canada – a larger protest than at any time in the last 20 years. This is significant, and hopeful. Mass protests will continue and must be expanded to include the fight for peace and global nuclear disarmament.”
The Mexican communist party is a major part of the program to destroy the United States by promoting illegal immigration from Latin America:
“We raise our voice for the migrant question, an issue that must be addressed by the communist parties that we have to find a common intervention in that important sector of the international working class.”
Further south, the El Salvadoran comrades boasted of their efforts to coordinate the communist parties of their region:
“We want to communicate that our party, in the framework of flying the flag of proletarian internationalism, is promoting communist articulation with the sister parties in what we call: ‘Meeting of Communist Parties of Central America, Mexico and Panama’, where the Communist Party of Mexico, the Guatemalan Labor Party, the Communist Party of Honduras, the Popular Vanguard of Costa Rica, the People’s Party of Panama and the PCS converge. The VI Meeting was held in San Salvador, in the month of March, on the slopes of the historic hill of Guazapa, the guerrilla cradle of the revolutionary process that the country experienced.
“The Communist Party of El Salvador proclaims the validity of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.”
The Lebanese party confirmed that the West is indeed facing a united movement led by China and supposedly non-communist Russia:
“The US-led imperialist system, along with allies in the European Union, Japan and NATO countries, also faces serious challenges with the rapid rise of other rival international poles with conflicting interests with the dominant imperialist states… This rise, mainly of two international powers, China, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), and its tremendous economic potential, Russia, which today regains its military and political power as well as regional powers in Asia, Latin America and Africa, is already posing a real challenge to the system of unipolar hegemony that has been dedicated for three decades.”
The Lebanese communists who played a significant role in the 2011 “Arab Spring” also condemned Israel and talked of uniting local Islamic states under the communist banner:
“We in the Lebanese Communist Party promise you that we will devote all that we can devote to achieve this crucial task by formulating our local and regional program based on confronting capitalism, imperialism and the Zionist movement through comprehensive resistance by all available means, and confronting reactionary, authoritarian and sectarian regimes, seeking to assemble leftist forces, Arab communism, to put forward a secular nationalist resistance in the path of socialism.”
The North Korean Workers party made it very clear that any concessions made to the United States or the West would only ever be temporary:
“We will always hold the initiative in the righteous struggle for peace and security of the Korean peninsula to defend our socialist system and the gains of the revolution, and never tolerate or sit idle by the sanctions imposed by the imperialists but fight against and frustrate their moves.”
The Brazilian communists emphasized their battle to overthrow President Jair Bolsonaro and the need for communists to go on the offensive both locally and internationally:
“The PCB [Brazilian Communist Party] understands that the moment calls for mobilization and struggle in the streets, accumulating forces to confront the Bolsonaro government. … In Brazil and throughout the world, it is necessary, more than ever, (for) the resumption of a counter-hegemonic offensive of socialist and communist ideals.”
The enormous Communist Party of India (Marxist) boasted of the huge numbers they were able to mobilize through their domination of the Indian labor movement:
“In India, the CPI(M) is trying its best to move in this direction of intense class struggles by mobilising workers, peasants, youth, students, marginalized sections and women. On 8-9 January 2019, a 48-hour National Strike of workers called by 10 central trade unions, in which many national confederations of workers and employees also joined hands, was a historic success. The bourgeois media had reported that over 180 million workers participated in this strike. Taking forward these struggles, trade unions have once again called for a general strike on 8th January 2020, for which preparations are afoot.”
US Contribution
Houstonian Alvaro Rodríguez, the international secretary of the Communist Party USA, addressed the assembled comrades on international resistance to U.S. imperialism and President Donald Trump:
“Efforts to beat back the achievements of the worldwide working-class struggle have reached a high point, especially since the election of Donald Trump, a racist, misogynist ‘white supremacist’ as President of my country. Imperialist interventions aimed at regime change and the imposition of the rule of voracious neoliberal capital are underway in many parts of the world. Economic sanctions have been imposed on progressive and socialist governments in Cuba, Venezuela and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. …
“But the picture is not all bleak. Neoliberal capitalism offers nothing to the working people and toiling masses of the world. Everywhere there is mounting resistance.
“The Communist Party of China, with its 90 million members, is leading the world’s second largest economic power on the road to socialism with Chinese characteristics. Socialist Cuba is holding out strongly against everything imperialism is throwing against it and continues to provide solidarity and inspiration to the world. In Argentina, the right wing Macri government has lost the elections. Elsewhere, right wing, pro-imperialist governments are on the defensive; in Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries. In Mexico, a new government is giving promise of advances against old inequities.”
Rodriguez was also fulsome in his praise for a new socialist wave building inside the United States:
“In my country there is a massive youth led movement to combat climate change and global warming. Important political figures, such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez of New York have taken a leading role in proposing new environmental protection laws, called “the Green New Deal”. This effort is supported by many unions, environmentalists and other organizations.
“There are many new signs of working-class struggle. Under the slogan of fighting for a national minimum wage of $15USD per hour, super exploited and mostly minority and women workers nationwide have reached a high level of mobilization. Youth are also mobilized behind demands for an end to gun violence, to police brutality and many other things. Unionized teachers have been carrying out successful strikes aimed at rolling back neo-liberal policies in the educational field.
“The fight for the rights of immigrants with or without documents is nationwide, intense and has the support of labor unions, African Americans, other minorities and many others. The indigenous inhabitants of my country are mobilized against racism and in defense of the national environment.
“Communists in the United States are involved in all these struggles and more, as part of broadly-based coalitions. The working-class fightback was seen in the midterm legislative elections of 2018, and the likelihood that it will sweep the extreme-right regime of Trump and his allies out of power in the 2020 elections is high.”
In a sane world, an international gathering of parties sworn to the destruction of the West would probably make it to the 6 o’clock news. Most viewers would probably like to know that the world revolutionary movement is alive and well and is able to mobilize hundreds of millions of people at will.
The communists are now leading violent insurgencies in Sudan, Lebanon, Ecuador, Chile, and Catalonia/Spain.
They are heavily involved in every major trouble spot in the world. They are actively trying to depose the two most actively anti-communist world leaders: U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Yet, they gather together to openly plot the destruction of what is left of the free world, with zero mainstream media coverage.
It’s very easy for the world communist movement to be confident of victory when the vast majority of their intended victims don’t even know that the threat still exists.
Feature photo: People hold a banner picturing Communist figures including (L–R) Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, as they gather in Bakirkoy district as part of the May Day rally in Istanbul on May 1, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / OZAN KOSE)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | October 30, 2019, Updated: November 6, 2019
Commentary
I heard a love story recently that brought me to tears. It wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy of star-crossed lovers. It wasn’t romantic at all. It wasn’t a tale of a mother’s self-sacrifice for her children—quite the opposite.
It was a simple tale of masculine love—something so rarely praised and so often devalued that Western culture is dying for the very lack of it.
A highly regarded U.S. military leader, a veteran of one of this country’s toughest military units, told me his story.
Many years ago, my friend’s son was about 16. He was smoking marijuana every day, and no matter what his parents told him, or how much they pleaded or tried to reason with him, he simply wouldn’t quit. The son’s drug habit became a big family issue.
The boy’s mother offered him unconditional love. She would be there for him, no matter how he behaved. When the boy’s father threatened to throw his son out of the house, his distraught mother would tearfully plead his case. Her love for her son was overwhelming and unquestionable—and completely ineffective.
Eventually, the father, a man who had led some of the world’s toughest troops into combat, made one of the bravest decisions of his life. He put his son in the back of the family car. He drove him down to the local shopping mall and made him get out. He told his son: “This is your new home. … You stay here until you learn to love this family more than you love marijuana.”
The father drove away, choking back tears and praying all the way home.
Five long, tearful, and fearful days later, the boy turned up on the family doorstep and said: “I’m never smoking that stuff again. Can I please come home?”
The boy was joyfully welcomed back to the family—and he kept his word.
The big lie of modern Western society is that masculinity is dangerous, destructive, even toxic. Masculinity is harsh and unforgiving. It’s warlike, aggressive, and intolerant. It needs to be suppressed. We need more love, and that’s essentially a feminine virtue. Feminine love (the only “real” love, we are led to believe) is kind and forgiving, accepting and tolerant, welcoming and unconditional.
The truth, known to virtually every civilization in world history but somehow largely forgotten in our own, is that there are two sides to love: the masculine and the feminine. Both are essential to any healthy family, church, or society. And in proper balance, they produce results far greater than the sum of the parts.
No family can truly prosper without feminine love. How sad it must be for some to grow up without memories of a mother’s unconditional love: having your grazed knee bandaged, eating a hot meal with mom on a cold rainy day, and snuggling on her lap while she reads you a story. Or seeing her beam with pride when you graduate high school, or watching the tears roll down her face when you ship out to a combat zone.
But what of the love of the father? Can any family reach its true potential without masculine love? This is the love that demands respect, that will lay down conditions. This is the dad who will kick your backside if you disrespect your mother. The father who will make you clean up your room, or who will bawl you out for a bad report card.
This is also the father who will teach his son to stand up for himself and will expect him to strive for goals. He’ll demand that the boy shows courtesy to his elders and be willing to protect his younger siblings and those weaker than himself.
This is the father who will be a rock for his daughter, protecting her from every threat and danger, especially from boys like he used to be. He will encourage her to be the best she can be in every aspect of life. He will teach her to respect herself and look for a husband who is at least as good as her dad.
How many millions of young Western men—most other cultures haven’t gotten as crazy as us yet—are rotting in jails, working endless dead-end jobs, smoking dope all day long on welfare, or living in mom’s basement at 35 because they never had a dad around to take them fishing or boot their backsides when needed?
How many millions of young women move from one hopeless relationship to another because they so lack self-respect they’ll latch on to any man who’ll have them? How many of them struggle to develop real meaningful relationships because they have no yardstick to recognize a good man, even if they happen to stumble across one? How many millions of their children are almost certain to repeat the same cycle?
Masculine love isn’t just desirable; it’s essential for our survival. A lack of the masculine qualities of leadership, decisiveness, discipline, and courage are destroying the Western family, churches, and culture.
Masculine Christianity
Christianity, the bedrock of Western culture, was once a very masculine religion. Jesus came with a sword, not a poem. He overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple and didn’t attempt to mediate a peaceful resolution.
He said, “Go forth and sin no more,” not, “Don’t worry, do what you feel like, I’ll make it right with dad.”
Modern Western Christianity is drowning in feminine love. Seldom will you hear an American or European priest or pastor ever get tough with his flock. You’ll hear very little about renouncing sin or denouncing evil in most Western churches.
Your modern Western church experience probably won’t include a military veteran priest or pastor who can preach a sermon that will chill your blood and cleanse your soul. You will likely not sing songs of praise such as “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
A caricature of today’s clergy would be a wispy-bearded, latte-drinking pastor, wearing skinny jeans and playing sappy “Christian” rock music, while he (or she) tells you that Jesus loves you no matter what you do, and as long as you put some money in the collection plate, you’re good with God—whoever she may be.
Western Christianity has all but abandoned masculine love, and our churches, families, and culture are dying because of it.
The fact that many people will be enraged by what I have just written only proves my point. We have so lost our bearings in the West that stating obvious truths about the virtues of masculinity and its role in family, church, and societal leadership could be enough to get you fired, banished, murdered, or even de-friended on Facebook.
To recover our culture, we must restore our respect for masculinity and the masculine virtues. We must recognize that masculine love is what drives young men to defy tyrants, fight just wars, explore space, create businesses, plant churches, and build strong families.
Life without feminine love is sterile, suppressive, harsh, and cold. Communist China, which so undervalues femininity that it has aborted tens of millions of baby girls under the “one-child policy,” is a case in point. Life without masculine love is, to borrow from Hobbes, “poor, nasty, brutal, and short.” Go to any inner-city welfare slum, where fatherless families are the norm, to see proof of that.
Any family, church, or society that can properly honor and balance both feminine and masculine love is destined to grow and prosper. We need both aspects of love to make us whole—and holy.
*Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Photo credit: A father and son watch batting practice prior to a game between the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix, Ariz., on Aug. 20, 2019. (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | October 16, 2019, Updated: October 22, 2019
Commentary
On Oct. 28, the two most powerful Democratic politicians in the United States, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), will headline the annual conference of J Street—a leftist (and, in reality, anti-Israel) lobbying organization.
Schumer’s presence at the conference is especially significant because he has been long regarded as a pro-Israel voice in the Senate. He regularly speaks at the annual conference of the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the nemesis of J Street.
Traditional bipartisan support for Israel has been waning for some time as the pro-Palestine left wing of the Democratic Party gains more and more influence. This “fraternizing” with J Street by party leaders will likely send a signal to Israel that Democratic support in the U.S. Congress can no longer be relied upon.
While AIPAC has long worked with both Democrats and Republicans, J Street is an almost exclusively Democratic-focused operation. Its affiliated political action committee, JStreetPAC, raised $5 million for more than 100 Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, according to The Jerusalem Post.
J Street was established in 2007 essentially as a counter to AIPAC. J Street describes itself as “the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans … who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people … [advocating] for policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.”
According to Media Director Jessica Rosenblum, cited in Brown University student newspaper The Brown Daily Herald, J Street “aims to ‘redefine what it means to be pro-Israel’ and marshal American support for a two-state solution.”
According to J Street, to be “pro-Israel” today is to support the “two-state solution”—the partitioning of Israel to create a new independent Palestinian nation within current Israeli borders.
The so-called two-state solution would in fact be tantamount to Israeli national suicide. Depending on the proposed borders (a major sticking point), a new Palestinian state would incorporate nearly a third of Israel’s territory and would include several major cities including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron, and Jenin. It would bring the borders of a potentially hostile foreign power to within a very few miles of Israel’s economic center Tel Aviv and within literal yards of the capital city Jerusalem. It would also bring dozens of Israeli towns and settlements within easy rocket or sniper range.
The “two-state solution” would make Israel almost impossible to defend—which is no doubt the reason it is being pushed so hard by the Jewish nation’s enemies. It is the strategic equivalent of giving Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington to China, or ceding the entire Eastern Seaboard up to the city limits of New York and Washington to Russia.
Israel’s traditional Middle Eastern enemies, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the openly Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, always owed their main loyalties to the former Soviet Union. Fatah, a faction of the PLO, now rules the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous part of Eastern Israel. Terror group Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip in Southern Israel, is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has deep ties to Soviet-Russian intelligence. Hezbollah, which has often attacked Israel from its bases in neighboring Lebanon, is a front for the Iranian regime, which partially owes its existence to the former Soviet Union and is still closely allied with Moscow.
Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that J Street is heavily penetrated by the U.S. hard-left, most of which is now militantly opposed to the existence of Israel.
Connections
In 2009, late Minnesota Communist Party leader Erwin Marquit traveled to Washington for the first national conference of J Street. Marquit “attended the conference on 26–28 October and participated in lobbying members of the Congress on 29 October. … The guidelines for the lobby stressed Congressional support of Obama,” according to his memoirs. Marquit was also a political ally and financial supporter of hard-left Muslim former Congress member Keith Ellison. J Street endorsed and funded Ellison in his 2016 congressional race.
Members of the J Street advisory board have included:
Stanley Sheinbaum, a wealthy Los Angeles-based philanthropist and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member. Sheinbaum claimed PLO leader Yasser Arafat as a friend and denied that Arafat was a terrorist.
Alan Snitow, a filmmaker and former member of East Bay DSA.
Michael Walzer, professor emeritus at the School of Social Science of Princeton University and a member of the DSA.
Maria Echaveste, the former deputy White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. At Stanford University in the 1970s, Echaveste was active in MEChA, a radical socialist group advocating for the return of the U.S. Southwest to Mexico. In May 1975, Echaveste of Students for Equity joined the Alliance for Radical Change, the far-left Iranian Students Association, and the Maoist-leaning Revolutionary Student Brigade to pressure Stanford University trustees to terminate a three-year, $1 million contract to develop a satellite system for National Iranian Radio Television. The communist campaign to economically isolate the regime of the pro-American Shah of Iran contributed to the Islamic revolution of 1978. There are clear parallels to today’s anti-Israel Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment Movement.
Rob Malley, the former special assistant to Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama. Malley’s father, Simon Malley, was a founder of the Egyptian Communist Party and a close associate of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. According to Ed Lasky of the American Thinker: “Simon Malley loathed Israel and … spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a close friend of Arafat.” In 1980, Simon Malley and his family were expelled from France for “political activities which do not correspond with, and even run contrary to, French interests in certain countries,” according to Discover the Networks. An Oct. 3, 1980, United Press International report stated, “[French] Interior Minister Christian Bonnet told the Assembly that some articles written by Malley were ‘genuine appeals to murder foreign chiefs of state.’”
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami also has a radical bent. Ben-Ami was then-President Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser and later served as policy director for leftist Democrat Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Before becoming president of J Street, he was senior vice president at Fenton Communications, a Washington public relations firm notorious for representing communist movements and governments, including Daniel Ortega’s Marxist regime in Nicaragua, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop’s Marxist-Leninist regime in Grenada, El Salvador’s Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization the FMLN, and the pro-Soviet MPLA regime in Angola.
In 2009, Ben-Ami served on the board of J Street sister organization Americans for Peace Now alongside several radical leftists, including DSA members Jo-Ann Mort, Stanley Sheinbaum, and Michael Walzer.
J Street is unquestionably an enemy of Israel as it is constituted today. The fact that the two highest-ranking Democrats in Congress are scheduled to address the upcoming J Street conference will likely be noted with some concern in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Feature Photo: U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) arrive at a news briefing after they returned to the Capitol from a White House meeting with President Donald Trump May 22, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
