By Cathal “Consider it as an audacious step that we must take; all audacious steps are the beginning of a new task, and the new has a problem: a terrain not sufficiently known; let’s take fir…
Hidden underneath a lot of political discourse (Marxist or otherwise) is the relevance of the distinction between race and nation. It is no accident that “Maoism” principally gets adherents in places where there are a number of different nations which could be reasonably said to belong to the same nebulous concept of ‘race’. China itself is very diverse, despite the overwhelming majority being the putonghua speaking Han, though nearly everyone in China could be said to belong to the same nebulous Asiatic ‘race’. The Philippines is even more diverse, and has around 185 languages (meaning 185 different nations), though again, most would say everyone there is the same ‘race.’
It is no secret Gonzaloism sought out indigenous groups that have not been assimilated into the larger Spanish-speaking mestizo/indigenous population, though one would have to look far and wide within “Left” circles to see this fact plainly stated. Gonzalo himself studied Quechua while at university, and the Shining Path would begin their military operations from the Ayacucho region, where over 63% of the population are native Quechua speakers.
In other words, Gonzaloism is/was an attempt to weaponize the Quechua-speaking Amerindian population against the Spanish-speaking majority and their government in Peru. This is why Spanish-speaking writers have long accused the Shining Path of being a creation of the CIA, as was done quite convincingly in the book CIA, Sendero Luminoso: Guerra Política. When the rest of Latin America was dominated by pro-US regimes, Peru alone a few years before the Shining Path got big would be the only pro-Soviet government in all of South America, under the Juan Velasco Alvarado government (aka “President of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces”).
“Maoism” becomes attractive to groups when they want to play on the internal divisions within a country, presenting themselves as the Savior of the entire country and simultaneously playing into the larger national identity fostered by the State. This is why the Naxalites in India called themselves the “Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)”, even though their base was the Bengali-speaking population in the Indian state of West Bengal. This nation within India would itself go through their own nationalist revolution in Bangladesh around the same time, and was opposed by the Naxalites (and Mao’s China, I might add!).
This should immediately reveal why “American” “Leftists” are attracted to “Maoism.” The white “Left” doesn’t have a vision of “America” splintering from internal Balkanization into different Nation-States, they have a vision of a “Communist Party of America” ruling the entire population. They want the phony State-induced identity themselves to play with, while simultaneously playing on internal divisions to bring them to power, all the while presenting their ideology as ‘above’ the fray of competing petty nationalisms.
So many words to say nothing at all.
Hidden underneath a lot of political discourse (Marxist or otherwise) is the relevance of the distinction between race and nation. It is no accident that “Maoism” principally gets adherents in places where there are a number of different nations which could be reasonably said to belong to the same nebulous concept of ‘race’. China itself is very diverse, despite the overwhelming majority being the putonghua speaking Han, though nearly everyone in China could be said to belong to the same nebulous Asiatic ‘race’. The Philippines is even more diverse, and has around 185 languages (meaning 185 different nations), though again, most would say everyone there is the same ‘race.’
It is no secret Gonzaloism sought out indigenous groups that have not been assimilated into the larger Spanish-speaking mestizo/indigenous population, though one would have to look far and wide within “Left” circles to see this fact plainly stated. Gonzalo himself studied Quechua while at university, and the Shining Path would begin their military operations from the Ayacucho region, where over 63% of the population are native Quechua speakers.
In other words, Gonzaloism is/was an attempt to weaponize the Quechua-speaking Amerindian population against the Spanish-speaking majority and their government in Peru. This is why Spanish-speaking writers have long accused the Shining Path of being a creation of the CIA, as was done quite convincingly in the book CIA, Sendero Luminoso: Guerra Política. When the rest of Latin America was dominated by pro-US regimes, Peru alone a few years before the Shining Path got big would be the only pro-Soviet government in all of South America, under the Juan Velasco Alvarado government (aka “President of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces”).
“Maoism” becomes attractive to groups when they want to play on the internal divisions within a country, presenting themselves as the Savior of the entire country and simultaneously playing into the larger national identity fostered by the State. This is why the Naxalites in India called themselves the “Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)”, even though their base was the Bengali-speaking population in the Indian state of West Bengal. This nation within India would itself go through their own nationalist revolution in Bangladesh around the same time, and was opposed by the Naxalites (and Mao’s China, I might add!).
This should immediately reveal why “American” “Leftists” are attracted to “Maoism.” The white “Left” doesn’t have a vision of “America” splintering from internal Balkanization into different Nation-States, they have a vision of a “Communist Party of America” ruling the entire population. They want the phony State-induced identity themselves to play with, while simultaneously playing on internal divisions to bring them to power, all the while presenting their ideology as ‘above’ the fray of competing petty nationalisms.
Struggle Sessions absolutely sees revolution as splintering the USA into several nations according to the ML definition of a nation. The Black Nation for one: https://struggle-sessions.com/2018/08/06/in-further-commemoration-of-black-august/ I don’t see an article on it but the Navajo Nation as well.