Workers World Party's convergence with Russian fascists documented

Workers World Party and my former CLE friend Caleb Maupin get a nice mention in an encyclopedic blog piece about Red-Brown political convergence.

Excerpt:

The WWP And Fascists

The RKRP

The reactionary positions of the WWP include the party forging ties with hardline Russian Stalinist parties in the 90s, the most prominent one being the Russian Communist Workers Party (RCWP/RKRP-RPK) [archive] as notes Kevin Coogan. The WWP’s newspaper ran an article by Victor Tyulkin, the RCWP’s leader and Secretary of its Central Committee in September 3, 1992. Tyulkin and Victor Anpilov, another RCWP member as well as member of the executive committee of the Working Russia group, sent birthday wishes to Sam Marcy which were republished on the WWP’s newspaper in 1996. The WWP even contrasted the RCWP more favorably to the KPRF [archive] on its publication.

The RCWP however is a “left fascist” organization, being extremely homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-Black, and being described by the International Solidarity with Workers in Russia as a “pseudo-Communist anti-Semitic organization”[archive], Kevin Coogan suggesting this might be why the WWP did not devote more extensive coverage of the RCWP as it would alienate the WWP’s rank and file members. Victor Anpilov later left the RCWP and his Labor Russia party allied with the National Bolshevik Party of Eduard Limonov [archive] in a voting bloc in 1997 [archive], yet kept on being praised by the WWP’s paper until at least 2002 in an article where Eduard Limonov is also described as one of many anti-capitalist political prisoners [archive].

Borotba

More recently, the WWP has been involved as of at least 2014 with the organization Borotba, a Stalinist organization formed by a former member of the RKRP [archive] and Sergey Kirchuk, from various Ukrainian Stalinist groups. Borotba has been on record for trying to cannibalize direct action by Anarchists and attacking anti-authoritarian leftists by falsely labeling them as members of far-right group Right Sector while having itself worked with far-right groups associated with Right Sector before the Euromaidan protests, after which it aligned itself with Novorossiya.

Like the RKRP, Borotba has been extremely racist, homophobic and associates with far-right groups like Slavic Unity and Rodina. Borotba routinely publishes anti-Semitic imagery and its leadership is close to anti-Semite Israel Shamir while its ranks include Aleksey Bluminov, who had worked with Svoboda and the PSPU. Borotba has itself cooperated with the PSPU and far-right anti-Semitic group Oplot while attacking left-wing members of the Maidan, leading many members of the Ukrainian left (which has condemned the far-right elements within the Maidan protests) to openly condemn it.

Aleksey Albu, a member of Borotba, fled to Crimea in 2015 and set up a “Committee for the Liberation of Odessa” [archive] with Vadim Savenko and Aleksandr Vasilyev of Rodina and and Dmitry Odinov of neo-Nazi organization Slavic Unity, itself a branch of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity, and which has cooperated with Dugin’s Eurasian Movement.

Another example of Stalinists working with fascism is when Antiimperialistische Aktion, a German “anti-imp” group, collaborated [archive] with an organization which calls itself the “International Anti-Fascist Committee” to organize “International Anti-Fascist Conferences”. A closer look at the website of the “International Anti-Fascist Committee”‘s website (which features a Saint George’s ribbon, a military award during the Russian empire under the Tsar) shows Soros conspiracy theories [archive] and support for Donald Trump[archive] as well as claims the West wants to balkanize Syria quoting Michel Chossudovsky [archive], which clearly establishes this organization was not only anti-fascist, but explicitly fascist of the red-brown type and weaponizing “anti-fascist” rhetoric in the service of fascism in the same fashion as Dugin does.

The participants [archive] of the International “Anti-Fascist Conference” included:

Anti-Imperialist Action

Borotba

the Communist Youth of Poland

the Swedish Donbass Group

the KPRF

the Leninist Komsomol of the Russian Federation, the youth organization of the KPRF

the Vanguard of Red Youth of Labour Russia

the Communists of Russia

the United Communist Party

the International Anti-Fascist Committee

the Young Communist League of Canada, an organization close to the Communist Party of Canada with which it shares overlapping membership

the Center for Continental Cooperation, an Islamophobic[archive] Eurasianist organization following Dugin’s ideology[archive]. Its slogan is “From Lisbon to Vladivostok”, corresponding to Dugin’s ideology of a Eurasian state. Its president, Yuri Kofner [archive], is a leader of the Eurasian Movement of the Russian Federation [archive]. Kofner is also the president of Young Eurasia [archive] to which belongs Tanai Cholkhanov [archive], an imam who has been fighting on the side of Novorossiya and has been trying to undermine the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People [archive], the highest representative body of Crimea’s indigenous Crimean Tatar people, which opposed to the Russian annexation of Crimea and whose subsequent banning as part of repressive measures against opponents of the annexation is part of larger policies of discrimination Crimean Tatars have been facing since 2014

The Community for Qaddafi and his People, an organization close to the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (which I explored below in this post). Its activists Pyotr Rybakov and Elena Gromova visited Syria in solidarity with Bashar al-Assad in November 2011 [archive] and participated in a ceremony at the Syrian Embassy in Moscow in December 2011 [archive] together with activists from Planet Antiglob (the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia’s newspaper) at the invitation of the Syrian Abmassador. Elena Gromova and Sergey Dondo, the editor-in-chief of Planet Antiglob, gave an interview on Jamhariyya Radio in Dcember 2011 [archive]. In December 2011, Elena Gromova, Pyotr Rybakov, Sergey Dondo and Aleksandr Ionov, then a representative of the Anti-Globalization Movement (Ionov was once a campaigner for The Community for Qaddafi and his People), took part in a rally in support of Bashar al-Assad together with members of Anpilov’s Labor Russia[archive].

Videos of their conference [archive] show that Pavel Gubarev was present at the conference, and Greg Butterfield from the Workers World Party participated in one of their conferences in 2016 [archive].

Antiimperialistische Aktion has also collaborated with Italian ska-punk band Banda Bassotti (which has organized numerous “Anti-fascist Caravans” in support of Novorossiya) and the Trade Union of Lugansk Republic to organize events as well [archive] in 2017 [archive].

Novorossiya

It is not surprising then that the Workers World Party has supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea and openly aligned itself with Novorossiya, published translations of Aleksey Albu[archive] in 2016 and quoted the Committee for the Liberation of Odessa on its website [archive] while repeating Russian state media narrative of a “Kiev putsch junta” opposed to “anti-fascists in the Donbass”, even as Anarchists in Ukraine paint a different picture, fighting against Nazis in Kiev, condemning the leaders of Novorossiya as Russian fascists whose fake calls to fight fascism echo those of Dugin and Limonov and condemning the right-wing elements of Euromaidan, the Kiev government’s alliance with fascists and the fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (a position also expressed by Russian Anarchists, who condemned the war in the Donbass as being fought by fascists on both sides and a way for Putin to divert attention from the economic crisis in Russia). Which means that is is not a surprise either then that SSNP flags and Saint George’s ribbons are appearing at protests organized by groups like the WWP and Code Pink. This is not isolated to American Stalinists, with some Spanish leftists having claimed to have fought side by side with Nazis for Russia in Ukraine.

Multiple Workers World Party articles have quoted Fort Russ (example 1 [archive], example 2 [archive], example 3 [archive], example 4 [archive], example 5 [archive]), a pro-Novorossiya website on whose front page are links to multiple National Bolshevik websites and, listed on the “Fraternal Sites” section, are linked Aleksandr Dugin’s think tank Arktogaia and Open Revolt, the website of National-Bolshevik and Eurasianist group New Resistance.

Chossudovsky

The WWP has been quoting Michel Chossudovsky since the 90s [archive] to defend Milosevic [archive], and acknowledged[archive] being reshared [archive] by the Centre of Research on Globalization, and worked together with WWP to defend Slobodan Milosevic [archive]. Sara Flounders (who is also a member of the International Committee for the Defence of Slobodan Milosevic) was listed by the Centre as one of its writers [archive]. Chossudovsky himself was one of the signatories of the founding charter of the ANSWER coalition when it was initially founded by the WWP. In 2013, Chossudovsky was a speaker [archive] at a conference[archive] in North Korea [archive] which included Ramsey Clark, Brian Becker and former WWP member Kiyul Chung.

Kiyul Chung

Kiyul Chung, who was formerly associated with the WWP, is a visiting professor at the state-owned Tsinghua University in the People’s Republic of China [archive], is Editor in Chief of the 4th Media, a confusionnist media outlet on whose board isMichel Chossudovsky as chairman and WWP organizer Abiyomi Azikiwe, who himself operates a blog named Pan-African News Wire which quotes [archive] and reshares[archive] conspiracist [archive] Global Research [archive] articles [archive] regularly. 4th Media itself regularly shares material by Engdahl [archive] (who is a visiting professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology [archive] and Meyssan [archive], as well as conspiracies [archive] in line with LaRouche’s [archive] and Dugin’s [archive] ideologies. Chung was awarded with a honorary degree for his “information service” by North Korea in 2014 as result.

Chung is on the Scientific Committee of Duginist magazine Geopolitica along with Chossudovsky, Engdahl and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, whose editor is Tiberio Graziani, a member of the High Council of Aleksandr Dugin’s International Eurasian Union who has worked with representatives of the Italian embassy of the People’s Republic of China [archive].

[Note: Engdahl and Aleksandr Dugin are on the Scientific Committee of Eurasianist magazine Eurasia, edited by Claudio Mutti. Graziani has also worked with Eurasia. Mutti is also associated with Stato e Potenza, a Third Positionist group funded by the Economic Club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Italy-Mongolia Association, the International Academy for Mongolian Studies, the Italy-North Korea Friendship Association, the Belorussian State Economic University. Another group Mutti is involved with is the Centre for Mediterranean and Eurasian Studies, which is partnered to Leonid Ivashov’s Academy of Geopolitical Problems [archive], Dugin’s Journal of Eurasian Affairs and Mutti’s Eurasia [archive], and promotes the New Silk Road initiative [archive] supported by both LaRouche [archive] and the Duginists [archive].]

Chung is also the Editor in Chief of The 21st Century, which appears to be an offshoot 4th Media [archive], and which lists among its “specialists” [archive] numerous regulars of confusionnist media and of Russian and Iranian state media: fascists and reactionaries such as William Engdahl, James Petras, Thierry Meyssan, Mahdi Darius Nazamroaya and Paul Craig Roberts, as well as WWP members and affiliates such as Sara Flounders, Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report, Abayomi Azikiwe, and Brian Becker.

The presence of WWP members and associates in organizations tied to the network of conspiratorial fascists including Lyndon LaRouche, Aleksandr Dugin and Thierry Meyssan might explain the WWP’s recent stance on the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar [archive], blaming the crisis on US and Saudi attempts to oppose Chinese investment[archive], which echoes Thierry Meyssan’s claims (published a few days before the WWP’s) that the West was [archive] arming jihadists in Myanmar [archive] and Sputnik’s similar claims blaming George Soros for it [archive] (sourcing a member of the same Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Institute of Sciences which publishes the Engdahl-affiliated New Eastern Outlook journal). Similar material [archive] appears[archive] on Katehon too [archive]. Global Research posted similar articles by the New Eastern Outlook journal [archive], the Land Destroyer Report [archive] (a conspiracist [archive] blog [archive] with far-right leanings [archive] affiliated to the New Eastern Outlook and linking to Webster Tarpley’s and William Engdahl’s websites [archive]) and by Mint Press News[archive] (a confusionnist website publishing Holocaust denier Anthony Hall [archive], National Bolshevik Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya [archive] and the fascist New Eastern Outlook[archive], Rothschild conspiracy theories [archive], Soros conspiracy theories [archive], HAARP conspiracy theories[archive], 9/11 Trutherism [archive], anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories which quote white nationalist Breitbart[archive] among others, while attempting to brand itself as a progressive news outlet, and its list of staff members and contributors is itself a strange red-brown list of fascists and leftists [archive]) around this same time.

Caleb Maupin

Another strange WWP member is Caleb Maupin, who has been involved with Webster Tarpley’s Tax Wall Street Party more than once [archive]. He has been writing for the New Eastern Outlook journal affiliated to Tarpley’s associate William Engdahl since June 2014, and spoke [archive] at the Third International New Horizons conference in Tehran. Among the attendants and speakers of the conference were leftists like CodePink founder Medea Benjamin, and Cambodian genocide denier Gareth Porter as well as fascists (most of whom were invited by Hamed Ghasghavi [archive], a contributor to many far-right websites like Veterans Today, Cercle des Volontaires and Katehon) such as:

Kevin Barrett

Wayne Madsen

Kenneth O’Keefe, a former anti-war activist who became an anti-Semite and associate of David Duke and Gilad Atzmon

Thierry Meyssan

Gilles Munier, the leader of the pro-Saddam Hussein French-Iraqi Friendship Association, who is also close to Dieudonné’s and Soral’s Égalité et Réconciliation

Claudio Mutti

Claudio Moffa, a Holocaust denier and associate of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson

Anthony James Hall

Mateusz Piskorski, a member of Polish fascist group Niklot, associate of Aleksandr Dugin and vice-director of the German Center for Eurasian Studies [archive]

Manuel Ochsenreiter, a host of Russian state-owned channel RT who was revealed to be the editor of a neo-Nazi magazine and the director of the German Center for Eurasian Studies [archive]

Imran Hosein

Leonid Savin, member of the Duginist International Eurasian Movement, chairman of the Ukrainian Eurasian Youth and editor of Geopolitica.ru, a Duginist journal, who once attempted to infiltrate the leftist anti-globalization  People’s Global Action [archive].

It is with no surprise then that in 2016 Maupin wrote a book called Satan at the Fountainhead: The Israeli Lobby and the Financial Crisis, a book which blames the 2008 financial crisis on the Israeli lobby, which closer to the coded anti-Semitism of the likes of Kevin Barrett and LaRouche than a legitimate criticism of Israeli policies or a Marxist analysis of the crisis.

Maupin left the WWP that very same year, in 2016, and his present website features Lionel and lists the white nationalist American Free Press as part of its network.