CPUSA Equates Black Bloc With Police Provocation

[Burningman]

This article is originally posted with essential links detailing the particulars at burning.typepad.com and also at nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/143511/index.php

I'd suggest going to those sites to make use of the embedded links. Any tech advice on how to include them to posts on AWIP? When I tried to enter the code it was all screwy.

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CPUSA Calls Ward Churchill 'Pathetic' -- Equates Black Bloc With "Police Provocation"

The Communist Party has recently been on a push throughout the social movements here in New York. Despite the jovial nature of their younger activists, the recent edition of Political Affairs features a review by their books editor Thomas Riggins on Ward Churchill's Roosting Chickens that equates Black Bloc property destruction during the Seattle protests with "police provocation"  while calling Ward Churchill "pathetic." You've got to read it to believe it.

None of this is any surprise to long-time observers, but as repression targeting the radical left heat up, it is worth noting how different organized forces bounce. The Communist Party's politics are pretty straight-up. They support the Democrats with an ardor beyond loyalty. They print their unreadable newspaper in red, white and blue and tend to lie about their membership while attempting to direct unions and political coalitions from behind the scenes. CP Central Committee member Judith LeBlanc's position in the UfPJ hierarchy is a notable exception, as there are other CP members who are not so public and attempt to direct democratic social movements without disclosing who signs their marching orders.

The Communist Party is a pale, pale shadow of its former self. It exists as a patronage network within "organized labor," the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and, to a limited extent, among NGOs.  Harper's Magazine ran a hilarious letter several years ago found in the archives of the former Soviet Union where then-Chairman Gus Hall asked the KGB for a few million more dollars. What for? To help elect Walter Mondale. You can't make this stuff up, though I can't help thinking part of those millions went towards keeping Gus Hall appear alive all those years using the same pickling technology the Kremlin developed for Lenin's corpse. Since their Soviet subsidies dried up, they now sustain themselves off of bequests from their geriatric membership base. The word necrophilia comes to mind.

In opposition to dread ultra-leftism, the current CP Chairperson Sam Webb argues in Democracy Matters that the left should recognize the glories of the current Chinese government (?!) and emulate Salvador Allende's disastrous path of electoralism. The CP's vision of utopia is Jimmy Hoffa as absolute dictator.  Like I said, you can't make this stuff up. Well, everything but that last one anyway.

Ward Churchill certainly lets his polemics get the better of him and I've written specifically about his use of the term "little Eichmans" to describe those killed on September 11. But the overwhelming fact of Ward Churchill's work is exposure of imperialism and America's founding and continuing genocides. For this, and his honestly regarding revolutionary violence as a fact of political life, he deserves our solid and unflinching support.

[flyby2]

I think their argument is a little more complex than I expected from your description.... but here it is in any case:

www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/637/1/75/

[Burningman]

How about this?
;D
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CPUSA Calls Ward Churchill "Pathetic" -- Equates Black Bloc With Police Provocation

The Communist Party has recently been on a push throughout the social movements here in New York. Despite the jovial nature of their younger activists, the recent edition of Political Affairs features a review by their books editor Thomas Riggins on Ward Churchill's Roosting Chickens that equates Black Bloc property destruction during the Seattle protests with "police provocation" while calling Ward Churchill "pathetic." You've got to read it to believe it.

Despite the intensity of the right-wing attack on Churchill, mostly because he has no allegience to the American "project," the CP deploys a liberal Bill-of-Rights defense that refuses to deal with the nut of the issue. Ward Churchill rejects this system root and branch. Communists, and radicals of all sorts, have a responsibility to raise the issue of "national defeatism" and solidarity with the people of the world including against the government. To the CP, the danger lies not just in the surge of what they call the "ultra-right," but in flamboyant radicals speaking directly to the central issues tearin the world apart. This is why they slip in the attack on Churchill's defense of the Black Bloc and snap on his militant posing -- without mentioning their own support of John "Reporting For Duty" Kerry. The "national interest" is not the "people's interest." This confusion is something Churchill and the CP share.

None of this is any surprise to long-time observers. As repression targeting the radical left heats up, it is worth noting how different organized forces bounce. The Communist Party's politics are pretty straight-up when you get through the star-spangled bunting. They support the Democrats with an ardor beyond loyalty. They print their unreadable newspaper in red, white and blue. CP Central Committee member Judith LeBlanc's position in the UfPJ hierarchy is a notable exception. There are other CP members who are not so public and attempt to direct democratic social movements without disclosing who signs their marching orders.

The Communist Party is a pale, pale shadow of its former self. It exists as a patronage network within "organized labor," the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and, to a limited extent, among NGOs. Harper's Magazine ran a hilarious letter several years ago found in the archives of the former Soviet Union where then-Chairman Gus Hall asked the KGB for a few million more dollars. What for? To help elect Walter Mondale. I can't help wondering if part of those millions was diverted towards keeping octogenarian Gus Hall appear alive all those years with the same pickling technology the Kremlin developed for Lenin's poor corpse. Since their Soviet subsidies dried up, they now sustain themselves off of bequests from their geriatric membership base. The word necrophilia comes to mind.

In opposition to dread ultra-leftism, the current CP Chairperson Sam Webb argues in Democracy Matters that the left should recognize the glories of the current Chinese government (?!) and emulate Salvador Allende's disastrous path of electoralism, presumably becuase that worked out so well in Chile. The CP's vision of utopia is Jimmy Hoffa as absolute dictator. Like I said, you can't make this stuff up. Well, everything but that last one anyway.

Ward Churchill certainly lets his polemics get the better of him and I've written specifically about his use of the term "little Eichmans" to describe those killed on September 11. But the overwhelming fact of Ward Churchill's work is exposure of imperialism and America's founding and continuing genocides. For this, and his honestly regarding revolutionary violence as a fact of political life, he deserves our solid and unflinching support.

[celticfire]

As an ex-CPUSA member I can say that the line that China is a model socialist state is often repeated an taught. The CPUSA's platform led by Sam Webb advises workers to organize support for Democrats who supposedly will make life “easier” for the US workers. This is tactic is fundamentally wrong. Mainly because the Democratic Party is a bourgeois party, and even though the Democrats despise Bush, they wouldn’t risk the security of the capitalist system to remove Bush from office. Democrats have historically been just as vicious capitalist as Republicans and their platforms have been far from progressive.

Sam Webb, the Chairman of the CPUSA also claims that China is still a socialist nation, despite the major capitalist reforms of Deng Xiaoping. The CPUSA denounced the Black Panther movement as a “separatist” and “adventurist” movement.

I can't remember the specific article, but the summer 2004 edition of Political Affairs had an interview with Sam Webb which he said Mao's economics were reposible for disasters and the "socialist market" practice has lifted "millions" of Chinese out of poverty. I can say as someone who has visited and breifly lived in China this not the case - the bourgeois class is openly in charge now, the wealthy live in mansions and have expensive things, and there are still millions of poor and exploited workers (most notably in the mining industries) and -we've all been shown how communists are treated in "socialist" China -- they're arrested!

The reason I joined the CP was the same reason I left it: I want to change the world.

[Burningman]

if you follow the links in the article on the Burningman blog, the article where Sam Webb upholds the current Chinese regime, "Democracy Matters," is linked.