Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "Angela Davis on Running from the FBI, Lessons from Prison and How Aretha Franklin Got Her Free" video.

"Captured by the FBI" Yes "Black Activist" Yes "Political Prisoner" Yes "Revolutionary communist:" No.
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I don't have to demonize Stalin. The Khrushchev revaluations of 1956 did that. They were an admission by Stalin's close if not closest ally. That the 1930's purges included loyal communists. You want to buy into the theory that Lenin surrounded himself with fascists to make the second socialist revolution that's your choice not mine. As for the 60's generation I'll take Malcolm X over Angela Davis any day.
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@josephjohnson701 You can argue about when the Communist Party of America - Communist Party USA leadership became a lifeless sect of Moscow cheerleaders but not was the party leadership a lifeless body of Moscow Cheerleaders. Was it when they kicked out Jim Cannon and anyone deemed a supporter of Trotsky in 1928, When the Germany Communist Parties (second it size only to the Soviet Party) leaders retreated to Moscow 1934 Instead of fighting Hitler to the death not even so much as throwing a punch at the NAZI's. When the American party hailed the 1936 Moscow trails of the old Bolsheviks. Lenin's closet comrades in the Russian party now framed up, tortured and executed. When Stalin dissolved the Communist International as a favor to his Democratic Imperialist Allies in the middle of World war two. At the end of WW2 when the party announced the permanent victory of the Soviet Union and the end of the class struggle. When in 1945 they though they would be shaking hands of the monopolists because the Stalin regime had won the war. When in a unanimous vote they dissolved the Communist Part of America into the Communist Political Association. Then in another unanimous vote about a year later became the Communist Party USA blaming a single man Earl Broader for everything. There were those in the American Party who sided with Trotsky as early as 1928 and began the task of first trying to convince the Party until 1934 and then began the task of building a new party. That new party is the Socialist Workers Party. The party press can be found at TheMilitant.com and pathfinderpress.com
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Angela Davis was not just a Communist party member but also a leader. She ran with Gus Hall as the Parties Vice Presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984. She can't as an American intellectual claim she didn't know of Stalin's crimes against the working class. That she didn't know what Trotsky had said about Stalin and the communist parties. That she didn't know about the Khrushchev revaluations in 1956 about how Stalin had framed and executed loyal communists. She didn't live in a country where the working class was kept muzzled by the lovers of dacha's. Where Marx and Lenin had their ideas and methods turn into a new religion with a set of priests, bishops, and a Moscow pope who could punish heretics with prison and death. No she lived in a country where the workers had fought against the methods of Stalin and his rotten clique. Where the revolutionary workers had long ago rejected such methods.
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@josephjohnson701 I read your couple of sentences did my best to explain why the CPUSA was not a revolutionary organization. You can believe whatever you want but you can't erase history. When Hitler set up his concentration camps he could care less if you were a Social Democrat, Communist (Stalinist or Trotskist) or Anarchist anyone speaking against dur fuhrer was headed to the camps. What makes you think the US ruling class is any different? How should you respond to attacks on the movement? Like the Communist Party of America did in 1940 hailing the arrest of the counterrevolution Trotskites under the Smith 'gag' Act law? Or should it be like the early Communist Party of America who defended the anarchists Saco and Vanzetti in 1928 where an injury to one is an injury to all? At that time period those not members of any particular socialist group called ourselves not 'activists' but radicals. Everyone knew she and the Black Panther Party were under attack for being radicals not because of what she thought about the Soviet Union. That's why you would here the slogan "Free Angela Davis and all Political prisoners." at anti war protests.
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It seems to me that you want to change topics. That your new goal is to prove the Soviet Union was not socialist by virtue of a collection of quotes. I don't think the name matters so long as we understand what the Soviet Union was, what it became, its class nature and why it broke up.
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@josephjohnson701 "I am not here playing a fucking word game." coulda fooled me. Now that you have. "... long sense graduated from Leninist and Trotskyist voluntarist vanguardism of Lenin and even individualist voluntarism of "permanent revolution" of Trotsky..." Hope you've enjoyed your graduation Bye Bye!!
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@josephjohnson701 Whatever you say Professor Booby hatch. At the end of the day though the CPUSA was always a cheering squad for the Democratic Party nominee.
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As to where the evidence is? The CPUSA doesn't keep records of its Party press because its just to embarrassing. The SWP has our press from 1928 forward.
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@josephjohnson701 Look you go around implying things and when I argue against your implications you say I am setting up straw man arguments. Now you imply I am a police agent.."""(nor any one of your or your handlers)""" Classical Stalinism on your part. Play dumb than play smart has been you whole approach to my original refusal to recognize Angela Davis as a "revolutionary communist". Sorry but "In Defense of Marxism" wasn't titled "In Defense of Stalinism" for a very good reason.
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