by Trevor | Dec 13, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Featured, Headline, Liberation Road, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times
Commentary
Pro-China communists from the Liberation Road group have insinuated their supporters and allies into several key positions in the city government of Durham, North Carolina.
Liberation Road has been highly influential in flipping neighboring Virginia from a Republican to a Democratic state; North Carolina is the next target.
Liberation Road has a strategy of destroying the Republican Party base in the South—what it terms the “New Confederacy”—by using the minority voting base to flip county by county, state by state to the Democrats.
If the communists can turn North Carolina blue, President Donald Trump will likely lose the 2020 election—handing Democrats and their socialist allies a near-permanent monopoly on power. By establishing a political base in Durham, the comrades aim to project their power and city resources across the entire state.
The 2020 presidential election may well be won or lost in North Carolina.
North Carolina Maoists
Since 1985, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) has been the pre-eminent pro-China communist party in the country, absorbing cadre from several other Maoist groups along the way, including the Communist Workers Party, Line of March, and League of Revolutionary Struggle.
In April this year, the FRSO changed its name to Liberation Road—partially at least to sound fewer alarm bells as it proceeds to infiltrate the Democratic Party.
In 1988, FRSO had fewer than six members in North Carolina: a white lawyer from Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and a handful of black comrades from the Amilcar Cabral/Paul Robeson Collective. Through the 1990s, FRSO recruited more old Maoists and a new layer of university students from Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. They even recruited a couple of former Communist Party USA members, and in recent years seem to have absorbed some cadre from the pro-Iran and North Korea Workers World Party.
In the 2000s, FRSO began sending comrades from California, Massachusetts, and New York to beef up the numbers, soon making the Maoists the most significant force on the left in the region. This was part of a deliberate colonization of Southern states, particularly Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida. FRSO targeted the South because of its high concentration of black and Hispanic potential voters, which, coupled with a history of racial polarization, made for great revolutionary potential.
North Carolina, one of the most politically marginal Republican-held states in the South was a prime target. Durham, with the largest concentration of black voters in the state, became ground zero for the Maoists. FRSO supporters began to infiltrate Durham student unions, community groups, labor unions, churches, and local government.
Maoist strategy is all about building a counter-state—taking over whole areas to form a state-within-state to serve as a base to spread revolution across a much wider area. Parts of Virginia are moving in that direction. Jackson, Mississippi, is already there. Durham is well on the way.
In recent years, FRSO has moved away from traditional street activism into more of an electoral focus. The organization now has the numbers and influence to impact elections at both state and local level.
FRSO is extremely secretive about membership, but I estimate there are around a hundred cadre in the Triangle area and another 200 supporters or allies. Many FRSO/Liberation Road people lead key organizations that are able to mobilize several thousand people at a time.
To achieve its ends, FRSO has infiltrated several existing organizations and has created others.
Durham People’s Alliance
In the early 1970s, Durham activists affiliated with the communist New American Movement formed two collectives—a health collective and a socialist feminist collective. In 1973, the health collective became the Durham Organizing Committee (DOC). The DOC later split, some members entering a Marxist-Leninist collective that eventually became the Communist Workers Party and others forming the Durham People’s Alliance (DPA).
Since that time, the DPA has become a major force in local politics. With the ability to raise money and a small army of door knockers and phone-bankers, DPA’s endorsement is widely sought by candidates on the left.
North Carolina Democratic congressmembers David Price and GK Butterfield and former Sen. Kay Hagan have all been endorsed and helped by DPA’s 2,000 members—as have dozens of lower-level politicians.
Around 2014, FRSO cadre Aiden Graham joined the DPA board; in the same year DPA helped elect FRSO leader Sendolo Diaminah, a self-described “black queer communist,” to the Durham School Board, though he later resigned before finishing his term.
Durham Association of Educators
The Triangle area has experienced widespread education labor unrest in recent years, mainly because of the Durham Association of Educators (DAE), a local affiliate of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) and the National Education Association.
Longtime FRSO/Liberation Road cadre Bryan Proffit is on the board of the NCAE and was president of the DAE.
With an army of fired up leftist teachers on their roster, ready to rally or door-knock on command, the DAE has also become a major force in Durham left politics.
Durham For All
Launched in early 2016, Durham For All grew out of a group of FRSO supporters who had been working together for some years on local politics.
In 2014 and 2015, members of the founding team began experimenting with building political power through local elections, and led “victories to elect young, progressive people of color into local offices.”
Durham For All is a completely Liberation Road creation and is the counterpart of similar front groups Richmond For All in Virginia and Memphis For All in Tennessee.
Durham For All plans to build a force in Durham of 10,000 people to first take control of the city, then the entire state. The first goals were to take control of the City Council in 2017 to 2019 then to flip the state to the Democrats in 2020.
According to the Durham For All website:
“Corporations and right-wing politicians have rigged the political system, and we’ve had enough. Together, we are building a cross-class, multiracial movement in Durham that is 10,000 people strong. …
“Power comes from thousands of people speaking up and deciding to take action. That’s why our plan is based on building people power from the ground up. The plan has three stages:
“Stage 1: Build a Mandate. 2017. With the launch of our 10K Strong Campaign, we trained leaders like you to ask family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to sign our 10K Strong Pledge and join the movement for a Durham for All. In less than a year, over 4,500 people said “yes” and signed on! These commitments were the foundation for a new political vision of a Durham rooted in the principles of a Durham for all of us. Grounded in these principles, we organized in working class and people of color communities to find new leaders and get out the vote. Together, we elected a progressive, people of color majority to Durham’s City Council!
“Stage 2: Build a Model. 2018. Through our Decriminalize Durham Campaign, we successfully piloted a base-building model that (1) activated and developed leaders in working class and people of color communities, (2) invited and supported hundreds of people to take new risks in organizing, and (3) translated election victories into policy wins via participatory democracy. We endorsed and elected officials who committed to fighting mass incarceration and stopping deportations ….
“Stage 3: Build a Movement. 2019-2020. In the third stage, we are harnessing the power of our movement to create platforms for co-governance and to pass policy. We are continuing to refine and expand our base-building model to bring new leaders and thousands of voters into the critical state and federal elections in 2020. Working with groups in rural areas, towns, and other cities, we will be part of unleashing millions of engaged residents and leaders in a movement to win back North Carolina from the far right.”
So far, the goal to take over the Durham City Council has gone as planned.
In 2015, the DPA elected Charlie Reece and Jillian Johnson and helped re-elect Steve Schewel to the six-member Durham City Council.
Reece was treasurer of the North Carolina Democratic Party and a past board member and secretary of the DPA.
Johnson was a long-time FRSO affiliate and later served in the leadership of Durham For All alongside comrades Sendolo Diaminah, Aidan Graham, Anna Grant, Tony Macias, and Bennett Carpenter. Steve Schewel was a former radical magazine editor.
In 2017, the DPA successfully backed Schewel for Durham mayor. The DPA also elected their longtime board member and Durham For All supporter DeDreana Freeman and another former DPA board member Vernetta Alston to the City Council.
In 2019, Johnson, Reece, and newcomer Javiera Caballero ran as a leftist “Bull City Together” ticket backed by the DPA.
Schewel, Johnson, Reece, and Caballero were all endorsed as a team by Durham For All.
Liberation Road’s Bryan Proffitt also endorsed the team, as did the DAE PAC, which also supported a “$95 million housing bond to combat gentrification and end the rapid displacement of our communities.”
The left won everything. They passed the housing bond and now hold five of the six City Council seats, plus the mayoralty.
In 2018, DPA members also helped elect Satana Deberry for district attorney and Clarence Birkhead for sheriff.
FRSO leader Sendolo Diaminah noted in a Facebook post:
“Tonight we made history in Durham by electing Satana Deberry for DA and Clarence Birkhead for sheriff – both committed to ending mass incarceration and fighting deportations. There are so many things to say about this but tonight I just feel humbled and nourished by the calling to build political power with our people.”
So, stage one of the FRSO Durham For All plan is pretty well accomplished, according to their original aims. Liberation Road and its allied organizations pretty much have a lock on North Carolina’s fourth largest city and its 275,000 citizens.
Can the Maoists Take the State?
Liberation Road has a strong presence in the state. So do their allies the Democratic Socialists of America, which has branches in Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Asheville, Winston-Salem, and the Yadkin Valley.
Liberation Road is affiliated to several ACORN-type voter registration organizations in the state, including Down Home NC, Ignite NC, and Blueprint North Carolina.
Liberation Road leader Aiden Graham also serves as the campaign manager for the North Carolina State AFL-CIO.
Between Durham For All, the DPA, DAE, North Carolina AFL-CIO, and the voter registration groups listed above, Liberation Road and its allies have the power to mobilize several thousand election workers against Republican candidates.
If the left is working hard to re-elect Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, they’re even more determined to defeat Republican Sen. Thom Tillis—considered one the most vulnerable in the country. The Democrats need to flip five State Senate seats for a majority and six seats in the State House.
If the left can defeat Sen. Tillis and flip one or both houses of the state legislature, North Carolina will be well down the road to becoming a Democratic state, just like Virginia was about three years ago.
Pro-China communists from FRSO/Liberation Road stole Virginia from under the nose of the Republican Party. If North Carolina is allowed to go down the same path then Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas will soon follow suit. The Republican Party will then be finished as a national force.
There is no excuse for the Republican Party to allow that to happen—if they care at all about their own survival that is.
Featured photo: A woman votes on November 8, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. African American turn out to the polls was reporting low across the battleground state. (Photo by Sara D. Davis/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 presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by M M | Dec 10, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, CPUSA, Democratic Party, DSA, Enemies Within, Featured, Green New Deal, Headline, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times
Commentary
This country’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), played a major role in pushing the Green New Deal into the highest reaches of the Democratic Party.
The Green New Deal is supported by more than 90 members of the House of Representatives and 15 senators, including presidential candidates Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Now, the DSA has endorsed a related project, the “Red Deal,” which comes from even further left. How long will it take the DSA to bring the Red Deal into the Democratic Party?
The Red Deal
The Red Deal is the project of the New Mexico-based Native American activist organization The Red Nation—a group of fewer than 50 core members. However, with close ties to Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestinian militants, The Red Nation has some revolutionary credibility on the left.
The Red Nation is openly communist.
The organization’s Third General Assembly formally adopted “revolutionary socialism and liberation as the primary political ideology of The Red Nation.” The document went on to “articulate the basic principles of revolutionary socialism and Marxism and its connection to Indigenous socialism and communism.”
The Red Nation website explains the origins of the Red Deal:
“The proposed Green New Deal legislation is a step in the right direction to combat climate change and to hold corporate polluters responsible. A mass mobilization, one like we’ve never seen before in history, is required to save this planet. Indigenous movements have always been at the forefront of environmental justice struggles.
“Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the main proponent of the GND, is herself a Water Protector who began her successful congressional run while she was at Standing Rock protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thus, the GND and the climate justice movement in North America trace their origins to Indigenous frontline struggles.
“With this background in mind, [The Red Nation] is proposing a Red Deal. It’s not the ‘Red New Deal’ because it’s the same ‘Old Deal’—the fulfillment of treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation. Ours is the oldest class struggle in the Americas; centuries-long resistance for a world in which many worlds fit.”
So what is the Red Deal? Like the Green New Deal, it’s constantly evolving, but essentially it’s an attempt to impose full-blown communism on the United States under the cover of restoration of made-up Native American “rights” and bogus environmentalism.
“The Red Deal is not a counter program of the Green New Deal. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives.
“The Red Deal is a platform that calls for demilitarization; police and prison abolition; abolishing ICE; tearing down all border walls; Indigenous liberation, decolonization, and land restoration; treaty rights; free healthcare; free education; free housing; full citizenship and equal protection to undocumented relatives; a complete moratorium on oil, gas, coal, and carbon extraction and emissions; a transition to an economy that benefits everyone and that ends the exploitation of the Global South and Indigenous nations for resources; safe and free public transportation; restoration of Indigenous agriculture; food sovereignty; restoration of watersheds and waterways; denuclearization; Black self-determination and autonomy; gender and sexual equality; Two-Spirit, trans*, and queer liberation; and the restoration of sacred sites.
“Thus the Red Deal is ‘Red’ because it prioritizes Indigenous liberation, on one hand, and a revolutionary left position, on the other.”
And where is the money coming from for this leap into full-blown socialism?
“Where will we get the resources to achieve these monumental tasks? We call for a divestment away from the police, prisons, and military (two of the largest drains on ‘public spending’) and fossil fuels and a reinvestment in common humanity for everyone (health, wellbeing, and dignity) and the restoration of Indigenous lands, waters, airs, and nations.”
In a Nov. 15 statement on its website, the DSA fully endorsed the Red Deal and committed to a partnership with The Red Nation:
“The Democratic Socialists of America is proud to endorse the Red Deal, an indigenous centered set of policy recommendations that was written by The Red Nation. We are also proud to endorse the work of The Red Nation and commit to a long-term partnership with them in the furtherance of decolonizing our society. The Red Nation is a group of radical indigenous people that are fighting back against the US imperialist settler colonialist state. They are not just fighting for land and sovereignty, but for survival.”
The DSA, which claims to be a “democratic socialist” and noncommunist organization, appears to have no qualms about endorsing communist principles and partnering with a revolutionary communist organization.
Red Nation
The Red Nation was founded in 2014 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a fusion between Native American militants and comrades from the pro-North Korea and -Iran Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The Red Nation and PSL held numerous events together and worked out of the same office. Several Red Nation activists were also PSL comrades, including Paige Murphy, Sam Gardipe, Michael Butler, and Melissa Tso.
In recent years, The Red Nation also formed a close bond to the Trotsky-oriented International Socialist Organization (ISO).
For several years, ISO website Socialist Worker has carried coverage of The Red Nation’s conferences and protests. Most were written by Wisconsin-based Native American activist and ISO member Brian Ward and his California-based comrade Ragina Johnson.
At The Red Nation’s Native Liberation Conference held Aug. 11–12, 2018, in Albuquerque, ISO hosted the panel “Solidarity Will Win: Socialism and Indigenous Peoples” featuring ISO comrades Khury Petersen-Smith, Johnson, and Ward and moderated by The Red Nation leader Nick Estes.
In early 2019, ISO collapsed as the result of a long-simmering sexual harassment scandal. Many ISO comrades moved into the DSA, bringing their The Red Nation contacts with them.
At the DSA’s national convention in Atlanta, in July 2019, seven comrades moved the resolution “Amendment on the Red Deal and Rejecting a Green Military.”
Two of the seven, Sofia Arias and Brian Ward, were former ISO comrades. Two more, Rory Fanning and Spenser Rapone, had addressed a major ISO-sponsored conference in Chicago in 2018.
The resolution amendment called on the DSA to:
“endorse the Red Deal, launched by comrades in The Red Nation, a radical anti-capitalist Indigenous liberation group, and its principles on the fight for non-reformist reforms. As described by The Red Nation, ‘The Red Deal is not a counter program of the GND. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives.’
“At the end of this Convention, the Green New Deal Coordinating Committee will be tasked with initiating a more direct working relationship between DSA and The Red Nation. The GNDCC will make direct connection with The Red Nation, dedicate one person to serve as the main point of contact, and collaborate with the comrades on joint actions, statements and local, national and international campaigns around indigenous liberation and climate justice.”
So far, the only Congress member to show an interest in the Red Deal is far-left New Mexico Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland.
In June, Haaland sent a representative to a Red Deal workshop in Albuquerque. According to New Mexico Report, Haaland said The Red Nation activists “are absolutely right, for far too long the U.S. government has not lived up to its obligations to Indian tribes, and this is a new era.”
Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal and said she plans to make sure “tribes are included as it is developed.”
The Green New Deal became ubiquitous in a few short weeks thanks to a social media blitz by the DSA and other forces on the left.
How long will it be before the Red Deal is on the lips of Democratic House members, senators, and presidential candidates?
Feature image: Members of the Democratic Socialists of America gather outside of a Trump owned building on May Day in New York City on May 01, 2019. (Spencer Platt/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 offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Dec 10, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Democratic Party, Electoral Politics, Featured, Republican Party, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times
Commentary
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.”
According to the Liberation Road website:
“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 in the 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.
Trevor offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Nov 28, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Bernie Sanders, Blog, DSA, Enemies Within, Featured, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times*
“Our Revolution” and “People for Bernie,” two key elements of the Bernie Sanders for President movement, have developed a close relationship with a militant Norwegian communist party.
The party in question, Rodt (Red Party), was formerly known as the Arbeidernes Kommunistparti (AKP or Workers’ Communist Party) and was notorious in Norway for its open support of Cambodian communist leader and mass murderer Pol Pot.
The Sanders movement’s ties to one of the most extreme communist parties of Europe gives lie to Sanders’ often-repeated claim that his “democratic socialism” has nothing to do with communism.
The AKP was founded in 1973 as a Maoist competitor to the pro-Soviet Norwegian Communist Party. The AKP, in common with many other Maoist parties of the era, openly supported mass-murderers Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
According to the “Black Book of Communism,” Pol Pot’s Beijing-backed Communist Party of Kampuchea, or “Khmer Rouge,” was responsible for the deaths of approximately 2 million of Cambodia’s 6 million people in its bloody three-year reign. Approximately 1.3 million of these victims were deliberately executed by the regime and buried in about 23,000 mass graves.
The AKP openly endorsed the Khmer Rouge. When Pol Pot’s Maoist forces conquered Cambodian capital Phnom Penh in April 1975, AKP’s newspaper Klassekampen (Class Struggle) emblazoned “Long live the free Cambodia” as their front-page headline. The AKP dismissed reports of massacres under Khmer Rouge rule as anti-communist propaganda and continued to send delegations to Cambodia until Vietnamese troops expelled the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh in January 1979.
The AKP openly called for armed revolution before 1990 and kept the possibility of having to “defend the revolution with arms” open for some time after.
In 2007, the AKP re-branded itself as “Rodt” and turned its focus more toward electoral politics. The party claims to no longer support violence but does state that its goal is still a “classless society” or “what Karl Marx called communism.”
The AKP maintained close ties to foreign Maoist parties including the New Zealand Workers Communist League and especially the United States’ Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). In recent years, Rodt has broadened its Maoist base to admit Trotskyists and “democratic socialists.”
This has been mirrored in the United States by the backbone of the Sanders movement, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which includes in its rank Trotskyists from “Solidarity” and Maoists from Liberation Road, the new name for FRSO.
Rodt’s broadened base has given it a little more traction in Norwegian politics. Rodt now has 20 county council representatives and 190 municipal and city council representatives. The party made a small breakthrough in the 2017 election, winning 2.4 percent of the vote and its first seat in the Norwegian Parliament.
Sanders Movement
After developing deep ties with FRSO over several years, Rodt began to build links with the wider Sanders movement during the 2016 election cycle. In October 2016, the New York City branch of FRSO sponsored a small get-together of “local labor activists, Sandernistas and other lefties” to meet Reidar Strisland—former youth leader of the Oslo section of Rodt. Strisland was in the United States for two months gathering material for a book on the Sanders movement.
Strisland visited comrades in Detroit and Lansing, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio, as well as in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in South Dakota. Strisland was back during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, scoring photo-ops with several DSA-supported candidates, including Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke in Texas and congressional candidate James Thompson in Kansas.
A delegation of Norwegian activists, including Strisland, attended the Sanders movement’s People’s Summit in Chicago in June 2017. A few days later, three American activists, Winnie Wong, Claire Sandberg, and Moumita Ahmed, accepted Strisland’s invitation to travel Oslo to see “Nordic social democracy” firsthand.
Wong was a leader of People for Bernie and a newly minted DSA member at the time. Sandberg was an organizing director for Bernie 2016 and a founder of the FRSO-linked electoral organization We Will Replace You. Ahmed was a leader of People for Bernie and Millennials for Revolution and a member of the DSA.
In Oslo, the three Americans socialists addressed a Rodt-run political and cultural festival “Popvenstre,” met with Rodt leaders, and even trained grassroots comrades in U.S. election campaigning techniques in the party’s downtown Oslo office.
According to Wong and Sandberg: “We spent hours in trainings and breakout strategy sessions with Rodt party organizers digging into the nuts and bolts of digital and social media best practices, barnstorms, peer-to-peer text messaging, dank memes, and more.”
The training seems to have worked. In the 2017 elections, Rodt leader Bjornar Moxnes was elected as the sole representative of the party in the Norwegian Parliament.
In a play on the Sanders slogan “Feel the Bern,” Rodt campaigners wore “Feel the Bjorn” T-shirts as they campaigned in Oslo.
Is it legal for American Marxists to involve themselves in Norwegian elections?
In February 2018, Larry Cohen, chairman of the Sanders support network Our Revolution, traveled to Oslo to address a special Rodt strategy conference.
The leader of a Sanders support organization claiming more than 200,000 members and 600 groups across the United States gave a keynote speech at a high-level planning conference with one of Europe’s most militant communist parties—with zero media scrutiny.
Key operatives in the movement to elect Sanders to the U.S. presidency are working with a European communist party that once openly supported Pol Pot. Senior American Sanders supporters seem to have played a role in electing a revolutionary Marxist to the Norwegian parliament.
Does the Sanders movement really support Scandinavian “social democracy,” or does it really favor flat-out Norwegian communism?
Nothing to see here, folks.
Photo credit: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Forum in Sioux City, Iowa, on Aug. 20, 2019. (Stephen Maturen/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 offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Nov 20, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Featured, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times*
Commentary
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 Iranian communists made a similar appeal:
“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 offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
*Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
by Trevor | Nov 17, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Asia-Pacific, Blog, Democratic Party, Featured, North America
Did a China-based American communist help flip Virginia?
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | November 14, 2019 Updated: November 14, 2019
News Analysis
It’s official. The once deep-red Commonwealth of Virginia is now a blue state. As a result of the Nov. 5 election, Democrats now hold all three of the statewide constitutional offices, both U.S. Senate seats, the majority of its Congress members, and both chambers of the State House.
Laura Ingraham of Fox News says it’s because of “changing demographics.” That’s only partially true. Virginia went blue because a handful of well-organized pro-Chinese communists made it happen.
The group in question, New Virginia Majority (NVM), has exploited Virginia’s changing population and “liberal bleed out” from the Washington area to flip not just Northern Virginia but also districts across the state. Based in Alexandria and Richmond, NVM has sent hundreds of paid workers and volunteers out across the commonwealth to register and send to the polls hundreds of thousands of new voters—all under the nose of the Virginia Republican Party.
WE JUST FLIPPED VIRGINIA! 🥳🎉👏🏿
اس پر New Virginia Majority نے شائع کیا منگل، 5 نومبر، 2019
The Democrats have flipped two state Senate seats and now hold a 10-vote advantage in the Assembly. NVM endorsed and supported 23 Virginia candidates this cycle and won with 15 of them, including two state Senate races and nine Assembly victories.
The 15 who were endorsed by NVM and won are:
- Ghazala Hashmi, Virginia Senate District 10
- John Bell, Virginia Senate District 13
- Wendy Gooditis, House District 10
- Kelly Convirs-Fowler, House District 21
- Elizabeth Guzman, House District 31
- Dan Helmer, House District 40
- Kathy Tran, House District 42
- Hala Ayala, House District 51
- Schuyler VanValkenburg, House District 72
- Rodney Willett, House District 73
- Shelly Simonds, House District 94
- Steve Descano, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney
- Parisi Deghani-Tafti, Arlington County and Fall’s Church Commonwealth’s Attorney
- Buta Biberaj, Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney
- Phyllis Randall, Chair Loudoun County Board of Supervisors
None of this electoral success was down to luck or changing demographics alone.
NVM Co-Chair Tram Nguyen has already published an op-ed in The New York Times saying, “Democrats could learn a lot from what happened in Virginia.” The message? “Democrats, do what we did in Virginia—everywhere.” By going after the minority vote with mass voter registration drives, you can flip almost any state.
According to Nguyen:
“The national Democratic Party spent millions in Virginia this year, but the state wasn’t always such a priority. From its position in the South to its prominent role in America’s legacy of oppression, Virginia was long considered reliably conservative—unbreakable. As recently as six years ago, Republicans controlled the office of the governor and the General Assembly.
“Local organizations like mine understood the political potential of Virginia when we got started 12 years ago. We are winning because we recognize the power of an electorate that includes and reflects the diversity of our state. We don’t talk to voters only when campaign season rolls around. We try to reach voters of all colors, women, low-income workers and young people where they are, which has made it possible for us to develop a robust base of support along Virginia’s so-called Urban Crescent, from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads. Long before Election Day, we registered more than 300,000 voters, knocked on more than 2.5 million doors, and organized within communities of color to help win significant policy changes like Medicaid expansion, which covered nearly 400,000 people.”
Nguyen (who was part of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s transition team) also went on to explain the importance of the ex-convict vote.
“Virginia’s state constitution bars anyone with a felony conviction from voting until their rights have been restored by the governor. For more than nine years, we organized formerly incarcerated women and men to help them demand that their full civil rights be restored. The former governor, Terry McAuliffe, restored the voting rights of more than 173,000 Virginians during his term, more than any other governor in Virginia’s history. In 2016, of the nearly 20,000 men and women who registered to vote for the first time as a result of the restoration of their rights, a whopping 79 percent voted. They were a key voting bloc in Virginia, the only Southern state that Hillary Clinton won.”
NVM worked closely with McAuliffe to win ex-felon voting rights. The organization actually gave the governor an award at its annual dinner for his sterling work.
And the path to success lies in organizing and energizing minority voters who already lean left, but normally vote at very low rates:
“Changes in the shape of the electorate and rising enthusiasm among voters can only go so far, without campaign architecture that channels those changes into tangible political outcomes. …
“Engaging meaningfully with voters of color means talking to tens of thousands of voters to make sure they have the information they need to cast their ballots even after receiving racist Republican campaign communications. … We didn’t need to persuade voters to embrace our worldview—they were already there on the issues. They just needed to be convinced that their vote mattered. To give one example of how this works in practical terms, in precincts in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, turnout this year increased by 24 percent over 2017. …
“States don’t become battlegrounds overnight. Democrats and national progressive organizations have the resources to take their case to the people and win, but they have to start early and organize relentlessly. When they lose, they have to stay in place and keep fighting for every political inch they can get. No place is unwinnable forever.”
All this would be serious enough if NVM members were merely well-meaning “liberal Democrats,” which unfortunately isn’t the case.
NVM is a front for Liberation Road, known until April this year as Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), the United States’ most influential Maoist organization.
Maoist Groups
NVM is led by longtime FRSO/Liberation Road cadre Jon Liss of Alexandria. Several FRSO cadres have served in NVM over the years, as have many activists from two NVM satellite groups, LeftRoots and the Virginia Student Power Network.
FRSO/Liberation Road comes out of the militantly pro-China American Maoist student movement of the 1970s. While it’s more discreet about its Chinese loyalties these days, several of its leading supporters maintain close ties to the People’s Republic.
Fred Engst is a longtime FRSO supporter. Born to U.S. communist parents and raised in China, Engst was educated in the United States, where he became immersed in Maoist politics. He returned to China in 2007 and is now teaching at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
Alex Tom, a leader of LeftRoots and the pro-Beijing San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association, in 2012 formed the China Education and Exposure Program to “build a deeper analysis of China for US progressives and leftists and to build relationships with the grassroots movement in China,” according to his 2013 LeftForum speaker’s bio.
John Marienthal, a San Jose-based FRSO member, has been a leader of the pro-Beijing U.S.–China Peoples Friendship Association for more than 40 years and has taught in several Chinese educational establishments since the 1980s.
Steve McClure is a former Washington resident who, in the 1970s, was active in the pro-Mao Revolutionary Student Brigade. He has close ties to FRSO and NVM. Since 2010, he has worked with the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China, and he is a research associate with the State Key Laboratory of Engineering Information in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote Sensing at the university.
McClure has used his skills in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to supply highly targeted voter identification information to NVM.
As far back as 2005, McClure was using GIS technology to identify low-income voters for Liss’s Tenant Workers Support Committee. McClure “plotted lower-income, high-rental housing areas to get a picture of where there was affordable housing in Northern Virginia,” according to the Mason Gazette. This information probably proved very useful when Liss established NVM two years later.
According to an Aug. 25, 2011, post on McClure’s blog:
“I have been recently working with New Virginia Majority to make a series of maps to inform planning for precinct walks in Virginia State house districts. … The core data are lists of individual households by pan-ethnic census categories. … The results are subjective but do suggest … the ways that actual communities conform or diverge from the discrete territorial units which define an electoral terrain in a democracy.”
All this wasn’t theoretical. It was designed to help NVM flip districts across the state by micro-targeting potential Democratic voters in low-income and minority communities. In another post, he wrote:
“In the general elections of 2008, Virginia voted Democratic for the first time since 1964 with Obama carrying the state. Demographic shifts and increased voter participation rather than a shift in political allegiances account for this outcome. …
“Focusing on Prince William County, Virginia, I applied spatial interpolation techniques in a GIS to translate the 2008 election returns from the geography of precincts to year 2000 zoning classification areas for further quantitative analysis. The goal was to produce actionable intelligence for working class organizations building popular power at the base. …
“The results are presented as maps and diagrams which might illuminate challenges and opportunities for organizations engaging with electoral efforts.”
McClure is still actively engaged in giving advice to his U.S. comrades on winning elections for the Democrats.
An article co-written by McClure and Bob Wing, “The Importance of the Fight for the South—and Why It Can and Must Be Won,” appeared on the Liberation Road-linked website Organizing Upgrade on Sept. 4, 2017. It states:
“The far right, racism, militarism, inequality, and poverty are all centered in the South. The majority of African Americans, the main protagonist of progressive politics in this country, live in the South. And the South has more electoral votes, battleground state votes, population, and congresspersons than any other region.
“The South is changing rapidly, giving rise to more progressive demographic groups—especially Black and Latino migrations, LGBTQs and urbanites—and a growing Democratic vote. These trends can only be maximized if the importance of the South is understood as a strategic necessity and the chance to win state by state, is acknowledged and acted upon.
“Hard as the fight is and will be, downplaying the Southern struggle is a losing political strategy and forfeits the moral high ground on the biggest issues facing the country.”
McClure and Wing (another “former” Maoist associated with FRSO) argue that to destroy the Republican Party in the South, black communities must be targeted and mobilized to vote:
“(1) A critical mass of Southern states can and must be won if we are to block or defeat the right in presidential elections. Three of the five or so critical battleground states are in the South: Florida, Virginia and North Carolina. Southern blue and battleground states plus Washington D.C. hold 38 percent of the electoral votes needed to win.
“(2) Winning an anti-rightwing congressional majority depends on winning in the South, as the South has a bigger congressional delegation than any other region and Southern congresspersons also hold key leadership posts within the Republican Party’s congressional hierarchies.
“(3) There are tremendous opportunities to build progressive political power and governance at the local level in the South as 105 counties have a Black majority. …
“While some might dismiss the South, focusing strategically on the Northeast and Pacific Coast as central to a progressive program and the Midwest as the main political battleground, the South’s dynamic growth, historical legacy of Black struggle and powerful political weight make it a critical battlefield.
“The nuance is that the South cannot be won as a bloc, but only state by state and county by county. In fact, winning the South in large part means understanding that it is not a monolithic entity and winning it piece by piece: i.e. politically deconstructing the South.”
President Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 shocked the left and, according to McClure and Wing, has made their goal of flipping the South even more urgent:
“This essay was prepared in March 2015, prior to the 2016 election season that eventually resulted in Donald Trump’s victory. However, the far rightwing’s capture of the presidency makes this essay’s main arguments even more important. …
“The South is the key center of the far right and the Republican Party; neither can be defeated without battling for the South.”
Liberation Road has a large presence in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina (Durham for All), and Florida (the New Florida Majority). Now that Virginia is safely in the Democrat column, look to see an upsurge of Maoist electoral activity in North Carolina and Florida to turn those states blue in 2020; Tennessee and Georgia will be next. Then, Texas.
Chinese ‘Collusion’?
Trump has been tougher on Beijing than has any other president in living memory. It’s no secret that China doesn’t like Trump and would love to see him defeated in 2020.
Rather than risk war, or suffer huge economic setbacks, wouldn’t it be much cheaper and easier to use China’s American assets, such as Liberation Road, to ensure Trump’s defeat by “democratic” means?
It’s inconceivable that the Chinese government didn’t know what McClure was up to. After all, they presumably pay his salary or living costs while he is in China.
It’s clear that Liberation Road is tied to China. It’s also clear that their front-group NVM is heavily involved in U.S. electoral politics and played a decisive role in turning Virginia blue. It’s also obvious that Liberation Road’s goal is to destroy President Trump and the Republican Party to pave the way for a socialist America.
Is there Chinese “collusion” here? Do we need investigations and executive action against these subversive groups before they’re able to fully realize their goals? With less than a year until the 2020 election, there’s not much time left to do so.
Photo credit: Virginia voters head to the polls at Nottingham Elementary School Nov. 5, 2019, in Arlington, Va. (Win McNamee/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 presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
*Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
