Beijing’s Revenge? 2 Pro-China Communist Parties Coordinate Violent US Protests

A protester waves a DC flag with “Black Lives Matter” spray painted on it next to a DC National Guard Humvee during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody, in Washington on June 2, 2020. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Commentary

Two pro-China communist parties—Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Liberation Road—are playing leading roles in coordinating the often-violent protests now occurring across the United States.

These groups openly state their desire to destroy the Trump presidency and bring down the Republican Party, and the current protests and rioting should be viewed in that context. This isn’t about justice for George Floyd—this is about revolution.

Background

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) was founded in 1985 as an alliance of the remnants of the 1960s and ’70s Maoist revolutionary movements—Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, Revolutionary Communist Party, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist), Communist Workers Party, and other groups.

As with most Maoist groups, FRSO heavily focuses on racial issues and organizing minority groups (blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Native Americans, and so on) for both electoral and revolutionary change.

In 1999, the FRSO split into competing organizations—but confusingly both kept the same name.

The smaller FRSO-FightBack! (FRSO-FB) (named after its newspaper FightBack!) is based in the Midwest. It’s strong in Chicago, Minneapolis, and several parts of Wisconsin; it also has a presence in New York, California, Florida, and Texas, as well as Salt Lake City and Tucson, Arizona. FRSO-FB works closely with the Workers World Party, several leftist Islamic groups, and sometimes the Democratic Socialists of America.

FRSO-FB openly supports China and North Korea and has ties to the State Department-designated terrorist groups the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army. FRSO-FB has sent at least four delegations to Venezuela in [he last year alone.

In September 2010, the FBI raided the homes of 23 FRSO-FB members and supporters in Minnesota, Illinois, and California looking for evidence of “material support for terrorism,” according to The Washington Post.

“Search warrants, subpoenas and documents show that the FBI has been interested in links between the activists and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah.”

Despite considerable documentation being seized and the first-person evidence of an FBI informant inside FRSO-FB, no prosecutions were carried out. The fact that several of the arrestees were tied to President Barack Obama through Chicago activist circles may have been a factor in that decision.

Today, FRSO-FB is a classic Maoist activist party. It generally keeps out of electoral politics and doesn’t usually cooperate with the Democratic Party.

The larger FRSO-Organizacion Socialista del Camino para la Libertad or FRSO/OSCL thankfully changed its name in April 2019 to Liberation Road. The organization is strong in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, as well as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Florida. It also has a smaller presence in several other states, including Washington, Oregon, Alabama, and Texas.

Liberation Road works closely with the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, Solidarity, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, Socialist Party USA, and sometimes the Workers World Party.

Because Liberation Road is heavily involved in electoral politics and has heavily penetrated the Democratic Party in several states, they aren’t as open about their foreign communist connections as their FRSO-FB cousins.

Several Liberation Road supporters live in China, and the party supports the Beijing line. Liberation Road also has ties to Palestinian radicals and foreign communist parties, including the formerly Pol Pot-supporting Norwegian Left Party.

Liberation Road is so strong in Virginia that by signing up hundreds of thousands of minority voters for the Democrats, they have flipped the state from red to blue. This was with the help of super-focused computer-generated electoral mapping done by Liberation Road comrade Steve McClure working out of Wuhan University in China.

Talk about foreign interference in elections!

Anti-Trump

Both Liberation Road and FRSO are militantly opposed to President Donald Trump and are working overtime to end his presidency.

Liberation Road’s Facebook page is headed with the phrase, “Crush the Fascists, Isolate Trump and Build a Path to Power!”

This is followed by a message from “Steve from Wuhan” comparing China’s response to COVID-19 with the United States’:

“The USA cannot respond as China did, at a national level because the ruling regime is in the thrall of white supremacy and the most reactionary block of capital.”

FRSO-FB was heavily involved in organizing protests against the 2016 Republican National Convention in Ohio, where Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination.

According to FightBack! News:

“In the aftermath of the dramatic 5,000-person protest that caused Trump to cancel his March 11 [2016] campaign appearance on the campus of the University of Illinois, Steff Yorek, the political secretary of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, urged progressive activists around the United States to follow Chicago’s example.

“‘We need two, three, many Chicagos,’ said Yorek. ‘Trump is an open advocate of racism and national chauvinism. Forcing Trump to chicken out of his Chicago campaign appearance was a real victory. Chicago protesters of all nationalities sent a message to the world, that here in the U.S. there is widespread and militant opposition to his reactionary agenda.’” Also reported in FightBack! News, Yorek, while speaking to protesters gathered in Columbus Circle in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017, said, “We need to stay in the streets the entire four years opposing Trump and making the country ungovernable.”

FRSO and the NAARPR

Every year, roughly 1,100 Americans are killed by police—almost always in legitimate circumstances. Some of those killed will inevitably be black. The Maoists could be confident that during the course of the summer of 2020, a black man somewhere would be killed by police.

It’s my contention that Liberation Road and FRSO were primed for just such an event. The killing of George Floyd was a gift to the communists. It was so egregious and so public that it was bound to provoke outrage. The communists seized on the event and magnified that anger to the point of mass violence. If Floyd had never died, the revolutionaries simply would have waited a few more days until the next opportunity inevitably arose.

In November 2019, FRSO gathered 1,200 people in Chicago to re-found the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR).

The original NAARPR had been led in the 1970s by well-known Communist Party USA leader Angela Davis to campaign against alleged police brutality and “white racism.”

The new NAARPR is led by Frank Chapman, a former prisoner-turned jailhouse lawyer-turned communist, who also served in the original organization. Today, Chapman serves on the central committee of the FRSO in Chicago.

The March 30, 2019, call to re-found the NAARPR states:

“We issue this Call in a sense of outrage in the face of increasing racist violence and political repression towards working class and Black and Brown communities. ...

“We see blatant police occupation in such major urban areas as Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, St. Paul, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. with police being permitted by city government to commit unspeakable crimes against the people. Murders by the police, even when video-recorded, go unpunished. ...

“Consequently, we are reaching out to you, our comrades in struggle, to join us in our renewed effort to create a Black-led, Left-led, multi-racial, multi-national movement to stop police crimes, mass incarceration and to end racist and political repression.” The call also made it clear that the NAARPR was part of the wider international revolutionary movement:

“We continue to stand in unconditional solidarity with the national liberation movements of Palestine, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, as well as the anti-imperialist struggles of South Africa, Venezuela, and all progressive, democratic forces against imperialism.”

Endorsers of the call included Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA, Marxist Labour Party, Socialist Unity Party, United States of Africa Revolutionary Party, several branches of Black Lives Matter, plus FRSO and at least 20 FRSO front groups.

On May 25, the day George Floyd was killed, the NAARPR issued a call for a National Day of Protest that weekend:

“Cities across the country are picking up the call for a National Day of Protest on May 30th ‘to stop the racist murder and violence that this administration has willfully unleashed’ on the many people trapped in jails, prisons, and detention centers many of which are becoming death camps in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

NAARPR produced a quick list of 11 major cities where protests were planned—almost all to be led by known FRSO front groups:

• Minneapolis–St. Paul–Twin Cities Coalition Justice 4 Jamar
• Chicago–Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
• Dallas–Dallas Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression
• Los Angeles–Centro CSO
• Jacksonville, Fla.–Jacksonville Community Action Committee
• Salt Lake City–Utah Against Police Brutality

Many more cities were added; many more marches were planned and continue to be planned. Almost all were led by FRSO front groups or allied communist organizations.

Liberation Road and Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter is a communist movement—period.

We’ve all heard the story about three young black women—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—who were sitting around after the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin grieving for the young black men being systematically persecuted and murdered by law enforcement. They just happened to come up with the hashtag “Black Lives Matter”—which then just happened to spark a worldwide movement.

In reality, the hashtag gained traction because FRSO/OSCL and their armies of sympathizers in the social movements and the media pushed to make it happen. Communists have been doing this daily for more than a century now. They are very good at it.

All three young women are seasoned far-left activists in the orbit of FRSO/Liberation Road.

Garza worked in Liberation Road-aligned organizations People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), the Right to the City Alliance, and contributed to the War Times newspaper.

In 2014, she was involved in a Mapping Socialist Strategies retreat in upstate New York, which was organized by the New York affiliate of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation—a German-based group founded and led by senior members of the former East German Communist Party.

Currently, she is a leader of LeftRoots, an FRSO/Liberation Road spinoff organization.

Tometi was executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Her predecessor was Gerald Lenoir, a former leader of the Maoist-leaning Line of March group.

On June 4, 2015, she visited the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin, where she spoke about police violence in the United States and the accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Cullors was mentored in Los Angeles by Eric Mann, a lifelong Maoist and former member of SDS, the Weathermen, and the League of Revolutionary Struggle.

In January 2015, she traveled to Palestine with a delegation of Black Lives Matter activists “to witness firsthand the effects of Israeli apartheid and occupation,” according to a Facebook post.

One of Cullors’s fellow American delegates, “Dream Defender” Ahmad Abuznaid, is the son of a Nabil Abuznaid, a “close friend” and adviser to Yasser Arafat, the late leader of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization.

When protests began in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 10, 2014, the day after the police shooting of Michael Brown, FRSO/Libration Road quickly took charge of the ensuing events. The protests soon degenerated into several days of rioting, arson, and looting.

The main organization directing events at Ferguson was local activist group Organization of Black Struggle (OBS)—which was led by longtime FRSO/Liberation Road comrade Jamala Rogers.

In the spring of 2015, the New York/New Jersey District FRSO/OSCL sponsored a forum titled “Ferguson: The Movement So Far and Lessons for Coming Struggles.” Speakers were “our comrade” Montague Simmons, chair of the OBS in St. Louis, and Loyda Colon, co-director of the Justice Committee, a “Latina/Latino-led organization dedicated to building a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City.”

According to an FRSO/OSCL’s advertisement for the meeting:

“Speaking for the first time in NYC since the police murder of Michael Brown, the chair of OBS, which played a major role in the Ferguson protests, discusses the new strategies, organizational forms and social forces that emerged there, and how the movement was sustained. Loyda Colon will reflect on the Justice Committee’s work organizing with families directly impacted by police violence, and will share their thoughts on the current movement in NYC.

“Together they will share their thoughts on key questions for the movements against police abuse that are erupting around the country. How do we hold together broad united fronts with different generations, cultures, classes and political perspectives? What’s the role of anti-capitalists and socialists? What kind of policing reforms do we want and how do they relate to other issues in our communities, and to radical social transformation?” At the meeting, Simmons casually told the assembled comrades that OBS had brought in just under 10,000 out-of-town activists to participate in the protests.

My wife and I traveled to Ferguson not long after the riots. We remember well one particularly chilling piece of graffiti—a large spray-painted machine with the caption “Death to AmeriKKKa.”

Today, the Black Lives Matter is coordinated nationwide by an umbrella group called the Movement for Black Lives (MBL). Several Liberation Road comrades work through MBL, including former FRSO/OSCL national organizer Cazembe Jackson and East Tennessee-based activist Ash-Lee Henderson.

MBL has been coordinating protests across the nation through regular Zoom conference calls.

On May 30, MBL convened an “In Defense of Black Lives: National Week of Action Call,” during which the “comrades” (their term) discussed coordinated protest activity. Moderators were Bay Area Black Lives Matter activist Karissa Lewis and New York-based MBL strategist Lumumba Bandele.

Participants included:

• Miski Noor of Black Visions Collective in Minnesota. Noor previously worked for Minnesota Attorney General and former Rep. Keith Ellison for three years on “foreign affairs, immigration, and outreach to the Muslim community.”
• Chanelle Helm of Black Lives Matter Louisville.
• Kayla Reed of Action St. Louis, a former Ferguson protestor and Organization for Black Struggle member. Reed was identified as an “organizer” of 2017 protests that turned violent in the St. Louis suburb of University City after a police officer was found innocent of murder after shooting a black man who engaged police in a high-speed chase.
• Chinyere Tutashinda of The BlackOUT Collective in California.
• Phillip Agnew of Dream Defenders in Florida, a former surrogate for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Agnew has led at least two Black Lives Matter delegations to the Palestinian territories.

On June 6, MBL held another forum titled “Making Meaning of This Moment”—advertised with a picture of a burning Minneapolis police station. Participants included veteran communist Angela Davis, who is now close to Liberation Road, N’Tanya Lee of LeftRoots, and Reed and Karissa Lewis of MBL.

The MBL website states the MBL “seeks to reach millions, mobilize hundreds of thousands, and organize tens of thousands, so that Black political power is a force able to influence national and local agendas in the direction of our shared Vision for Black Lives.”

The site invited activists to take part in a week of action from June 1 to 7 in defense of black lives.

A daily list of talking points and action steps is listed which include: “We Demand a Divestment from the Police and Investment in Black Communities: We Demand Local Schools, Colleges, Universities, and All Public Institutions Cut Ties with the Police” and “Immediate Relief for Our Communities,” followed by a list of demands that included a Universal Basic Income for Blacks and “direct cash payments, rent cancellation, mortgage cancellation, a moratorium on utility and water shutoffs and a cancellation of student, medical and other forms of debt.”

According to the MBL website, “By Friday, after a week of taking action together, we will have flexed our collective muscle and built power nationwide.”

Clearly, the protests are aimed at socialism—and ending the Trump presidency.

Bring Down Trump With Ongoing Revolution

The pro-Beijing forces behind the current protests genuinely believe that Trump is a fascist and must be removed from office by any means necessary. While most Americans believe that the protests and riots are about the tragic death of George Floyd, the Maoists understand that this is really about bringing down Trump.

The current uprising isn’t an aberration. It must be seen (as the Maoists do) in the context of a longterm revolutionary strategy.

Longtime Maoist, former SDS, and Line of March comrade Max Elbaum recently published a propaganda piece “Black America: Beyond 1968 This Time” on the Liberation Road-run website Organizing Upgrade, hinting at what is to come:

“On the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination April 4, 1968, Black rebellions erupted in more than 100 cities. Flames came within six blocks of the White House; 70,000 troops were called out to ‘restore order.’

“Tuesday, there were uprisings in 140 cities. President Trump threatened to deploy the military. Trump’s top henchman, Attorney General William Barr, ordered the teargassing of peaceful protesters near the White House so Trump could pose for a photo-op holding a Bible.

“The pattern repeats, but several important things are different this time around.

“The millions who poured into the streets in the 1960s gave the powers-that-were-then a damn good scare. More than a few of us believed a final reckoning was near at hand. …

“Ruling class unity and confidence has been badly shaken. Their neoliberal economic order system is in tatters, still unrecovered from the 2008 financial crisis and under fire from all quarters. Washington’s global power has been steadily slipping away. The government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has made the U.S. a global laughingstock, while casting a spotlight on this country’s deep-rooted inequities. The current uprising has moved the country’s longstanding racial fault line center stage and is generating a new cohort of revolutionary fighters.

“The result is a crisis holding greater danger but also greater possibility than the high tide of 1968. The danger lies in the potential imposition of a racist authoritarian state. The possibility that exists is setting out on the path toward a Third Reconstruction that will remake the country. ...

“There could be a massacre tomorrow. And short of winning the demand just raised by the Movement for Black Lives—‘Trump Must Resign’—we are likely to see an effort to steal the 2020 election through some combination of voter suppression, vigilante intimidation (or worse) at polling places, and refusal to accept the results if a vote count says Trump has lost.

“It will take a sustained effort—organized, focused and with the same scale and militancy as the current uprising—to prevent that from being successful.” The Maoists of FRSO and Liberation Road happily believe that “Washington’s global power” is “steadily slipping away.”

They are actively working on Beijing’s behalf to accelerate that process. Just as the United States is beginning to recover from the disastrous effects of COVID-19, now comes another disaster to retard the economic recovery, rip America’s social fabric to shreds, and weigh on Trump’s poll numbers.

The Chinese Communist Party’s loyal Americans have been actively involved in every major race riot in this country since the 1960s. I believe they are the major force behind the current wave of destruction.

The attorney general is correct to direct the FBI to investigate Antifa and other anarchist groups. However, he shouldn’t miss the far bigger threat—the much better resourced and politically connected pro-Beijing communist movement.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has every incentive in the world to bring down their adversary Trump. He’s challenged the CCP on trade, supported Taiwan and the Hong Kong protestors, and is rebuilding the U.S. military to oppose the CCP’s plans to dominate the Pacific region. He is leading the fight against the CCP-inflicted coronavirus pandemic. Can the CCP handle four more years of President Trump?

Would it not benefit the CCP to burn American cities and destroy Trump’s reelection chances—while taking none of the blame?

Any good detective knows that to identify the perpetrator of a crime, one must first determine the motive and the means.

The CCP certainly has the motive to burn America. This article was designed to expose the means.

Postscript

For several decades, the wise U.S. policy of isolating the CCP economically and politically kept China a third-rate power—unable even to seriously threaten its near neighbors.

In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Americans that by engaging China, the CCP could be weaned away from communism and lured into the free world.

This disastrous mistake may yet be the undoing of us all.

Now, the CCP controls a world-class military and the world’s second-largest economy—all while staying firmly on the communist road.

The United States now stands with a dangerous enemy squaring off across the Pacific, a deeply penetrated political system and business community, a vastly reduced industrial capacity, a severely damaged economy, and now mass rioting in cities across the nation—all in some way related to the CCP.

Is all of this worth the ability to buy cheap toasters at Walmart?

Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. He is best known for his book “Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” and his similarly themed documentary film “Enemies Within.” His recently published book is “White House Reds: Communists, Socialists & Security Risks Running for U.S. President, 2020.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.