The Maoists of #Ferguson: Why the Media Blackout?

Out of all the photos I have seen of the protests, looting, arson, etc. regarding the recent decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson, by far the most interesting ones are those featuring Maoists.

No, that was not a typo. In fact it was a very precise descriptor: Maoists, while being Communists, are a specific type of Communist; as their name implies, they are the variety of Communists that particularly admire Mao Zedong, as opposed to Lenin, Trotsky, etc. While not exactly numerous, there are some Maoists in the United States, and they come out in full force in the latest protests sweeping the nation.

They look like regular protesters, I know, but they have little giveaways that are easy to spot once you know a bit more about them. The easiest giveaway is the URL “revcom.us”, which is the website of the Maoist group, Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Since Conservatism Inc. throws around the slur “Communist” on a fairly regular basis, I fear I might be coming off as a bit hyperbolic by calling these people Communists, so allow me to list a few of the RCP’s beliefs to show that I am not bloviating:

• The RCP is headed by a man named Bob Avakian, whose memoir is called “From Ike to Mao and Beyond”
• In one of their party documents, “The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future,” one of their chief theoreticians, Raymond Lotta, manages to champion Stalin, hold up Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” as a shining example for the world to imitate, and advocate a “new synthesis” on how to advance the world to glories even greater than those achieved by Mao and Stalin.
• They also openly call for a revolution in the United States, although are fairly mum about what exactly this would entail, likely for legal reasons

Exploring their website is a wonderland of insanity, perhaps you fine readers could check it out yourselves and post in the comments the zaniest things you can find (my vote is for their claim that “slow genocide” against blacks in Latinos is being committed in the US). What is of course important to remember, is that the RCP is doing its best to advertise their website on the occasion of all this #Ferguson unpleasantness, which is why the URL is always splashed across their banners, posters, etc:

Another giveaway that you are looking at RCPers is their t-shirts. Again, you need to know what to look for to spot anything, so let’s take a look at some of their products on their Zazzle page:

Unfortunately, the Zazzle page is a bit out of date, and their website does not seem to have an “apparel” section. However, an immigration restrictionist blogger took some excellent shots of RCP t-shirts at a May Day rally two years ago:

There are several constants you can find in all, or almost all, of the clothing: the word “revolution” in yellow/orange, the phrase “revolution, nothing less”, references to “BA” as in “Bob Avakian”, and “the whole damn system is guilty” and “get with the real revolution,” and more often than not, the URL revcom.us. Let’s take another look at some more protesters:

See the “BA Speaks”? Note too the woman in the background with a shirt that has similar lettering and coloring.

Note the “revcom.us” on the banner, and the woman with the fop of blonde hair in the lower left with a “Revolution — Nothing Less” shirt.

For those of you who think I may be “stretching” in assuming what certain apparel says when almost all of the photos leave the matter far from crystal clear, you should explore the revcom.us website once again. Consider how when the RCP released a DVD of Bob Avakian giving a talk, the cover of it read, “BA Speaks: Revolution — Nothing Less” with “Get With It” scrawled along the bottom of the DVD in faux-graffiti style. “Revolution — Nothing Less” is in the same fire-like orange/yellow, as is the word “Revolution” in their official newspaper, which is called “Revolution”. Referencing Bob Avakian as “BA” is very common within the RCP as well, there is even a book they released called BAsics, which is a “greatest hits” compilation of writings by Bob Avakian, and is advertised with the slogan “You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics”.

As you have likely noticed, the RCPers seem more prevalent on the Left Coast generally, and Oakland particularly. Aside from the obvious political reasons for this, the RCP is based in Berkeley as well, and is known to cause trouble during local protests, like five years ago after the shooting of Oscar Grant in San Francisco. Regardless, they certainly get around. Last year they were spotted in Florida to protest the innocent verdict in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair, which the Daily Caller made note of briefly, but got the name of the group wrong, claiming they were with the CPUSA instead of the RCP, as their banners proudly made clear. A more talented journalist at the San Francisco Weekly wrote an interesting piece taking a look at the RCP’s attempts to recruit by way of the anti-Zimmerman verdict protests that took place last year — and their attempts to recruit by way of most any protest that is sweeping the nation.

As they have tried so many times in the past, like with Occupy Wall Street, the RCP is now trying to gain new recruits through the latest leftist craze. I would here like to make clear that I am in no way suggesting that the RCP is behind the protests as a whole — there is no evidence for that — or that they will succeed in co-opting the protests. Their numbers are quite small, and every RCPer that I have met (about six) has been over the age of sixty — except one man who was in his forties, and their obvious over-eagerness to talk to young people about “the revolution” is embarrassingly unappealing. They have also been known to alienate even people who might be inclined to join them. When I lived in Chicago I knew several lefties who loathed the RCP because they made a habit of swarming “spoken word” events and shamelessly trying to recruit even during the presentations.

Even within the Marxian left they have numerous enemies. The “International Communist League”, with is Trotskyist instead of Maoist in pedigree, has repeatedly attacked the RCP for (in their opinion) their puritanical anti-sex beliefs, suffering from a “cult of personality” around Bob Avakian, and being homophobic. Other groups have attacked them for being too sympathetic to the Democrats, and even groups as radical as the “Kasama Project”, who support the Maoist rebels in Nepal, have published lengthy attacks on the RCP. In short, the RCP likes to think of itself as a vanguard – but they have not even managed to unite all of the American Maoists under their banner, making them a candidate for what Greg Johnson has called “Vantardism.”

What the RCP’s presence at all of these protests does show, however, is the shocking extent of the left and the dominant media’s double standard. Not one website I pulled these photos from explained by way of captions what the RCP is or what they represent, presumably because it would conflict with the idea that the protests are entirely a spontaneous grass roots movement by Blacks. I have been watching plenty of CNN these last few days as well, and have seen RCPers protesting live, accompanied by live commentary from newscasters who were invariably mute on the topic of the RCP.

How can this be when any conservative with ties to American Renaissance invariably finds himself purged from “respectable” circles, always to the delight and at the behest of the media? The media loves to do guilt-by-association pieces when the want to go after conservative causes, but we don’t see that here.

Not pointing out that apologists for Mao and Stalin are prominently present at protests against supposed “state violence” is a great example of media bias. Let it serve as another reminder that in the name of their egalitarian agenda, they will justify or ignore just about anything.