Tom Morello (so I’ve been told) is a member of the band Rage Against the Machine, and also a character in Guitar Hero. Caleb Maupin is a reporter for RT and a self-proclaimed “American communist,” who was once pretty decent in his takes, and has since leaned hard into the whole patriotic socialism thing. In fact, he can probably be considered the originator of that whole tendency. I do owe him, personally, a certain debt, since listening to some of his early streams c. 2019-2021 helped me see that China post-Mao is not the revisionist hellhole ultras make it out to be. And his geopolitical analysis has always been excellent. Unfortunately, since about late 2021 he’s done a Trotsky and pretty badly degenerated. His think tank, Center for Political Innovation, was involved in a sex scandal with him at the center; exactly what happened is a little unclear, since the accusations were kind of inconsistent and he was already on the Mroytvorets hitlist, but he clearly wasn’t entirely guiltless. He and his followers still uphold the principled Marxist line on imperialism – they support, basically, all the countries we do – but his domestic politics have become more and more just tailing the Republican party. The Democrats right now are clearly worse on China and Russia, but supporting the other bourgeois party is not the way to go.
I defended the guy longer than I should have, because for a long time so many criticisms of him were just dumb: basically, people mad that he told them to present themselves professionally, and not try to “sell” communism dressed in ratty jeans and a cannabis t-shirt. And he insisted on the radical proposition that communists actually read theory and understand economics, which made the BreadTube people – remember them? – absolutely livid. But he if he ever was a positive force on the American left, he certainly isn’t any longer.
Tom Morello (so I’ve been told) is a member of the band Rage Against the Machine, and also a character in Guitar Hero. Caleb Maupin is a reporter for RT and a self-proclaimed “American communist,” who was once pretty decent in his takes, and has since leaned hard into the whole patriotic socialism thing. In fact, he can probably be considered the originator of that whole tendency. I do owe him, personally, a certain debt, since listening to some of his early streams c. 2019-2021 helped me see that China post-Mao is not the revisionist hellhole ultras make it out to be. And his geopolitical analysis has always been excellent. Unfortunately, since about late 2021 he’s done a Trotsky and pretty badly degenerated. His think tank, Center for Political Innovation, was involved in a sex scandal with him at the center; exactly what happened is a little unclear, since the accusations were kind of inconsistent and he was already on the Mroytvorets hitlist, but he clearly wasn’t entirely guiltless. He and his followers still uphold the principled Marxist line on imperialism – they support, basically, all the countries we do – but his domestic politics have become more and more just tailing the Republican party. The Democrats right now are clearly worse on China and Russia, but supporting the other bourgeois party is not the way to go.
I defended the guy longer than I should have, because for a long time so many criticisms of him were just dumb: basically, people mad that he told them to present themselves professionally, and not try to “sell” communism dressed in ratty jeans and a cannabis t-shirt. And he insisted on the radical proposition that communists actually read theory and understand economics, which made the BreadTube people – remember them? – absolutely livid. But he if he ever was a positive force on the American left, he certainly isn’t any longer.