Reactionaries Promote ‘Are You a Communist?’ Campaign
Sections of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) this year began a new campaign, “Are You a Communist?” In countries around the world, posters and stickers of Karl Marx asking that very question are popping up everywhere, encouraging anyone who responds in the affirmative to get organized with the IMT. The campaign has gotten a huge positive response from workers and youth looking for a way out of the impasse of capitalism.
One of the more amusing aspects of the “Are You a Communist?” campaign has been the response of reactionaries, which is equal parts bafflement, rage, exposure of their own stupidity and cluelessness, and free publicity. It says a lot about the way these people see the world and their total disconnect from reality. Here’s an example from right-wing talk show host Odessa Orlewicz.
Where to begin? Let’s start with “Antifa is hiring.” You can say it a million times and it will never get through the thick skulls of reactionaries, but antifa is not an organization. It’s a political movement: anti-fascism. Even Donald Trump’s own FBI director admitted that antifa is “not a group or organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.” Regardless, particularly since Trump began blaming “Antifa” in response to the George Floyd protests in 2020, that phantom force has become an all-purpose bogeyman for the right. Apparently, “Antifa” is large and well-funded enough that it is hiring people to — well, Orlewicz never specifies.
In reality, the posters are encouraging anyone who identifies as a communist to get organized with the IMT. The notion of voluntarily joining a revolutionary organization is completely alien to these right-wing idiots. But then so are mass protests against racism, police brutality, inequality, or any of the other wonderful features of capitalism. The right uses conspiracy theories to dismiss any left mass movement, as we saw at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement when people protesting racism and police brutality were dismissed as “paid protesters”. Who is allegedly paying these protestors? Why, George Soros, of course, the all-powerful puppet master the far right believes funds all their political enemies. It’s really just a veiled form of antisemitism, which is what all right-wing conspiracy theories amount to, and the only way to explain the absurd idea that wealthy capitalists are funding communist movements for some reason. The far right, let’s remember, has long believed communism to be nothing but a Jewish plot.
Here’s another example of reactionaries publicizing the “Are You a Communist?” campaign, this time from the United States. Morgonn McMichael, a contributor to Turning Point USA — apparently not having learned from her organization humiliating itself with its laughable “infiltration” of a public Marxist school held by the IMT’s U.S. section, Socialist Revolution — was shocked, shocked to discover banners promoting communism at Arizona State University.
Socialist Revolution and its Arizona comrades graciously thanked McMichael for the publicity. But the right-wing “influencer” wasn’t done yet. She made another post sharing a schedule of Socialist Revolution’s upcoming campus events, garnering a thumbs-up from the comrades for again helping spread word about their campaign.
What these examples illustrate is that right-wing commentators have no clue what actual grassroots political organizing looks like. They don’t understand the value of free publicity because they’ve never lacked funding. In reality, all their delusional talk about George Soros is pure projection. Unlike the IMT, which relies entirely on its members and supporters in the workers’ movement for funding, right-wing media and astroturf organizations like Turning Point USA receive massive funding from billionaires. That backing by wealthy benefactors means idiots like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, and the like are given huge platforms to spew their ignorant garbage, precisely because they defend capitalism and the ruling class.
There’s another aspect of that ignorance that needs to be mentioned. Most of these reactionaries have little if any exposure to actual communist ideas. To them, “Marxism”, “socialism”, and “communism” are primarily epithets to hurl at their liberal opponents. Anyone who considers capitalist politicians like Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau to be “Marxists” and “communists” either has no clue what Marxism and communism actually are, or is cynically using these labels as political insults, against liberals they know will disavow any association with Marxism, socialism, or communism. Both groups are oblivious to the fact that communism is massively popular among young people who see that capitalism offers them no future.
As a result, it’s hilarious to see the shock and befuddlement of reactionaries at seeing actual communists who openly defend the ideas of Marxism. Those who defend the existing economic system — especially those paid well to do so — are inevitably more prone to intellectual laziness than revolutionaries, who are constantly denigrated by every ruling class institution and have to constantly defend their ideas. For right-wing halfwits accustomed to seeing communists only as some twisted caricature, it can be jarring to come face to face with the real thing.
I hope they’re ready for more, because the communists are growing in number around the world. Workers and youth are drawing increasingly radical conclusions as they fall deeper into poverty, the rich get richer, the world burns around them, and capitalism proves itself incapable of moving society forward or providing solutions to any our most pressing problems. Let the ruling classes tremble.
