Above: the piece of art that CPI president Elizabeth Young painted for the recent Portland convention
When I went to the Center for Political Innovation’s Portland conference this week, it was apparent that the attempt by Rose City Antifa to get it shut down was not a threat to take seriously. The attack amounted entirely to a social media post, and hostile calls to the event’s venue that had no effect. I want to emphasize how fanatically Antifa opposes CPI and those it works with, though. Because if we make most Americans aware that Antifa wants to silence this group of communists, many of the people who otherwise would never have any sympathy for communists will begin to wonder if communism actually represents something beneficial.
There’s a reason why less than a tenth of Americans decidedly support Antifa, whereas a full one-third of them are decidedly against it. It’s because the anarchists in this movement aren’t concerned with building a mass base of support for their cause, only with waging war to satisfy their personal hero fantasies. Naturally, the people don’t support them. They’ve done nothing to show that they represent a source of resistance against our ruling institutions; against the war machine, the corporations, and the national security state. Which means that when they carry out their attacks against other anti-communist groups, it does nothing to improve the conditions of the people. Antifa anarchists may hate Nazis (at least the ones who aren’t Ukrainian), but Antifa shares the obsessive anti-communism of the Nazis, which by definition makes Antifa a tool of the ruling class.
The way to be truly anti-fascist is by working to defeat the ruling class, which uses fascism to maintain its status. That’s not what Antifa is doing, that’s what CPI and its partners are doing. Which means in a contest for who wins the people, the latter are going to be the victors.
Even if we can’t turn most of the people into communists until after the revolution, that’s not a requirement for winning the class conflict; only a minority of the people in a given country are liable to become members of a communist party, and numerous socialist states have existed under these circumstances. Our cause will prevail if we both create a sufficiently trained organizational force, and gain the support of the majority; which CPI provides an example of how to do. When Scott Ritter spoke at the conference, he remarked that his not sharing the organization’s Marxist ideological orientation doesn’t mean he isn’t ideologically compatible with them. Because they share his goal of defeating the war machine, they’re his friends. And tens of millions of people who aren’t Marxists could come to the same conclusion, because there are great masses of Americans with a profound desire to end their government’s assaults upon the globe.
With the Gaza genocide, this capacity to resist their government’s attempts to indoctrinate them has become clearer than ever; as a majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum have come to want an end to Zionism’s crimes. There’s a widespread understanding that the evils of U.S. imperialism must be combated. Which makes it impossible for Antifa, and for CPI’s other obsessive detractors on the left, to effectively argue that CPI should be opposed. All you have to do is look at what this org is truly saying and doing, and it becomes clear that it represents nothing besides a source of support for the anti-imperialist cause. Therefore, the attempts by these supposed anti-fascists to discredit it are quite obviously negative.
If the people are wary of Antifa now, wait till they see what kinds of good anti-imperialist work Antifa has been showing itself to oppose. Then they’ll come to view Antifa as being not just out of touch with the interests of the people, but a class enemy, and an enemy of the movement for Palestinian justice.
Promoting the scandal-mongering around CPI and its partners has such an innately detrimental effect on the globe’s liberation movement because when an organization has shown itself to be having a progressive impact on the struggle, to discard that org is to undermine the struggle. This week, the Cold War nostalgia club behind the site In Defense of Communism tried to argue CPI and its affiliates represent a liability to the struggle. These sectarians listed CPI as one of the WAP members that supposedly “hold reactionary, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and openly anti-communist positions,” an assertion that wasn’t backed up by any citations showing the org to put forth such stances.
It’s clear that this portrayal of CPI came entirely from the widespread prejudices that the broader left holds toward the org, in which it’s viewed as representing an amorphously defined “red-brown” element. And the author of the hit piece, who comes from the ultra-left current within Mexican communism, evidently is able to rationalize such shoddy reporting. Those in his camp are willing to do anything to discredit pro-Russian orgs like CPI, as his camp subscribes to the unscientific “imperialist pyramid” theory where Washington’s challengers are viewed as rival imperialist powers. Though Antifa’s focus isn’t on geopolitics, this absurd idea is absolutely compatible with what Antifa is trying to do. As Antifa shares the desire of these sectarian Marxists to smear anti-imperialists by any means necessary.
In both cases, this eagerness to denounce the given target comes from a lack of curiosity. They don’t think they need to further investigate what they’re talking about, even though if they were to better investigate it, they would find many things that could open their minds to great new possibilities in the struggle. I used to be part of this left sectarian element that uncritically repeats every negative claim about CPI. Then the Ukraine conflict drove me to enter into new alliances within the antiwar movement, which led me down a path where I would become excited to attend this convention. And what I found there were ideas that totally went against the ones Idcommunism has attributed to the org.
I saw UK Marxist-Leninist leader Joti Brar, as well as Ritter, state their support for the Palestinian resistance coalition’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; which CPI’s detractors in conventional left orgs like PSL have also done, except the pro-Palestine stance of these CPI speakers is made stronger by certain additional positions they take. Unlike PSL, they also support Russia’s operation to save the Donbass Russian speakers from fascist Ukraine, which shows that they’re truly reliable anti-imperialists. The ideological element that CPI represents is so opposed to xenophobia, it’s willing to practice solidarity with types of foreigners who the liberal tailists forsake, namely the Russian people. And that shows them to have a commitment to justice which their enemies on the left lack.
This is what gives credibility to CPI and the coalition it’s part of: the coalition’s members not only state their support for justice, but also seek to do whatever is necessary for achieving justice. A statement that Caleb Maupin and his organizing partners repeated throughout the convention was “out of the movement, into the masses”; which we know they mean sincerely, because they’re not the kinds of political actors who are constrained by a desire to only work with left-liberals. They’re not appendages of the Democratic Party, like today’s dominant “socialist” orgs are. And despite what Antifa or Idcommunism would say, they’re not appendages of the right wing either.
If they were taking a right opportunist path, and advancing a racially exclusionary version of socialism, they wouldn’t be promoting the Uhuru organization, along with some of Uhuru’s key ideas. CPI doesn’t share all of Uhuru’s views, but Caleb and his org have been using the Hands off Uhuru effort to raise awareness about the USA’s oppression of Black Americans. They’ve made a documentary about mass incarceration, racist policing, and Black poverty in collaboration with Uhuru, as well as acted principled in supporting Uhuru against the DOJ. That isn’t the case for PSL—which has worked to underhandedly sabotage Uhuru—and certainly not for Antifa, which would no doubt denounce Uhuru simply for associating with CPI.
As we build on the recent successes of the anti-imperialist movement, we must work to make the takedown attempts by the left opportunists backfire. Only those within the leftist niche are susceptible to their smear narratives against anti-imperialists. Most others will be resistant towards these narratives, so long as they’re made aware of how the political actors who the smears target are dedicated to fighting our ruling elites. Let’s work to connect with the rest of the people, because so many of them will be receptive to what we have to offer.
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