Rev Left Radio - BRG Round 2: Fighting to Win...

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Black Red Guard returns to the show for a no-holds-barred, wide-ranging discussion on a multitude of topics, including Palestine, Aaron Bushnell, the DSA, line struggle, party building, Taiwan, revolution, the future, and much more! Check out BRG's YT Channel HERE Follow BRG on Twitter HERE Check out his Twitch  HERE Outro Music: To Cause Your Own Death by Mon Rovia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get 15% off any book in the Left Wing Books Library HERE Support Rev Left Radio Follow Rev Left on IG 

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the show for the second time. Black Redguard, aka BRG, he's back on for round two of Rev Left. And the first time we talked about Maoism and black nationalism was a really great conversation. And this time we're all over the map. I'm asking him questions about Palestine, about a workers' party, about the Marxist left's short and medium-term goals, where he sees human civilization in 100 to 500 years,

you know, the Maoist position on China and Taiwan, his experience within the DSA, etc. And as always, with BRG, you know, there's no punches pulled. You know, he agitates and ruffle feathers. He doesn't mind calling people out who he disagrees with, and that's fine. And, you know, you might not agree with every single thing that he says, but I appreciate him kind of.

coming on and sharing his opinions. And in general, I think he's a really engaging and principal comrade who has for many, many years, been putting in the work both organizationally and doing political education. And I always find, you know, him to be a refreshing voice on the left, even if sometimes that involves grabbing the left by the collars and slapping them around a little bit. Sometimes we need that. And he is more than willing, more than willing to do just that. So this is a really fun, wide-ranging conversation.

Buckle up. What's up, everybody? It's BRG. I'm glad to be back here with an old comrade Brett. And looking forward to a good discussion. Absolutely, man. Welcome back to the show. I think this is round two, your second appearance.

It's been too long in between. I'll have to fix that going forward. But it's always a pleasure and an honor to have you on. And I know our audience really enjoyed your episode last time. And so I'm hoping to give them more of that. Now this time, like last time we had a conversation, it was more about black nationalism and Maoism. I think this time I wanted to just kind of spread things out

and, you know, talk about a bunch of different topics. So every question is just going to be sort of, you know, different things that are relevant to the revolutionary Marxist left. at this moment and kind of get your feedback and opinion on these things because you're a voice that I think is very principled and consistent

and I really appreciate your sort of your politics in general so I think it would be a this will be a good conversation and I think the first place to start is of course what's going on right now with the ongoing genocide in Palestine I know this is sort of a broad question

but I think it's a good first one can you just kind of tell us your thoughts on the overall situation and kind of where you see things going from here? Yeah. Like you said, it's a genocide. I mean, I think both of us are actually like far to the left of people like AOC on this position who unfortunately has refused to even use the term genocide and the organization that I've been a member of since last summer, DSA, like most

of us acknowledge and fight against the fact that we are watching. a literal genocide, mass murder, or forced expulsion of millions of people from their, from their ancestral home, from their national territory. And the fact that one of our major and most well-known elected officials, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, refuses to use this term even and continues to pander to the Biden administration, While also fainting at the left shows that within the organization there is a burning need to hold elected's accountable and not just allow them to use our resources to get themselves elected and then sell us out. But like you said, like everybody with eyes to see and ears to hear, knows this is a genocide. And I've talked to a lot of comrades who feel like, oh, what can we do?

What can we do? And Palestinian comrades, they consistently say that we need to, we need to keep talking about this. We need to use our positions of privilege at the imperial core at the West to highlight what's going on. We have to talk to our friends. We have to talk to our coworkers. We have to talk to our union brothers and sisters. and say, like, this cannot keep happening. And the sacrifice made by a comrade Aaron Bushnell should be remembered.

Like, in Yemen, his picture was literally raised at a million-person march. All of the major Palestinian resistance factions have honored him as a martyr. and that's something that we need to keep in mind, like all this discourse politics. Like it disgusts and sickens and grievously upsets me that right after this comrade's death, people were talking about like who has the right to use rest in power. Like we have to get serious.

Like we have to get serious about our politics. And if we are true, friends, comrades, and allies, of Palestine we have to realize that playtime is over all this bullshit discourse that flows out of the ivory tower and may or may not be directly stirred up by alphabet agencies like this shit needs to cease movement like we there's people fucking dying we have seen images and photographs and videos like we have a literal genocide being live streamed and being being being into our phones every fucking day, every fucking day we wake up to a new horror, a new barbarity, a new atrocity. And playtime is over. Playtime is for peacetime, and we are not at peace time,

and we have not been at peacetime ever as a class. As a black man in America, we've been catching hell for 500 years. There's never, ever been a point in the history of this hemisphere where black people have been able to sit on our laurels and say, well done. Like, everything that we have, we have had to fight for. We have had to struggle for. So that's something that I would encourage comrades to remember and keep in mind. If we are true comrades and friends and allies of Palestine, like, we have to share their pain. We can't just share a post every day and be like, okay, I've done my Palestine thing for today.

Like, that's intolerable. we're witnessing a literal holocaust in front of our eyes and we got to get our shit together. Absolutely. And there is, there is, I mean, especially when you go online, there seems to be a sort of deep immaturity and a deep uns seriousness amongst many people on the quote unquote left, whatever that means to whatever faction of it, that is a problem. And the weaponizing of liberal identity reductionism is a thing that we've seen, you know, occur many times over the last decade and a half or so. But it really, I feel like its time might be coming to an end because there's just a level of just obvious sort of immaturity reductionism and sort of almost cringe at this point when that identity politics and that reductionists, you know, where everything is reduced to mere identity and then is weaponized against somebody who, you know, in this, in this instance, it's not a particularly important sort of discourse around rest in power. but it just speaks to that broader trend and it's literally in the face of somebody who you know burned their life away to highlight the humanity of Palestinians and I just think that that's just like a rot at the core of the American left and a product of our overall

ineffectiveness you know that we can naval gaze to such an extent we can language police to such an extent while the world is literally on fire people are dying and that sort of takes the place of real organizational organizational work, sadly. And I think these corporate social media outlets are really geared towards sort of sucking you in and keeping you on there indefinitely. And a lot of people, especially younger folks, you know, kind of see that as their main terrain of activism. And I think that's a, that's a real problem. Yeah. I mean, social media is a tool, just like, just like anything else, just like a newspaper, just like a television program, if you use correctly. Like when I was,

I guess you can say on the Maoist fringe of the fringe, like we tended to, well, I'm talking about the Red Guards here. I was never a member of the Red Guard slash CRCPUSA, whatever funky acronym they had for themselves. But like, it was just like, okay, we seek a mass movement. We seek to unite the people under the banner of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, principally whatever the fuck. and then like you you issue media coverage or you seek it out by these spectacular actions uh like who the fuck has been convinced not to vote by some uh some de-classed college kid spray painting don't vote revolt on the national world war one memorial or some stupid shit like that Like, when you're, when you're first coming to politics and, like, there's a reason why the Gonzaloites had a stranglehold on the Maoist movement in the United States for such a long time because organizations like PSL, CPUSA, like, for a long time, they haven't really done anything.

They're like nobody, people get tired of marching in circles. People get tired of losing presidential campaigns, like a smart person and intelligent and genuine political actor or someone who aspires to be a political actor knows that power is as Huey P. Newton defined it, the ability to define a phenomenon and make it act in the according manner, in the desired matter, rather. basically, okay, we know we have enemies, landlords, the government, the bourgeoisie, all of these people that make our lives a living hell and make the lives of our brothers and sisters and comrades overseas a living hill. So we have to exercise our will as a class over these people. And marching through the streets of New York or Philly or Washington, D.C., every week. That doesn't

do anything. Like these people look up, the cops are happy because they're getting overtime and they get the opportunity to kick a little ass. And like nobody gives a fuck. So naturally these kids who are becoming like who are

coming out the protest for the first time who are getting off social media because again it's a tool but if you do nothing but lay on it and lay on it and lay on it, you're not going to, you're going to be into being permanently depressed. You're going to be fucked up because some of the discourse, some of the shit that's talked about,

it's, it's frankly disconcerting and unsettling. Like, I've seen the stupidest fucking shit talked about, like, there's no other explanation besides these people of fucking cops. So you have these kids who are coming off social, who are going out to protest, see that this stuff isn't working. Nobody's taking them seriously. So, yeah, in 2019 and 2020, those kids would go out and become Gonzaloites and be led into doing stupid shit and end up in these cults

where they were being abused by bad actors. So it's essential that those of us who are serious, those of us who are normies, so to speak, normal people. Although, uh, if you ask my coworkers or my family or my friends or my comrades in town, I probably would not be a normal person, but relatively, relatively normal people. Uh, it's our job to build a left that keeps people away from doing stupid shit, like joining ultra left, cults like Blackhammer and the Red Guards. Well, I wouldn't even call Blackhammer alpha left. I wouldn't even say that they're a political organization. But,

Anyways, it's our job to keep them away from those types of people. The stupidity of the ultra-left is the responsibility. It can be laid at the feet of the communist movement, which has failed to get his shit together. And the ultra-right, people like the leadership of PSL and all of these other do-nothing organizations, it's their fault because people are only going to do that shit for so long before they, Before they're like, you know what, fuck this. How many Palestinian people have been killed while we're marching through the streets and getting arrested on purpose? It's simply ridiculous.

Yeah, and threading that needle between sort of ineffective marching and ultra-left adventurism is something I think we're going to get into a little bit more with some questions down the line. As for the PSL and the organizational front, you know, no organization is above critique. And certainly there are valid critiques of the PSL. I do have to say personally, I'm not involved with the PSL, but I do know and have talked to and have formed close friendships with comrades who are in the rank and file of the organization. And many of them are obviously incredibly sincere, committed folks, you know, criticisms of the organization and the leadership aside. But that's a perfect segue into this next question because, as you just mentioned, you somewhat recently have joined the DSA. And, you know, of course, on the left, there are criticisms of every org, including the DSA. But I'm really interested to hear, especially in light of the criticisms of some other left organizations in North America, if you can kind of explain your reasoning for joining it and what value you see in the DSA, even as someone whose politics are, you know, well to the left of that organization's center probably.

Yeah, I'm definitely left of center. As a matter of fact, I would even consider myself left of the left in DSA. There's not that many Mao, well, I know of quite a few Maoists that either joined after I did. or they were already dare. And yeah, I myself, like, I'm a Maoist. Marxism is the ruthless criticism of everything that exists, right? And DSA, last I checked, exists. Although if you listen to some of the right wing talking about this budget thing,

that apparently laying off 12 staff members will result in the collapse of the organization as we know it. but I'm not really a fan of the sky is falling shit especially from rights but why did I join DSA? Why would I died in the wool Maoist

and revolutionary black nationalist joined an organization that yeah it definitely has a race issue a lot of white folks A lot of petty bourgeois white folks. But all that aside, like, look, if you're a leftist in America, you're really not escaping white people as much as we would love to, like, love that to be the thing.

But it's necessary to work in coalition with white people. that doesn't mean that you can't criticize them certainly and I've spent a lot of time doing that but why would I join DSA? Well, for one, it's the largest socialist-oriented organization in the United States, PSL, all these little Maoist study groups or whatever they'll Maoists are up to these days on the fringe.

They don't even come close. So that's one draw and then two like this actually space for struggle like in a small Maoist or Marxist Leninist anti-revisionist organization like say 12 or 15 members in one city and that's an infinitesimally small organization but like that that DC model applied to that small of an organization like it lends itself to some pretty funky shit so like in these organizations yes there is ideological unity but in most of them there's really no space for struggle at all because if you struggle too much you're going to end up getting yourself expelled

so dsa actually has space for struggle it has space for sharp line struggle You've got DSA forums, which I definitely need to be using a lot more. But struggle gets sharp sometimes, but I really like the way that I've seen comrades treat each other within the organization in terms of disagreeing, but realizing that at the end of the day, we're all in this thing together. And then I'm really, I was really impressed by the election of a left. wing MPC, a left-wing governing body. That would, I would probably say, is the, was the, rather, most attractive thing that pulled me to the organization because, like, within the Maoist movement, like, DSA was a joke.

It was just a bunch of people that went out to get social Democrats elected. But here we have in Red Star and Marxist Unity Group. and a variety of other caucuses and people who are represented on the MPC, we have a left-wing majority for the very first time in living memory. So it seems like we're beginning to thoroughly expunge the spirit of that fuck Michael Harrington from the organization. And I wanted to be a part of it. So I think I got in at like just the right time. because like it's a space for struggle like there's no reason no ideological no political

reason why um why Maoists should stand aloof from the largest socialist organization in the United States like I don't think Mao would be very impressed they're very happy about that like he's like what the what why are you all starting all these little bitty study groups and uh trying to do your own thing when these people are right right over here yeah no i mean i i find that you know convincing and interesting yeah it is the number one um just size wise the the biggest organization there is this room via the caucuses and by these different factions within the organization for these lying struggles to be carried out meaning that unlike some of these smaller hyper ideological you know sectarian groupings

there is this possibility that the organization itself can be moved in proper directions through these line struggles and through these different caucuses, battling it out with each other ideologically, forming alliances, et cetera. So, yeah, I think that is a sort of a convincing narrative that you laid out there. How does line struggle necessarily take place within the DSA? Like, what are the nuts and bolts of that? Is it a, you know, you get access to certain forums that are just of DSA members and people can have this out? Is it more structured than that?

Is it sort of decentralized? People just have these arguments within the organization. Or is it really through the caucuses that this line struggle takes place? The caucuses are a major or a major factor. Like each caucus has a website and they put out their line on the website, like the line on a position that's affecting the organization. So socialist majority caucus, they have a website. And if you want to find out what socialist majority caucus thinks on a certain issue,

then you can go to the website and you can pull up their position papers same with bread and roses reform and revolution uh Marxist unity group and redstone who've already mentioned libertarian socialist caucus uh commie caucus which uh I love and um so any issue that's important like you can go to a caucuses website and um you're really Of course, each caucus also has like a handful of people with big Twitter accounts who will definitely make their opinion and that of their caucus no. I'm not in the caucus, but I know people who are in almost every caucus that is India say they're all good comrades, none of them want to run the organ to the ground.

Accusations of intryism and wreckerism fly amongst some of the most unprincipled, the more unprincipled members of the organization. But like the rank and file, like a lot of times we're having shit out on Twitter or some of the smarter people are on the forums. I haven't even posted on the forums yet. But, yeah, so there's many methods to struggle within DSA. The main thing with Twitter, though, is that with the clout and name recognition, that DSA has

when they see us fighting amongst each other sometimes viciously you got liberals like died in the wool Democratic Party operatives and even outright fascists

through like hey look the commies are fighting again so that's just something that we have to be mindful of but again it's the it's the year

2024 social media it's popular because it's convenient because it's fast because it's cathartic and that's why people respect that's why people use it so much that's why people do things that they maybe shouldn't be doing they wouldn't be allowed to do if they were in a strict democratic centralist organization like um if you're in one of these Maoist groups these small Maoist groups like some of them even have social media discipline like they will if you make a stupid tweet um or you say something stupid on your youtube channel like they'll literally jump down your throat about that like if i recall correctly at

one point the red yards actually wanted me to get rid of my youtube channel because they call it individualism but but i'm like look there's a point where like there's a fine line between um okay yes this is necessary for the good of the organization and for the good of the the movement and then like at the same time like you cannot tell other grown adults what to do you cannot like that that's not going to work nobody is people already surrender enough of their time and autonomy uh to their boss why the fuck would they come and in their free time allow a 27 year old uh art history grad student to tell them that that they can't have a fucking Facebook account.

It's ludicrous. It's not going to happen. You're going to end up, what's going to happen is you're going to end up with a bunch of mentally ill people who are easily influenced, who are easily manipulated. And that's going to be your organization. That was the case of the Red Yards. They recruited a bunch of college students. They recruited, I don't think they organically recruited a single proletarian, like a single proletarian who joined. who joined them because of their work, it could not be found.

They could not be found. So all they had was a bunch of UTA kids that they dogged out, that they manipulated, that they abused horribly, financially, and in many cases, even physically. And no, because no adult, no thinking, sensible adult, 40 years of age, 35 years of age, you have been around the block a few times we join an organization like this they'd take one look at these people and be like these people are crazy yeah and i i think in in black hammer there's a similar dynamic um of of incredibly young manipulable uh people that were brought on board in a very similar and obviously colt like way as well oh black hammer black hammer at the end uh at the end

was literally recruiting mentally ill on house people yeah they were literally they were literally going to the park and they had this house that i guess they'd bought with the money that they had swindled during that whole um that whole hammer city deal gazi basically took all the money and ran to atlanta um where he rented this house and he would literally take these homeless kids and uh off the street he was doing something called a revolutionary church um in one of the parks down there and he was basically getting these black kids these unhouse kids and bringing it to this house and uh yeah cult indoctrination 101 and unfortunately it uh and ended in tragedy when this individual who literally thought that he was going to end up like fred hampton

like he thought that this was his friend hampton moment the cops were coming to kill them because of their non-existent revolutionary activity um and the kid blew his brains out and um yeah I worked with Ghazi at one time on, um, it was a basically a black nationalist blog. Yeah, the name escapes me. But,

um, it was Ghazi, me, a couple of, uh, all African people's revolutionary party folks. And, uh,

like, even then, it was obvious that some of like, like, like he dominated discussion. He didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. And the thing that, that led me being like,

hey, yeah, Gazi has a, fuck was when they for no reason whatsoever decided they wanted to attack and frank a 14 year old girl who died of typhoid uh they were burning her books and i'm like why like why can't you people be fucking normal like people people understand like how much clout that black people have in the revolutionary movement worldwide like people in uh people in palestown people in Africa, people in Australia, people in China who are struggling, people all over the

world, like they look up to us. They see us as the real revolutionaries in the belly of the beast. They take us more seriously than they do our white jam rats. So we have to, we have to live up to that. Like, we have to earn that respect and we have to earn the right to walk in the footsteps of George Jackson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X and Hew. P. Newton. They paved away for us and for us to squander our legacy squander this revolutionary legacy that has been bequeathed to us for nothing or for temporary gratification that that's a crime a sin most foul so yeah fuck gazi is he's in jail now do you know where he is yeah he's still in yeah he's still in jail okay i don't keep i don't i don't know what jail he's in like this guy isn't my ex-boyfriend or anything

But, yeah. Last I checked, he's still in jail. Well, let's do him out a little bit and kind of think about Marxism writ large. I know you've alluded to this. But what should the Marxist's sort of short to medium-term goals be here in the United States, given where we currently are? Like, what would you like to see as a real evolutionary step in the Marxist left on this continent? Well, for one, we have to like, we have to touch grass. Like, we have to be fucking normal.

Like, every time I get on Twitter, it's a discourse about Stalin's mustache or Mao Zedong's grocery list. Like, these people are fucking dead. They're dead. They're not going to rise from the tomb. They're not going to come help us. Okay? And they left us a legacy of works. They left us examples of glorious struggle.

But Jegevada, I mean, they cut the man's hands off. Jake, he's not going to rise from his tomb in Cuba. If he did, he'd be handless. I don't think he'd be much good with a gun anymore. But like, we have to get, we have to be normal. And we, we always want to emulate dead leaders of the past who, again, left us very good revolutionary theory,

which should be read. But we have to realize that we are in the year 2024. like we have gone through things we have at our fingertips technology and processes that Che that Mao that Lenin that marks that angles that all these people could not even dream of like what the fuck would Lenin do with the cell phone like if he would come if he were to break out of his tomb in Moscow and somebody handed him an iPhone like he would probably spend days and days turning in weeks just looking up cat videos because this is like it would be like handing it would be like handing a

cell phone to a caveman yeah so we have to realize that we live in entirely different times from the periods in which our foundational texts were written and that's one thing that always burned my ass as a like as a hardcore Maoist fringe guy like everybody was like refer to the foundational texts. Refer to the foundational texts. Okay, we refer to the foundational texts, but imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, didn't say anything about the fucking internet. Should we still read imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism? Yes, we should. But we also have to engage in the processes, which enabled Lenin and Mao and all of the other great heads, trademark, to make these insightful analyses.

They went out amongst the people, they were involved in class struggle, and that's what enabled them to write these things that echo down to us through the decades. And if we're going to have that same legacy, if we are going to see a revolution in our lifetime or in our children's lifetimes, we have to get serious about this. later for arguing over shit that was settled that was settled 70 and 80 years ago like we're still talking about Stalin versus Trotsky Stalin won that argument with an ice pick

get over it would I personally if I were in Stalin shoes would I have had Trotsky summarily and extrajudicially executed no because he did exactly what Trotsky wanted him to he made him a martyr

Now you've still got 20-year-old college kids talking about him 80 years after the fact. So, no, if I was Stalin, I would say at Trotsky, like sent out to the Urals or Siberia to teach kids how to make wicker baskets or something. For one, that would have curbed his ego. And two, the man had some gifts. The man had some talents. He was a very good orator. he spoke several languages and he was a very good author

so yeah put him there give him an NKVD minor and forget about him like that's how you get rid of your rivals like that's what Mao did during the great great proletarian cultural revolution and of course many of those people ended up coming back

but it was a lot better than just having people taken out and shot or ice picked in the head but um that little historical tangent aside Yeah, we just have to get serious We have to be normal

And we have to be able to use the internet The power of the internet To bring people To our ideology We have to make our ideology Understandable to people We can't just quote books at people We can't like I saw this Trot kid

He was in Kensington A bougie part of London And he's with that new Revolutionary Communist Party That the IMT has founded But he was just, yeah, he was just standing on like, he was standing on this barricade giving a speech to nobody in particular. And like he called it a barnstormer.

And I felt so bad for this kid. Like I really did. My tears almost came to my eyes. Like this guy, nobody was listening to anything that he had to say. Like London especially has a very strong tradition of public speaking. like Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Like, they probably thought this guy was some religious nut. Great Britain in particular has been overrun with Trotskyites.

I'm sorry, Trotskyists for decades. As soon as the ice pick left the man's brain, out of his very large brain poured 15 different organizations, which turned into 50 different organizations is like the Dothraki story about no it's like the it's like the story that one of DeNaris Targaryen's handmaid's tells her

about the moon going too close to the sun and lit and dragons out because the moon is cracked by the sun that's what happened when Stalin cracked Trotsky's brain out poured a thousand, thousand, thousand formation. So Britain knows what trots sound like. So, like, and this kid, and like, I know what was going on in this kid's head. He probably thought he was, he probably thought that he was the next linen. As a matter of fact, they probably told this kid that he was going to be the next linen.

So they got this kid to go out with this funky looking get-up arm with a flag in one hand, the newspaper in the other hand. He was just standing up there. Well, we're in a general strike. Oh, that's right. And I'm like, bro. Like, why?

Well, like, what, why? People are more distracted by fucking, a puppy and cat videos on their phones or fucking sexy red. I don't know if sexy red is popular in Britain. She probably is. But, like, they're listening to that stuff.

They've got AirPods on. Nobody's listening to you. You're part of the background noise. But this kid actually thought that he was doing something. That's the thing that gets me. We're so insurious that we have. these people, they're not being offered political education, they're being offered brainwashing, they're not being taught how to organize, they're not being taught to read anything outside

of the tradition of whatever cult that they've stumbled across. Like there are people in this Revcom or whatever thing that don't even know that they're Trotskyists. And that that is atrocious. Like here we are. We have our Palestinian comrades overseas fighting a life or death struggle this Ramadan. And over here we have people. standing on barricades and bougie parts of London playing with, yeah, so many toy revolutionaries. And the key thing

for the Marxist movement in the United States and in the Imperial Corps, in general, is to stop being fucking toy Bolsheviks, toy Chinese communists. If we're not aping these people and failing, then we're cheerleading for China, and Russia and all these other places, which, yes, the U.S. is fucking with them, but Germany and Britain fuck with each other during World War I. So if it's not campism, it's LARPing and all sorts

of other idiocy. That's why people don't take us seriously. That's why normal, average, everyday working people do not take the left in this country seriously. Because like, what gains has it provided. How has it made their lives better? How is it a force in their lives? Like this whole DSA staff debate, the Black Panther Party didn't have any fucking paid staff. They didn't. They had thousands of bright-eyed young people who were tired of the shit that their people were going through, who were motivated by not money, but love for the people. Like Fred Hampton to get no fucking salary from the Black Panther Party. And he was one of the best communists that this country has ever had.

So we have to reorient ourselves. We have to proletarianize ourselves. No, I'm not saying drop out of up, drop out of fucking Yale and go work at McDonald's. If you do, I will come to your McDonald's and laugh at you. What I'm saying is we have to paint our organizations the colors of the working class, the colors of the proletarian. Right now, the left in the United States and in the Imperial Corps. in general is painted the colors of the petty bourgeoisie. That's why 12 white hipsters in New York have been allowed to gobble up 70% of DSA's

fucking budget. Well, yeah, so a couple points there. One, you're absolutely obviously correct, and I agree with you about this fetishizing of the past as sort of a product of our collective impotence. And I was just reading the 18th Broomer by Mark, so we have an episode coming out on it soon. And he talks about this in times of revolutionary crisis, there's this tendency to put on the costumes of the past, right? To fetishize this Stalin versus Trotsky debate or to wear the garb of a Lenin or, you know, to sort of fetishize these past figures and these past revolutions

instead of trying to grasp the historical moment that you're actually in and build out from there going forward. So I think that is, you know, obviously very much in line with what Marx was saying 150 years ago. But there's also this other thing that I do think on some level there has been some progress made on something you said early on in that answer, which is the, there is a, there seems to be some effectiveness and our ability to convince more and more people over the last several years of a more revolutionary politic, I think mostly because of the material conditions that, you know, our generation and the next generation coming up gen z sort of have lived through and are sort of you know shaped by uh hyper alienation

this you know complete bullshit jobs for low wages being completely you know compressed under mountains of debt and then you see these these global crises like the palestinian resistance and even locally a lot of people were educated um you know for all of its its flaws of from the black lives matter movement and the militancy that was engendered within that movement especially during the summer of 2020. And so I do think that people are coming around, but that's sort of the problem is if you can convince a bunch of people, we have a bunch of like political education outlets or, you know,

lots of meme outlets on social media, lots of young people coming in. But then there seems to be, you know, very little above and beyond that. So if you're convinced of these politics, you know, that's one thing. But then it's like, okay, what do I do next? Do I join in a little organization? And yeah, maybe this organization in this relatively, small city is only 15 people, should I just, should I do that? Should I not do that? You know,

there's a generalized impotence. And so I think, you know, bridging that gap, we're bringing more people in, but then we have to be able to funnel them into the proper directions, you know? Yeah. And that's the thing. Like a lot of the, uh, the operatics and many of these left wing organizations, like they see people as numbers. They don't see people as, as things to be developed they just see people as objects they see them as bodies at protests they see them as signs in hand like we treat our people like shit but like you said and like history has shown us like as long as material conditions for people are fucked up as long as people with college degrees mind you have to work at texas roadhouse or Starbucks there's going to be struggle

And our job is to take that struggle and ensure that it doesn't dissipate. Like what happened during the Black Lives Matter uprisings, Black Lives Matter uprisings, look at me sounding like Trump, during the Black Liberation Movement uprisings of both 2014 and 2020, cannot be allowed to happen again. They were co-opted. They were allowed to be co-opted. And the nonprofit industrial complex, all of these NGOs, the Urban League, like, do you know that the site of the Quick Trip that was burned down in 2014, it's now like this big Urban League center and the Salvation Army is there too?

So you can come and get brainwashed into the ideology of the black bourgeoisie. And you can get an old stinky army blanket too. and yeah it's it's literally like right in front of the complex where he was killed and we have to like we communists we revolutionaries have to assert ourselves because there are people that are being paid like very large amounts of money to ensure that we do not get hedging money we do not get dominance so um that's one major thing like educating people and being out there with the people so that they don't just see us as faceless masks or, like, people that come and yell and then go home. They see us as comrades.

I see us not just as comrades, but as the best comrades. We have to be, like, front and center in a struggle, not in an opportunistic way. Like, it always sickens me how PSL gets their ugly, yellow, and black signs. They always have to, like, every time something happens, emergency protest, emergency parade, What do you fucking do? Come pick up a sign. And yes, I have comrades in PSL like you do, rank and file comrades. I think most of the national leadership has blocked me.

But it's just opportunistic. Like what exactly is going to solve? That always made me sick. Like even during Ferguson and during the stockly localized struggle in 2017, like there was this one group is called Expect Us. And they basically monopolized the protests. And, like, if they didn't like you, they wouldn't let you speak. They wouldn't, they would literally set up actions alongside actions that my organization, FTP and other militant revolutionary organizations did at the same time.

They would set up actions to basically steal all the people. Of course, we stole one of their marches. So, but, like, this whole, like, it's jousting. Like, why can't we all get in a room together? And I'm not saying put our political differences aside, but like real, I said, hey, a black kid just got shot. His body is still in the middle of the fucking street. So it really doesn't matter if you're an anarchist or you're a trod or you're a left-of-center liberal. Like, let's raise hell for this kid.

But people's egos, people's petty bourgeois mindset, people's, I got to one-up these people mindset. Like, especially in the black community where, like, get a bag is like the motto of a lot of my generation and a lot of the zoomers. It's so easy. It's so easy for somebody that gets clout because they appeared in a really good picture or something. It's easy for them to sell out. Like, I'm going to make these white folks pay me. That's what a lot of people thinking. But when the white folks pay you,

they're not just giving you money out of the goodness of their heart because that's not what they do. So it's important that we educate our younger comrades and we struggle with comrades our age and older. Like a lot of us are afraid

to confront elders. We can't be. And it's important that like we struggle against this. I'm going to get mine by any way, by any means, necessary mindset. Like, anything that we have has come at the point of a machete or the point of a gun.

Like, we have to quit seeking easy ways out. We don't want to be funded by the Rockefeller or the Ford Foundation because the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundation are going to choke the life out of your movement and turn you into an enemy of your people. Like, there was this guy, Doree McKesson in St. Louis. He can't even come to St. Louis no more. People, like, literally throw shit at him because of the shit that he did during Ferguson.

Yeah, I remember that, yeah. I haven't heard about him in a while. I hope he's dead. Just a raw opportunist, right? Yeah, just a raw opportunist. And I hate it that ugly fucking Patagonia blueberry puffer vesty war. Well, yeah, I definitely agree that in our society, we're deeply conditioned into this hyperindividualism, into this sort of, you know, worship of the self, this deification of one's own ego, the get mine at all cost sort of mentality. and that's a that's a real problem and of course everything in society is sort of structured to bring that part out of you from social media to these sort of opportunists at these various protests and you know personally and one of the things i've tried to do on rev left for a long time and people have different opinions on this is this this idea that we should do some sort of work individually to try to dismantle that that appra that ideological apparatus within ourselves and the ego that sort of it's sort of it

it all revolves around. And I think, you know, there's some, there's some, you know, long-held traditions like within Buddhism that are meant to systematically confront and dismantle that ego that leads to so much of this sort of hyper-individualism and this me, me, me, narcissism that, you know, has infiltrated not only the left, but the entire American society, entire imperialist core capitalist societies. And I think it behooves us to try to do some of that work in tangent with and in sort of combination with, outweigh, political struggle. But one thing I wanted to move on to is this idea of possibly a workers' party. So do you see any value to the pursuit of building an electoral party, some version of a real workers' party, to contest on the terrain of electoralism against both the Democrats and the Republicans, or do you think our time and energy is better spent more or less completely outside of the electoral

terrain. If you were talking to me five years ago, I would have said that I would echo the stock Maoist line at the time, don't vote, revolt. And I mean, that's my own personal opinion on voting. Like, I'm not voting and fucking in any

of this crap. Agreed. I'm not. But millions of people do. And you also have black people that are being disenfranchised. So, It's kind of goofy to say, like, don't vote revolt. And there are literal people in Black,

there are literal people in Georgia and Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in Texas, who literally are being, like having the right to vote taken away. Like, people died to get our right to vote in this country. And, like, D.C. Like, D.C. is a literal colony. Puerto Rico is a literal colony. Hawaii is a literal colony.

but like DC especially because like that's the nation's capital and it's called Chocolate City for a reason the percentage of black people in the population is decreasing DC is becoming heavily gentrified but like DC does not have any representation at the national level yet it's still governed in major part by Congress so you've got a whole bunch of black people that are crowded into this city that there used to be slums right up the street from the White House

and if DC was full of white people it would be a state as a matter of fact that DC becomes a state it's probably going to be in large part because the white people that are moving there the moneyed white people are going to demand

representation and yeah so there's a lot of talk about whether or not communists should engage in elections. Should we do stupid shit like Cornell West is doing? No. Like he's literally made an ass out of himself,

this whole process. Unfortunately. Yeah. Same thing. Claudia and Carina. They're not going to like, no. Fucking Kanye West, I think, is going to get more votes than that.

I think he actually did in Tennessee last cycle. So there is a basis. There is a foundation for communist involvement in the electoral process. That cannot be the majority of our work. That cannot be the sum total of our work. But as long as the American people see the electoral process as being legitimate, like a revolution cannot happen if there's a safety valve. if there's a mechanism that people can turn to like nobody's going to pick up a gun and go fight somebody and get themselves killed okay like people with full refrigerators do not do that people with food stamps do not do that

people with cheap gasoline do not do that people with 401ks and the ability to take a nice two week long vacation every year they can't do that so as long as Americans and our job is to organize Americans we talk about how much we hate Americans how much Americans are how stupid Americans are okay like at the end of the day we're all Americans so it's our job to organize our people we're not organizing Cubans we're not organizing

Palestinians in Palestine because we're not in Palestine who are we can't go over that organized Palestinian people like we're not in Sudan we're not in the Congo, but it's our job to organize a party that can effectively help these people by grinding the gears of American imperialism to a halt. Such a party would have to involve themselves in elections at the local and even state level. Like many of these elections for school board are decided by a dozen, a few dozen votes. And an organization like DSA with the resources that we have, like we can easily sway these races.

And school boards have the have a lot of power. They have a lot of authority at the local level. Like they're able to decide the district's position on trans kids having their full democratic rights and that's something like moms for liberty like the right is kicking our ass at this like they are literally working to get their people at local positions and they're winning like a lot of these rural school boards they're dominated by people like moms for liberty yeah and the left needs to quit responding reacting the shit we need to start being proactive We need to start influencing shit if we're going to get large chunks,

large swaths of ordinary working class people on our side. They're not joining us now because we're not doing shit. Yeah. So, yeah. In regards to a workers' party in the United States, that's something that we're simply going to have to do, even if we don't want to. because a party is what?

Once you strip away all of the ideological gobbly gook, what you've got is an organization that has, as its purpose, the seizure of power, right? The seizure and exercise of power. By any means necessary, the ability to define a phenomenon and make it act in the desired matter. Honestly, every leftist needs

that phrase from Huey tattooed on their forehead so it's the first thing they see when they get up in the morning and the last thing they see when they go to bed at night because that is such a sweet summation of what we're trying to do of what power is the left in the united states has no power aOC in congress where she hymns and hauls and stutters her way through a genocide that's that power that's not power that's being used that's allowing yourself to be used by power and it's using the left to keep yourself in power. AOC knows perfectly well what power is. She's a relatively powerful person.

So the formation of a workers party in the United States, I would say, requires, like, actually recruiting people from class struggle. The left does this stupid thing where it, like, recruits other leftists. Like, why would you do that? Why are you trying to poach other people out of the organizations that they're in so that they can, That's parasism. That's what vampires do. Quit being vampires. Like, where's our fresh blood? Where is our fresh blood? Like, why are we not getting people from the UAW, from the various local level black organizations, Latino organizations, grassroots Palestinian organizers? We love their work. You want to parasitize off their work. But why are they not coming to us,

seeking us out organically and seeking like strategic cooperation and even joining us it's like what do we have to offer bodies to come march through the streets we don't offer them anything we don't have no power and until we get power by involving ourselves deeply and thoroughly

in class struggle we're not going to have any but of course to build the actual electoral fighting party that we would want we would want to have a vanguard party in place but we don't we don't have that right now so i wondered like obviously this is sort of purely hypothetical but you know is there any way that like the left factions the left organizations that do have some staying power and that have been around for a while and do have numbers if they're like a convention where you come together and try to create this workers party and i mean i think there's so many contradictions and issues that would flow from that but i just

I just wonder if there's a possibility of creating a workers' party in the process of building a vanguard party that isn't quite there yet. Because I don't think we have a lot of time. I think the crisis in this country is here. And I think it's going to continue to deepen. And if we don't have some mechanism of power, even if it's not the full mechanism that we would want, I think we're absolutely going to get fucking crushed. Like you said, the crisis is here.

And crisis is a double-edged sword. Like, yeah, at one point, I mean, at one age, it makes people suffer. Suffering is bad. Nobody wants to suffer. That's why we're communist because we don't want to suffer and we don't want our people to suffer. But on the other hand, like, it tempers people. It tempers people struggle, class struggle, tempers people. Like, if it wasn't for the fact that the police were dogging out the black residents of Oakland, there would have been no Black Panther Party.

If it hadn't been for the fact that the Tsar and the nation Russian bourgeoisie was grinding the Russian people between two millstones, there wouldn't have never been a Bolshevik party. So no, I'm not saying that I want people to suffer. I don't want anybody to suffer. That's why I'm a communist. But at the same time, struggle and suffering lends itself to the creation of the formation of the formation. that we need because all of the bourgeois finery and bullshit is stripped away. And all that's left is, as Lenin would say, real communists, real Marxists. So in terms of a convention, if such a thing were called, I would definitely show up and be

there with popcorn just to watch all of these, just to watch all of these idiots fight with each other and walk out and disgust or try to poach each other's members or do a bunch of other stupid things that the left loves doing, but a workers party or a vanguard party is not going to come out of a convention. It's going to come out of class struggle. Alliances and real formations are going to be forged through conversations on Twitter. It's going to be forged through class struggle. It's going to be forged in the heat of the fight,

just like all good things that have ever come through our movement, from our movement, rather. Now, I wanted to bring up this part because you've talked about the need to like sort of yeah you say be normal but you know reach out to working class people why don't we have you know uaW members interested in socialism and communism and you know all these all these issues and one strain that has emerged which i'm sure you and i share an opinion on a negative opinion on is that this sort of patriotic socialist but then it turned into this mega communist strain which there our whole argument is that actually actually the

Actually, the Pat Sox and the Maga Communists don't like each other. Yeah, they beef now? Yeah. Caleb Marpins people, I think, are the ones who call themselves patriotic socialists. Those are the CPI weirdos. And the Maga Communists are, that's Hazal Dean and Hinkle and Yankee-Tanky and all the rest of those weirdos. Right. Like, how the fuck do you let, how do you fuck do you look that disgusting pedophile vosh and make a fool out of you?

Like he's done it I think he did it to Eddie Liger And I think he did it to Yankee Tanky God damn Like how Like how How low an opinion of yourself Like have you ever wondered why Vosch

Never has black people on Because he knows it will dog his fucking ass out So he finds all of these Degenerate weird white kids Like Eddie Liger And Yankee Tanky And he brings them on And he humiliates them for his

For his petto fan base but yeah those two those two sects groups whatever the fuck you want to call them don't like each other right but yeah so let's say that the mega communist argument is that you know the left is is too unnormal they don't connect like average conservative working class people so we're gonna try to yeah wait so well for one you're making a mistake of assuming that mega communists are normal absolutely no no you're not not making a mistake. They're making a mistake. Have you ever listened to Haas?

They're fucking insane. Yeah. They're the most least normal motherfuckers I know. A guy with the fucking Fez waving a sword around and sounding, Ka-Bogga, Ka-Bogga. Like, these people are walking mean. Like, nobody takes them seriously. And it's a meme. And it's a grift. Yeah. Like, how did Jackson Hinkle

become the most canceled man on Twitter? It's so crazy. I just laugh out loud. followers yeah like like if you like go in the comments of any of his um any of his tweets and it's a bunch of bots like he literally bought a bunch of bots to follow him mm-hmm that's how he got one and a half or two million or however many followers he has they're not organic they're not real just like the whole fucking movement it's not organic it's not real it's the um it's La Rouscheid bullshit, like essentially.

Absolutely, absolutely. But their whole argument is that they're trying to reach out to the average American worker. Of course, we know it's bullshit. Of course, they don't have any residence with those actual workers. But in the process, we got to talk about, like, what does the average American worker look like? The average American worker is not a conservative white man in Iowa. Exactly. The average American petty bourgeois is a conservative white man in Iowa.

Your average American worker, your average American proletarian, who does not have anything to lose with their change. is black or brown is a woman most likely has children is middle aged and is probably undocumented that's your American proletarian but here you have Jackson Hinkle

talking about deporting American proletarians but yeah absolute piece of shit yes it's yeah it's a uniquely American brand of bat shittery absolutely well let's go ahead and move on then because of course you and i agree on that 100 percent um another important issue on the marxist left is and i know you've talked about this

convincingly and i think really well um is the role that decolonization would have to play in a truly revolutionary movement here on turtle island and i believe it would be essential to a thoroughgoing revolution that seeks to uproot the capitalist imperialist system you can't just set aside the issue of colonization and think you're going to build an anti-capitalist an anti-imperialist system rooted in colonization. So do you agree with that basic point? And what is your vision of decolonization in general and for black and indigenous peoples in particular? Yes, I do agree with that definition. And the process of decolonization, okay, it has to be led by black and brown people, black and indigenous people. Because like a lot of people seem to think that,

Oh, we're going to give you what's basically a Chaz, a Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone for black people in Atlanta. I'm like, we didn't ask for that. We asked for, well, there's various, like, there's various strains of black nationalism. And you talk about New Africa, like there's a handful of states, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, I think it's the map. personally i would expand that all the way up to dc and chicago but i'm greedy um so those were the lands where ancestors were enslaved like where we came into genesis as a people they took several

african nations ibo iwe uh manding um yoruba all these different groups dozens and on these slave ships and on these plantations forced us into a new being we were simply black But we reclaimed that term, and now we are New African, because we are Africans, but we're a new ethnic group. We're a new people in the United States. Of course, I'm not, I'm still not saying, like, if I walk up to my to my boomer black co-worker tonight, I'd be like, hey, what's up, fellow New African? I'm like, what the fuck is a New African? So there's still a lot of ideological and political work that needs to be done around the term and around that struggle, but I fuck with it. And, of course, our indigenous comrades, like they have various opinions on treaty rights, on reparations, on the land, and a variety of other things.

So the main thing is that we are not going to allow white people, communists or otherwise, to decide what we get. We decide what we get. And we're also going to decide, like, what's going to happen with settlers. United States are you all going to be deported to Europe or mass slaughtered in mass or all of these other horrible scenarios no well like because black people and indigenous people by and large are not butchers we're not going to do to y'all what y'all did to us because we're better people than that we learn from the horrible things that y'all did to us actually but like and then like we also have to consider like after a revolution like you have a budget you're

going to have a substantial chunk of white people who are going to fight that and are probably going to end up dead because they fought it. So you all's population numbers are probably going to go like, but at the same time, y'all are still going to exist because a lot of you all are going to be our comrades. And we do not abuse or kick our comrades out of the country and do other horrible things to our comrades. So, and another thing, like no indigenous person, no black person is saying that we need to go back to 1491 or we need to go back to uh we need to go back to the situation before slavery because most of us are dialectical and historical materialists and we realize that history marches forward not backwards so um i don't have a crystal ball

i don't know what the process of decolonization is going to look like exactly anybody that tells you that they do is a charlatan but i could definitely say that it's going to involve um it's going to be heavily centered around the around repairing the massive environmental damage that colonization is done to these continents, not just North America but South America. Like the Amazon is literally being gutted. The left lung of the earth

is being gutted. It's like in 500 to 1,000 years, almost once the Amazon very well possibly might be a Savannah or even a desert if we don't win. I don't want to visit. I don't want my descendants looking at the Amazon desert. I don't want the last human beings, again, if we don't win, gazing out upon the last tree in the Amazon desert. That is an intolerable future for me. And that's why decolonization is so necessary, because with decolonization comes

the end of capitalism. It comes the end of imperialism. Capitalism and imperialism are literally destroying the planet and destroying our species. That's why decolonization is necessary. It's not a revenge fantasy. It's not a, we want to get rid of all the white people in revenge fantasy. Yes, it's cathartic to talk like that

sometimes, but it's politically unsirious. We're not going to be able to send all the white people back to Europe and leaky boats. That's not, for one, that's inhumane, that's barbaric, that's cruel. And if it do, it simply can't be done, logistically. What European country wants a bunch of a

Americans coming to their shores. Nobody. The Irish would literally build a wall around their island. So yeah, that's what I take on decolonization. Can you critique the idea that some chauvinists hold that you could have a full socialist revolution without decolonization? What would that lead to? That attempt to do that?

It's basically going to be fascism with the red flag. I thought we're fighting the revolution to get black people and indigenous people. out of the shackles that we've been forced into. So you're going to have a white-led revolution and then you're going to

continue to give us scraps. Sounds like black people and indigenous people are going to have to make another revolution after that. So yeah, you're going to have a settler socialist regime. You're basically going to have early Israel. Labor Zionism, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely agree.

Okay, let's move on to another big issue in the world, which is China and Taiwan. Now, I know you're a Maoist and Maoist have obviously very clear position on China as having taken the capitalist road under Dang during the reform period and still to this day. But of course, U.S. imperialism is, you know, obviously hostile and increasingly so towards China. So with that in mind, what posture should Maoist take in the context of a possible conflict between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, given both their feelings about China as well as their anti-imperialism and understanding of the world system and U.S. hegemony.

Honestly, as an American, what I think of China doesn't matter. If there's to be another revolution in China, if capitalism is going to be overthrown in China, it's not going to be overthrown by American Maoists hurling insults at it on the internet. It's going to be overthrown by the Chinese people who organize themselves and get rid of the bastards who have irrigated as of themselves, their party. So our job, if the United States were to get into an arm struggle or any other type of struggle with China over Taiwan would be to raise the slogan, U.S. out of the East, U.S. out of the Pacific, because that's what we have influence. That's what we can have control over. It's our tax dollars that are funding the aircraft carriers. Like we've ringed China with aircraft carriers. We've engaged in all sorts of provocative activities. Yes, China. China is an imperialist state. Yes, Russia is an imperialist state.

But at the same time, our country is the beast. China and Russia are like little wolves running around nipping at the carry-on. So our job as Maoists, as communists, as leftists, is whatever in the belly of the beast, is yes, to demonstrate solidarity with our Chinese comrades when they rise and they're going to rise against their own capitalist imperialist class but the key focus the main blow should be at the United States Maoists made this mistake in the 70s

they were talking about main blow at the Soviet Union okay well what the fuck are you going to do to the Soviet Union they've got nukes for fuck's sake you're not going to do anything it is running her mouth so we cannot make this mistake again like that's why Maoists are a joke in large portions of the world because of positions like that.

Like, we basically ended up backing the United States in Angola because Cuba was seen as being a Soviet revisionist puppet. Like, get fucking real. What is good for the Angolan people? What is good for the people in the various countries that our country is riding roughshed over? What is good for the people of Haiti? If Haiti wants to engage with the Chinese,

if Jamaica, if Cuba, all these different countries want to engage with the Chinese, these are sovereign fucking countries. That's their business. Our goal, our job is to end American imperialism. And until we do that, like all of our critiques or whatever are going to fall hollow. Because, okay, yeah, China is doing this. China owns the coal-town mines in the Congo. But look at what your country is doing. What are you doing about Afri-com? What are we doing about Africa? So that's something that we have to keep in mind. and when we talk about international affairs. All right, so I have a handful of questions here.

We're going to maybe kind of do a slight lightning round, ask these questions with quick repetition back to back. You don't have to answer these incredibly briefly. You can take as long as you want. But just a bunch of questions I have at the end here. So what do you think will happen this election? And what does this election say about the state of this society and the contradictions and crises that throttle it?

Trump is going to win, obviously. like he's kicking Biden's ass in all the polls. I've seen I think I've seen one where his lead is narrowing but yeah Trump is going to steamroll Biden why because Biden is not

he's an empty suit he's an empty suit he's let Israel make him a punk he doesn't respond to um he doesn't respond to the will of his own base he hasn't done shit for black people he hasn't done shit for indigenous people. He continues to sell weapons to Israel while simultaneously sending a thousand U.S. troops to build a port in Gaza. Trump is going to win, and it's all the Democrats' fault

because they take their base for granted. And they treat their base like spoiled children who don't know how to do politics. And you can't do that when your base is fragile enough as it is, like a lot of not all but a substantial chunk of a of young black Gen Z,

Lupin proletariat people like they love Trump. They love Trump. It's the churchgoers. It's the old union heads. Those are the people that are all dead or down for Biden. But a lot of these young kids out on the streets, they love Trump. Like who the fuck is going to get excited about Joe fucking Biden

or Kamala Harris? so um you just shows like the ruling class is the ruling class okay like the OG ruling class the white shoe Wall Street money people like they alternate between playing with Trump and like despising Trump because he has a big mouth he's unpredictable and he has a base that will that is literally willing to kill for him. Like, people have literally killed for Trump. He's a political wild card. And the ruling class,

well, I say the conservative, because Trump is part of the ruling class. Right. But, like, the old school conservative, Washington, New York City, Philly establishment, like they don't like people like that. They like their fascism quiet. They like their fascism quiet.

They like people that they can mold. old like putty they're like people that they can manipulate and Trump can be manipulated definitely like all that like everybody from Xi Jinping the Kim Jong-un lied to him but he could definitely he could definitely be manipulated by people who appeal to his ego yeah but like the uh the old money families the brahmins and these international corporations they can no they prefer an idiot like Joe Biden. So that just shows that like the ruling class, it fights amongst itself. And we have to be able to take advantage of these fights.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't mean that they're enemies forever because at the end of the day, money is going to back money. That's why I laugh, like when people are like, why, why would this rapper endorse Trump because of money? Because of money, this guy is closer to Trump than he is to you. What exactly do you have in common with the guy that's worth $150 million? One thing I think about quite often is that if Trump had won that second election and was in office right now and the Israel-Palestine thing went down, do you agree that millions of liberals who are now providing cover for Biden and the administration would have taken a different tact on the Palestine question if it was Trump in charge,

sort of showing their immaturity and their partisan hackery. But at the same time, there is that benefit when Trump gets into office that the liberals out on brunch tend to join the quote-unquote resistance or protest movements or whatever they may be. Thing is that, yeah, the warm bodies, but I don't like liberals around the so-called resistance because they fuck it up. Yeah. Yeah, they fuck it up. They bring their, they never learn. they're not going to become well a few of them a precious few of them might become communists but most of them they come they shit all over the place they use their money and their prestige and their influence like remember the fucking pussy hat parades yeah they use their fucking

influence and their power and their connections to sideline leftists then they get some other hack elected it's probably going to be Kamala Harris they get some other hack elected then they disappear and they use state power against the left for four or eight years, however loaned as lackey is in office. And then the dance repeats. I'm tired of this fucking movie. I want to see something else. Absolutely. All right. Well, where do you see the most hope in the world right now? And how does one stay optimistic and committed given the incredibly bleak state of affairs at the moment? Palestine. Like, they, the Palestinian people have shown us how to fight. I could just put it that way. The Palestinian people have

shown us how to fight. All of these factions have come together and they said, you know what, fuck it. Fuck it. The October 7th concentration camp break was one of the, it's going to go down in history. It's one of the most glorious events of the 21st century. I don't care who gets mad at me. I don't care who calls me what. I will never forget where I was on that night. It was nighttime over here. It was daytime over there. I will never forget where I was. And future guerrilla fighters and people's warriors are going to look.

They're looking at this footage that we're seeing now. They're going to be looking at it, rather. And they're going to be taking notes, and they're going to be learning from it. The Palestinian people have literally grabbed us and shaken us by our shoulders. And it'll be like, get off your fucking ass and wage some struggle. So Palestine gives me hope Yemen gives me hope This small poor country

That nobody even knew existed Well I knew it existed but I'm a geography nerd I literally memorized an atlas when I was 10 Nice But Yemen gives me hope This small little poor country Has brought the world to its knees And regardless of

And note that I said Yemen And not the Houthis Because for one, that's a, it's a, that's not even what they call them, so it's called Ansa Allah. But, so Ansa Allah represents the will of the Yemeni people, just like Hamas and the PFLP and all the other armed factions. They represent the will of the Palestinian people. Regardless, regardless of what Western leftists and liberals think and say, nobody gives a fuck. about what's being written in Jacobin. Like, there's a war going on.

And it's in my interest as a black man, as a communist, for Palestine to win that war. And, of course, I'm a Maoist, so I have to give a shout out to the comrades in the CPI, Maoist, the Communist

Party of the Philippines, and everywhere else that the spirit of Mao Zedong Burns Bright, and the people wage struggle. Amen. If you had to guess, where will humanity be in 100 years

and in 500 years? 100 years? We're probably like, there's definitely going to be, I'm not one of those dooms that's like, oh, humans are going to all be dead in 100 years. Right. Like, climate change will have definitely gotten worse.

Like, I'm pretty sure that the Maldives will have sunk under the sea by that point. And New Orleans is going to be. threatened Miami all of these major coastal cities like you're going to have a major rush of people into the Midwest and Great Lakes region and shit even Canada because what what like the South feels like now those areas are going to feel like that so like if I were you I would buy your vacation property of St. Louis now That's we're going to be the beach.

But yeah, climate change is going to continue to fuck the world up. And as we know, it's going to fuck the third world up long before it fucks us up. So the Maldives, Bangladesh, Lagos, Nigeria, all of these third world cities that are built on coasts, Rio, the ice is going to continue to melt in the poles. And the sea levels are going to continue to rise. So a lot of these people are going to end up being climate refugees. Shit, Bangladesh might not even exist as a country on land. We might be talking about the Bangladeshi Isles or something. And that's sad.

Like entire cultures of people will be uprooted and displaced. 100 years from now, we will be talking about a free Palestine, though, of that, I'm sure. Like Israel is not going to see the end of this century. I'm pretty sure that the EU will have either fallen apart or transition into some unrecognizable state. Why are we ever guessing? Like health is like health is becoming like so advanced and technology is becoming so advanced. You and me might be having this conversation in 21, 24 for all we know. Yeah.

Yeah. I do have something like that. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. In regards to the United States, will it still be a solid territorial entity? It depends on what happens. There's so many factors that influence that. I'm not going to even, like, try to speculate. I do think that Puerto Rico will have finally won its independence, though. because, like, for all the colonies, that's the one, I think, with the, like, strongest movement. And, like, honestly, I think that America sees Puerto Rico, like, you know, a lot of Americans that are surprised when they found out that Puerto Rico is in a state. Like, they already think that it's a country. Yeah.

They already think that, like, they don't call Puerto Ricans. Americans. They call them Puerto Ricans. Like you meet a dude, like, oh, yeah, I'm half Puerto Rican. I'm half American. So that national culture is still there. Same thing with Hawaii. Like, you meet a guy, I'm half Hawaiian, and I'm half black or whatever. So the national consciousness is still there. And I think if they handle their struggle correctly and they exercise power, both of those places will have definitely won their independence.

All of these little bullshit sovereignty movements like Cascadia and shit, like that's not going to happen. The Cascadians last that check were pacifists. The South, I think, might continue to act the fool. But will we end up at a new civil war by 21, 24? It's hard to tell. There's certainly enough hopped up angry, violent people on the right side to make that a reality. So I guess that's just even more reason for the left to get our shit together.

And I would also say that you've never gone humanity and certainly the American state has never gone 100 years without a major either civil war, revolutionary war or world war. So I feel like that's almost baked in at this point. I think I'll look good in blue. I don't know about you. All right, what about 500 years? I know it's way out there. You don't have to give specifics, but the world, do you think communism is becoming a globalized? system at that point you think we're still in the socialist transition well mouse said that uh mouse said

that communism will last for thousands of years i don't think he gave like a time frame for socialism but i definitely think that socialism will last quite a while especially if we're talking about like we're talking about on a global scale yeah um like we have some places that that are still in feudalism. We still have some semi-fudal places that haven't even reached what we would call what we would call nation capitalism yet. So a lot of the world is underdeveloped. Africa in particular is underdeveloped. There's literally Walter Rodney literally wrote a whole book on that and there's a lot of shit that we would have to solve before we can talk about the beginning, the process of establishing a worldwide classless, stateless, moneyless society.

I definitely think that we will see, we will be in a socialist stage during this period that you're talking about. Where were we 500 years ago? Let me see. You had the Spaniards that were hacking and slicing that. way across North America. When was 500 years ago? Was that 1524?

Yeah. Would you want to go back to 1524? Well, you'd probably be dead from the pox, so I don't think so. But that just shows the enormity of change that happens in 500 years. Yeah. If you could, well, the diseases we have nowadays, if either of us went back to 1524, we would probably trigger like a global pandemic just because all the fucking germs we've got in our bodies.

I think they'd be, I think they love the AR-15 though. Absolutely. We'd give, yeah, I'd go with like 500 ARs that I get through methods. And I would go and I would give them, I would give them to the indigenous people all around the world. And show them how to use, as a matter of fact, I'd show them how to, I'd learn how to make one of those motherfuckers. And I would bring the necessary, the requisite. apparatus and I would literally give them the power to make AR-15s. And then I'd hop forward at time and I'd see

what we were. That'd be fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to land in the fucking old-sage People's Republic. That'd be fucking awesome. Yeah. Like literally go and equip them so that the colonization stops 500 years ago and doesn't go any further. And then what that would say about the development of capitalism and imperialism over the coming centuries, it could completely undermine it. Yeah, maybe I should write a book like that. I'd read it.

All right, last question for you, my friend, and I really appreciate you taking your time with us today. This has been really fun, and I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on a wide range of topics. Last question is, what advice would you give to young people coming of age and developing a political consciousness today? Study. Study.

Don't listen exclusively to assholes like me and Brent or any of these other cognitive creators. I mean, yeah, listen to us, but, like, at the end of the day, you're going to be getting our biases. So I always encourage people, like any good teacher, to go and study the source for yourself. You want to know what Lennon thought about something? Read your Lennon.

You want to know what Mao or Huey or any of these other theoreticians thought? Read them yourself. Because, yeah, I will tell you what I think about what Lennon said, or I will give you my interpretation of what Leonard said, but ultimately it's up to you to parse this stuff through your experience as a worker, as a youth, as a young person coming up in the United States during late stage capitalism and imperialism. And hopefully you'll come to the correct conclusions because that's really what matters. Coming to the correct conclusions and being ready and knowing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

That's more important than mastering Mao or being able to quote or recite. And we're not in Bible study here. We're in the study, we're in the school of class struggle. We're trying to unmake and remake the world. So that's my advice. Study and get your friends to study and get involved in class struggle. And for fuck's sake. Before you join any organization, read its program, read its constitution if it has one.

And honestly, I would say talk to people who've left. Yeah, you're going to get, you might get some bitterness, you might get some bias. But talk to people who have left the organization. Like, what was their experience? What was their experience within the organization? Were they abused? How were abuse cases handled? because that shit is rampant on the left.

How are people treated? What is political education like? It's like you need to ask questions before you go to work on a new job. You have to know what you're getting yourself into because ideally you are going to stay in this organization for a while. Leaving organizations is traumatic because a lot of people,

a lot of these kids that are joining these orcs, they don't have that many friends or they recruit their friends into this but most of these people they make their friends in the org so when you get kicked out of the org or when you resign from the org you lose a lot of your friends and that's traumatic, that's stressful

and that helps trigger mental illnesses so you have to take care of yourself and I'm not saying don't join an org I'm not saying don't join an org I'm saying do your research do your research ask questions

If they get mad at you for asking questions, that's an organization that you don't have any business being in. If they, him and ha, or if they're like, if they're sneaky with it, or if they're trying to, if they try to evade questions, that's an organization that you don't have any, that you don't have any business being in because they're, they're already on some fuck shit and you haven't even joined yet. And especially if these org charged dues, you're paying money to these people. You have the right to know. absolutely well said all right my friend thank you so much for coming on before i let you go can you please let listeners know where they can find you and your work online i am on i'm on youtube i'm still black red guard there i'm on twitch at o g black redguard and i'm on medium at black like mao and i'm on twitter at black redguard one cool i will provide those links in the show notes

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. devil on the corner they feed off our pain they don't care they don't care when they don't care when they tell you

when they tell you your chances are a million to what you're done Is it you to decide My price tag doesn't match yours No matter all the riches you hold You can afford my soul My body was burning under your cones It's your words I hate the most

Jerusalem bells are dreaming How can my sin I'm sinking What's the plan? We go back Once ahead don't pass Don't ask that you'll love but fall back All the shame heart attack Change our clothes for the weather We don't fall with each other

And never been to see your soul But all the league we turn cold It's the thing we go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the thing we go ahead. It's an end. Don't ask. You're a love for a back. And all the single heart in a tag. Cheap close with the world. We need to fall in the child. I never have ever seen what you see

But all the deep we had to be turned cold Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

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