Hinkle was recently featured by the NYT as the face of the rising anti-imperialist and pro-Palestinian movements.
Today, he says he is a Stalinist and a Maoist who was expelled from the Communist Party of the United States. (Roberta Wood, a party leader in Chicago, said he subscribed to the newsletter but had never joined the party and did not reflect its values.) He once supported Bernie Sanders, but now praises Donald Trump.
He is, he wrote last year, an “American PATRIOT, GOD fearing, Pro-FAMILY, Marxist Leninist, Pro-PALESTINE, RUSSIA & CHINA, Anti-DEEP STATE, Anti-IMPERIALIST, Anti-WOKE, Pro-GROWTH, ANTI-MONOPOLY, Pro-GUN, Pro-FOSSIL FUEL.”
Now liberals everywhere will continue to associate those ideologies with uncritical support for Putin and anti-LGBT views. 
To paraphrase Gabriel Rockhill, the CIA doesn’t generally and doesn’t need to pay puppets to spread its propaganda; it pays to build and support a marionette theatre to promote the performances of those who already and/or are willing to say what the CIA wants you to hear.