Who’s Afraid of Protracted People’s War?

The enemy, obviously! Why? Because it’s the only military strategy that, when applied correctly, can actually beat them and establish socialism. The enemy is not threatened by anarchist displays of derring-do, academic shitcourse, or ramblings from the International Basement Tendencies of the pathetic and anemic white left, they are afraid of Maoism because it is the product of people in the Third World that absolutely hate their guts and will inevitably destroy them. Whenever something happens that frightens the enemy, even DSA running their lackies out of restaurants, they compare it to the Cultural Revolution. Why? Because they know that this was a period when people like them received their just deserts and weren’t tolerated. This is why the revisionists who fawn over imperialist China and it’s semi-fascist excuse for a “Communist Party” are also afraid of the Cultural Revolution and PPW, even going so far as to summon identity politics for reactionary ends. “How dare WESTERN MAOISTS call for the overthrow of the Chinese government”? First of all, I’m not a Westerner, I just live here, I have no interest like many on the white left do in the continued preservation and existence of the “West” as an entity capable of ruining lives and flexing muscle. Revisionist China, on the other hand, loves the West. A white Maoist that realizes their place in the grand scheme of things and accepts correctly guided leadership from oppressed nations people is far more useful than a few “Daddy Xi” loving meme communists that just so happen to look like me because line > identity. This by no means excuses the myriad of silly rednecks and white trash that have decided to hitch themselves onto the rising star of our revolution to satisfy their own settlers’ bloodlust and be self righteous about it, either. Maoists believe that the only way to make revolution is Protracted People’s War, and there has been no effective argument or, most importantly, disproving of the correctness of its universality in practice. In essence, if you deny the universality of PPW and its relevance to the imperialist metropole, you are a revisionist because what you promote, no matter how you dress it up, is either the October Road (the belief in a future, short insurrection in some major cities that will somehow topple imperialism) or the classic revisionist “peaceful transition” thesis that has people fawning over opportunists like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who as soon as they enter Congress become oh-so-pragmatic and forget all about you. Everybody that I’ve discussed this question with who has rejected PPW has promote some idealized vision of a general strike, insurrection, or something else that doesn’t solve the root problems of what we face. They also display a root cowardice, afraid of drones and tanks. Those are just pieces of scrap metal driven by oftentimes incompetent people. A new type of weapon does not fundamentally change the laws under which we wage revolutionary war, it calls for an adaptation of tactics. Many also argue that PPW has never been tried in the United States or any other imperialist country, this is true, there was a love affair with focoismo in the 1970s from organizations like the RCP split Venceremos, the Symbionese Liberation Army cult, and the BLA which was liquidated in practice because none of the organizations bothered to develop a mass base or base area into which they could retreat after carrying out attacks, this shows even more the necessity for thinking about how PPW as a revolutionary military line can be carried into imperialist metropole conditions. General strikes are not revolutions, they can be used tactically but must be defended with arms and under the auspices of a revolutionary party, insurrections are easily isolated and defeated, and focoismo lays the ground for defeat and has been thoroughly debunked in practice.

You can not be a Communist and reject revolutionary violence. Rejecting revolutionary violence entails trying to have it both ways, working on electoral campaigns while playing ever so militant trying to impress actual Communists. Rejecting revolutionary violence entails trying to control the people when they rise up after the latest pig atrocity, and usually ends with you becoming the victim of it in the form of a thrown brick. Rejecting revolutionary violence means complaining about the enemy’s drones, tanks, and weapons as if these things, in the final analysis, aren’t just so much scrap. In essence, rejecting PPW and revolutionary violence is to capitulate to the West and the bourgeoisie that you posture and make memes about destroying. The memes are about to become life, as Chicago has shown yesterday. What side are you going to be on when we are no longer fistfighting with the pigs, but shooting them? Are you going to get cold feet and snitch? Are you going to stand around and complain because my people have no time for your bullshit “socialist” candidates, your opportunism, your utter and simple uselessness to change the rapidly declining conditions under which we are forced to live? If you do, welcome to the historical dustbin. Make your choice.