Editorials » Activism

Front Page Redesigned

Metal Gear — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 07:08:30 +0000

Besoshvili/Berianidze and Daniel Shays have gotten on my case about the quality of the front page. I knew it needed some improvements too.

I finally stepped up. Check out The link.

Comrade Lindsay Interviewed

Metal Gear — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:52:17 +0000

The link

Interesting.

Free Media Productions makes urban dictionary

Metal Gear — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:22:19 +0000

The link

TechnoFascism was a word officially forged by _ _ of Free Media Productions, a third positionist site, that heavily rejects mainstream politics. Techno-Technocracy is a hypothetical form of government in which engineers, scientists, and other technical experts are in control of decision making in their respective fields. Fascism-Rule of the few. Sometimes can breed racism, and overt nationalism.
Technofascism would be a government ruled by technical, the smart, and the few.

It looks like this passed through moderation, even though I am sure the person who started this had bad intentions. They wanted to hurt employment opportunities, but it appears that the moderators like it and have cleaned it up a bit.

Thoughts on White Nationalism

Metal Gear — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:54:37 +0000

The idea of partitioning the entire area between Canada and Mexico for people defined on the internet as “white” is a retarded idea. It doesn’t really matter who is white. I want nothing to do with it. Keyboard Commandos!

Free Media Productions to Expand in Next Few Months

Metal Gear — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:13:21 +0000

My ability to market this project has been greatly limited the last two years as I was largely sidelined by the bad economy and therefore forced to live with my parents, who do not want to be associated with anything political. However signs are showing based on the quantity and quality of interviews that I soon may gain Independence, and with the freedom to live alone, you can count on a big “recruitment drive” and more “real life content.” Totally new political dissidents will be recruited not from “other websites,” but from “real life.”

Foxman urges Jews to “March on Washington” if American-Israeli conflict continues

Metal Gear — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:01:59 +0000

The link
Abe, shut the fuck up.

Tel Aviv – American Jews should consider a march on Washington unless the “crisis” in the U.S.-Israel relationship is resolved soon, according to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

He observed that there is a “debate in the American Jewish community” about the best way to achieve Arab-Israeli peace and that such a march in the nation’s capital would demonstrate where the American Jewish community lines up on this issue.

Foxman said he believes that the American Jewish community’s opposition to settlement building is still strong, but that the opposition does not apply to building in Jerusalem.

Fueling that debate, Foxman said, was the full-page newspaper ad from J Street that ran last week when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, during which he met with President Barack Obama. Foxman said the ad’s message was “Right on, Mr. President.”

“Maybe it [J Street] is pro-peace but I question how pro-Israel it is,” Foxman told more than 200 people at the Dix Hills Jewish Center on Long Island last week. “The prime minister is here and struggling [with the president] and J Street says, ‘Mr. President keep it up.’”

“Obama needs to hear from the American Jewish community not that he’s anti-Semitic or that he’s a Muslim, but that, Mr. President, this is not in the best interests of America,” Foxman said.

Hadar Susskind, director of policy and strategy for J Street, said: “We view the Obama administration’s efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution as both in Israel’s best interest and in the American national interest. Opposing unilateral, provocative actions by either side that undermine the chances of a two-state solution are laying the seeds for the end of a Jewish, democratic Israel. We support President Obama’s strong stand in recent weeks because we believe he is trying to help Israel avoid that fate.”

Foxman added in his talk that a senior Obama administration official told him last year that the White House was preparing to play hardball with Israel because “eight years of making nice to Israel didn’t work,” a reference to perceived Israel policy under the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have reportedly rejected White House demands made during Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama. Among other things, Obama is said to have wanted Israel to commit to a building freeze in east Jerusalem and to include final status issues in indirect talks mediated by the U.S. But Benny Begin, a member of Netanyahu’s inner cabinet, told Israel Radio Monday that the status of east Jerusalem should be resolved through direct talks with the Palestinians.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing sources in Jerusalem, said Monday that the Obama administration is prepared to impose a permanent solution on Israel and the Palestinians within the next two years.

In response to the White House, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel should formulate its own peace initiative to demonstrate its seriousness in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict during a “delicate and tense diplomatic situation.”

“The U.S. administration is looking for an answer to the question of whether Israel is energetically and seriously going along with it toward broad understandings in the diplomatic process,” Barak told reporters on Sunday.

“In other words, direct talks on core questions,” he continued. “This is the question bothering the U.S. administration more than the concrete requests … that are still being discussed in the contacts between us.”

“The real challenge … is how to we advance toward an Israeli diplomatic initiative for negotiations and an agreement,” Barak added. “This will be our challenge in the coming weeks.”

Among the points of contention between Israel and the U.S. is the future of building in the areas of Jerusalem annexed to the Israeli capital after 1967, as well as the agenda for the indirect peace negotiations that the Obama administration is trying to get started.

Since his return from Washington, Netanyahu has met several times with a group of seven cabinet ministers who advise him on security and diplomacy, but there was no immediate word on the results of the discussion.

Until now, the prime minister has said he’s willing to offer gestures in the West Bank to boost the peace process. Jerusalem, he insisted, will continue to be expanded for Jewish housing.

Despite the ongoing efforts to defuse the spat, observers on both sides of the Israeli political spectrum believe that the standoff will only worsen as long as Netanyahu’s Likud Party, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party and the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party are the principals.

But some Jewish leaders here said they believe there is not yet a crisis in the relationship. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he believed it is in Israel’s interest to “resolve the differences with the administration.”

“Even in the midst of this difficult period it should be possible to work out a deal with the administration, and that needs to be the goal of the American Jewish community and the government of Israel,” he said. “I don’t think we should be talking now about confrontational events. Confrontational language on anybody’s part – the government of Israel, the U.S. and leaders of the American Jewish community – is a mistake. That kind of thing spins out of control. Let us resolve these issues.”

Jason Isaacson, director of government and international affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said that although there is a dispute, Israel and the U.S. are “closely engaged and I expect they will not allow it to explode into a crisis.”

“There is a lot of heated rhetoric and spin on all sides,” he continued. “I don’t believe the treatment accorded to the prime minister was befitting the treatment one would expect of a friend and ally. But to say there is a crisis overstates the case. What we need to focus on is the true threat – Iran. We don’t want the enemies of Israel or peace to interpret this dispute between allies as a crisis that may signal a lack of solidarity.”

But Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said the entire picture has yet to emerge and that he would discount newspaper stories that purport to report on what happened when Netanyahu and Obama met.

“Nobody outside a very close circle know any of the details,” he said. “And we have not seen how the U.S. is going to deal with the Palestinians and the Arabs. What are they going to squeeze out regarding refugee claims and the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state? Clearly there is going to be a package here, and clearly there is a lot of pressure and a crisis. But the administration has learned that it is not going to impose something on Israel that the Israeli public sees as suicidal.

“I expect even stronger pressure on the Arab and Palestinian side once [the administration] has gotten something from Israel. The problem for Israel is that Obama began with pressure on Israel because he believes it is the stronger party, and that is hard for Netanyahu and Israel to accept.”

Regarding the fruitfulness of a march on Washington, Steinberg said: “If this becomes a real clash like [Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin and [President Jimmy] Carter or [Prime Minister Yitzchak] Shamir and [President George H.W.] Bush, the American Jewish leadership will also use the forces it has. … If there is a march on Washington, it will galvanize American Jewish support for Israel and expose J Street as an empty vessel.”

There are already signs that the members of Israel’s Labor Party are getting restless. Labor Minister Yitzhag Herzog said the party’s parliamentary caucus would convene next month to rethink its participation in the government if there is no progress on negotiations.

“I will recommend joining a Kadima government,” he said, referring to the party of Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister. “Israel is confronting an international situation and threats from Iran, and this requires a change in the structure of the governing coalition.”

But that is unlikely to happen as long as Defense Minister Ehud Barak remains at the helm of the party. Barak is unlikely to threaten a withdrawal from the government because he would go from the No. 2 cabinet minister to the leader of a political party in its death throes, said Labor Party cabinet member Eitan Cabel.

“As long as it is dependent on Barak, the Labor Party will not leave the coalition,” he said. “He knows that the Labor Party is headed toward darkness.”

Cabel, who opposed Labor joining the government, predicted Israel is headed “toward a crisis.”

“The Americans are insistent that the government of Israel” spell out its game plan, Cabel said.

The same sense of foreboding exists on the other side of Israel’s political map.

After Netanyahu returned from a reportedly rocky meeting at the White House standing firm against U.S. demands to rein in housing projects in Jerusalem, Likud Party faithful who were previously concerned that he might bend are now lining up behind the prime minister, said a party insider.

“The pressure of Obama strengthens [Netanyahu's] standing within the Likud because he hasn’t conceded; there is solidarity with him,” said Arik Ziv, a party member who edits Likudnik, a Web-based political journal.

In recent months, Netanyahu’s standing within his party suffered a blow because he was perceived as bending on support for a Palestinian state and a settlement building freeze without getting anything in return.

The most far-reaching concession Netanyahu could make on Jerusalem would be to agree to a temporary freeze on an isolated building project, Ziv said. Party members would grumble, but Netanyahu could convince the Likud to back it.

However, a more comprehensive slowdown in Jerusalem would stir up a rear-guard movement within the party reminiscent of the 2005 rebellion against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over the Gaza pullout. That said, Ziv said he does not expect Shas or Lieberman to withdraw from the coalition over generous peace concessions.

“Obama should know that Jerusalem will not be the price to justify his Nobel Prize,” said Danny Danon, a Likud lawmaker.

Government secretary Tzvi Hauser told Israeli networks that Netanyahu is looking for a “golden path” that will satisfy Obama while remaining faithful to the principles of the Israeli government. Most observers say they don’t know if that grand compromise exists.

Anniversary of the Iraq Occupation

FMP News — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:11:59 +0000

From the American Party of Labor (Red Phoenix)

By Comrade Kale, A. S. Kinser & Marcus Winter

Seven Years of War

The 20th of March 2010 marks the seventh anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. And after seven years, over 100,000 dead Iraqi citizens, 700+ billion dollars and almost 5000 US soldier deaths later, what does the American Empire have to show for its expense? Not much. Iraq, even still is a county ruined and torn apart by war. Power in Baghdad is often only on one or two hours per day, crime and ethnic violence are still rampant, and much worse. That country, so rich in oil, is now in debt—a large debt too. The oil fields themselves have been mainly privatized and although they are pumping oil, the efforts of the American exploiter corporations in Iraq are hampered by the heroic efforts of the Iraqi Resistance.

In these past seven years it has been remarkable how much the original reasons behind the invasion have been widely proven to be a lie. By now, everyone knows that the so-called Global War on Terror has nothing to do with terrorism, the Taliban, democracy or womens’ rights in the Middle East. It is also common knowledge that Iraq held no responsibility for attacks against the US, and that the old WMD claims of Saddam’s government possessing biological and nuclear weapons was a lie.

Let’s discuss the fact that the US government stated it was “freeing” a subjugated people. We need not look far to disprove that. Despite claims of “fighting radical Islam,” Saddam’s Ba’ath Party was a secular party throughout its history. The US supports the Saudi Arabian monarchy financially, politically and militarily. The United States and the Bush Administration did not enter the war because it was liberating anyone. Iraq was also not filled with “terrorists” until a military coalition invaded it.

Operation Iraqi “Freedom”

The former Administration of George W. Bush seized the opportunity after the events of 9/11 to launch an occupation against two nations and interfere in several more. The US government assembled a military coalition to secure the economically and strategically crucial Persian Gulf. Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructures have been mostly obliterated by sustained military bombardment and on-the-ground invasion. Predictably, this involved overthrowing Middle Eastern regimes that interfered with US corporate interests in exploiting vast oil fields in Central Asia. This has ended in the installation of a “democratic” government hand-picked by US forces, which of course support the ongoing military presence.

Some Statistics

It’s been seven years since the United States launched its occupation into Iraq, and that means it is time for us to review the numbers. First, take a note. At the time we began writing this article an estimated $712,156,525,787 had been spent on the war.

Number of Coalition Forces who have Died in Iraq: 4,693

4,375 US Military, 179 British Military, 139 Other Country Coalition Forces

Number of Civilians Dead (Iraqi and Other): 151,000

Number of Iraqi Security Forces: 8,745

Number of Insurgent Deaths: 20,987

Number of Private Military Contractor Deaths: 1,186

Number of Journalists: 170

218,397

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

[Due to chaos and civil war, actual totals for Iraqi deaths are most likely much higher than the numbers recorded on this site. As well, the United Nations Human Rights Council as well as the UN can be seen as a group led by the US and therefore cannot be trusted in it's listing of Human Rights Violations. We post these numbers as merely one possible source. Some have listed as high as over 1,000,000 dead.]

That number is 186,781 dead and 31,616 wounded. This is the human cost of a war propagated by the United States government not for the liberation of a people, but for imperialism and the dawn of a New Age of American Colonialism. By the time we finished writing this article an estimated $712,164,983,347 had been spent. That is $8,457,560 dollars worth of writing.

Announcement

With seven years, 186,781 dead and 31,616 wounded under its belt, need this war, now turned into an out-and-out occupation, continue? It will unless the American people stand up and put a stop to imperialist war once and for all.

In light of all that has been said here and must continue to be said, the American Party of Labor must reiterate the call it began making a year ago during the 6^th anniversary of this tragedy:

Troops Out of Iraq! Troops Out of Everywhere!

Unlike Islamic Fundamentalist Countries, Israel is honoring the Red Army

Metal Gear — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:39:37 +0000

The link
Just to play Devil’s advocate, as many of our “Communists” think that Islamic Fundamentalism is inherently more compatible with Marxism than Zionism, it should be pointed out that the Taliban and Iranian regime curse the Red Army whereas Israel praises it. Now you can say the material conditions make ideology unimportant, but it is still ironic.

It should be noted that the SECULAR Ba’athists were pro-USSR in their original conception, whereas the counterpart regime in Afghanistan was not. And that regime was a fundamentalist regime, but not the Taliban.

Israel will erect a memorial commemorating the Red Army’s crucial role in the victory over the Nazis, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin at a photo opportunity before their meeting Tuesday.

Netanyahu said the gesture, which he intends to move forward, is in honor of the 65th anniversary of the victory over the Nazis later this year. This move comes amid growing concern in Russia that their role and sacrifice in the victory over Nazism is increasingly being underplayed.

Putin, saying that it was forbidden to forget the Nazi victims and that the Jews and the people of the former Soviet Union suffered more than anyone else at the hands of the Nazis, said he was currently in discussion with Moscow’s chief rabbi about the possibility of establishing a Holocaust museum in Moscow.

Netanyahu said he hoped the memorial would be erected before Putin’s next visit to Israel, expected with the year, and that at the same time the Russian prime minister could also take part in the ceremony in which Russia would formally take over control of the Sergei courtyard in central Jerusalem.

After saying that Israel and Russia would increase cooperation in a number of spheres, including technology, security and agriculture, Putin joked that he hoped the agricultural cooperation would add funds to Israel’s Agriculture Ministry so that it could quickly move out of its offices in the Sergei courtyard.

Autistic Posters Accuse Other Posters of Being Autistic

Metal Gear — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:32:12 +0000

Some of the internet personalities you meet are pathetic. They set up their own false micro-realities, in which the world can be explained in a certain way, and then flip out when someone shakes their foundations. This is autism and I expose the autism. The same people accuse me of autism. No I am the ground shaker and you are the collapsing house!

I have no use for being stuck in the 1940’s or 1800’s and I view people as negative when their mind thinks backwards. My mind only thinks sideways and forwards! If you can’t handle that, then fuck you.

Join the free media productions group on facebook

Metal Gear — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:44:19 +0000

The link

Are you an anonymous coward, or are you the real thing? Whether or not joining this group “scares” you will tell me what you are!

Letters from Our Readers

Free Media Productions Staff — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:44:09 +0000

Some of our favorite recent comments from our more endearing readers:

cubbt said:

Why don’t you guys just drop the shit and watch the super bowl game. The Who were amazing. Allah would be proud if you did.

Jimmy the Popper said:

You guys truly suck.

Tresse Julie said:

Wow. Love all the unnecessary anti-Semitism. You guys have a real subtle way of turning something otherwise progressive (anti-Zionism) into something despicable.

Pornotaliban said:

another fucked up moron raised on burgers and fries with no clue of poverty or lack of freedom. Such pigs should be impaled and burned – earth would be so nice without u

jsg75 said:

Ha! Communists! That’s rich. Communism / socialism / internationalism reminds me of flat-earth, eugenics, biblical literalism and similar disproven beliefs. Have fun with your make believe time, it’s cute.

Kirby Ruffle said:

You guys are a disgrace.

“Proud veterans” are ruining vbulletin dissident circles

Metal Gear — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:53:17 +0000

How can one be taken seriously as a political dissident when he/she openly brags about his/her service in the army which he/she claims to be dissenting against?

Simulation displayed below:

Originally Posted by A phony political dissident

“I’m a hardcore dissident against American foreign policy. But I proudly served in the Army and enjoyed killing Ba’athists and Vietnamese in the name of neo-liberalism.”

No, you cannot be taken seriously! All serious dissident circles must criticize this! All such people will never be able to post on Free Media Productions using anything but a guest account!

Free Media Productions has been a success

Metal Gear — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:42:03 +0000

Yes we were abandoned by many of our former participants, but we succeeded in reaching our goal.

The goal was to go off in a completely different direction and we did it. The goal was to appeal to a different audience and we did it.

We should be proud of this accomplishment. It is a major step. Things are finally starting to come together.

We disposed of rigid ideological distinction. Now various ideologies overlap and produce a product. Yet we discuss our differences too.

We need people to continue progression both forwards and also sideways!

Comrade Shays is back

Metal Gear — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:26:42 +0000

Discussion is going on behind the scenes, and together we regretted some events that occurred near the end of the lyceum era. Besoshvili, Daniel Shays and I plan to revamp the front end of the website, but that will not occur until my depression over the bad economy ends. I do have the means to do this. Daniel Shays is a dependable man and I know the project will greatly benefit from having him in the fold.

On the cancellation of the amren conference

Metal Gear — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:23:08 +0000

The Amren Conference was supposed to occur around this time, but it was canceled due to anti-fascist activism.

I want to give my opinion. I feel sympathy that free speech has been oppressed and do not condone what has been done. But it gives me great pleasure to see many people on online forums grieving. I realize that it is not worth it because Jared Taylor himself is a decent person. But I enjoy watching posters cry and vow for revenge. It’s pleasurable. I do not support hurting Amren, but I’m glad the anonymous WN cowards are crying because of it.

German Paranoia – Constantin Von Hoffmeister in “right wing extremist” textbook

Metal Gear — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:00:43 +0000

the link
I could type this into a document and then have google translate it, but that would actually require a WORK EFFORT and I don’t feel like doing that!

Identity Impersonators – Let’s put these people in jail

Metal Gear — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:50:32 +0000

The Link
Here is a link to where identity theft can be reported (imposter profiles). I am going to start using it and I encourage those who found this post via google to do the same. Too many people have jacked my identity and I’m sick of it and won’t stand for it.

Sign up on the forum and we can talk more about how to round up as many of these anonymous cowards as we can and put them all in jail for good.

A Question for the Iranian Protestors

Metal Gear — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:22:26 +0000

Tell us exactly why you protest.

What is your alternative?

Democracy and freedom?
Secular Authoritarianism?
Real Marxism?
Third Positonism?
Sunni leadership?

We want to know why you protest. You can comment as individuals.

Iranians Rally in Support of Khamanei, Islamic Revolution

Chapaev — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:07:08 +0000

Long Live Comrade Stalin (Poem)

Free Media Productions Staff — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:51:20 +0000

Long Live comrade
Stalin!

By Kuo Mo Jo

(Chairman of All
Chine Association of writers and Artists)

Great Stalin, beloved
steel, eternal sun!

Because humanity has
you,

Marxism Leninism can
exert its might today;

Because humanity has
you,

The proletarians can
display its strength today;

Because humanity has
you,

The work of
liberation can extend its glory today,

It is you who lead us
to the open sea of world Communism;

It is you who
instruct the west to not forget the East;

It is you who unite
us into a force unparalleled in history.

The peace fortress of
Soviet Union stands firm,

The unity and
progress of the New Democracies of Europe and Asia advance;

And the brilliance of
the People´s Republic of China shines forth.

The history of
mankind has started new chapter;

The order of native
to will follow the path of revolution;

The name of Stalin
will forever be the sun of humanity.

Long Live great
Stalin!

Long Live beloved
Steel

Reference: People´s China Vol 1, No 1, Jan 1 1950; Pg 4

Pagad – The Gangster’s Enemy

Besoshvili — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:26:05 +0000

Film about the Muslim anti-gangster group Pagad (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) in Western Cape, South Africa.

Pagad – The Gangster’s Enemy (on YouTube)

From Pagad (online):

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Mindful of our duty to the Creator as a Community, and in conformity with:

“You are the best of people evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right,

forbidding what is wrong and believing in the Creator…”

~ Al Quran: Surah 3 Verse 110

Therefore, all those persons who surrender themselves to the will of God are welded into a Community and the Society comes into being. Thus, this is an ideological Society; a Society radically different from those, which arise from accidents or races, colour or country. This Society is the result of a deliberate choice, commitment, effort and sacrifice.

Accordingly, it is the outcome of a contract, which takes place between human beings and their Creator. Those who enter into this contract undertake to recognise and accept God as their Sovereign; His Guidance as Supreme; and His Injunctions as absolute Law. They further undertake to accept, without question, reservation or doubt, His classification of good and bad, right and wrong, the permissible and the prohibited.

In recognition and acceptance hereof, we hereby pledge to honour our Contract with Our Creator…

Gangsterism and Drugs are menaces and should be eradicated!

We all CAN & MUST do something about it!

Let’s organise ourselves and protect our children from the dangers they face every day!

Join other neighbours and establish a PAGAD Branch in your area.

Background Information (from www.sahistory.org):

People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) came into being in 1996 when communities on the Cape Flats, Cape Town decided to form an anti-crime organisation. The aim was to fight the drugs and violence plaguing their area. PAGAD began as a multi-religious organisation, but because its dominant membership was of Muslim people, it became an Islamic front. Later, PAGAD developed anti-government and Western sentiments, as

the organisation believes that the South African government poses a threat to Islamic values. It also aims to create better political representation for South African Muslims.

Due to its controversial vigilante tactics, the organisation has several front names like Muslims Against Global Oppression (MAGO) and Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders (MAIL) under which it launches anti-

Western campaigns. PAGAD’s military wing is called G-Force, for Gun Force, and functions as small groups or cells. It is believed that G-Force has been responsible for acts of sabotage and violence akin to terrorism.

PAGAD has been implicated in episodes of urban terrorism in Cape Town since 1998, especially 9 different explosions in 2000. The groups attacks synagogues, gay nightclubs, moderate Muslims, tourist attractions and restaurants with Western associations, like the Planet Hollywood bombing in Cape Town on 25 August 1998. PAGAD denied any involvement in the event after subsequent raids on several members’ homes within 20 minutes of the explosion.

The organisation first came into the spotlight in 1996 when members shot and set alight Rashad Staggie, a notorious Cape Flats drug dealer. PAGAD felt that the police were not doing enough to stop drug related crimes in their communities and decided to take matters into their own hands.

Shots were fired at a group of Muslim men who converged on the Staggie residence and some of the vigilantes were wounded. Staggie tried to escape by car, but was prevented from doing so. He was shot and someone threw a firebomb at him and he burst into flames. Police officers doused the fire, but several masked men fired further shots and finally killed Staggie in a widely televised drama. Benny Gool, a photographer at the scene, captured the killing on film and had to go into hiding for fear of attacks from PAGAD. He was also not prepared to turn his footage over to the police. Rashied Staggie, the brother of the executed drug dealer, fled to a safer location, but swore revenge at his brother’s funeral.

It is estimated that PAGAD has several hundred members with G-Force probably consisting of less than 50 people. There are allegations that it has relationships with Middle Eastern fundamentalist groups, as well as with Osama bin Laden.

In 1998 the South African Police launched Operation Saladin, a campaign to curb the rampant vigilantism PAGAD was practicing. Two policemen laid charges of intimidation after they allegedly received death threats as a result of the operation.

Free Media Pedia

Metal Gear — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:43:52 +0000

The link
This is a preview of a project I’ve been working on, which is an Encyclopedia tied to Free Media Productions that is similar to Wikipedia but not controlled by people with obvious biases. Our page rank is improving based on google searches and soon we will have the power to use this to our advantage.

Anti-War Protest in SF – 12.2.2009

Free Media Productions Staff — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:58:41 +0000

‘Emergency Protest: No Escalation! U.S./NATO Out Now!—San Francicso

Wednesday, December 2, 5 p.m.
Powell and Market Streets

On Tuesday, December 1, President Obama is expected to announce that tens of thousands additional U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan in the coming months.

A call for protest actions across the country against the war and escalation following the announcement has been issued by several national organizations including A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, World Can’t Wait, United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, National Assembly, and others.

Join us to demand: No Escalation—Bring ALL the Troops Home Now! No to War and Occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Everywhere! Money for People’s Needs, Not War!

Call 415-821-6545 for more info or to volunteer.

Ask Metal Gear MP3 Audio

Metal Gear — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:47:55 +0000

http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Audiozone/index.php?dir=&file=ask_metal_gear.mp3

I purposely distorted my voice.

I noticed that I really talk like a Yankee. I speak in short bursts without stressing vowels.

On Blogging

Metal Gear — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:42:02 +0000

Forums are ruled by circle jerks who accuse those who dissent ideologically or socially of being trolls.

Blogs are not. In blogging, you can really say anything and it doesn’t matter if people consider you a troll. The middle school playground antics that exist in forums don’t exist in blogging.

For those who are stuck in drama queen forums, I definitely advocate taking up blogging instead. On forums one has to make peace with ideological opposition because otherwise the hypocrites ban people and out personal information. On a blog, you don’t have to make peace with people who disagree with you.

When running a blog, you don’t have to worry about mass movement politics. It is much better. It is you and the audience, and the sacred cows become irrelevant.

Johnny Gulag Arrested for Encouraging Suicides Online

Metal Gear — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:55:50 +0000

I regret to inform the audience that our very noticeable member, Johnny Gulag, recently had his computer seized and is awaiting trial for his hobby of going to internet chat rooms and encouraging depressed people to kill themselves.

I won’t comment on the case anymore. He had informed me previously that he was doing this but I thought he was joking. However after not believing him over IM, I got a phone call from the police confirming it.

I feel bad for Johnny. Maybe I feel bad for the dead people too, because Beria/Besoshvilli and I agreed to terminate his account, even if he is not found guilty.

Update : Child Pornography was found on his computer too.

Abolishing “At Will” Employment

Metal Gear — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:12:14 +0000

http://www.abolishemploymentatwill.com/
As political dissidents, the potential threat we face from overbearing employers who are scared about “their reputations” and therefore fire or refuse to hire us is real and escalating due to changes in the technological foundations of society. It is particularly true for more sophisticated dissidents who argue against the entire system of government rather than just a party. We are not cowards and it will not stop us, but it is still a threat. The “at will” doctrine is outdated and should be abolished. I agree wholeheartedly with this website. It adds some strong arguments to the case against “at wil” employment and I give it my full endorsement like a good bureaucratic techno-populist who criticizes the bourgeois liberalism which grants dictatorial powers to employers in the name of “freedom.”

I call on all readers and supporters to support similar measures openly both on and off the internet.

A thing (or two) about Interrogations

Free Media Productions Staff — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:27:39 +0000

Modern police interrogations in the United States rarely have to rely on physical pressure in order to get a suspect to comply with investigators. Modern interrogators will employ what’s now-known (and a registered trademark) the so-called “Reid Technique,” which rests on psychological manipulation through a number of different tactics that help investigators elicit a confession from a suspect.

However successful the Reid Technique may be, there are two very basic ways to protect yourself against this method of interrogation.

First: Invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Law enforcement agents are required (Miranda v. Arizona, 1966) to explicitly and clearly advise any suspect of his Fifth Amendment (right to remain silent) and Sixth Amendment (right to an attorney) rights. A suspect’s right to remain silent exists throughout the entire duration of a criminal proceeding, including arrest, interrogation and even the suspect’s criminal court case (in other words, you don’t have to testify in your own court cases – and prosecutors are NOT allowed to ask jurors to infer this as a sign of guilt).

Remember, the only thing you are legally required to tell any law enforcement agency is your name and address.

Second: Invoke your Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

As soon as you find yourself confronting detectives hoping to extract information that will inevitably be used to incriminate you – you should immediately ask for counsel. US federal law stipulates that everyone has a right to an attorney, even if they can’t afford one. Though an attorney can often times give poor or ill-conceived advice, nonetheless they “should” know how to assist you in navigating the process and make sure your rights are protected throughout all stages of the criminal investigation.

During an interrogation there are a lot of things working against you. For instance, the rapid pace for which events occur (from arrest to interrogation), the “shock” of being arrested, the atmosphere of an interrogation room (inherently constitutes a source of “pressure” on detained suspects) and even the way investigators communicate with you are all intended to help make the jobs of law enforcement agents that much easier.

Therefore, understanding the process behind police interrogations will help you better prepare and protect yourself (in the event you should ever find yourself in such a position in the first place) from doing or saying anything that may work against your interests.

Environment: Most interrogation rooms are small and bare. This is intentional in order to play upon the suspect’s sense of discomfort and isolation. This will make most people feel uneasy and overwhelmed with a sense of loss of control. There’s almost always a one-way mirror with other detectives watching the interrogation and taking notes of how you respond to questioning, either a hidden or explicitly placed video camera and a table with three chairs. Usually the suspect will be positioned towards the end of one side of the table, with one interrogator across from him and another on the other end/same side. This is meant to make the suspect feel as though he’s being “trapped” and again adds to the level of discomfort.

Questioning: At the beginning of the interrogation police will begin by asking you simple questions that serve two important functions: 1) to get you to begin talking and 2) to judge how you respond to memory and creative inducing interrogation.

Police know that building a rapport is an easy way to get a suspect to begin talking, and once you start, it will always be harder to sop. Likewise, once you start telling the truth it will also be harder to begin lying.

In the early stage of the interrogation process, police will also ask you questions that both induce your memory and your creative thinking. Investigators will attempt to use this as a means of identifying how you respond to these respective questions and try to determine how “truthful” your answers are later on when the real interrogation begins. The problem with this is that its far from scientific, and many investigators have been led to believe that when a suspect’s eyes shift to the right, that must mean he/she is “constructing” information (i.e. lying or inventing). However, several psychologists and neurological-linguist scientists have dismissed this as unfounded, since (on a certain biomechanical level) all memories are “re-constructed” and thus could be interpreted as a physical indication of a suspect’s not telling the truth.

More sophisticated interrogators will pay attention to more “telling” indicators of whether or not a suspect is telling the truth. Some involuntary physiological responses commonly used to detect if someone is lying include pupil dilation, breathing patterns, changes in muscle tone, flushing of the skin and even the size of your pores.

In short, your best means of defense is to keep your mouth shut and only momentarily end your silence with a request for counsel.

The Crisis of the ©PUSA (part 2)

Besoshvili — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:09:05 +0000

From Marxism-Leninism Today (Part 2)

Part 2: What Kind of Organization Do the Present Leaders Want?

Revelations and decisions at the June NC meeting make it now possible to discern the organizational model that the Party’s leading group has in mind. They want a re-named, non-profit, progressive entity (“People Before Profits,” the C word will be first downgraded not jettisoned, yet) that needs only passive members, and certainly no pesky “clubs.” The growing reliance on investment income means the Party can, over time, dispense with a dues-paying membership base. Reportedly, about eighty percent of the Party’s income is from investments. It will have a core staff, reasonably well paid. It will have a web presence. It will be a multi-issue group.

Class orientation will be watered down. For example, there will be no industrial concentration policy to seek to influence the trade unions. Objectively, this will throw away the Party’s future influence. Present influence is already suffering from “adaptation.” Even now, there are few or no differences with trade union officialdom whose positions are declared to be “left.”[1]

Hard copy? With no bookstore distribution network, printed political pamphlets on key ideological questions are seldom seen. There are fewer neighborhood forums and paper distributions. Marxist-Leninist education, already abysmal, will vanish. Already Party schools are said to feature mainly the works of Webb.

People Before Profits, if that proves to be the quite awkward new name, will run no candidates. It will lead no struggles. Fact is, the CPUSA leads few struggles now, [2] waiting for whatever the imaginary “Labor-Led People’s Movement” [3] or the Democrats decide to do.

Another NC member ruefully remarked: “Haven’t people noticed that, nowadays, after an NC Main Report, there is never anything to do? No mobilization. No tasks. It is just a shallow current-events survey, full of expressions of joy at the arrival of the Age of Obama.” An example: while 30 million unemployed people languish the Party leadership has not taken a single step toward responding to the crisis in its own name. Contrast that with the 1930s.

All in all, one senses an evolution into a second Committees of Correspondence (CoC), though one with more real estate assets. The present CPUSA top leadership has sought to maintain close relations with the CoC, suggesting an eventual merger, wholly logical given the similar ideologies.

If it isn’t stopped, the liquidation endgame can be a morally squalid affair. In the US there are disturbing parallels to what happened in the UK in the early 1990s. The Eurocommunist clique which folded up the Communist Party of Great Britain changed its name to “Democratic Left.” Soon they realized Democratic Left had no reason for being. So the scoundrels in London sold off all the physical assets, gave themselves generous pensions, and went off to build careers, for example, in bourgeois journalism.[4]

A New Landscape?

Because of the new political landscape, the Left has an opportunity to step from the edges into the mainstream of U.S. politics. Sam Webb

This is not the place for a full analysis of the politics of the Obama Administration. Rather, these notes are concerned with the CPUSA analysis of Obama, and why it assumes the disingenuous form it does. One can hear supporters of the line say, “he [Obama] never promised us he would be an anti-imperialist.” The last point is true enough, but what is shocking is not Obama’s limitations,[5] but the CPUSA apologetics about those limitations. The defense of imperialism in the working class movement is the historical role of Right Social Democracy.

Is the CPUSA cheerleading for Obama, dissolving the Party in broader coalitions, opportunism? Of course. The former left wing positions of the CPUSA required struggle, strategy, leadership, intellectual honesty, realism, self-sacrifice, risk-taking, contact with masses, and political toil. Now, the center positions require little more than going with the flow of spontaneous mass movements. Whenever it is needed, to justify this retreat from struggle, the inane phrase “Labor-led People’s Movement,” is invoked. Politically, the phrase is worse than worthless, it is destructive. It justifies yielding political leadership to center forces.[6]

One Big Straw Man

Supposedly, the trial lawyers have a saying:

If you have the facts on your side, but not the law, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, but not the facts, pound the law. If you have neither the law nor the facts on your side, pound the table!

Webb is notorious for depending on the Straw Man tactic. If you can’t win an argument on the merits, then attribute to your opponents a weak argument (a Straw Man) that superficially resembles the one which they actually hold. Then refute the weak argument and claim victory.

His words below add up to one big Straw Man. Their abstractness (“amorphousness, elusiveness,” Lenin might say) is also noteworthy. No one is accused by name. Clearly going after his critics in the Party and nobody else, Webb pounds the table about the mentality of marginalization:

How does this mentality express itself? In a number of ways….
1. In spending too much time agitating the choir;
2. In dismissing new political openings;
3. In thinking that partial reforms are at loggerheads with radical reforms; in seeing the glass as always half empty;
4. In thinking that our outlook is identical with the outlook of millions;
5. In turning the danger of co-optation into a rationale to keep a distance from reform struggles;
6. In enclosing ourselves in narrow Left forms; and
7. In damning victories with faint praise.

and he says that the mentally marginalized think that:

• Politics has few complexities.
• Change is driven only from the ground up.
• Winning broad majorities is not essential.
• There are no stages of struggle.
• No social forces possess strategic social power.
• No divisions [in the ruling class are] worth noting.
• Distinctions between the Democratic and Republican parties are either of little consequence or disdainfully dismissed.

No one in the CPUSA holds such preposterous views. Many in the ultraleft do hold them. Webb is attributing to critics in his own party views they in no way hold. Webb warns his own party’s members and “the left” that unless they change, success will continue to be elusive: Unless the Left – and I include Communists – sheds this mentality, it will miss a golden opportunity at this moment to engage and influence a far bigger audience than it has in the past six decades This reasoning is absurd. How exactly does a political party seeking to overturn a social order increase its influence by adopting the views of its class opponents who rule the selfsame social order? It doesn’t. Maybe it obtains “access”? No, the CPUSA, for all its tailist pains, has not won even that trivial crumb. Only in its imagination does this confused Party leadership join the winners circle, and get to be a “player.” The truth, as Communists have always known, is the exact opposite. One wins political power for one’s class by struggle, not the cessation of struggle.

Organizational Difficulties: Caused by the Line

The present leaders go to great lengths to deny the obvious causal link between Party organizational crisis and the political line of the Party. The present general line — unjustified, obsequious support for Obama, and its organizational corollary narrowing differences between the Administration’s positions and CPUSA positions, leads straight to organizational crisis. There is no Party growth because primarily because there is no incentive to join the Party.

One can draw comfort from the fact that at the deepest level the line is not only wrong. It is probably futile. The CPUSA is seeking to tail the Democrats and somehow make its own members rest content with the present US Administration. Sam Webb’s dilemma: how does one sell class collaboration when the class struggle is sharpening? Look around the world: depression and mass unemployment in the US; the leftward trend in Latin America; strikes of unprecedented militancy in other major capitalist countries; spreading wars of US aggression, and so forth.

He tries to escape the dilemma by means of oratorical sleight of hand. Hence, the sophistry that characterizes Webb’s writing.[7] He relies on ever-bigger buckets of bilgewater about the joy of the political moment. There is shabby maneuvering too. He conjures up fake budgetary emergencies, so liquidationist steps can be pushed through. He relies on staff loyalists to deliver a majority at an under-attended NC meeting. He ignores failure. He celebrates non-existent success. This can only be done by being fact-free and abstract, as for example, OPRRW is, page after apologetic page. He appears to deny causation. The putative party budget crisis is an orphan, with no father and no mother. No one’s to blame. He insists: press ahead with the same policies. Presumably, the past is no guide to the future.

No one denies that the Party’s difficulties are real: No growth. A tiny membership of perhaps a thousand in a country of over 300 million souls. Budget crisis, contrived or uncontrived. But above all, above all, the greatest problem is the demoralization and political disorientation. In most regions of the country, club life has declined. People are voting with their feet and becoming inactive, or joining organizations that do struggle.

The latest changes adopted in June are being billed as “efforts to make the Party grow.” But a party cannot grow if the reasons for working people to join it have been — and continue to be — removed.

In other words, tailism has consequences. No wonder few want to join a party which conceives its chief mission to be electing Democrats.[8] No wonder members are drifting away. Owing to the world capitalist economic crisis, the class struggle is sharpening at home and abroad. The warlike tendencies of monopoly capitalism are coming to the fore. Working people and oppressed people want to fight back. Honest Communists want to lead the fight. Under attack, working class people want far-reaching change — real change, not campaign-slogan “change.”

But, by abandoning struggle, the CPUSA is missing opportunities for recruitment among masses of people moving into struggle.

Worldwide Stakes

US working people are not the only ones with a stake in this inner-party ideological struggle. The world Communist movement understands full well that there is a need for a revolutionary organization in the heartland of imperialism, one that can lead mass struggles. The CPUSA suffers from growing international isolation. Two ideologically steeled mass Communist parties that, since 1991, have unselfishly rallied the Communist movement, the Greek and the Portuguese, are continually badmouthed in private conversation by CPUSA leaders. It is known that foreign Communist leaders are watching the drama in the CPUSA with growing concern, dismay, and alarm.[9]

How to Recover

A growing number of Party members at all levels believe the present course must be changed. Privately, though they do not relish an internal fight, they will admit that if the present leaders will not or cannot change course, then the leadership must be changed. What might a recovery plan carried out by a new leadership look like? A few suggestions, in no particular order:

• Replace the struggle against the ultra-right by the perspective of struggle against monopoly, especially in light of the world economic crisis.[10] To achieve whatever reform potential [11] exists under the present Administration, it needs pressure from the Left. It’s getting plenty of pressure from the Right.

• Re-study the CPUSA ’s role in the Great Depression. The Party is today doing the opposite of what it did then. Then, it supported FDR’s good initiatives, opposed his bad ones, but mainly it led and organized from below among masses in struggle. Carry out a sober analysis of the class forces represented by the Obama Administration. Fashion a CPUSA anti-crisis program for this moment.

• Stop tailing the Democrats. Resume the struggle to build political independence in all its forms, including, where possible and appropriate, Communist candidacies. Project the Party’s own advanced demands for anti-monopoly democracy and for socialism. Fight for leadership of people’s movements, including trade unions. Never leave out that any reforms under capitalism, even if won, are never secure. Only socialism can bring real change.

• Revitalize the industrial concentration policy. The cream of the YCL and other younger members should be encouraged to go into key industries to win positions of union leadership and influence for the future.[12]

• Revamp the labor policy. There is a complete muddle about what is “left” and “center.” The center forces will settle for whatever is on offer from the Democrats. Without the voice of a conscious Marxist current, center forces vacillate, the endless retreat of UAW top leaders being only the latest egregious example. The Party’s labor staff in Chicago has better things to do than recycle AFL-CIO press releases. The most militant tactics (plant occupations, e.g.) are rarely publicly advised by CPUSA leaders though once under way, such tactics are supported by all, and intensely admired by rank and file CPUSA members.

• Restore Marxist-Leninist education at all levels. The rightists in the leadership have gotten this far because of the woeful theoretical development of US Party members.

• Restore the PWW and PA as the voice of Communist militancy, with new chief editors who have Communist politics. Smart use of the Internet is important, but it cannot substitute for direct mass contact with workers through print publications. Imagine telling workers at a plant gate or on a picket line, or unemployment line that they can read it all at www.pww.org

• Renew and reinvigorate proven left forms and create new ones with more advanced positions than the mass movements, especially in matters of the highest priority such as: equality for African-Americans and other nationally oppressed groups; anti-imperialist solidarity, Free the Cuban Five and end the blockade; health-care reform worthy of the name; disarmament; an immediate end to the various US aggressions in the Mideast; rank-and-file union action and democracy; women’s equality; democratic rights and civil liberties, and so forth. Left-center unity, key to social change, is not built by a self-renouncing Left. Left forms are also one of the keys to Party growth.

Conclusion

An article as forthrightly opportunist as “The Mentality of Marginalization” reflects the Party’s ideological decline.

The CPUSA is in a deep crisis. In a crisis, a contradiction sharpens to the point that it soon must be resolved. The contradictions here are two interrelated ones. One is the contradiction, on the one hand, between the leadership circle that, with sheer chicanery, is speeding up its drive to remake the CPUSA into something other than a Communist Party and, on the other hand, the honest members who think they are in the same Communist Party they joined. In June 2009 the leadership miscalculated by attacking the print edition of the Party newspaper. Many more members now see the truth, or at least are open to hearing it. That represents progress.

The other contradiction — helping to open up Party members’ eyes — is the gap between reality and the Party’s rose-colored political line. The line is not only unrealistic. It thwarts Party growth. These two contradictions will sharpen. They will be resolved, one way or another. The present situation cannot last.

The present CPUSA leadership is calling for more of the same policies. Moreover, to their shame, they are blocking the channels of inner-party democracy. With the May 2010 national convention not far off, in a frenzy to pre-ordain the outcome, under pressure from national Party officials, reportedly one large district is abolishing industrial clubs, creating unwieldy “community clubs” under the control of loyalists who will vote for the more of the same at the convention. It is likely that such clubs will be directed to carry out electoral work for Democrats, and do little else. Thus, for two reasons, tactically, to weaken critics and potential convention opponents, and longer-term, to turn the Party more fully into an electoral helpmate for the Democrats, the hard-won industrial roots of the Party are being ripped up.

This article will not presume to tell CPUSA members what to do. They can figure that out. Only Party members will decide the fate of the CPUSA. But, first, they must recognize the calamitous path that the current leadership has mapped out.

In the view of more than a few Party members, the incumbent leadership needs to be held accountable for nearly ten years in office. Their record is: a nonsensical political line, no growth, dwindling influence on the left and in mass movements, political disorientation and declining morale, recurrent budget crises, fraying international ties, and a headstrong determination to steer the Party straight into the iceberg. Surely, it is possible to find a few fresh leaders who are accountable and politically sound.

Every time a function of the Party is shut down, it makes it harder for healthy forces to recover lost ground. If the changes voted for in June 2009 are any indication of things to come, goodness knows what they have planned for May 2010. As one observer noted, a plane can be dismantled one piece at a time. A four-engine jet can fly with one engine malfunctioning, or perhaps with a damaged tailfin. But at some point, the absence of key parts causes the plane to fall to earth. The Party is reaching that point.

If anyone is tempted to walk away in disgust, resist the temptation. Real revolutionaries don’t quit. Walking away only makes the victory of the Party-wreckers easier. There is not an infinite amount of time to right this starboard-listing ship. Every comrade is needed is in this struggle. Let the motto of this struggle be what a CWA worker shouted not long ago at a strike rally: “We will fight until hell freezes over…and then we will fight on the ice!”

Words to live by.

——–

Endnotes

[1] OPRRW: “We took a fresh look at the labor movement, noting the new positive developments, even asking ourselves whether quantitative changes were reaching a qualitative turning point in terms of labor’s outlook and practical activity.”

[2] Individual Communist activists soldier on in antiwar work, health care reform work, labor work, solidarity work, often with little direction from the national center. Out of self-discipline and commitment these loyal individuals keep engaged in struggle. It one of the reasons not all of them see the metamorphosis at the national center.

[3] This notion is at best ten percent true. Labor unions, being the biggest, most stable, best-funded, and often best-organized people’s organizations, often bulk large in larger coalitions. But in so many arenas of non-economic struggle, (anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, etc.) unions do not lead at all, although they could do so, with Left leadership. The Left must win leadership in all arenas of struggle.

[4] Line of March: a Historical and Critical Analysis of British Communism and its Revolutionary Strategy by Max Adereth (London: Praxis Press, 1994). Passim. Another lesson of the British tragedy was that a generation of radical youth can be lost to ultra-leftism. If US liquidationism wins, the effects will be felt for decades. It can happen here.

[5] The apologetics extend to domestic policy. Obama is for “charter schools,” i.e., privately-managed public schools, a panacea promoted by the Right to weaken teacher unions. So, siding with Obama, the Party goes silent on the charter school issue. For decades, teacher unions have done their best to fend off charter schools and defend the public school system, with mixed results. The urban public school system, underfunded though it is, remains a major achievement of US democracy.

[6] The foreign policy landscape is hardly new. True, the domestic policy landscape can boast some welcome changes, but it is not entirely new either. The CPUSA inner circle simply declares that a glorious morning of new politics has dawned. This explains its refusal to concretely analyze the class nature of the Obama Administration, i.e., the monopoly capitalist interests he represents. It would hinder the idolization of the fictitious Obama they have created. In the 2008 campaign when some CPUSA members quite naturally referred to him as “a bourgeois politician,” the label was hotly rejected by Webb and his associates. Instead they heap outlandish praise on Obama and the Democrats. The titles of speeches are silly: “The Impossible Becomes Possible,” “Change is Here; Change is on the Way!” The country just went through “The Springtime of Possibility.” Obama’s “a friend,” a “people’s advocate.” During the campaign his speech on racism was “a speech for the ages.” Such mad hyperbole expresses contempt for the intelligence of party members. It is supposed to convince them to ignore the facts under their noses.

What are those facts? In foreign policy, little is new. One can point to a changed atmosphere. There is welcome shift to diplomacy, and less of the reckless, brutal shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later of the Bush years. In domestic policy, many Obama policies can be praised. The picture is mixed. Unemployment rates have soared above 20 percent in many US cities. Thanks to both Obama and Bush, the biggest bank monopolies are brazenly gorging themselves on profits and bonuses derived from taxpayer bailouts. Tens of thousands of autoworkers, many of whom surely worked hard to get him elected, have been tossed to the wolves. Obama’s election, breaking the racist color bar on the White House, admittedly was a democratic achievement. But, for the overwhelming majority of Americans of color, the burden of special oppression and class oppression remain a material reality, as the Black unemployment rates double the white unemployment rate (true for decades now) illustrate.

The two big domestic reforms that working people and progressives care most about — health care reform and the restoration of union organizing rights through the Employee Free Choice Act — are both in trouble. Their best features have already been compromised away by the Administration under corporate pressure. Covering up, denying, minimizing, and distorting these realities is a big part of the present CPUSA line.

[7] Opportunism is not only a political phenomenon. It has a psychology. Lenin wrote: When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a characteristic feature of present day opportunism in every sphere, namely, its vagueness, its amorphousness, elusiveness. An opportunist by his very nature will always evade taking clear stand. He will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view and try to ‘agree’ with both and reduce his difference of opinion to petty amendments doubts innocent and pious suggestions, and so on and so forth.

[8] The likeness between the Obama Administration’s positions and CPUSA positions is the source of endless glee and fascination on the web sites of the ultra right anti-Communist lunatics stuck in a Cold War time warp. They claim it proves Obama is a Communist. Not at all. It suggests certain Communist leaders have reinvented themselves as Democrats.

[9] It has not escaped notice in the world movement that the CPUSA, often citing the positions of an Iraq Communist Party leadership that is part of the puppet government, is willing to sign fewer and few international statements on Iraq, on Gaza, on anything.

[10] The CPUSA Progam, 1984, more radical than the one adopted in 2005, contained the following 11-point anti-monopoly program:
A program of radical reforms would include, but not necessarily be limited to, the following:
1. Negotiate comprehensive arms limitations and reductions. Drastically slash the bloated military budget and apply the savings to constructive public use, such as providing employment and training; guaranteeing affirmative action with firm quotas and timetables so as to overcome past discrimination and rapidly achieve full equality; building low-rent, quality housing; vast improvements in mass public transportation and public services.

2. Close all tax loopholes for the rich and end public subsidies to the monopolies; tax

corporate profits heavily; end all giveaways of natural resources to the monopolies and reclaim past grants wherever possible.

3. Strengthen labor’s right to organize, to enforce contracts and to strike. Curb “management prerogatives” on such questions as plant closings, automation, job safety, environmental protection, product quality and similar questions which vitally affect the lives of workers and the whole people.

4. Nationalize the energy monopolies so as to provide adequate energy supplies at the lowest possible cost. Build modern power plants providing conditions of maximum safety.

5. Public ownership of the hospitals, drug and medical companies. Provide free, quality, comprehensive health care for all.

6. Abolish the CIA and the FBI; enact measures to prohibit racist or political repression of the people’s movements.

7. Enact and enforce measures to protect the exercise of full economic, political and social equality for all races and nationalities and for women.

8. Extend aid to family-type farms through grants, long-term government loans and

guarantees of parity prices for products. Make similar credits and loans available to other small producers and service enterprises.

9. Rescue our cities from the grasp of the banks and wealthy bondholders and provide funds to improve the quality of urban and rural life.

10. Remove unequal barriers to foreign trade and promote interchange with other nations on terms of mutual benefit.

11. Enact a National Youth Act guaranteeing- the right of youth to earn, learn and live a full life.

[11] The current no-struggle-be-happy-with the-Democrats policy is arguably unfair to Obama. He has a reasonably progressive background. If the US Left including the CPUSA, instead of writing love letters, were mounting pressure on him, they would help him and he might welcome it. To paraphrase what FDR famously told A. Philip Randolph. “Mr. Randolph, the reform you propose would a good idea. Now make me do it.”

[12] Webb’s OPRRW makes a fleeting reference to “labor concentration.” This could leave the misleading impression that there is still a CPUSA policy of industrial concentration. There isn’t one. Ask the YCL. Ask the industrial districts. It’s gone.

The Crisis of the ©PUSA

Besoshvili — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:07:19 +0000

From Marxism-Leninism Today (Part 1)

Startling new documents by the CPUSA National Chair Sam Webb, above all, The Mentality of Marginalization,[ 1] so candid in its opportunism, are his most revealing writings in a long time.[2]

They reveal that the top-down changes imposed at the National Committee (NC) of the CPUSA in June 2009 — over significant protest from Party leaders and members — are, in reality, Party liquidation, not Party building. A new stage has been reached. Mounting evidence shows that Party liquidation – the dismantling of the CPUSA — has begun in earnest.

Consider the question: “Are these changes Party liquidation or Party building?” How on earth can such a question even arise? To reach for an analogy, isn’t the difference, for example, between house demolition and house construction perfectly obvious to all?

Actually, in the early stages, it is hard to tell the difference between construction and demolition. Demolition of an old building requires as much preparation as building a new one: performing asbestos abatement, obtaining the needed municipal permits, submitting necessary notifications, disconnecting utilities, vermin removal, and development of site-specific safety and health plans. The preparatory processes can be hard to tell apart. [3]

The analogy is imperfect. Party demolition is harder to see also because those carrying it out deny that demolition is what they are doing. House demolition does not have to be denied.

In June 2009 the early stages of Party liquidation ended. The likely trajectory of liquidation has become much clearer. Even the shape of the organization the present top leaders are striving for is coming into focus.

To sift through Sam Webb’s writings in “Mentality of Marginalization,” in “Observations on Reconfiguring and Restructuring Our Work” (OPRRW), and in his speech at the Chautauqua Institute, “The Communist Party: a Work in Progress, ” is to find a tangle of specious arguments for dismembering the Party. Almost any argument is pressed into service, no matter how disingenuous, far-fetched, and inconsistent with other arguments and previous statements. Together, these writings and a closer look at what the June 2009 NC meeting actually did — not what it claimed to be doing — shine a light on the real meaning of the new Party course. Moreover, the transformation of the CPUSA into something other than a communist party is accelerating.

Elsewhere the present writer has discussed the history of opportunism in the US Communist movement[4] and the debilitating changes Sam Webb and his closest allies have been arguing for.[5] Alas, gloomy forecasts in those two earlier articles have proven accurate.

What is Liquidation?
Party liquidation can be political, ideological, organizational, and physical, or all of the above. An excerpt from a long out‑of‑print CPUSA pamphlet, “The Communist Party and How it Works” states:

There are constant pressures of ruling class and petty bourgeois ideology on the Party. Occasional errors of Party organizations and individuals can, if not corrected, become tendencies and even general departures or “deviations” from Marxism‑Leninism. Ideological struggle against such tendencies is permanently necessary for the Communist Party. Though the forms constantly change, in the United States opportunism has been the main character of ruling class pressure on the Party and the working class movement. This involves adapting the working class movement to the interests of the ruling class. It also means capitulating to the difficulties created by the ruling class and learning to “live with” those difficulties. Tendencies to liquidate the Communist Party as a Leninist party, to be replaced by an ideologically and organizationally amorphous “broader socialist” organization, have been one of the principal expressions of opportunism historically. [6]

“Tailism” is to follow the political line and to accept the ideological leadership of a section of the capitalist class. It is a form of class collaboration.[7] Up until spring 2008 the foremost manifestation of the present opportunist Party general line has been 1) to tail the Democrats by dropping any CPUSA struggle for political independence, and 2) to tail the Democrats specifically on the Iraq War, uncritically endorsing them as the vehicle for ending the war.

Since 2008 when Barack Obama emerged as the leading candidate, the CPUSA controlling group has tailed the Obama campaign[8] and now the Obama White House.

Signs of Liquidation Are Everywhere
Political and ideological liquidation has been under way for some time. For example, in 2005 the principle of the struggle for the leading role of the Party, a cornerstone of Leninism, was cut out of the new Party Program under false pretenses.[9] Out the window, also, went the struggle for the political independence of the labor movement and its allies. The 2005 Program sees the Democratic Party as the final resting place of working class activism, for as far into the future as anyone can see.[10] The changes in the new program were sold to members with many quotations from Dimitrov. But Dimitrov never said that a Communist Party in a multi-class coalition has to trim its ideological sails to whatever is acceptable to more conservative social classes and political forces also opposed to the main enemy, be it fascist or ultra-right. He said the opposite.[11]

Political Affairs, once a Communist theoretical journal, is now (despite a few remaining principled contributors) mostly a quirky liberal magazine. It is available online only. Often enough, its writers seem more devoted to distancing themselves from Marxism-Leninism, than using it to understand the world.[12] The name Lenin is seen less and less in its pages.

The ideological unity of the party is a thing of the past. De facto there are two trends, the dominant one, is that of the rightward-moving top leadership. The other trend, struggling, is the Marxism-Leninism of many members and leaders.

Prompt Press, a printing press that has traditionally printed the Party’s newspaper and pamphlets, is on its way out. The Party Archives were given away for free four years ago to a wealthy private university. There has been no Party candidacy for any public office in perhaps 15 years. There are no bookstores. There are few or no pamphlets. There are no mass public meetings — even by today’s modest definition of “mass” — and no attempt to organize them. There is no mass distribution of the Party paper. There is no industrial concentration policy. [13]

A little discussed form of liquidation is the abolition of left and intermediate forms. This is a conscious policy: when attempts are made to revive them, for example, US Peace Council chapters, the leadership pounces, denouncing “sectarianism.” These forms, such as such as NAIMSAL, WREE, NAARPR, TUAD, USPC[14] and others have been allowed to wither and die. Only remnants survive. With mass radicalization from Bush’s attacks on working people and with global capitalist economic crisis laying bare the rottenness of the capitalist system, the CPUSA should be growing. It is not. One reason for that is that it has no periphery. A Communist Party recruits from among people on the left, not from center forces. With Communists one-sidedly working with center forces unready to make any commitment to Party membership, it is harder to recruit.

CPUSA antiwar work has been stalled since before Obama’s election. The Party has a noble tradition of leadership in antiwar work. With the CPUSA leadership so preoccupied these days with trying to orchestrate membership contentment with the Administration’s Iraq “withdrawal” policy, and Party leaders in complete denial on the expanding US aggressions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, the antiwar movement, deprived of its natural leader, is rudderless.

No multi-racial US political organization can boast of a better record on fighting racism than the CPUSA. Now African-American working people are being hammered by mass unemployment and unprecedented housing foreclosures and evictions. Affirmative action, for 35 years an effective policy for achieving racial equality, is under fresh attack by reaction. Nobody denies that the breaking of the racist color bar on the White House by Obama’s election was a splendid democratic achievement for the US people. Understandably, it was uniquely gratifying to tens of millions of people of color in the US. Missing is a special Party class analysis of racism as a barrier to class unity in the new circumstances.[15] Instead there is endless 23rd Street jubilation at the Obama election, and irritation at members who raise questions about the persistence of racism, especially institutionalized racism.

New examples of physical and organizational liquidation can be seen. Headed for the scrapheap today is the print edition of the People’s Weekly World (PWW).[16] Fury at this autocratic decision from many clubs, districts, and individuals — after Party leaders had recently and publicly denied that any such move was planned — went unreported[17] at the NC meeting, by a leadership famous for claiming “democracy matters.” The Party’s finest comrades have been faithfully carrying out the PWW’s distribution in the wee hours of the morning in foul and fair weather for decades. If “a Communist Party’s prime task is to unite its science with the class,” the PWW represented a transmission belt to basic workers on the shop floor, on a picket line, at a demonstration, or on an unemployment line. It is the most obvious and outrageous way so far that the present CP leaders are severing Party links to the working class.

Phony Rationales for Change
At the NC meeting in late June, concrete measures to enfeeble the CPUSA were rammed through. In recent months there had been a leadership epiphany regarding the communicative powers of the Internet. From the podium, NC members heard puerile hype about Twitter and Tweets, and Facebook, and MySpace. The simple truth is the party, like all living organizations, has been on the Internet since the early 1990s. Nobody denies that smart use of new information technology is important for any organization. The present writer is unaware of any other Communist Party in the world, big enough to have print publications, discarding such print publications to go to “Internet only.” In reality, the newly discovered technological imperative is merely a bogus excuse to get rid of the print PWW. The paper’s announced demise sparked a degree of opposition in some sections of the leadership, though not enough to thwart it.

Back in 1989 Gus Hall said this:

About our press — articles from three clubs in one way or another raised the question of doing away with the People’s Daily World because it “takes too much effort, money, and time..” And, as one article said, “We don’t have the time to visit the contacts we make with the paper anyway.”

To do away with the People’s Daily World would be the first step in liquidating the Party. I don’t see any alternative to our press — or our Party. Here again, the influence of the People’s Daily World is much greater than its subscriptions alone.[18]

The Spanish-language editor of the PWW (Nuestro Mundo)was dismissed. This will hurt the Party’s outreach to the growing and often militant Spanish-speaking population in the US.

Other steps by the cyber-Communists threaten to be just as enfeebling. Perhaps most harmful of all is the decision to abolish the Organization Department – and to hand its function over to a committee with many other functions. This giant stride toward Party liquidation rips the heart out of democratic centralism. Few Party functions are as important as the Organization Department, subordinate only to the National Convention, NC, and NB.[19] Its checkup-and-control mission is to turn Party policy into organizational reality. The Organization Department has the responsibility for the daily implementation of the policy decisions of National Conventions, the NB and the NC.[20] It makes the difference between an organization of doers and an organization of talkers.

Ominously, the June NC meeting saw the first tentative steps to a new party name, “People Before Profits,” whose advent will be cloaked as merely a new mode of self-presentation on the Internet. Cleverly, the edict is put forth in a plausibly deniable way.[21] The giveaway is that the dreaded C- word, “Communist,” will be downgraded, most likely before it is discarded altogether.[22]

The 42 percent cut in staff is a massive cut (29 people down to 17 people). This means the Party’s influence will be torn to shreds in many spheres of its work.

The YCL is the party’s future. If, as claimed, these proposals are about accepting austerity for a period in order to create more favorable conditions for future growth, why is the YCL staff being shrunken?[23]

“Observations and Proposals…” and the Chautauqua speech[24]
In the document that Chairman Webb circulated on the eve of the June NC meeting “Observations and Proposals on Reconfiguring and Restructuring the Work “(OPPRW) he argues: 1) the changes made since 2000 have allowed us to successfully adapt; 2) we have been on this road for years — this is only one more step; 3) The budget crisis makes the end of the print PWW necessary; 4) a cyber-CPUSA is a technological imperative.

Taken together, these arguments make no sense whatsoever.

Is a “budget crisis” driving Party economy moves? Anyone who can do arithmetic could have and should have foreseen it. Sam Webb stated, “We are not doing anything new; it’s just reconfiguring.” But he gave the game away when he also said “I’d be in favor of these cuts even if there were no budget crisis.”

If management blunders caused a deficit requiring drastic remedial measures, those responsible should have been required to submit their resignations. But there will be no resignations. The changes imposed were not in fact driven by technology or budget. The present leadership has no wish to be called to account and no intention of self-criticism.

We should not lose sight of the fact, finally, that there was no pretense of a Leninist basis[25] for any of the organizational changes, for example, to perfect democratic centralism.

Why take further steps along the same road if nine years of similar steps only caused the organizational difficulties to deepen? If we have successfully “adapted” to a harsh political climate since 1991, why do we have a shrinking party and a budget crisis, requiring a new round of savage cuts?

Sam Webb states, “We have not had a sustainable budget for as long as I can remember.” Who has been national chair since 2000?

Who in Party leadership signed off on salary increases for a sizable paid staff, as if it was unforeseeable that, in time, the wage bill would be unsustainable and require a 42 percent cut (currently 29 people, down to 17 people) in paid staff headcount?

This “emergency,” then, was completely foreseeable. In most organizations, incompetent management, not foreseeing such a shortfall, would be sacked. Frankly, it looks more like a contrived emergency than a real one to achieve other, unstated goals. That possibility is explored below.

The Mentality of Opportunism
The grandiose historical argument in Mentality of Marginalization is that the present-day lack of political success of the US Left (which Sam Webb presumes to speak for, not merely for the CPUSA) is due to a holdover mindset, “mentality of marginalization.”[26] At an earlier stage, marginalization, he claims, was caused by objective factors such as “McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the long economic expansion following WW II…” But now it is resistance “to thinking anew” that is causing the persistence of the “mentality of marginalization.” In other words, the Party’s problems are the fault of an unwilling Party membership.

This notion suggests Webb’s broader analysis, which he has openly stated elsewhere. He believes many of the stock slanders of the Party are justified, that the present day Party is in crisis because of its dogmatism, sectarianism, bureaucracy, and rigidity, that it may not survive unless it abandons its out-dated dogmas. It should emulate social democracy; its differences with social democracy are not that great, and it should seek to merge with the “broad left,” a favorite phrase.[27]

He congratulates himself for pushing the Party in this direction, apparently undisturbed by the contradiction that the road he chose has led the Party to this crisis. In OPRRW he states: “A glance at history, after all, reveals that the landscape of the class struggle is littered with working class formations that didn’t adapt to new realities. But to our credit we choose change, we choose innovation which is not surprising since we are a party of innovators. We could have clung to familiar moorings, long held views, and our place in the scheme of things, but we choose a different road.”

Abruptly — only at the end of Mentality of Marginalization — does the reader discover the article is a rationale specifically for opportunistically abandoning the Party’s longstanding commitment to achieve health care reform by ousting the parasitic private insurers from the system, for example, by the single-payer proposal.[28] But Mentality of Marginalization sounds themes of a much broader significance than health care reform, important and timely though that matter is.

At root it is a plea to continue the Tail Obama CPUSA general line that Webb has been pursuing since Obama emerged as Democratic front-runner in early 2008. Before then, the tailing of the Democrats took the form of all-out, uncritical electoral support for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, supposedly as a way of ending the Iraq War and reversing attacks on the US people by ending Republican (“ultra-right”) control of the White House and Congress. The Democrats came into office in 2006 and 2008 all right, but neither the wars nor domestic attacks on working people have let up.

Webb’s writing has been predictable. He always tries to justify his opportunism by depicting it as a struggle against “sectarianism.” That mask is now dropped. He no longer bothers with arguments invoking Dimitrov’s reasoning about the Popular Front. He observes that the “ultra right” – George Bush and his would-be successor John McCain — was ousted from The White House in November of last year.[29] He worries that to demand more tailism by calling anew for “unity against the ultra-right,” because it might come back, would seem too flimsy an argument to Party members.[30] So his argument has mutated. It is “Tail Obama because he is the leader of the people’s coalition, and you risk isolation if you don’t support him.”

Be a “Player”
Opportunism sacrifices long-term and fundamental class and revolutionary goals for temporary and partial advantages. In this case, principle is exchanged for “player” status. In his own raw formulation:

A player of consequence; a player whose voice is seriously considered in the debates bearing on the future of the country; a player that is able to mobilize and influence the thinking and actions of millions.

But all or almost all CPUSA position have been shifted over the last few years, either explicitly or by gradually filling them with new content. To accommodate the Democrats and top union leaders Webb has been slowly shifting the CPUSA’s positions from the left to the center: on the Iraq and Lebanon wars,[31] on the socialist goal[32], on revolutionary strategy, on racism, on Cuba solidarity, on the economic crisis and the auto crisis, and by giving up on both political independence and industrial concentration.[33] The phrase “class struggle” is not only used less often; it is not even a frame of reference.

The retreat continues today. For example, there is CPUSA silence about US imperialism’s role in the Honduras coup; muted criticism of the expansion of Bush’s wars into Afghanistan and Pakistan; about Administration retreats on US democratic rights and liberties, on closing Guantanamo, and on and on.

Foster: Intentions Don’t Count. Outcomes Count
It has puzzled the present writer that friends in the Party have expressed unease with the word “liquidation.” One good friend remarked, “serious as the problems are, we want to avoid talk of ‘liquidation’ and place our entire stress on strengthening the Party politically, organizationally, financially, in its class composition and consciousness…” Why the unease?

Liquidation is a precise scientific word in Marxist-Leninist theory, yet it receives a negative reaction. Is it too abstract? Too little understood by a party whose educational standards have dropped?

Some believe, with good reason, the basis of the negative reaction is the party-wide drift away from Marxist-Leninist analysis and therefore Marxist-Leninist language. Scientific terms appear less often in CPUSA publications, even such elementary terms as “capitalist class,” “the national question,” even “right opportunism” or “imperialism.” This typifies the Party’s ideological decline, slowly succumbing to the surrounding ideological pressure in the wake of the break-up of the USSR and other socialist countries.

It seems likely the main cause of unease is that the idea of liquidation is counterintuitive. People simply have a hard time believing that any leader would seek to dismantle the very organization he is leading. Do union leaders liquidate trade unions? No. Do leaders of the nationally oppressed liquidate civil rights organizations? No. Do anti-war leaders liquidate peace organizations? No. True, such leaders may make this or that organizational blunder, but they never shoot the horse they are riding. Liquidation appears to suggest conscious bad intentions. And it’s always hard to prove intentions. So, to assert “liquidation is under way” evokes skepticism. Such skepticism is honest and merits an answer. Nevertheless, it is contended here the use of the word liquidation still makes sense.

Amidst the fight against Browderism, William Z. Foster stated,

Of course Comrade Browder does not want any such situation [that American imperialism would eventually dominate the world - EAD], but Lenin has long since taught us that the objective results of political policies bear no necessary relation to the subjective desire of the initiators.[34]

The motive of liquidation is the same. In 1944-46 Browder wanted to reduce the CPUSA to a “progressive” current within the Democratic Party. It can be shown that Webb’s policies, objectively, have the same outcome.

The organizational changes Webb seeks are actually more radical than Browder’s. Browder merely changed the name to Communist Political Association (CPA), and gave up the Party’s right to run candidates, something parties typically do. Most of the rest of the work of the CPUSA went on as usual in the brief existence of the CPA, 1944-45. Webb seeks a fundamentally different kind of organization, as we will see below.

The mode of liquidation is different. Returning to our earlier metaphor, Browder liquidated quickly. His method was dynamite and the wrecking ball. Stealthier and more gradual, Webb’s “deconstruction” policies amount to 21st century Browderism.

Gus Hall who lived through the Browder debacle, once stated, “The most dangerous liquidationist trend is not disbanding the Party structure, but eliminating the Communist essence in our mass work.” He noted that, in end-stage opportunism, the party itself becomes the obstacle.

Thus, the Browder-led process of liquidating the Communist Party set in. The process of liquidation did not start with organization or physical liquidation. The process was at first one of liquidating the role, the functions of the Party. Slowly, the Party gave up taking independent positions. Less and less it took positions in its own name. More and more it became only the supporter of movements led by other forces. There was an acceptance of the cockeyed idea that the Party narrowed down mass movements and that anything non-Party was “broad.” Even a unity with small “Left” sects who influenced no one became a “broader” movement. Finally, the Party became an obstacle to Browder’s opportunism. Browder kept denying he was liquidating the Communist Party. Each new opportunist step was presented as necessary as a way of giving the party a broad a mass base, but it became an obstacle to “the alliance of intelligent men.“ Opportunism reduced the Party’s influence and warped its policies so they would be acceptable to the most backward sections of the people. However, as the Party began to move toward the less politically developed sections of the population, it began to lose its influence with the politically and ideologically more advanced sectors of the people. This is always the result of opportunist policies. [35]

Intentions Do Not Matter.
Let us give Sam Webb the benefit of the doubt. He has devoted his adult life to the US Communist movement. The last thirty years have been hard times for proponents of revolutionary change. It is possible he thinks he is saving the Party. It is possible he is not fully conscious of the implications of his liquidation policies. He has spoken of “adaptation.”[36] He may believe that his “adaptation” strategy is the only realistic strategy for the CPUSA in the long haul. He often says socialism is not “on the agenda.” He evidently expects nothing more of US politics than a low-intensity, slow-tempo class struggle, with national politics consisting of little more than alternation of Democratic and Republican Administrations, for decades to come. But Lenin, and Foster, and Hall are all saying the same thing: subjective intentions do not matter. Declared intentions do not matter. Objectively, Webb and his supporters are dismantling the Party. That is all that matters.

If such pessimism is indeed the outlook underlying liquidation, it is an outlook of despair. It leads straight to a “Socialism of Modest Aspirations,” as one writer aptly labeled it.[37] It leads to the willingness to settle for crumbs from the table of the Democratic Party. Consider the timeline. Webb and others came to hold their present political beliefs in the awful 1990s. They came into office about 2000. One of the inner circle then was heard to state, “We have ten years to remake the Party.” The irony is that they are carrying out their plans — now speeding them up — at the very moment that possibilities for radical change in the country and in the world are fast reviving. With the world economic crisis, the possibilities are multiplying exponentially. The whole ideological crisis in the CPUSA, therefore, has a curious anachronistic quality.[38]

A fuller discussion of the origins of opportunism can be found elsewhere on this website.[39] Opportunism has roots in the material position of a revolutionary party in a non-revolutionary situation. In such a situation, there is always pressure to move toward opportunism and reformism, at first by revising revolutionary theory. The dominant ideology in society remains that of the dominant class. There is a natural and understandable pressure on revolutionaries to be relevant, to not isolate themselves from the working class, and thus a natural tendency (that revolutionaries must consciously resist) to adopt the ideas, vocabulary, and positions of non-revolutionary workers, or liberals, or social reformists. Superimpose on that lasting reality these historical circumstances: the blow to revolutionary self-confidence stemming from the downfall of socialism in Europe twenty years ago, and the problematic course of People’s China in the last three decades. The upshot: at the beginning of the 21st century opportunistic pressures on Communist parties in imperialist countries are a mighty force.

Why do Communist leaders go further and try to shoot the horse they are riding, that is to say, liquidate the parties they lead? It is an international phenomenon in the Communist movement. In France the Robert Hue leadership, aping the French Socialist Party, has reduced the CPF to a shadow of its former strength. In 1977-88 the “Eurocommunists” wrecked the CP of Great Britain, requiring a British Communist movement to be rebuilt almost from scratch. After 1989-91 the once mighty Italian Communist Party shattered like glass into successor fragments, some Communist, most reformist. And why did Gorbachev liquidate the CPSU?

Liquidation is an advanced form of opportunism. Concretely, what propels this leader Sam Webb to move beyond the revisionist conclusions he drew after the events of 1989-1991, (but has never admitted forthrightly), to move not merely to opportunist policies and revisionist theories, easy to trace in his writings over the last few years, but now to actual dismemberment of the Party?

Here is the answer: a Communist Party, organized along Marxist Leninist principles, is not an ordinary organization. Lenin developed the theory of a Marxist-Leninist party “of a new type” in fierce ideological struggle with Second International opportunism. The Leninist theory, and the fortress-like organization designed by that theory, is based on the whole history of the European and world working class movement over many decades. Uniquely, a Communist party’s democratic centralism, its rules, its structure, its traditions, its practice of collective leadership, its criticism and self-criticism, its insistence on realistic all-sided estimates, its check-up and control, its reliance on revolutionary theory tested in class struggle around the world, the clarity and precision of its terms — all represent built-in organizational safeguards aimed at resisting opportunist degeneration.

Therefore, opportunism, meeting such steely organizational resistance, sooner or later tries to liquidate the Party.

Next time: The Crisis of the CPUSA Part 2: What Kind of Organization Do They Want?

____________________________________________________________
Endnotes:

[1] When the CPUSA is reconstituted on a Marxist-Leninist basis, “The Mentality of Marginalization” should be part of the curriculum of party schools, in the class dealing with party history and inner-party ideological struggle. It vividly illustrates opportunism in the US Communist movement.

[2] In a slightly different form, its ideas were included in his June 2009 remarks to the National Committee of the CPUSA and in his Chautauqua speech. They are, therefore, his considered position.

[3] Demolition is not exactly the same as de-construction. De-construction involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use. The current drive toward Party liquidation is more like de-construction.

[4] Reflections on Revisionism <>

[5] From Revisionism to Party Liquidation <

[6] Party veterans say this superb pamphlet was written by Danny Rubin. Let us give credit where credit is due.

[7] William Z. Foster observed, “trailing after the big bourgeoisie is the historic error of social democracy.” William Z. Foster “On the Question of Revisionism.” In Marxism-Leninism vs. Revisionism, by William Z. Foster, Jacques Duclos, Eugene Dennis, and John Williamson. Foreword by Max Weiss. New Century Publishers, Feb. 1946, 9.

[8] In calling for change in the organizational structure of a Marxist-Leninist Party they have invoked the Obama campaign as an organizational ideal. They still refer to an “Obama movement.” It does not exist. They confuse a 2008 email list of small contributors with a mass movement. The genuine wave of enthusiasm for Obama in the early stages of the 2009 campaign came from his perceived stronger anti-Iraq War stance. Democratic primary voters are liberal and antiwar. Since Inauguration Day his anti-war reputation has suffered.

[9] The lame argument, which sad to say, a majority of delegates bought, was that in the name of modesty, the Party should earn the leading role, not merely claim it.

[10] He believes political independence should be limited to work within the Democratic Party. Any attempt to go outside the two-party system is sectarian and futile. Third party efforts, particularly those with an anti-monopoly thrust, are no longer of strategic importance; they may actually impede the struggle. Running Communists and workers is especially narrow and self-defeating. Electoral struggle in the Democratic Party is the main arena of progressive struggle in this period. OPRRW: “… a sea change occurred on Election Day [2008] and nothing that has happened since then suggests anything else. We live in a new era of struggle, filled with immense opportunities. … Is there any doubt that Gus, Winnie, Jim Jackson, Helen, George, Elsie, Lou, Carl, Vic, Fred, Jim West, Tommy, and many others would have hailed our election policy, the election of the first African American President, and the broad coalition that elected him?”) To invoke the first names of revered Party leaders whose policies he is reversing is deeply offensive to this writer.

[11] “Communists, of course, cannot and must not for a moment abandon their own independent work of communist education, organization, and mobilization of the masses.” “Content and Form of the United Front.” Dimitrov on United Front (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1971), 27.

[12] Last August an editor of Political Affairs ran a lampoon of Marxism. He became highly indignant when some Party members expressed shock.

[13] Webb’s OPRRW makes a fleeting reference to “labor concentration.” This could leave the misleading impression that there is still a CPUSA policy of industrial concentration. There isn’t one. Ask the YCL. Ask the industrial districts. It’s gone.

[14] Younger readers may be unfamiliar with these organizations and their initials: NAIMSAL (National Anti-imperialist League in Solidarity with African Liberation) , WREE (Women for Racial and Economic Equality) , TUAD (Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy), USPC (the US Peace Council, an affiliate of the World Peace Council) , NAARPR (National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression) and others.

[15] Old timers can recall the Party’s emergency focus on the ideological defense of affirmative action in the late 1970s when the Bakke and Weber cases threatened to undo civil right progress. No like effort exists now.

[16] Some don’t regret the loss of the print PWW much. Not to regret its loss is a mistake, in the present writer’s view, though to be sure its ideological decline has been steep. The editorials and coverage show little fighting spirit, which can only be found in the articles of a few dogged contributors.

[17] At the next meeting NC members could demand to know the extent of protests from around the country. There were many, and they did not mince words.

[18] Gus Hall, “The Power of Ideology: Keynote Address to the First Ideological Conference of the Communist Party USA,” July 14-16, 1989, Chicago, New Outlook Publishers, 1989, 57.

[19] The current Organizational Secretary will be reassigned to work on new fund raising work, big donor development and a campaign to raise $100,000 by the end of the year.

[20] “The Communist Party and How it Works: a Handbook on its Organization and Functioning,” March 1976, 53.

[21] The former PA editor has been openly advocating a name change for some time.

[22] The NB proposal was: “Single website (People before Profits) with multiple domains – CPUSA, PWW, PA, and YCL featuring on line news, commentary, education, theoretical discussions, action initiatives, podcasts, u-tube interviews, downloadable materials, etc. “

[23] The NB proposal was: “Reduce staff of YCL to one position; discuss reconfiguring of the work and structure of YCL with its leadership and membership; and explore further the feasibility of an additional staff position.”

[24] The Chautauqua Institute speech, given to a non-party audience in Western New York, restated the Mentality for Marginalization thesis. This is odd; the thesis is aimed at the supposedly self-marginalizing Left, not the public.

[25] At Chautauqua he characterized the Communist Party as “a work in progress,” as if organizational changes would be determined by pragmatism and the needs of the moment, not a theory of what a revolutionary organization must be and must do. He also began the speech with the curious comment that “if any of you are expecting militant rhetoric and passionate appeals to storm the barricades, you will be disappointed…”

[26] Inconsistency does not bother him. Are the changes he demands a response to failure, or simply movement along a continuum of successful adaptation? Both, he seems to believe.

[27] The very fact that he wields The Straw Man weapon against his opponents shows the weakness of his argument and the strength of his opponents’ views. He cannot win against their actual arguments, so he invents an argument he can defeat.

[28] Ever flexible, he announces his retreat. He comes out in favor of the Administration’s weak “public option” proposal, which leaves the private carriers in the system, supposedly to be regulated by competition. In truth, the “public option,” whatever its details, barely constitutes reform at all. Of course, Webb prefers single-payer in his head, but is unwilling to struggle for it. It might isolate him from Obama. The health care struggle has demonstrated the strategic weakness of the Party’s policy of being in bed with the Obama Administration. Not fighting for a strong HR676 single-payer initiative makes the “public option” the most “left” option and the target of right wing attack. It is difficult to mobilize people for a vague public option. Many cannot grasp it or else distrust it, due to the closed negotiations and the changing details. In other words, people are not sure what they are fighting for, other than that they don’t want the insurance companies and Big Pharma to dictate the “reforms.” Moreover, the single-payer advocates are a real movement. They can and do mobilize. With their huge resources, the insurance companies mobilize coached, fake “grassroots protestors” and various ultra right thugs and cranks at Health Care Town Hall Meetings. But having tossed aside the single-payer movement, Obama and his allies are without a comparable mass force.

[29] Some say that the ultra right is still strong in the larger US political system and Obama has to be defended to help him overcome it. That Obama needs pressure from left and independent forces is, of course, correct. It is quite another thing to adopt and defend Obama’s centrist positions, which is what Webb does. The argument carries another implication: that the US left must forever stay within the confines of Democratic Party as long as the ultra right threat exists, that the struggle for political independence must be delayed indefinitely, inasmuch as only the Democratic Party is a practical electoral vehicle to defeat the ultra right. This is a trap. The material basis of the ultra right — finance capital, oil giants, weapons manufacturers, etc., which have a stranglehold on state power — will be a reality until a radical or revolutionary movement takes them over. The ultra right will exist for a very long time. This way of thinking is to put off the fight for a labor-based independent formation forever. Moreover, in tailing Obama, the CPUSA is ignoring its own 2005 Program, which states: “U.S. capitalism is presently in the monopoly capitalist, imperialist stage of development, and in the transnational monopoly phase of that stage. Once the most reactionary ultra-right transnationals, who dominate political life today, receive a major defeat, it will be both necessary and possible to take on the transnationals as a whole; it will be possible to move on to the anti-monopoly stage of struggle. Building an anti-monopoly coalition is the next key step in the road to socialism in the U.S.” If ousting Republicans from the White House was not a major blow, why all the political ecstasy? If it was a major blow, why is the Party not back in the anti-monopoly stage of struggle?

[30] Not that he hasn’t tried it, referring to an “ultra right” that threatens “to derail the Obama administration.” Hence, any criticism would be out of bounds as long as the ultra right exists.

[31] Bill Miller, “For Anti-Imperialist Partisanship in the CPUSA” (www.MLToday.com) August 2006

[32] His previous writing suggests he believes much bourgeois criticism of socialist democracy and economic planning is essentially correct. He distances the Party from the Soviet Union. OPRRW: “We began re-envisioning the path to socialism and socialist society, based on present day challenges and a critical examination of the socialist experience in the 20th century.”

[33] George Meyers, a great Communist trade unionist, is tendentiously misquoted to justify the CPUSA’s present satisfaction with the centrist positions of the AFL-CIO. To be sure, Meyers was correct to state that “left-center unity is built on the most advanced position of the center forces.” He was referring to unity on action program, not ideological unity. Communist and other left-wingers don’t drop their ideology when they coalesce with center forces.

[34] William Z. Foster “On the Question of Revisionism” Marxism-Leninism vs. Revisionism, William Z. Foster, Jacques Duclos, Eugene Dennis, John Williamson. Foreword by Max Weiss. New Century Publishers, Feb. 1946 , 39.

[35] Political Affairs.

[36] Implicit in the “adaptation” talk is the social democratic notion: the capitalist system is not moribund, but strong. It is not in general crisis. Its direction is upward. Therefore, the Party’s strategy should be to win attainable reforms within the system rather than advocate capitalism’s revolutionary replacement with socialism. OPRRW: “We could have clung to familiar moorings, long held views, and our place in the scheme of things, but we choose a different road. While embracing our traditions and history, which admittedly help us navigate stormy seas, we also eagerly searched for new angles of looking at, thinking about, and reshaping the world.”

[37] Zoltan Zigedy, http://mltoday.com/en/for-a-serious-conversation-on-socialism-616-2.html.

[38] Foster discerned the pattern. Periods of upswing of US imperialism, coupled with setbacks/defeats for socialism, correspond to bouts of opportunism in the US Communist movement. He cited “The Roaring 20s” (Lovestone); World War II military success (Browder); the conservative 1950s when a top-dog US ruled the postwar world (Gates). One can add: The Booming 1960s (Healey and Richmond ); the downfall of socialism and emergence of US as sole superpower (Committees of Correspondence). Only the present bout is exceptional, for the reasons indicated.

[39] Reflections on Revisionism<>

Getting to Know the American Judicial System

Free Media Productions Staff — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:56:40 +0000

If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself OUTSIDE the political mainstream in the United States, and you’re vaguely active in any type of movement, then it’s probably a reasonable assertion that you ought to acquaint yourself with the basics of the American judicial system.

Given FMP’s utter revulsion at nearly all things American (capitalism, bourgeois degeneracy, liberalism, gangsterism, imperialism – just to name a few), we’ll be publishing a weekly informational/educational series on “getting to know the American justice system.”

In this series we hope to provide readers with a sensible understanding of how the American judicial system operates as a political tool of class-oppression. More importantly, we’ll try to provide helpful information and resources with at least some practical importance for political activists.

Finally, if you have questions or would like to see a specific topic covered – please let us know in the comments section and we’ll be sure to cover any requests!

Our first topic will focus on the basics of Grand Juries, a staple of the English and American common law systems that establish whether or not there is suitable evidence for a trial against a suspect (future defendant) to proceed.

“Carnivore System” – the FBI’s dated e-mail wire-tapping program

Ex-MIM — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:17:33 +0000

Up until 2003 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employed the custom-built the “Carnivore” system that took the guess-work out of monitoring electronic/network communications (i.e. e-mail), along with browsing activities, and other data sent across an internet connection.

This tool, far more sophisticated than your typical packet sniffers (though this is still reason enough to consider encrypting your electronic communications), allowed government agents to extract messages sent over a network while targeting and filtering specific

Carnivore became obsolete when, in 2003, it was replaced with even more sophisticated software that was more precise in deciphering communications and information that could *legally* by intercepted by law enforcement agencies (in accordance to Federal legislation).

While obsolete now (for intelligence gathering information at the level needed by the US government), the Carnivore System was an interesting experiment in how relatively easy (and unsafe) e-mail, and the internet in general, really is.

Using “sniffing” technology, the Carnivore system is installed at an Internet service provider (ISP) to keep court-ordered tabs on a suspect’s e-mail and instant messages. Prior to its becoming obsolete in 2003, it was confirmed to have been used in more than 150 criminal investigations.

Unlike some of the more emerging online-tapping systems, Carnivore had to “physically” be connected to a network in order to conduct surveillance. By connecting to the ISP, the system would then collect e-mails, websites visited, instant messages and all other forms of network activity. From here the aggragated data would be sent through a filter that would weed out information that could not be held up by a Court-ordered mandate allowing for the surveillance of electronic communications in the first place.

After being filtered – the information would then be stored on a removable disk and physically picked up by an FBI agent.

And while Carnivore is no longer the online-tapping system of the FBI anymore, it does give cause for concern about the ways in which anybody should take an active interest in ensuring their information security through a variety of means, ranging from rather simple to the much-more complicated.

On a final note – nearly all information-security experts recommend AGAINST purchasing proprietary security programs. Most so-called security companies, like MacAfee, have no qualms about leaving “back-doors” open for government Trojans. Your best bet is to stick with Open Source, such as the GNU Privacy Guard or even Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client, which includes an easily-installed encryption extension known as “Enigma.”

On Digital Dirt

Metal Gear — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:32:12 +0000

The revealing of digital dirt may scare many bloggers and activists, but it should not. What is worse than losing a job or lead over political discrimination is being hired by an asshole which uses social networking websites to stalk your activities off of the job. Any potential boss who cares about your blogging is an employer you do not want to work for. Any employer who views your content and eliminates himself/herself as your potential boss should be applauded in a social Darwinist sense. By discriminating against you for your views and activism, the individual allows you to find a better “fit” instead of bringing you into the fold only to reveal a manipulative personality later. It is better to find the right employer from the beginning than to settle for the wrong one, and then learn that he/she is not a decent person. I happen to know someone who was fired for what was written on Linkedin. Less than two-three months later, the company is being sold to a bigger one. Obviously the social network stalking was indicative of mismanagement and employers who did not know how to run their own company. Only inferior companies run by circle jerk bosses stalk their employers. Good companies do not. Good employees do not talk about their employers in inappropriate places, but good employers know their boundaries too.

Do your research; the total amount of business per square mile in America is astounding, even inside the recession. The only reason that digital dirt is a threat is because of the recession and now employers are picky. In a good economy, for every employer who cares, there are ten decent employers who are not hypocrites. For every employer who “writes you off” due to your viewpoints, there is one that will favor you as an out-of-the-box thinker with creativity. This is particularly true if you prove that you have good tech skills. We really do have a conspiracy of elites and most people indeed are decent enough, afraid enough, indifferent enough or in agreement enough to not care. Simply put, most people do behave like backstabbing politicians and special interest lobbies do. Most people do not behave like internet cowards do either.

In the recession, indeed opportunities are limited and I can see why people would be stuck working for an asshole who stalks their social networking, and want to cover it up. I can see why the recession could turn employers into assholes and I can see why some people would want to work for an asshole just to make ends meet. Even though the recession complicates matters, if you really do your research, enough business still exists that you hopefully can find a good match with an employer. I feel empathy for those who are less lucky and end up either unemployed or the victims of stalking due to the convergence of the recession and what they have written online.

I used to fear the consequences of “being outed” but now I really do not care. The kind of guy who sits around looking for digital dirt and “punishes” people economically for it is exactly the kind of guy you want to avoid. If digital dirt weeds out the weak, then perhaps we should create more of it and care less what others think about it. If it wasn’t for the recession, I would openly declare that I completely do not care.

Misuse and Abuse of the Internet to be Controlled

Metal Gear — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:01:19 +0000

I encourage all Free Media Productions readers and writers to contact your political representatives to tell them you support measures like this. I am a REALIST and am sick of people living in a fantasy world. With powerful search engines like google peering into the blogesphere, we can’t afford to have people’s reputations maligned by libel and impersonation in the name of the god forsaken free market. The internet is real life. Both the Third Positionists and Marxists should support these measures.

Ideologically, The Third Positionists should support these measures because they take society one step closer to a totalitarian state. The Marxist-Leninists should support them because the more anger and antagonism they produce, the better chance there could be for a revolution.

This is what I have to say about Cowards who hide behind the apparent “anonymous status” of the internet and abuse it. Hail totalitarianism and death to liberalism!

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07112009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/gag_the_internet__178749.htm

When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a “chilling effect” on speech that might hurt someone’s feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.

Advance copies of Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the prominence with which Sunstein is about to be endowed, his worrying views are fair game now. Sunstein is President Obama’s choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It’s the bland titles that should scare you the most.

“Although obscure,” reported the Wall Street Journal, “the post wields outsize power. It oversees regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Obama aides have said the job will be crucial as the new administration overhauls financial-services regulations, attempts to pass universal health care and tries to forge a new approach to controlling emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Sunstein was appointed, no doubt, off the success of “Nudge,” his previous book, which suggests that government ought to gently force people to be better human beings.

Czar is too mild a world for what Sunstein is about to become. How about “regulator in chief”? How about “lawgiver”? He is Obama’s Obama.

In “On Rumors,” Sunstein reviews how views get cemented in one camp even when people are presented with persuasive evidence to the contrary. He worries that we are headed for a future in which “people’s beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire.” That future, though, is already here, according to Sunstein. “We hardly need to imagine a world, however, in which people and institutions are being harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet,” he writes. “We live in that world. What might be done to reduce the harm?”

Sunstein questions the current libel standard – which requires proving “actual malice” against those who write about public figures, including celebrities. Mere “negligence” isn’t libelous, but Sunstein wonders, “Is it so important to provide breathing space for damaging falsehoods about entertainers?” Celeb rags, get ready to hire more lawyers.

Follow the DPRK on Twitter!

Besoshvili — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:19:57 +0000

Leave it to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to find a useful function for the obnoxious social-networking software “Twitter.” Now, you can get all the latest updates from the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) through its “Twitter” feed (kcna_dprk).The updates include all the latest English-language headlines from the DPRK’s official news agency. Enjoy.

June 6 – Gaza Solidarity Day in San Francisco

Besoshvili — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:28:29 +0000

From FMP News:

June 6 Gaza Solidarity Day

Demonstration in downtown San Francisco to commemorate 42nd anniversary of Zionist seizure of Gaza

What: Demonstration against Zionist aggression in Gaza

When: Saturday June 6, 2009 @ 12 pm noon

Where: UN Plaza, Downtown San Francisco (7th & Market). See map.

Who: See below for sponsoring organizations

May 28 – June 6th marks the 42nd anniversary of the Zionist-Israeli seizure and subsequent occupation of Gaza. In memory of this atrocity and the continued perpetuation of the terrorist-Zionist state of Israel, the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition is organizing June 6 Gaza Solidarity Day, a special day of demonstration in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine demanding an end to the siege of Gaza and the cessation of US financial and military support to the murderous Zionist regime that continues to ravage the displaced peoples isolated in the narrow Gaza strip.

The demonstration will begin this Saturday June 6 at noon at the UN Plaza (7th and Market) in downtown San Francisco. The focus of the June 6th protest will be calling upon the US government, complicit in the murderous crimes of the Zionist regime, to end its financial and military support for the terrorists in Tel Aviv, and commemorate the tragic seizure and current occupation of Palestinian territories.

The June 6 Gaza Solidarity Day is sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, the Muslim American Society Freedom, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, National Council of Arab Americans, Free Palestine Alliance, Al-Awda—Palestinian Right of Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine and more.

Individuals interested in helping out can stop by the ANSWER San Francisco office at 2489 Mission St (#24), or call 415-577-1492.

Robert Lindsay’s Response to my Essay on Jews and Anti-Semitism

Metal Gear — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:17:30 +0000

Robert Lindsay is a far left blogger who is known for his political incorrectness and out of the box thinking. He has something controversial to say about pretty much any political movement and is very entertaining. Here is what he has to say about my essay.

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/metal-gear-on-the-jews-and-anti-semitism/

This seems to be a pretty nice take on the Jewish Question that ought to satisfy most of the sane people for the time being.

Metal Gear is a friend of mine. Our politics differ in a number of ways, but although we are both ethnocentric White men (he is part Jewish too) he isn’t really a racist at all, though I would call him some sort of a radical nationalist. He runs a very interesting website for big government loving statists like me. There are all sorts of nefarious characters lurking about there, but mostly what they have in common is a love of Big Gubmint.

There are Stalinists and fascists, and they seem to get along happily under a big government tent, though I assure you that they have some very strong disagreements. In particular, the Stalinists strongly object to a lot of the fascist program.

I hate to flog a dead horse and play into reactionary and libertarian BS, but let’s face it, Communism and fascism are both forms of Big Government. They are both uber-statist solutions and as such are the polar opposites from anarchism and libertarianism. One can definitely draw a useful dichotomy there.

Anyway, it’s a pretty interesting website. Name? Free Media Productions. I’m on the roster of writers, but I don’t write much. It’s mostly for extremists who have been rejected or ejected from much of the rest of the Net or blogosphere so they set up this free speech zone where everyone can say outrageous stuff. It’s odd to have fascists and Stalinists under the same tent, but I’ve seen stranger things.

Whoa, check out My Father, Enver Hoxha. Haha. Something for everyone.