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 16, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Bernie Sanders, Blog, CPUSA, Democratic Party, DSA, Enemies Within, Featured, Headline, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | November 12, 2019, Updated: November 13, 2019
Commentary
Radical Maoists from Liberation Road and their small “c” communist allies from Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected one of their own to Philadelphia City Council on Nov. 5.
Kendra Brooks, who won a city council at-large seat, will join fellow radical Helen Gym on the 17-member body.
Heavily Democratic Philadelphia follows an unusual system for electing city councilors. Ten councilors are elected by district, while seven are elected “at-large” from the whole city voting base. Two of those seats are traditionally reserved for “minor parties,” which has for decades guaranteed two Republican seats on the council. Brooks took one of these minority seats, cutting Republican representation down to one.
Brooks ran on the Working Families Party ticket. The party, which has recently expanded from its New York base to several new states, spent more than $400,000 on Brooks and her running mate Nicolas O’Rourke, and knocked on 150,000 doors and sent 300,000 text messages.
In reality, the Philadelphia Working Families Party is just a ballot-line, a shell with little real structure. The backbone of Brooks’s campaign were activists from the DSA, the 215 People’s Alliance (a Liberation Road front—the 215 signifies Philadelphia’s area code) and Reclaim Philadelphia (a DSA-led organization).
Liberation Road (known from 1985 to April as Freedom Road Socialist Organization or FRSO) is a pro-China communist organization that has in the last few years turned heavily toward electoral politics. Liberation Road works both inside and outside the Democratic Party depending on the local circumstances.
The DSA is the nation’s largest Marxist group with a claimed 56,000 members. The DSA is aligned to several European and Latin American communist parties.
Together with the Communist Party USA, Liberation Road and the DSA combine their forces to infiltrate mainstream politics, including the Democratic Party, in an alliance dubbed the Left Inside/Outside Project.
Brooks’s victory should be viewed in this context.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
“Without the infrastructure of a major party, Brooks and her campaign manager, Arielle Klagsbrun, largely built their operation from scratch. But they could not have won without the efforts of a preexisting network of groups whose members knocked on thousands of doors, held fund-raisers, and posted constantly on social media for Brooks and her fellow Working Families Party candidate Nicolas O’Rourke, who came up short in his Council bid. …
“The activist groups that carried the Working Families Party banner this year didn’t just aid Brooks’ campaign. In many ways, they were the campaign.”
Philadelphia DSA has at least 600 members in its main branch and can draw on many more from Delaware, Bucks, and Montgomery counties. Reclaim Philadelphia can mobilize hundreds of people across South Philadelphia and the river wards. Reclaim Philadelphia’s lead organizer Amanda McIllmurray is a well-known DSA member.
Liberation Road also has deep roots in Philadelphia, stretching right back to the Maoist student movement of the 1970s. It’s much more secretive than the DSA, however, and publicly acknowledges very few of its members. However, it does maintain several front groups in the city, and it’s fairly easy to track the same people appearing in various Liberation Road-aligned organizations.
The 215 People’s Alliance, which is centered in Southwest Philadelphia, is riddled with Liberation Road-aligned people. Confusingly, many of them are also DSA members as Liberation Road has some cross-membership with the DSA all over the country.
Some examples include:
Ron Whitehorne, a 215 supporter, was active in the 1980s Maoist group Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee and has since been active with several Liberation Road-aligned groups, including Philadelphia Public School Notebook, Media Mobilizing Project, and Youth United for Change—as well as the DSA.
Bryan Mercer, a 215 activist, has been involved with Liberation Road-affiliated groups Media Mobilizing Project, Asian Americans United, and LeftRoots.
Nancy Dung Nguyen, a 215 canvasser, has been involved in Liberation Road-friendly groups, including Asian Americans United, Memphis Solidarity Brigade, Campaign for Nonviolent Schools, and Progressive Philly Rising.
Teresa Engst, a 215 endorser and canvasser, comes from a well-known Philly communist family. Many of her relatives grew up in China after immigrating to support Mao’s revolution. She is active with Asian Americans United.
Kendra Brooks herself serves on the steering committee of 215 People’s Alliance and has a history of left activism. Her campaign manger Arielle Klagsbrun comes by way of the Midwest where she was an organizer with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (formerly known as ACORN), which was also closely aligned with the local Liberation Road.
Sitting Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym, a Democrat, ruffled a lot of Democrat feathers when she endorsed Brooks rather than a fellow Democrat.
According to local radio station WHYY Philadelphia, Democratic Party chairman Bob Brady was “dismayed”:
“I don’t know why that’s happening. We have a slate of five, she’s a part of it, and now she’s asking someone to vote against herself or one of the other four candidates who won the nomination — that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
It makes perfect sense if you examine Gym’s background.
The high-polling Gym was first elected to the Philadelphia Council in 2015 by many of the same Maoists who elected Brooks. She has a history with Philadelphia’s FRSO/Liberation Road element going back more than 20 years.
Gym got her activist start with local FRSO leader Ellen Somekawa and her influential Asian Americans United activist group. She also helped Somekawa and Somekawa’s FRSO comrade and husband Eric Joselyn found the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School.
Gym played a key role in the creation and early publishing days of another FRSO-linked group, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a nonprofit news outlet covering the city’s public schools. She worked alongside Whitehorne, Joselyn, and several other FRSO supporters on this project.
Gym would later work with the Media Mobilizing Project, Progressive Philly Rising, and the Minneapolis-based FRSO-linked education journal Rethinking Schools.
In recent years, Gym, who is of Korean extraction, has served on the board of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), which aims to “organize Korean and Asian Americans to achieve social, economic, and racial justice.”
NAKASEC grew out of Young Koreans United, a 1990s activist group well-known for its pro-North Korean views.
Gym may officially be a Democrat, but to all intents and purposes she follows the Liberation Road “line.” No doubt she will look forward to having an ally in Brooks to help advance her far-left agenda.
Photo: The City Hall building with the statue of William Penn on top is seen in the city center of Philadelphia on Dec. 3, 2017. Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via 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.
by Trevor | Oct 12, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Bernie Sanders, Blog, Commentary, CPUSA, Democratic Party, Enemies Within, Red Reps, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | October 11, 2019 Updated: October 11, 2019
Commentary
Judith LeBlanc, a leading member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), is organizing Native American communities in several states to turn out in high numbers for the Democratic Party in 2020.
At just over 2 percent of the population, the Native American vote could be enough to swing several key U.S. Senate races and even the presidency. LeBlanc also organized the nation’s first Native American Presidential Forum in Sioux City, Iowa—specially to lift Native American voter interest and drive turnout.
A member of the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma, LeBlanc joined the CPUSA in 1974 and has served at the highest levels of party leadership. LeBlanc has served as a vice-chair of the party and formerly chaired its Peace and Solidarity Commission. She has traveled to Japan, Australia, Israel, Lebanon, and “Palestine” on party business, which included a 2002 meeting with the late Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat.
On Nov. 29, 2010, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, LeBlanc “had the honor of speaking on behalf of civil society organizations to a special meeting at the United Nations,” according to the Peace Action blog.
In recent years, LeBlanc has been assigned to work on Native American business through her role as national coordinator of the Native Organizers Alliance—the country’s leading Native American activist group. This work included a training role in the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. In mid-September 2016, LeBlanc led a “four-day training at Standing Rock with tribal officials, native-led non-profits, and local community and political leaders on power mapping, strategic campaign planning, and direct action,” according to Inequality.org.
Now, LeBlanc’s role is to build on the energy and unity generated at Standing Rock. Her job is to ensure that millions of traditionally low turnout, yet Democratic-leaning Native American voters go to the polls in 2020.
Presidential Forum
Working in partnership with the South Dakota-based, Rosebud Sioux-affiliated voter registration organization Four Directions, Inc., LeBlanc’s Native Organizers Alliance hosted the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Forum on Aug. 19 and 20 in Sioux City, Iowa.
Named after a recently deceased Winnebago leader, the forum featured interviews with 11 Democratic candidates, including front-runners Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
The forum was partially underwritten by the leftist funding group The Praxis Project, which is closely linked to the pro-China communist group Liberation Road. The Praxis Project was founded and led until recently by former Communist Workers Party militant Makani Themba-Nixon.
In her opening remarks to the forum, LeBlanc referenced the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s action to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
“ We are moving on a continuum from protest to power. … Standing Rock interrupted the narrative, and when we left Standing Rock, we went back to our cities and our reservations to organize,” she said, according to Religion News Service.
LeBlanc told the Liberation Road-linked website Organizing Upgrade:
“Our goal for this first-ever Native presidential forum was twofold. The first was to energize the Indian electorate. We reached hundreds of thousands through the live stream of the event and the vast array of media coverage, including both the Indian and mainstream media. The second goal was to educate the presidential candidates about our strategies for overcoming the challenges in Indian Country.
“It was powerful. For example, Secretary Julian Castro spent quite a bit of time prior to the forum collecting input from various leaders in Indian Country. He issued a very excellent Indian platform prior to the forum. The week of the forum, Elizabeth Warren did the same. … The debate that happened during the forum, the back and forth with tribal and community leaders over the course of two days, will influence how whoever gets elected governs. For example, most of the candidates said they would have (or would consider) a cabinet-level representative of Indian Country.”
So promises of power have been made. But the only way to collect is to win the 2020 election.
The organized hard left—especially CPUSA and Liberation Road—want to win the next election on a Rainbow Coalition strategy. They intend to update Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign strategy from the 1980s—unite all the racial and ethnic minorities with the base of white “progressives” to achieve a winning majority. Don’t fight a losing battle on policy—make it all about race.
When Jackson last ran for president in 1988, minorities were about 12 percent of the pollution. Now, they are 38 percent. It only makes sense to focus resources on Native Americans to increase the chances of victory in what could be a very tight race in 2020.
LeBlanc also told Organizing Upgrade:
“Four Directions, our sister organization, did research and found there are seven states where the Indian vote would be decisive in determining the outcome of 77 electoral votes. These 7 states include critical Senate races. From that scientific basis, Native Organizers Alliance and Four Directions began to organize traditionally, to reach out to the community groups that we have relationships within those seven states.”
It’s all about “transformational change”—LeBlanc’s euphemism for socialist revolution.
“ We’re also turning our attention to working in those seven states where the Native vote will be decisive. Native Organizers Alliance is working with groups in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada. We’ll be doing the kind of voter registration, education, and mobilization that ensures that our grassroots groups and tribal entities expand their organized base. The day after the elections, we will be ready with a stronger organized, politically empowered grassroots base. …
“ In order to protect and deepen democracy in the long run, we need strong, vibrant social movements who understand that voting is one of the tools of social change along with protest, advocacy, governing and popular political education. That holistic strategy is needed for us to make a transformational change which deals with the systemic nature of the problems that our communities face. …
“We need science and people power.”
In 2016, President Donald Trump won 18 states by less than 250,000 votes. By targeting knife-edge states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada, LeBlanc and her Native Organizers Alliance could well have a major influence on the 2020 election. If Trump loses Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan and is denied possible victories in Minnesota and Nevada by the Native American vote, LeBlanc will deserve much of the credit.
Most Americans (including most of the Republican leadership) seem to think that the Communist Party has no influence on U.S. politics. They might be shocked to find that just one comrade may be able to determine the outcome of the 2020 election.
Photo: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Forum on Aug. 20, 2019, in Sioux City, Iowa. (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 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.
