Communism Rebranded – the American Left Today

This article was written exclusively for the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by the distinguished retired judge, John H. Wilson.

It is an open secret that the radical movements of the day – including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (aka CHAZ) – all have their basis in communist theory and practice. BLM Activist Shaun King, states on Twitter that he “support(s) the communists & socialists standing against Trump and against bigotry & white supremacy.” One of the founders of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, freely admits that she and her fellow organizers ” are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories,” and credits the Labor/Community Strategy Center with providing her with that training. She describes the Center as “having deep historical ties to the long history of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, pro-communist resistance to the US empire.”

The organizers of CHAZ have issued a series of demands on line. These include, “replacement of the current criminal justice system (with) the creation of restorative/transformative accountability programs as a replacement for imprisonment,” “the funding previously used for Seattle Police be redirected into… Socialized Health and Medicine for the City of Seattle…Free public housing, because housing is a right, not a privilege (and) Naturalization services for immigrants to the United States living here undocumented. (We demand they be called “undocumented” because no person is illegal),” and “a decentralized election process to give the citizens of Seattle a greater ability to select candidates for public office such that we are not forced to choose at the poll between equally undesirable options.”

Similar demands were made by “Occupy Wall Street,” who wanted a “guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment,” “free college education,” and “open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live,” while an anonymous poster at Crimethinc.com explains that “the proposal to abolish the police is not a proposal to defund a particular institution, but to overhaul our entire society, abolishing the disparities that make police necessary to maintain the prevailing order.”

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matters states their “continued commitment to liberation” and “to co-creating alongside comrades, allies, and family a culture where each person feels seen, heard, and supported…”we intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative…we disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another…”

Note in particular the words that have been highlighted above – do they sound familiar?

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Karl Marx was a German philosopher of the 19th century. “Marx declared that philosophy must become reality. One could no longer be content with interpreting the world; one must be concerned with transforming it, which meant transforming both the world itself and human consciousness of it.” Based upon this view, Marx believed that “underlying everything (that is, all of our material world and reality) as the real basis of society is the economic structure. This structure includes (a) the ‘material forces of production,’ that is, the labour and means of production, and (b) the overall ‘relations of production,’ or the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution…above the economic structure rises the superstructure, consisting of legal and political ‘forms of social consciousness’ that correspond to the economic structure.”

Marx also believed that “the political relations that individuals establish among themselves are dependent on material production, as are the legal relations,” and that eventually, some “individuals become conscious of the conflict within the economic structure between the material forces of production and the existing relations of production expressed in the legal property relations.”

In other words, Marxism consists in understanding that you, as a physical being, have an obligation to transform both yourself and your world; that economic structure is the basis for that material world you live in; and that there is a conflict between the economic structure and the legal relationships that have been imposed on that economic structure. It follows, then, that once you are aware of this conflict, you have an obligation to do something to transform those legal relationships.

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

Photo: Marx & Lenin (Pixabay)

Quick Analysis

Russia Expanding Aggression

President Putin is using more than one pathway to enter Europe and undermine the West. While most of the world watches the conflict he initiated in Ukraine, the Russian government is actively pursuing a second front in a little noticed campaign in Cyprus. Although the corrupt Cypriot government ended its issuance of “golden passports” in 2020, Russian intelligence is functioning quietly there to transform this EU country into a Russian beachhead of illicit economic activity aimed at penetrating the capitalist West, according to Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation. Cyprus is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nor does it receive as much attention as those countries who are member states. That adds to its allure as a prime location for Russia to attempt to gain a European foothold. Last week a NATO report, cited in the European Daily Monitor, noted that Russian intelligence agents have been plotting to destroy European infrastructure across the continent to disrupt states supporting Ukraine. It further suggests that Putin’s immediate goal is to lay the framework for a future move against the security organization’s members. Hungary, in particular, is another country garnering Moscow’s attention as it opposes the Western response to Russian aggression. Russia is focusing its intelligence efforts on other European, non-NATO member countries in addition to Cyprus, including Austria, Malta, and Ireland. The NATO report suggests that Moscow has had success in disseminating the Russian political narrative in these states to advance its campaign against the West. The island of Cyprus is proving to be a good target for Moscow as it is an ethnically divided island that is part of the EU since 2004. Northern Cyprus, officially called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that is only recognized by Turkey. The division precludes it from joining NATO. As Goble suggests, “it offers Russia troubled waters in which to fish.” Over the last 20 years, he points out, Cyprus’ challenges have opened it to a massive influx of Russian citizens, who now comprise approximately 10 percent of the island state’s population. Over 2,900 residents are Russians who entered until the “golden passport” program that allowed wealthy or well-connected Russians to move to Cyprus. It also provided them with documentation to travel freely throughout Europe! Although less visible on the world’s radar than the war in Ukraine, Moscow is also being helped by Cyprus’ banks opposition to seizing Russian assets and its support in evading Western sanctions. Russia has placed tens of billions of US Dollars there for money laundering. It has been more than two years since a single Russian “diplomat” has been deported and, in fact, the Embassy has grown to over 300 staffers on this tiny island state of only 1.2 million people. The Russian embassy in Nicosia has advanced communications antennae on its roof and opened a consulate on the northern end of the island. Moscow’s Ambassador, Mura Zyazikov, is a lieutenant general in the FSB with no diplomatic experience. The FSB, SVR (Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service), and GRU are actively using the island as a base of operations against NATO Member states, Israel, and other Western allies. Moscow backs pro-Russian political parties who in turn influence Cypriot decisions on education, language, and other issues. “Dmitry Khmelnitsky of the Dossier Center says that its findings should be of concern not only to Cyprus but to the West as a whole. Those who ignore what Moscow is doing because Cyprus does not follow the EU sanctions regime are missing something critical,” says Goble. “Cyprus does not seek to get rid of Russian agents and does not interfere with their work,” Khmelnitsky concludes, “despite the fact that what the Kremlin is doing is so clearly visible.” This has an impact not only on the small island but on the EU, NATO, and the West in general. Earlier this year the Moscow Times reported that when the FBI became more interested in Russian business and oligarchs in Cyprus, at least 10 of the major Russian businesses operating there left. Despite the government of Cyprus’ vow to implement plans for new sanctions against Russia, it continues to ignore Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine and to shield the wealth of the 50,000 wealthy Russian citizens and oligarchs residing there. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay