Thanks for that, comrade. I basically agree, and just want to add a few things about the left situation within the US, which might contextualize (a little) the behavior of odd groups like the CPI.
Essentially, politics in the US has been completely captured by the two-party system. (Somebody – Sankara, I think – said words to the effect that “America is a one-party state, ruled by two parties in order to suit the American taste for extravagance.”) Thus, you find in the US a certain real and unfortunate tendency: communists who say all the right things, but who also end up supporting Democrats when push comes to shove. The CPUSA is of course infamous in this regard. But the tendency is shared by much more radical groups. For instance, the Revolutionary Communist Party – which is a weird, culty US group mostly famous for having elevated its founder, Bob Avakian, to the status of Marx and Lenin – came out in support of Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
As a result, the perception which the US public, and many younger American leftists, have of most “mainstream” American communist parties is that they spend inter-election years denouncing the government and scuffling with the police, but campaign furiously for the Democrats as soon as an election cycle begins. Officially, we are supposed to vote in Democrats in the name of “harm reduction.” But the past twenty years have made it abundantly clear that Democratic policy, domestic and foreign, is just as bad as Republican policy. Indeed, Democratic policy is often worse, simply because the party can hide behind its pseudo-populist image – the latter inherited from Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the “US victory over fascism” in World War II.
All this has led many within the current generation of US communists – people Maupin’s age and younger – to denounce legacy communist parties as corrupt and out of touch. At the same time, the US far right is well-organized and decently funded. It has been able to capture popular anger against the system in a way that US communists have not. This situation has many US communists panicking, and rightly so. There is a real feeling that something must be done to attract workers who are being radicalized to fascism, even if that means waving the American flag and praising American “heroes” like Lincoln. There is a certain precedent for this, in that the CPUSA, when it was a revolutionary party, actually used similar tactics. But as other people have pointed out, Maupin is not a convincing patriot. He hedges his praise for America so much, and says patriotic things with so obviously bad a conscience, that one really wonders how many nationalists he will be able to wean from fascism. Haz is a different matter, but only because he is crazy, and that brings its own set of problems. Maupin is the brains and the public image of the CPI, and without him the whole thing falls apart.
The dismissiveness – I’ve encountered it too – that you get from CPI members stems from anger at the current left establishment, and panic at the emergent right. Most USians, unfortunately, have been propagandized to believe that America is the entire world; and thus even leftists, who should know better, assume that anyone speaking English online is from the United States. So among those associated with Maupin, there seems to be a basic gut reaction that anybody questioning CPI tactics is part of the American pseudo-left, which (and Maupin is actually right about this one) has been heavily groomed and infiltrated by the US government. According to this mindset, all criticisms of the CPI must be in bad faith – instigated by paid agents of imperialism, or by useful idiots doing the imperialists’ work for free. And so you get the duality of the CPI: hostility towards other leftists, coupled with a willingness to accommodate reactionary views as long as they come from American workers. It isn’t, I think, an attempt to sneak in fascism under the rubric of Marxism-Leninism. (EDIT: there are easier ways to sneak in fascism in America.) Rather, it stems from a conviction that the current American left is unsalvageable, and in fact serves imperialism.
Thanks for that, comrade. I basically agree, and just want to add a few things about the left situation within the US, which might contextualize (a little) the behavior of odd groups like the CPI.
Essentially, politics in the US has been completely captured by the two-party system. (Somebody – Sankara, I think – said words to the effect that “America is a one-party state, ruled by two parties in order to suit the American taste for extravagance.”) Thus, you find in the US a certain real and unfortunate tendency: communists who say all the right things, but who also end up supporting Democrats when push comes to shove. The CPUSA is of course infamous in this regard. But the tendency is shared by much more radical groups. For instance, the Revolutionary Communist Party – which is a weird, culty US group mostly famous for having elevated its founder, Bob Avakian, to the status of Marx and Lenin – came out in support of Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
As a result, the perception which the US public, and many younger American leftists, have of most “mainstream” American communist parties is that they spend inter-election years denouncing the government and scuffling with the police, but campaign furiously for the Democrats as soon as an election cycle begins. Officially, we are supposed to vote in Democrats in the name of “harm reduction.” But the past twenty years have made it abundantly clear that Democratic policy, domestic and foreign, is just as bad as Republican policy. Indeed, Democratic policy is often worse, simply because the party can hide behind its pseudo-populist image – the latter inherited from Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the “US victory over fascism” in World War II.
All this has led many within the current generation of US communists – people Maupin’s age and younger – to denounce legacy communist parties as corrupt and out of touch. At the same time, the US far right is well-organized and decently funded. It has been able to capture popular anger against the system in a way that US communists have not. This situation has many US communists panicking, and rightly so. There is a real feeling that something must be done to attract workers who are being radicalized to fascism, even if that means waving the American flag and praising American “heroes” like Lincoln. There is a certain precedent for this, in that the CPUSA, when it was a revolutionary party, actually used similar tactics. But as other people have pointed out, Maupin is not a convincing patriot. He hedges his praise for America so much, and says patriotic things with so obviously bad a conscience, that one really wonders how many nationalists he will be able to wean from fascism. Haz is a different matter, but only because he is crazy, and that brings its own set of problems. Maupin is the brains and the public image of the CPI, and without him the whole thing falls apart.
The dismissiveness – I’ve encountered it too – that you get from CPI members stems from anger at the current left establishment, and panic at the emergent right. Most USians, unfortunately, have been propagandized to believe that America is the entire world; and thus even leftists, who should know better, assume that anyone speaking English online is from the United States. So among those associated with Maupin, there seems to be a basic gut reaction that anybody questioning CPI tactics is part of the American pseudo-left, which (and Maupin is actually right about this one) has been heavily groomed and infiltrated by the US government. According to this mindset, all criticisms of the CPI must be in bad faith – instigated by paid agents of imperialism, or by useful idiots doing the imperialists’ work for free. And so you get the duality of the CPI: hostility towards other leftists, coupled with a willingness to accommodate reactionary views as long as they come from American workers. It isn’t, I think, an attempt to sneak in fascism under the rubric of Marxism-Leninism. (EDIT: there are easier ways to sneak in fascism in America.) Rather, it stems from a conviction that the current American left is unsalvageable, and in fact serves imperialism.
Your comment makes sense, I think I noticed the same malaise the “new” (younger) USian communists have with the established parties.