Elsewhere, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which I am a co-initiator and leader of together with others from different political perspectives, has issued its response to the attacks against it. For their part and from their perspective, the Revcoms have also issued a response to the attacks against them. In this piece, I speak further from my own perspective as a revcom and follower of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian in response to the attacks on him as a "cult leader" and the Revcoms as a "cult."
On July 11, Will Sommer published an article in the website The Daily Beast that elevated scurrilous and unprincipled attacks by a motley cabal of pro-choice “movement” groups against Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights and the Revcoms, especially Bob Avakian. The fear-mongering title of his article: “Is This Communist 'Cult' Trying to Hijack the Abortion Movement?” The piece is filled with lies, tired anti-communist tropes and wildly out-of-context-quotes. It is the kind of dishonest hit piece aimed at wiping out serious resistance and revolution while destroying and endangering lives, a vicious witch hunt, that would've made the infamous 1950s anti-communist crusader Joseph McCarthy proud.
Will Sommer, and the opportunists he’s channeling, don’t want you to think about what is the actual source of the problem humanity faces in the system we live under. They don't want you to think about the solution to all this—a real revolution and a radically new society working to dig up all this misery, exploitation and oppression. That is why Sommer relies on scare words like “cult” and libelous lies about financial improprieties and out-of-context quotes in his attack-dog article.
This would be pathetic if it weren’t so dangerous and if people in this society weren’t so easily deluded thanks to years of soaking themselves in stupefying identity politics which leads people to focus on themselves and going after each other rather than the system that causes all the inequality and injustice that people rightly want to be free of.
You see, Bob Avakian (BA) is a serious—and a seriously scientific—revolutionary thinker and leader.
But those attacking Bob Avakian don't want to engage these questions and the work BA has done on them. Or, where they differ, they don't want to openly state their disagreements with substance. Instead, they lie, fear-monger and attack. In this way, they do the spade work of those who rule this system and their political police who have a long and grisly track record of working to isolate and “neutralize” revolutionary leaders and freedom fighters.
Yes, BA’s thinking and analysis on the question of abortion and women's liberation over a whole quarter of a century and right up to now is what led me to play a key role in initiating Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. So the hell what? Nobody’s hiding that.
Do you have any idea of the work Bob Avakian has done on this question going back decades?1
Do any of these haters have a critique of all this or any of the crucial and clarifying articles he wrote in the midst of this current struggle?2
Did you even read a single one of them, Will Sommer? For that matter, did any of you now launching all these attacks on us ever read a single one of them?
If you did, if you actually read any of these pieces, let alone the work BA's done on this question and on the emancipation of women and on ending all oppression based on gender and sexual orientation and how all that relates to the revolution we need, you might actually have to think—including about what we’re really facing and what we need to do.
But for intellectual cowards who are more committed to staying in their comfort zones than ending oppression, it’s much easier to hide behind accusations of “cult” and outright lies. Then your readers also don’t have to think and notice what worse-than-useless bullshit you are peddling.
The fact that this garbage gets printed and then bounced around the internet and its social media mobs only demonstrates the old saying that a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
And the fact that people fall for this shows how woefully identity politics woke groupthink has warped people’s minds and wiped out their capacity for critical thinking.
And by the way, Will Sommer: Where is your journalistic integrity? Do you have any respect for what is true? Or, are lies and rumor-mongering to serve a political agenda your m.o.—which is really no different than Trump and the fascists at Fox. You printed a mere 14 words from the statements I sent you rebutting the lies your article trafficked in.3
And instead of citing what we Revcoms have actually written and done with regards to LGBTQ rights, the sex industry, abortion funds and more—you repeat dishonest distortions, because—like Trump often fell back on—“people are saying.”4
Sommer also accuses us Revcoms of not only joining but often playing an initiating role in important struggles against the crimes of this system—like the fight against institutional white supremacy and the epidemic of police murder, the fight against the rising fascism in this country, and more.
To this “accusation” we can only answer: Innocent as charged!
Of course we wage struggle and unite broadly against the enemy, to prevent people from getting even more ground down. And yes, we boldly struggle with others over the need for revolution and the need for them to read and get into Bob Avakian—not to build up “our thing” as Sommer implies, but to enable humanity to get free!
Bob Avakian is deeply loved by many who more than anything else want to get humanity free for the very same reason he is hated by many backwards fools, opportunists, outright counter-revolutionaries as well as functionaries and enforcers of the present repressive order. It is because Bob Avakian's entire life and work is dedicated to making the most radical and thoroughgoing revolution in human history—a truly radical break with this whole rotten world.
Some people are thrown off by the fact that many of those dishonestly attacking have so-called “left” credentials and non-profit positions. Don't be.
As was put in an important article years ago, “some people, out of their own deeply invested interests, or their narrow outlook and aspirations, want to hold onto this [system], or at least significant parts of it—and so actually hate BA for being very clear and firm, and putting forward very clearly and firmly, why we need to sweep aside and move beyond all this, and move forward to something far better.”
It is no coincidence that many of those now howling the loudest against Bob Avakian are forces of the so-called “movement” who did virtually nothing to mobilize people to fight the overturning of abortion rights while there was still time. It is no coincidence that they all, in one form or another, are slavishly determined to accept the limits of and work within the framework of the current system. It is no coincidence that they are overwhelmingly focused on greater “inclusivity” in their so-called “movements” and “safe havens” while turning their backs on those outside their “safe spaces” and certainly outside the borders of the U.S. empire they are living parasitically within.
But to all of you who are not so jaded, not invested in protecting a little niche in this people-destroying system, let me say this:
We are living in an extraordinarily high stakes time. The normal workings of the system are under concerted attack by the hard-core fascists of the Republican Party, and the Democrats are incapable of holding things together the way it's been, which has always been an empire based on the most brutal heartless exploitation and violent repression here and around the world.
It is not surprising that those who fear people rising up and fighting for fundamental change are doubling down on their efforts to isolate and bury the singular revolutionary leader who has forged a way out and is doggedly fighting for it on an unparalleled level. But this—like the rest of the horrible future that is rapidly advancing—must not be capitulated to.
Stand up to and call out this new McCarthyism. Dig into BA and the new communism he has forged. Debate and engage this with substance. Don't measure it against what makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable... or what “everyone else thinks”... measure it against the reality of the world around us and what it will actually take to get humanity free.