Did you know?
President Obama’s boyhood mentor was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party (card number 47544)
“Progressives for Obama” was founded by formerly admitted communists
The Communist Party USA urged support for the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election
Marxists—particularly cultural Marxists—have been remarkably successful in miseducating Americans. But education is just one front in the ongoing struggle to bring communism to our country. An astonishing variety of organizations and movements in the United States today are still agitating for the promised communist utopia. An alarming amount of the violence and division we see in our country today can be traced back to the activism of communists and associated leftist dupes and fellow travelers. And there are disturbing connections between these hardcore communists and a number of “mainstream” American politicians.
To this day, the Communist Party USA—which was completely loyal to Stalin and continued to toe the line set by the communist government in Russia until the fall of the Soviet Union—remains the dominant party of communists in America. But it is not the only communist organization in America. There are plenty of variations and splinter groups, as there have long been. For instance, there remains a following of Trotskyites (or Trotskyists), which once included the popular angry atheist Christopher Hitchens.1 Trotskyists gravitate toward Lee Harvey Oswald’s favorite newspaper, The Militant, the flagship publication of the Socialist Workers Party.
Guilt by Association
The Militant achieved some infamy after a photograph surfaced of Oswald proudly hoisting the publication alongside his rifle before he consummated his love affair with communism by placing a bullet in the skull of JFK. Oswald posed for two pictures with his rifle and pistol, a copy of the March 11, 1963, issue of The Militant and a copy of the March 24, 1963, issue of the Daily Worker.2
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, (RCP) is one radical group that is arguably to the Left of the Communist Party USA (no easy task). Its tactics are certainly more aggressive. Its beliefs include a dedication to a real revolutionary communism, with its members insisting that the dividing line between genuine communists and those who are not genuine is the commitment to real revolution.3 RCP comrades call for the “overthrow” of the current “capitalist-imperialist” system, which is to be replaced with a “radically different system.”4
The group’s chairman and guru is Bob Avakian, a Maoist, for whom the RCP membership is asked to provide a loyalty reminiscent of the personality cults of Mao and Stalin. Avakian’s group proclaims, “Just as, in 1975, being a communist meant being a follower of Mao and the path that he forged, so today being a communist means following Bob Avakian and the new path that he has forged.”5 And Mao isn’t the only bloodthirsty communist tyrant popular with the RCP. As Paul Berman explains in his book Power and the Idealists, “The RCP was a California group mostly, but it was animated by an ambitious view of the proletarian revolution and a determination to cultivate fraternal ties with Maoist parties around the world. . . . The RCP’s comrades devoted unusual energies to celebrating Stalin.” This “Stalin-worship,” this “cult of Stalin,” writes Berman, reflected the influence of the Chinese communists, who believed that Stalin, unlike Nikita Khrushchev, had not betrayed the world proletariat. Thus, “The RCP dutifully set about burnishing Stalin’s reputation in the world of the American left.”6
The RCP’s living hero, known as “Chairman Bob,” was raised in a middle class home. Bob Avakian was radicalized in the 1960s during his time in Berkeley when he hooked up with SDS, the Black Panthers, and buddies such as Bill Ayers. He co-founded the RCP with fellow radical Carl Dix in the mid-1970s, about the time that Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn (who, like Avakian, had left SDS) were fleeing law enforcement.
Avakian is now in exile in Paris (some reports claim this is a self-imposed exile). It is said that only his closest comrades know where he is living.7 His RCP operates “Revolution Bookstores” in sixteen American cities, including New York (of course), Berkeley, Cambridge, and Seattle.8
Personality Cult
“Bob Avakian is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Like all Party members, he is subordinate to the collectivity of the Party overall, even as he has been elected by the Central Committee to lead the Party. At the same time, as the initiator and architect of a new synthesis of communism, he is also objectively ‘greater than’ the Party. It is crucial that our Party be grounded in and proceed on the basis of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism.” —Revolutionary Communist Party Resolution 6,10 explaining that the Party’s leader is to be viewed as objectively greater than the party itself, something that is very reminiscent of the personality cult that surrounded Stalin.
Avakian’s personal manifesto, a book titled The New Communism, promises a “radically new society” based on a fundamental transformation of the existing order. He and his comrades proclaim a “New Communist Manifesto,” and their website lists six resolutions of the RCP as of January 1, 2016. These long, strange, and meandering resolutions repeatedly express the Party’s militant dedication to revolution, and every one of them mentions Avakian’s name.9
Spyridon Mitsotakis, an insightful and informed reporter of communist activities who in 2014 reported on the RCP’s attempted takeover of a Unitarian Universalist Church, describes the Revolutionary Communist Party as an “intolerant totalitarian movement.”11 John Rossomando, another keen observer, says of the party’s acolytes, “They are worse than the CPUSA.”12
Bring Back the Show Trials!
Peter Wilson reports in the American Thinker that the RCP advocates the creation of “special Tribunals” (again, quoting the RCP constitution) to be “established to preside in cases of war crimes and other crimes against humanity” committed by “former members and functionaries of the ruling class of the imperialist USA and its state and government apparatus.” As Wilson notes, these enemies of the state would “be imprisoned or otherwise deprived of rights and liberties.” Further, “those who played a leading role in opposing the revolution” will not be “accorded citizenship” and will be “deprived of the right to vote.”13
And, as we shall see in the next chapter, the RCP—which continues to agitate for an actual communist revolution in the United States—has been involved in fomenting some of the racial violence we see in America today in connection with the protests of police shootings and the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
“Progressives” (Read: Communists) for Obama
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, makes no apologies and no excuses. It operates openly and boldly. It is a party of revolutionary communism, period. Other communist and pro-communist groups, however, are far less forthright about their intentions—and who they really are. Take “Progressives for Obama.” A more honest name for the group would have been “Communists and Progressives for Obama.”
This group of ’60s Marxists, Maoists, and Che admirers came together in 2008 to support what they saw as a once-in-a-lifetime presidential candidate, a kindred ideological spirit: Barack Obama. They sought to ride with him on a magic red carpet to the fundamental transformation that would finally change the nation they had so long loathed. He would usher in the utopian paradise they had always been hoping for.
The radicals of the 1960s, as we have seen, went from campus activism to bombings and other violent acts to life “underground” on the run from the FBI to rehabilitation (without repentance) that put them in the position to shape the minds of America’s college students and future teachers. But still they felt themselves to be in a kind of frustrated exile as adults. They had painfully endured the rise of Reaganism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The likes of Tom Hayden and Mark Rudd had gone into an uneasy limbo, teaching at universities, trying to get into politics, but they were frustrated that neither major political party in America would nominate a presidential candidate of their liking. Of course they despised the Republicans, but they also disliked Democratic presidents such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who were too conservative for them (just as in the ’60s they had detested traditional and anti-communist Democrats like John F. Kennedy and even Bobby Kennedy).14
Well, in 2008 that finally changed. The Marxist children of the ’60s were suddenly back on the public stage, this time calling themselves “progressives.” They were filled with direction, elation, and a new sense of purpose by the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. Their movement was alive again.
Whether Obama knew it or not, he was the man they hoped could be their Manchurian candidate. He was the one on whom they projected their ideals and vision for America and the world—a false utopianism that had long ago smoldered into ashes behind that fallen wall that once divided Berlin. He was their political Phoenix, through whom they believed they would ascend again. He was the first Democratic Party presidential nominee whose politics approached theirs.
And so they came together with renewed vigor in a formal group called “Progressives for Obama.” It was, in effect, a twenty-first-century iteration of something that this collective of red-diaper babies knew so well—a classic communist front-group.
Card-Carrying Communist, Presidential Mentor
In Hawaii in the fall of 1970, nine-year-old Barack Obama was introduced to sixty-five-year-old Frank Marshall Davis. Obama’s grandfather made the introduction because the boy was lacking a black male role model. Stanley Dunham chose a curious pick as a mentor for his grandson: Davis was a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (card number 47544).
Frank Marshall Davis was a writer, poet, and political extremist who became the founding editor-in-chief of the Chicago Star. There he shared the op-ed page with the likes of Howard Fast, the “Stalin Prize” winner, and Senator Claude “Red” Pepper, who sponsored a bill to nationalize healthcare in the United States.
In his first Star column, on July 6, 1946, Davis urged the need for “fundamental change.” Davis averred: “If history teaches us anything, it teaches that any fundamental change advancing society is spearheaded by strong radicals.” Davis would impart this attitude to Obama.
Davis’s politics were so radical that the FBI placed him under continued surveillance. He did Soviet propaganda work in his columns, at every juncture opposing U.S. attempts to slow Stalin in Europe and Mao in Asia. In December 1956, the Democrats who ran the Senate Judiciary Committee summoned Davis to Washington to testify on his activities. He pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The FBI placed him on the federal government’s Security Index, which meant that he could be immediately detained or arrested in the event of a national emergency, such as a war breaking out between the United States and USSR. To repeat: in the event of a war between Russia and America, this future mentor to the future president of the United States—who would commit himself and his presidency to a campaign of “collective salvation”15 and to “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”16—would have been placed under immediate arrest.17
The roster of Progressives for Obama was a veritable who’s who of the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were thrust into the national spotlight during the 2008 presidential campaign when it became public knowledge that Obama’s political career had been launched in the living room of the home of the former SDS-ers and fugitives from the FBI.18 But Progressives for Obama flew under the radar, unnoticed even by the Right, and predictably ignored by the liberal mainstream media, which had no interest in hurting Obama by exposing the ignominious names that headlined this group of associated advocates.
It was fitting (and chilling) that the man spearheading Progressives for Obama was the same man who had spearheaded SDS: Tom Hayden. Hayden was one of the four “initiators” of Progressives for Obama, along with Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher Jr., and Danny Glover. The group also featured a list of ninety-four formal “signers,” including Mark Rudd, Vietcong go-go girl Jane Fonda, Carl Davidson, Thorne Dreyer, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Flacks, John McAuliff, and Jay Schaffner. Columbia University was represented—by current faculty like Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology.
It is no exaggeration to say that the names on the list of Progressives for Obama resembled a roster of SDS-ers and Weathermen once called to testify before Congress for their subversive activities. These very same names appeared throughout the index of the transcripts from Congress’s December 1969 SDS investigation.19 In addition to the aforementioned names, there was also Bob Pardun, SDS education secretary from 1966 to 1967, and Paul Buhle, a professor who had recently sought to revive SDS.20 Other SDSers-turned-Weathermen who were not formal signers for Progressives for Obama but signed online petitions supporting Obama’s candidacy included Howard Machtinger, Steve Tappis, and Jeff Jones, one of the four co-authors of the 1974 Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire21—the statement in which, as we have seen, the signers frankly declared themselves “communist men and women, underground in the United States for more than four years” in “a guerilla organization” and called for “a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.”
Others who had been called before Congress in the 1960s, such as the pro-Stalin Maoist Michael Klonsky (co-author with Bill Ayers of books on teaching “social justice”), were represented in the 2008 list of Progressives for Obama by their relations: Anne Lowry Klonsky and Fred Klonsky. All of the Klonsky clan are involved in the field of education. In fact, the vast majority of these communists are now in education, including Ayers and Dohrn and Rudd. Along with Ayers and Dohrn, Rudd serves on the board of “Movement for a Democratic Society” (MDS), which he and others envision as a “new SDS,” which he hopes to resurrect with his talks in college classrooms around the country. MDS was founded in Chicago in August 2006, and includes Jeff Jones and Barbara Ehrenreich on its board. Its chair is socialist Columbia University professor Manning Marable.22
Rudd, who specializes in teaching social activism, remains a stalwart proponent of communist Vietnam and Cuba, whose repressive systems he still admires. He also admires Barack Obama, whose election Rudd saw as a major “advance” and “opening” for his cause.23
Former SDS leader Tom Hayden—he wrote the infamous “Port Huron Statement,” the SDS manifesto that marked the birth of “the New Left”—played a central role in Progressives for Obama.
After his early life establishing SDS, meeting with the Vietcong, and vigorously protesting America, Hayden went into politics, activism, and (what else?) education. Like Rudd, Ayers, Dohrn, Klonsky, and many others, Hayden came to view a quick “revolution” of the political system as too daunting, if not impossible. By 2008 he had become much more patient. He sought to advance the “progressive” cause within the established, respected Democratic Party.
Thus Hayden was thrilled about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The man who had drafted the SDS’s pivotal Port Huron statement now drafted mission statements for Progressives for Obama. Hayden wrote a piece titled “Obama and the Open and Unexpected Future,” in which he raved, “I didn’t see him coming. When I read of the young state senator with a background in community organizing who wanted to be president, I was at least sentient enough to be interested. When I read Dreams of My Father [sic], I was taken aback by its depth.” Hayden celebrated the fact that Obama had given “his first public speech” at a rally organized by Students for Economic Democracy (the student branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy that Hayden had chaired in 1979–1982) at Occidental College, where Hayden taught. Hayden was hooked.
Would You Call This Progress?
Woodrow Wilson, Democratic president from 1913 to 1921, was the progressive’s progressive. He has few fans among conservatives. But unlike today’s progressives, he had no sympathy for communism—at least in the form he could see it taking in Russia during his presidency.
President Wilson described Bolshevism as an “ugly, poisonous thing.” He alerted Americans that the Bolsheviks were engaged in a “brutal” campaign of “blood and terror,” of “mass terrorism,” of “indiscriminate slaughter” through “cunning” and “savage oppression.” The Bolsheviks were “barbarians,” “terrorists,” and “tyrants.” They were “violent and tyrannical.” In fact, said Wilson, they were “the most consummate sneaks in the world.”
Wilson warned a joint session of Congress that the Bolsheviks were pushing an “expansionist” ideology that they wanted to export “throughout the world,” including to the United States.
“In the view of this Government,” said Wilson’s State Department in an August 1920 statement, “there cannot be any common ground upon which it can stand with a Power whose conceptions of international relations are so entirely alien to its own, so utterly repugnant to its moral sense. . . . We cannot recognize, hold official relations with, or give friendly reception to the agents of a government which is determined to conspire against our institutions; whose diplomats will be the agitators of dangerous revolt; whose spokesmen say that they sign agreements with no intention of keeping them.”
Vladimir Lenin, in turn, despised Wilson, dismissing him as an “utter simpleton” and openly calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Tom Hayden saw Obama’s campaign as an opportunity for the fulfillment of the long-awaited hopes of “economic democracy”—what both he and Obama called “economic justice.” Hayden hoped that “the Obama movement” would come to “shape progressive politics . . . for a generation to come.” He hoped that the “progressive movement” also “might transform” Obama as well. Both could reinforce one another and fundamentally transform the nation—under the banner of “progressivism.”24
When Obama won the election in November 2008—against John McCain, a former POW during the Vietnam War (when Hayden’s pals were spitting on American soldiers and denouncing them as “fascists,” “pigs,” and “baby-killers”)—Hayden was beside himself with joy, shocked that the American electorate had at long last voted for someone that Tom Hayden saw as his kind of president.25
It was a towering achievement for him and his fellow “progressive” commies in Progressives for Obama.
This group of commies and ex-commies had engaged in very shrewd strategizing to persuade moderates, independents, and traditional Democrats into voting for Obama in 2008. And that is exactly what happened. Barack Obama, red-diaper baby mentored by card-carrying Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis, won the 2008 election by concealing his radicalism and winning over moderates, independents, and traditional Democrats.
Democratic Socialists, Socialist-Friendly Democrats
And President Obama is far from the only “mainstream” American politician who has been both enthusiastically supported and deeply influenced by the radical Left.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is another far-left group with disturbing connections to politicians we usually think of as mainstream. The DSA website states, “We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.”26 The Soviet leaders said just the same. (When the Soviets proclaimed that “the workers” were in charge, it merely meant that the government was in charge. The “workers,” like the phrase “the masses,” was merely a nebulous, wide-ranging label for a mass collective that the centralized authority was in charge of orchestrating.)
And yet, though most Americans don’t know it, the DSA has some serious influence in the U.S. Congress. John Rossomando, a writer and researcher who has long investigated the DSA, estimates that some “50–60” members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.27 The Caucus is chaired by Democrat Representative Keith Ellison and, Rossomando says, “used to advertise its DSA connections a decade ago”—until more people in the general public learned about the DSA’s far-left extremism. Rossomando has detailed connections between the DSA and the Democratic Party, the Congressional Progressive Caucus,28 the Socialist International, and even Barack Obama’s pre-presidential campaigns in Illinois.29
Asked what they really believe, most DSA members appeal to some form of so-called “democratic socialism,” just as the name of their party implies. “Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically,” says the DSA website. Sounds good, right? Could that take place in America? Not as we know it. In the very next line, the DSA states that “To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed.”
And then there remains that old standby of American Reds: the Communist Party USA. A review of material published by the CPUSA makes it possible to see where this top group of American commies—formerly Stalin’s loyal foot soldiers in the United States—stands today.
New York City’s Comradely Mayor
A striking case of a high-level comrade securing the support of millions of Democrat voters is Bill de Blasio, the current mayor of New York.
De Blasio spent his ideologically formative years stumping for the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the nasty communist regime spearheaded by Daniel Ortega. The future New York mayor actually peddled subscriptions for the Sandinista regime’s newspaper, Barricada, the Sandinistas’ version of Pravda. That is not a matter of casual interest. De Blasio was, thereby, working for the communist Sandinistas, helping them spread their propaganda; their newspaper was their chief print propaganda organ. Barricada, as Paul Berman notes, “was the most hardline of the Sandinista publications,” and was controlled by Sandinista Ministry of the Interior, Tomás Borge, the regime’s enforcer, chief defense officer, and top liaison to the Soviet Bloc. It was subscriptions to this paper, the New York Times reported, that De Blasio spent time and energy “hawking” to other New Yorkers.30
De Blasio was among the leftist Catholics taken in by the ruse that was Latin American Liberation Theology. He had a queer attraction to communist tyrannies. The appeal ran so deep that he engaged in one romance in the Soviet Union and then, a decade later, he and his bride actually honeymooned in Cuba.31 The couple somehow orchestrated their Havana honeymoon despite the U.S. embargo on travel long ago signed by President Kennedy. Bill de Blasio, regardless, went where his heart led him; he and his honey found Fidel.
And today de Blasio is no less than the Big Apple’s chief political official. Now, De Blasio wages war on “inequality” and the evil rich, devoting himself to leveling incomes, just as the Sandinistas did in Nicaragua.
Immediately after the vote, one writer penned a piece titled “America’s First Openly Marxist Big City Mayor.”32 Bill de Blasio shrewdly describes his ideology in the same way that American communists have cleverly done since 1917: he refers to himself as a good old-fashioned “progressive” pursuing “social justice.” “Make no mistake,” he declared in his mayoral victory speech, standing behind a large sign proclaiming “PROGRESS,” “the people of this city have chosen a progressive path. And tonight we set forth on it—together.”
That material is vast. It is available at www.cpusa.org and in the online pages of People’s World. Especially enlightening is a glance at CPUSA’s formal statements from its annual conventions, where the group’s platform and priorities are regularly trotted out. Any number of these could be quoted, but a statement promoting a recent annual convention held (fittingly) in Chicago, the adopted town and ideological home of Barack Obama, and the city where the American Communist Party was founded in September 1919, is typical and telling.
The statements from that convention (and others) are strikingly like the talking points coming out of the mouth of your average left-wing Democrat these days. Portions of the promotional statement for the June 2014 Chicago convention, for instance, read like a press release from Elizabeth Warren’s office, sound like a Bill de Blasio campaign rally, or smack of campaign slogans and remarks on the stump by Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton.
The CPUSA statement from Chicago in June 2014 began by demanding that the masses unite to “put people before profits” and then pledged to “transform” America:
We live in a capitalist system where the 99% of people struggle every day to survive and the richest 1% control the vast majority of wealth and power. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of the vast majority. . . . Our schools are underfunded and essential public services are strapped and slashed. Home foreclosures are everywhere and millions of people are homeless and hungry in the richest country in the world. Racism, sexism, homophobia and all kinds of discrimination are commonplace.33
This is a classic anti-capitalist rant—with the addition of support for the LGBTQ agenda. As we have seen, today’s communists are as likely to rally against “homophobia” as against the free market. The cultural Marxists have as many if not more seats at today’s Red dinner table as the traditional class-economic Marxists. (Joe Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev certainly were not gay rights guys. But today’s communists fully grasp the advantage of issues like “gay marriage” as long-awaited wedges to separate or “abolish” or “transcend” the nuclear family—a goal that communists have touted since Marx’s Communist Manifesto.)
Watermelons and Climate Communists
Why is April 22, 1970, significant? It was the first Earth Day—and the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s birth. Ever since, Earth Day has been celebrated on Lenin’s birthday.
Lenin’s hundredth birthday was a big deal to the communist movement (and anti-communists also find one hundred significant in relation to Marxism-Leninism—it reminds them of the hundred million dead victims of the communist ideology).
Given this interesting confluence of events, it seems more than ironic that so many former communists, when the Cold War ended, ran for the woods. Really, the environment was the perfect refuge. Rocks and frogs cannot tell the commie “environmentalist” to go jump in a lake. Trees cannot speak. Unfortunately, nature has no audible voice that can call communists tyrants and tell whiny activists to take a hike back to their air-conditioned offices in Manhattan or coffee shops in San Francisco. Thus, it makes an ideal constituency for communists. Plus, environmentalism is the perfect excuse for doing what communists already want to do: wield government power to control people and their property.
Both communists and environmentalists view people as a drain on limited resources. Both embrace mass collectivism and redistributionism—not to mention government control and seizure of property—as solutions. Moreover, communists and environmentalists alike remonstrate against capitalism, profits, corporations, industry, free markets, the West.
Old-line communists (especially the Soviet variety) didn’t give a damn about forests and vast landscapes. The forest that the Soviets found most useful was the Katyn Woods, where they exterminated thousands of Polish military officers. The most useful landscape that the Kremlin protected was snow-covered Siberia, perfect for housing countless Soviet citizens begging for basic civil liberties. Sure, Moscow did some preservation—constantly re-embalming the jaundiced corpse of Lenin planted in Red Square. Actually, the post-death history of Lenin’s body is a cautionary tale about the challenge of recycling: it is costly and does not work well.
For an example of just how polluting a system can be, look no further than the countries in the Soviet Bloc, where filthy water and air was everywhere.34 Or at China today, where in some places people have to wear surgical masks whenever they go outside, just to breathe safely.35 To genuinely clean up an environment, capitalism is the key. Wealthy countries have the disposable income to afford it. When a population is starving from communism, its concern is not “paper or plastic” but rice or an empty stomach.
If Marx and Engels were alive today, they would be writing manifestos on socialism and ecology at some silly university. Today, their disciples at People’s World urge left-wingers everywhere to “Get on board the . . . Climate Train.”36 The head of the Communist Party USA hails modern ecological warriors as “climate justice activists” battling for “green socialism.”37
Today’s climate commies have shrewdly found a way to cloak their red ideology in green camouflage. They are “watermelons”: green on the outside, red on the inside.
“Climate change,” too, has been eagerly embraced by communists. “We also face an urgent threat to the very survival of life on the planet,” declared CPUSA’s June 2014 statement. “Climate change is the byproduct of capitalism.” Whatever it takes to bring down business and those evil profits.
Sounding like a run-of-the-mill university professor or a New York Times editorialist, the comrades at CPUSA lament that “It is working people, the poor and communities of color who face the most direct consequences of global warming and the poisoning of our environment.”
And it never takes CPUSA long to zero in on the real enemy, which just happens to be the shared enemy of every liberal Democrat: the Republican Party and the “right-wingers”:
The main obstacle to progress today is right-wing extremism. Right wing spokespeople and groups represent and are funded by the most conservative sections of the rich and powerful.
The extreme right, which now dominates the Republican Party, is seeking to roll back all the social and economic rights that working people fought for and won. They want to take the country back to a time before marriage equality, before voting rights, before women’s reproductive rights, before the right to a union. It seems at times that they want to take us back to the days of slavery.
Democracy itself is under attack from this far-right group and their servants in the [sic] Washington and statehouses around the country.
It’s increasingly clear to millions of people: another world is possible and necessary. Another U.S. is possible too. Capitalism cannot solve these problems, we need a socialist USA. . . .
The Communist Party of the United States of America has a 95 year history of fighting for democracy, jobs, equality and socialism.
Our party reflects the diverse working class of our country. Our members are of all the races, ethnicities and nationalities that make up the rich fabric of U.S. society. We are native born and immigrant. We are men and women. We are young and old. We are straight and gay. . . .
We join the fight against the right wing today and build for socialist tomorrow.
We are proud to announce our 30th National Convention, June 13–15, 2014 in Chicago, the city of our birth.
Leading up to our convention, we will discuss the challenges and opportunities that working people face today. We will share experiences and discuss how our party can more effectively help build a people’s movement capable of transforming the country and making the future brighter for everyone. . . .
Onward to Chicago!38
Note once more the communists’ use of the words “socialism” and “democracy” as synonymous with their own communist goals. And note, yet again, the remarkable degree of overlap between the language and goals of the Communist Party USA and the language and goals of “mainstream” politicians in the Democratic Party. Presidential candidate Barack Obama talked about “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”; the CPUSA talks about “transforming the country.” And on the economy, on gender issues, on the environment, the stated goals of the current leadership of the Democratic Party are frighteningly close to the statements coming from the Communist Party USA, which was the official representative of the Soviet Union until its late demise. No wonder the far Left can work in harmony with the current leadership of the Democratic Party and the chief Democrat who occupies or seeks the White House. There was a time when the American Communist Party despised and demonized even liberal Democrats like Woodrow Wilson and FDR,39 not to mention more conservative Democratic Party standard-bearers such as Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. That is no longer the case. Conservative Democrats seem to be an extinct species, and today’s “liberal” or “progressive” Democrats are far to the Left of Democrats of the past—so far Left that they are kindred spirits to the communists in the CPUSA and allies in their “onward!” march to “transform” America.
Consider the gushing excitement expressed by CPUSA chairman Sam Webb (the predecessor to John Bachtell) after Obama’s 2012 reelection. “We meet on the heels of an enormous people’s victory,” Webb reported to CPUSA’s National Committee on November 17, 2012. “An African American president was reelected to the Presidency, the Democrats unexpectedly strengthened their hand in the Senate and House, new progressive voices, like Elizabeth Warren, are coming to Washington, and victories, including for marriage equality, occurred at the state level. . . . All this bodes well for the future.” Webb was celebrating because “[f]inally,” he and his fellow communists would be able to “build the Party”—the Communist Party, that is—with “confidence, spirit, and boldness.”46
My, How Times Have Changed
The Democrats were not always dependable allies to the communists. Unbeknownst to liberals who have elevated the Kennedy family to their progressive Mt. Rushmore, the early Kennedy clan was intensely anti-communist.
The family was close to infamous anti-communist Joe McCarthy, a fellow Irish Catholic who often visited the family compound in Hyannis-port and even dated one of the Kennedy girls. Bobby Kennedy would choose Joe as the godfather to one of his daughters.
Bobby had been a staff attorney to McCarthy, whom he greatly admired.40 When McCarthy died in 1957, Bobby was distraught. “Very upsetting for me,” he wrote in his diary when he got the news. “I dismissed the office [staff] for the day. It was all very difficult for me as I feel that I have lost an important part of my life.” Bobby quickly caught a plane to be at McCarthy’s burial in Wisconsin, where he was weeping so hard that he could not leave his car.41
RFK was not only anti-communist; he had at best a love-hate relationship with liberals. “What my father said about businessmen applies to liberals,” said RFK. “They’re sons of bitches.”42 He said liberals were “in love with death.”43
RFK was especially appalled at the naïveté of liberals when it came to communism. As was his brother.
“The communist,” said Senator John F. Kennedy in June 1955, had a “fear” of Christianity and allowed “no room for God.” For communists, “The claim of the State must be total, and no other loyalty, and no other philosophy of life, can be tolerated.” They “have substituted dialectical materialism for faith in God” and endeavored “to make the worship of the State the ultimate objective of life.”44
Once he became president, JFK warned Americans of their “atheistic foe” in Moscow, of the “fanaticism and fury” of communism, and the “communist conspiracy” that “represents a final enslavement.” Kennedy declared, “The enemy is the communist system itself—implacable, insatiable, unceasing in its drive for world domination. . . . This [is] a struggle for supremacy between two conflicting ideologies: freedom under God versus ruthless, godless tyranny.”45
Obama offered a truly new day and new dawn for America’s communists.
The Seventeenth International Meeting
Really, any statement from the many annual meetings and conventions of communists could be recapped here as a telltale sign of how silly and yet scary their proposals are—and how uncannily similar today’s Marxists are to today’s Democrats and liberals. Let me give another example, this one from the Seventeenth International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, which was held in Turkey in November 2015. The words I will quote come from the CPUSA’s official statement, which is still posted at the website of CPUSA. It was presented and submitted to the conference by Tony Pecinovsky of CPUSA’s National Board.47
The statement opened with “heartfelt condolences” to “our Turkish comrades” for losses suffered “at the hands of reactionary forces in your country.” “Reactionary forces”? What was he referring to?
An American reader might be prompted to wonder which group of Reaganite conservatives had done what to the people of Turkey. Who was Pecinovsky talking about? It turns out that “reactionary forces” was a reference to radical Muslim jihadists (though of course no such words were used in his statement—no one in the Communist Party, the Obama Administration, or the Hillary Clinton State Department would ever use that kind of language). “The cowardly suicide bombing of the Ankara peace rally illustrates the depths of barbarity to which right-wing forces will go to attempt to stifle the voice of the people,” lamented Pecinovsky on behalf of the American Communist Party. Islamist jihadists were not called out as Islamist jihadists but as “right-wing forces.”
Who’s the Reactionary Now?
It’s hilariously amusing to observe communists framing their opposition as reactionary when, in truth, it is communists who are fighting for the ideas of two dead nineteenth-century white German philosophers. It is equally ironic to see communists hoist the mantle of “progress,” as they always do, given that their two-century-old ideology surely meets the definition of a regressive one. The word “reactionary” nonetheless has long been a pejorative that the American Left uses against anyone and everyone on the political Right, including American conservatives.
“For the left,” said James Burnham, the great ex-communist, “the preferred enemy is always to the right.” And thus, a Muslim suicide bomber is morphed into a handy “right-wing” enemy.
But jihadists were not the only “reactionary forces” that Pecinovsky talked about. The preferred enemy and focus of this Communist Party USA address in Istanbul, Turkey, was American conservatives: “My remarks will focus on four overlapping, interconnected items that are central components to the struggle against reaction in the United States,” said CPUSA spokesman Tony Pecinovsky. “First and foremost, I will briefly touch on the upcoming 2016 U.S. presidential elections; second, the ongoing and emerging challenge to racism, exemplified by #BlackLivesMatter; third, the ‘Fight For $15’ and a union, led by fast food workers and their allies; and forth [sic], a few thoughts regarding the international situation.”
It was yet another official Communist Party statement that was hard to differentiate from the campaign agenda of the Democratic Party.
“The importance of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections cannot be exaggerated,” insisted Pecinovsky. “Americans are increasingly upset about the growing economic inequality in our country.” He hailed heroes of the modern Left, from communists to the Occupy Wall Street movement. (That movement epitomized the left-wing surge of the first two years of the Obama presidency, during the Nancy Pelosi–Harry Reid Democratic Congress, before so many Democrats in Congress were bounced out of office in the November 2010 election.)
“The Occupy Wall Street slogan of the 1 percent versus the 99 percent has taken root in public awareness of the mounting and glaring inequities of our current system,” said Pecinovsky. “Continuing economic insecurity, declining standards of living, hemorrhaging of jobs, persistent structural racism evidenced in a variety of toxic forms, environmental degradation and insecurity, austerity cuts in essential public services, crises in education—these and more weigh heavily on the 99 percent of Americans who make up our working class.”
It was a direct echo of the 2016 platform from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “A powerful extreme right has emerged in our country over three decades beginning with the Reagan and even Nixon years,” said Pecinovsky. Sounding like DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the CPUSA spokesman added, “With the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, a liberal who is the nation’s first African American president, this extreme right went into overdrive. Having achieved domination of the Republican Party, the far-right now controls both houses of Congress and many state governments, and has a big presence—often forming the majority—in our nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court.”
Pecinovsky was just warming up: “These elements, very well financed by the most right-wing sectors in our ruling circles, such as the oil industry, are viciously racist, militarist, anti-union, hostile to environmental protection, women, immigrants, sex and gender equality, and public services.”
Sex and gender equality? This was a curious message to be vocalizing against Republicans in Muslim Turkey! Nonetheless, these days American communists wave the LGBTQ rainbow banner just as enthusiastically as American liberals, “progressives,” and Democrats. So the CPUSA was going to wave the flag proudly even amid a sea of gay-denouncing Muslims in Istanbul.
Besides, noted Pecinovsky, the Republicans’ “foreign policy is aggressive, shoot-first, racist,” and they “are an obstacle to any social progress in our country. Having captured significant position of power, they have forced progressive movements into a defensive posture, fighting just to protect or even re-win past gains. Now they are intent on recapturing the White House, putting them in virtually total control.”
And so, said the leader of the Democratic—nay, correction—Communist Party, “We consider the defeat of the far-right Republicans an essential first step in the struggle for a people’s agenda and ultimately socialism.” He insisted, “The race for the next presidency has already begun. In our two-party system, the race is between two parties, Republican and Democratic. One the one hand, we have the Republican Party, now dominated by rabid, hate-filled, racist, anti-worker, anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-environment, anti-LGBT, anti-people, pro-corporate profit warmongers.”
Surely the CPUSA spokesman must have been putting in his resume to apply for a job with the DNC.
“Domestically and internationally,” he went on, “this group of reactionaries are unanimous. They want anti-immigrant border walls built, unions broken and women’s rights smashed . . . They are racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Muslim.”
Hold on there, comrade! And Muslims are, what, homophiles?
One can imagine the raised eyebrows in the room as Comrade Tony continued to hammer the homophobes in the racist, sexist GOP, who also hate clean air and bathe in Big Oil: “With strong backing from Big Oil, they deny the reality of the emerging climate crisis. And their only loyalty is corporate profits.”
The CPUSA guy even took time to inform the international comrades of Republicans’ ongoing advancement of a dangerous “right-dominated U.S. Supreme Court,” who legally backed the (here was more Obama-ish rhetoric) “millionaires and billionaires.”
“Make no mistake about it,” he told the assembled communists, “the Republican presidential candidates work at the behest of unrestricted aggressive capitalism and imperialism.”
And where are the angels in the political system? The Communist Party USA head pointed them out for the international Marxists: they were in the Democratic Party: “On the other side in our two-party system are a range of Democratic Party candidates who take a generally pro-worker, pro-women’s rights, pro-immigrant, anti-racist, pro-environment, less militarist stance. They include Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner, a defender of capitalism who believes it must be curbed and regulated to be more people-friendly.” Republicans, bad; Hillary, good. “She has stood up to vicious attacks from the ultra-right. If elected, she would break new ground as the first woman president of the U.S. They also include Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who is a self-avowed socialist and calls for a ‘political revolution.’”
Really, either Bernie or Hillary would do, as far as CPUSA was concerned. “Even if he does not win the Democratic nomination,” the American Communist Party spokesman said of Bernie Sanders, “his grassroots campaign has attracted enormous excitement and very importantly has brought discussion of socialism out of the shadows and back into the political mainstream.”
The Democrats are the good guys. “Opposing the Republicans, Clinton and similar Democrats represent a more reality-based, sober section of the U.S. ruling class, which sees a need for alliance with the working class on a range of issues. Sanders represents an emerging progressive/left/working and middle class section of American politics, which sees the Democratic Party as the best vehicle for electoral battles at this time in our two-party system. Together, they reflect a shift in public opinion and growing mass demand to seriously address mounting income inequality, persistent racism, the crisis of climate change, immigrant rights, stop attacks on women’s rights, defend and expand voting rights and access, advance equality for LGBT Americans.”
By the time he was finished, Pecinovsky was making very specific policy pitches that were exact echoes of the Democratic agenda—for “green jobs,” Barack Obama’s Cuba policy, Obama’s Iran deal, and, naturally, the $15-per-hour minimum wage touted by Bernie and backed by Hillary and the vast swell of unions who supported the Democrats. He also made numerous pitches for Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. “Tellingly,” he said, “the Obama administration and Sanders and Clinton have all called for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, while all of the Republican candidates oppose increasing the minimum wage—and some Republicans oppose having a minimum wage, period.”
On and on the CPUSA statement went, with more and more of the same. Without any doubt, and no exaggeration whatsoever, the Communist Party USA statement was a statement on behalf of the Democratic Party in the 2016 election and against the Republican Party. CPUSA was on the same page as the Democratic Party at the seventeenth international communist congress.
Pecinovsky concluded his talk in Istanbul with this ringing call to support “fraternal parties”: “The CPUSA and our sister publication the People’s World are both eager to work with comrades and fraternal parties to accomplish the most rewarding of all tasks—the winning of socialism! In solidarity!”
And especially, in solidarity with the Democrats.
“How to Better Unite the Left”
Finally, one last look at how today’s commies are vigorously pushing for a united front of the wider American Left. This is obviously an overriding priority.
The People’s World edition of June 12, 2013, is just one of hundreds of examples that could be cited in which today’s communists have heralded a hopeful new moment in uniting the American Left.48 Emboldened by the election and reelection of Barack Obama, plus major victories on everything from Obamacare to the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act to the Boy Scouts’ rejection—under extreme outside pressure—of their historical moral-Biblical beliefs on sexuality, the Marxist Left is flying high. They are especially confident about the cultural issues, sure that everyday Americans will continue to give them the green light to fundamentally transform America.
And so, People’s World ballyhooed a June 5 event in which the CPUSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Freedom Road Socialists, and the so-called Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism came together to discuss “how to better unite the left.”49 Playing host, fittingly, was the worst union in America, the one gleefully marching America toward Greece: the SEIU. All the fellow travelers packed the New York City union hall of SEIU 1199 United Healthcare Workers East.
People’s World reported that the four organizations have been working together over the past several years in the “peace, labor, youth, racial equality and other movements” and had more recently initiated plans on how to “enhance left unity between the groups and more broadly.”
One of the comrades, CPUSA rep Libero Della Piana, stated, “Left unity should always be the outcome of the struggle. . . . It should go without saying that left unity cannot distract us from the current democratic and class struggles . . . A bigger, broader movement more engaged in the struggles will create the conditions for a vibrant left of greater size and scope.”
What does that mean? Who or what will be part of that “bigger, broader movement” of “greater size and scope?”
Or, to quote Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists: “How do we expand? We need to build a movement that is democratic; it needs to be rooted in American realities; it needs to learn from American movements e.g., civil rights, the feminist movement. We need to take power seriously and not be satisfied being a thoroughly marginalized movement.” She likewise insisted on building a larger “movement for a longer term,” seeking out “social forces within capitalism to change the system.”
People’s World concluded its report on the “unity” event with words of wisdom from one attendee, the founder of (no kidding) Jacobin magazine, who exhorted his fellow leftists, “We should take some of the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, where there was a fierce sense of urgency.”50
Overall, the lesson and general thrust of the sentiments from these socialists and communists was that new allies must be carefully sought out, identified, upheld, tapped—in a word, used.
In that sense, today’s commies are little different from yesterday’s commies. They, too, are counting on a large enough pool of suckers—that is, liberal dupes who will wittingly or unwittingly help them advance their agenda of fundamental transformation.
That concept—echoed in Barack Obama’s campaign promise that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”51—is the heart of the radical-left project.
I will give the last word in this chapter on “Communism Today” to John Bachtell, chair of Communist Party USA, writing in the socialism series for People’s World under the headline, “Envisioning a modern, democratic, peaceful, and green socialism.”
Bachtell started with a quote from Marx’s The German Ideology: “[Socialism] is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call [socialism] the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”52 This is actually a better and more revealing definition of communism than one might sense at first glance.
Bachtell argues that the “idea of socialism” must be thought of in ways “different from the formulas we on the left may have relied upon in the past.” He calls for “A revolutionary reorganization of society to one that is people-centered, democratic, peaceful, and in harmony with nature” (note the green-olatry). He believes that a “social revolution” will be precipitated not by a mass “general strike” or an implosion of the economy or the working class overthrowing the old ruling class and hoisting the red flag. In his view, a socialist revolution is not a single episodic event but, rather, “the product of a complex and contested process, a transition orchestrated by real people consciously and creatively shaping their conditions of existence to make their lives more livable, secure, enjoyable, and meaningful.” It will involve no less than “multiple stages of radical systemic, economic, political, social, and cultural change that addresses urgent and concrete needs. And it will certainly be an ongoing process.” Bachtell sees socialism coming in “waves”: “I like to envision the historic realization of socialism as a series of epic waves, characterized by ebbs and flows, advances and defeats.”
Bachtell lays out that history. He says that the first wave featured the “utopian socialist communities” in the United States during the nineteenth century, which he estimates (correctly) numbered in the hundreds. These presumably included the (failed) ideological colonies erected by the likes of Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Albert Brisbane, and John Humphrey Noyes. The second wave, says Bachtell, “encompassed 20th century socialism, born during the stormy era of war and revolution beginning in 1917.” This was Bolshevism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism. This wave, states Bachtell, was characterized by centrally planned economies and full state ownership of the means of production. “Among the great achievements,” of these states, insists Bachtell, “were rapid industrialization, elimination of illiteracy, universal health care and education.” He concedes that these totalitarian hellholes had a few “democratic shortcomings, including constitutionally-enshrined one-party rule, political repression, lack of an independent press, and dogmatic approaches to ideology.” Yes, one supposes so.
And now, today, Bachtell foresees a modern dialectical evolution developing before our very eyes, a third wave unfolding amid a completely new historical context: “the post-collapse of 20th century socialism, the deepening crisis of late capitalism, extreme wealth inequality, the displacement of millions of workers through automation, and an ecological crisis that threatens mankind’s very survival” (again, note the climate communism).
The current head of Communist Party USA believes that America is on the cusp of that third wave, which will include great strides for “women’s equality; free speech; LGTBQIA equality; disability rights; immigrant rights; and climate justice movements.” Leading these efforts will be “an even broader and more diverse future coalition of socialist forces.”
Here, Bachtell gets detailed with very specific policy prescriptions, the list of which ought to scare the daylights out of anyone who loves limited government, private property, and America as it was founded:
Ultimately it means transferring all natural resources and the energy production sector to public ownership managed under democratic authority. It means a radical reallocation of social expenditures needed to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure from coast to coast, retrofitting for conservation, and converting to renewables.
It means a guaranteed wage and retraining for new jobs for all those who are displaced during a just transition or whose jobs have been eliminated due to automation (although here more far reaching reforms are needed like a shorter work week with no cut in pay). It means allocating necessary resources to adapt to the inevitable changes wrought by global warming, including extreme weather events, coastal flooding, relocating entire communities, building massive infrastructure works, overcoming drought, and deforestation.
The immense resources needed can only come through a redistribution of society’s wealth, which will require a conscious and determined struggle against the capitalist class. The battle will be over who pays for it: the ruling circles or the working class and people?
A similar redistribution struggle will be fought to ensure a $15/hour minimum wage or a living wage, universal health care, and free college tuition.
This will be part of the process of developing mechanisms for directing social investment and imposing further restrictions on capital and the anarchy of the market economy. This implies the need to raise Earth consciousness and intertwine it with class, racial, and gender consciousness.
That is a good summary of the current communist agenda, from environmentalism to transgenderism to using sexism or racism or whatever other “ism” can be coopted for the grand takedown of the America founded by Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton and friends. But it is now also the agenda of countless “mainstream” American politicians—in fact, of one of our two major political parties. America has just survived eight years under a Democrat President who had communist influences and who did his best to implement certain of these goals—to fundamentally transform our country. Which brings us back to Marx.
John Bachtell wrapped up his analysis with probably the single most important quotation from Marx. If Marx ever said anything that was worth remembering about his idiotic and murderous ideology, it is this: “To again quote Marx,” wrote Bachtell, “socialism is ‘the real movement that abolishes the present state of things.’” That it does. That it does.
In communism, nothing is permanent, including the first things that should never be tampered with. All Marxists agree. Take her down, baby. Take her down. America—that is, America as you knew it—rest in peace. Fundamental transformation is the watchword of the Left’s new revolution. Goodbye, America.