Just spell my name right: US government calls out Avakian and RCP, sort of

[Clifford C Clavin]

Did any of you see this?

Apparently Bob Avakian and his "Revolutionary Communist Party" came up in testimony in a US court case (successfully) contesting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012.

The Court's opinion read in part:

"Hedges also testified that he has previously associated with a group called Bob Avakiam Revolutionary Party, a Maoist group, which he stated he understands endorses the use of violence towards revolutionary ends—a philosophy to which Hedges stated he did not ascribe.... Despite that fact, Hedges understands Sec. 1021 as potentially encompassing his association with the Avakiam Revolutionary Party and thus, the statute already has had a chilling effect on his associational activities."

I added the emphasis.

There's a few stories about it on the RCP-USA site, but as a new member I don't have the ability to post a link.

It must be quite deflating for an egomaniac like Bob Avakian, and maybe even more so for his legions of (dozens of) fanatical followers who have spent countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to "promote" him and "protect" him from a government that doesn't even know how to spell his name, or the name of his party. Forty years of this "end of the world" organizing has gotten them exactly nowhere. It must feel absolutely terrible.

As they say: "Say what you like, just spell my name right!"

[Lucretia]

The fact that the gubmint Avakiam is hiding from can't even spell his name right shows you exactly how much concern it has for the man's activities. Perhaps now he can end his Messianic self-imposed exile.

[Revolutionair]

What use is a self exile anyway? The US state has shown it has no troubles killing its citizens abroad.

[Clifford C Clavin]

He already "sneaked back" into America years ago.

[Book O'Dead]

Did any of you see this?

Apparently Bob Avakian and his "Revolutionary Communist Party" came up in testimony in a US court case (successfully) contesting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012.
[...]

I understood what Avakian and his RCP were all about the moment I read a pamphlet of their praising the tactics of "President Gonzalo" and the notorious "Sendero Luminoso".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path

Jut look at how Abimail Guzman (aka. President Gonzalo) ended up! Betrayed by the Mao babes planted on him by the CIA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Gonzalo

Anyone who associates with that crumb or praise his revolutionary creds deserves to be ignored by the working class at large. I mean Gonzalo, not Avakian.

[The Idler]

I heard there was a bus tour in honour of him here


BAsics Bus Tour (http://basicsbustour.tumblr.com/)

[Book O'Dead]

I heard there was a bus tour in honour of him here


BAsics Bus Tour (http://basicsbustour.tumblr.com/)

From the site in question:

"Bob Avakian is a visionary communist thinker and revolutionary leader. He is the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA."

In my book, anyone who accepts the appellation of "leader" and "visionary" in the same breath is suspect; I give him a wide berth.

[Grenzer]

I actually own one of Avakian's books, BAsics. What's most telling about it is that it's formatted so it can be quoted like the Bible.

Avakian 3:15

And verily did Chairman Bob speak unto the masses: Down with capitalism-imperialism!

[Lynx]

Don't begrudge the man his need to make a living.

[eyeheartlenin]

What use is a self exile anyway? The US state has shown it has no troubles killing its citizens abroad.

And not just ordinary citizens. In the second half of the 1970's, in Boston, there was a radio program from the "Assassination Information Bureau," (AIB) that I used to listen to regularly. On it, a former US government spook was quoted to the effect that they had done in Adlai Stevenson II, a Democratic Party politician and high-ranking US diplomat, who died unexpectedly and suddenly, of heart failure, while walking in London, at the age of 65.

The AIB was a useful, grass-roots effort to get at the truth, namely, that the US appeared to be governed, at a crucial time, by gunplay and surreptitious assassinations. I am betting that the only difference between then and now is that now we know less about what the government is doing.

To return to the topic under discussion, I have often thought of Avakian having croissants and coffee in a sidewalk café in Paris. If exile is in your future, you would do well, I bet, to spend it among les français, from what I have heard about life in France. Maybe Avakian felt he had to go into exile because Lenin did.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

To return to the topic under discussion, I have often thought of Avakian having croissants and coffee in a sidewalk café in Paris. If exile is in your future, you would do well, I bet, to spend it among les français, from what I have heard about life in France. Maybe Avakian felt he had to go into exile because Lenin did.
This is actually how I´ve always pictured the life of a professional revolutionary in exile. Cozy and sophisticated.

[Positivist]

This is actually how I´ve always pictured the life of a professional revolutionary in exile. Cozy and sophisticated.

Same.

[eyeheartlenin]

This is actually how I´ve always pictured the life of a professional revolutionary in exile. Cozy and sophisticated.

Cde Botswana, have you ever read N.K. Krúpskaya's Reminiscences of Lenin? I loved that book. According to Krupskaya, her husband Lenin went around London muttering, "Two worlds, two worlds," referring to the rigid class divide in England. The other thing I remember from the book is that Krupskaya and Lenin had never heard English spoken before they got to London. They had studied the language, IIRC, during Lenin's internal exile in Russia.

If you visit London, you can go to Clerkenwell Green to visit the Marx Memorial Library and stand in the room where Lenin wrote some of his articles while living in London.