What makes a leftist turn into a complete heinous dipshit like this
Caleb Maupin is a self-proclaimed communist and former member of the Workers World Party who believes in "Socialism with American Characteristics" - a system which in practice would resemble Britain in the 1970s. In SwAC, important parts of the economy (natural resource extraction, heavy industry) would be planned and state-controlled, large infrastructure projects would be carried out, and new welfare programs introduced. The consumer goods sector would be left to the market. Billionaires would be allowed and even encouraged.
His other activities include founding a left-wing(?) think tank which consists of six links to videos on his channel, giving lectures on his opinions, and having lots of debates with right-wingers and left-wingers alike.
I don't take him seriously. He doesn't seem to have a coherent understanding of socialism or Marx. He holds to the most superficial interpretation of the theory of the productive forces possible. He's tone deaf and not particularly good at messaging. All of that said, I wouldn't consider him a nazbol, but that doesn't have to be true for me to consider him a detriment to the left.
Dude literally thinks welfare governments are socialist. Its pretty scary because most of the psycopathic racists we have are neolibs and shit
I wouldn’t consider him a nazbol
Did you see who he's hanging out with here?
Yes. Caleb Maupin is not a nazbol. He's the contrived, horseshoe theory, productivist, neo-Dengist equivalent of a Bhaskar Sunkara demsoc, but he's not a nazbol.
But also
Maupin uploaded a video of himself paling around with Aleksander Dugin and other right-wing nationalists/crypto-fascists at an "anti-imperialist" (but in reality closer to "third positionism") conference. He praised Dugin, downplayed his fascism, criticized Western youth for worshipping weakness over strength (classic fascist talking point), taking classes in gender studies, and talked about "international bankers" who were "disloyal to the nation" (classic antisemitic dogwhistle).
Maupin defended his use of "international bankers" by claiming that the IMF is an "international bank", when in reality, it's a neocolonial institution led by American capital which lends to other States internationally, which is quite different from the antisemitic trope of rootless, cosmopolitan Jews represented by amorphous "bankers".
Maupin gets very offended when you even raise the question of his association with Dugin, whether he's a Strasserist, a Dugnist, a Nazbol, etc. so I think there's some truth to the allegations. I agree with some of his classic "tankie" positions like the need to defend and learn from actual existing socialism, but he's not the best role model for MLs.
He also wrote a book called "Satan at the Fountainhead: The Israel Lobby and the Financial Crisis", which accused ethnically Jewish bankers of looting the US Treasury for 'Israel'. This book doesn't appear on his own website, even though it lists his other books there.
I have no idea why Maupin thought it would be a good idea to meet with Dugin. I doubt he gets many invites to conferences. However, you simply do not get a nazbol perspective on his channel. He's anti-fascist and debates fascists regularly. He's for LGBT rights. He's against violence and nationalism. And he's against vanguardism! I'm not too keen on 'defending' Maupin, but I really don't think he's a nazbol.
P.S. He didn't say "disloyal to the nation", he said "disloyal to the United States"
I dunno, his latest dustup over trans rights seems just as bad. He never seems to outright say he supports trans people. He sounds like every transphobe who tries to talk about people living their lives but there's still an element of pity or condescension there.
I’m familiar with Caleb Maupin. This will unfortunately require a massive effort post to fully explain what happened. I’ll provide a little bit of background information on Maupin first. His ideology is basically Marxism-Leninism but he thinks vanguard parties are ineffective in first world countries (he had a falling out with the Workers World Party (an anti-imperialist trotskyist party that has an ideology that overlaps significantly with Marxism-Leninism and was founded and led by Sam Marcy) that left him with the impression that first world vanguard parties have strong tendencies to devolve into irrelevant tiny cults with only the few people that lead them having any real power in the party). He supports market socialism at least as a transition phase and is ok with a temporary national bourgeoisie as long as its under the heel of the proletariat with capitalists having no political power and having no ownership in the commanding heights of the economy. He likes to highlight the historical accomplishments of all socialist projects across the world including the more controversial ones in the past like the Stalin era of the Soviet Union instead of doing the popular Western leftist tactic of “that’s not real socialism though” which he sees as an ineffective argument in countering anti-communist propaganda that tries to portray socialism as “something that’s failed everywhere it’s been tried.” In recent years he’s been pursuing an extremely naïve strategy of basically defending anyone who he perceives to be remotely anti-imperialist even if they’re not necessarily communists or leftists without really considering the optics or consequences of some of the people he loosely associates with.
Years ago he did some humanitarian work in Iran and met some Iranians who insisted that he should read Dugin’s takes on Western imperialism to try to understand anti-imperialism from more non-Marxist perspectives and that he should go to one of his conferences. This is what led to his horrifically stupid decision to attend the Dugin conference and even post a video of himself giving a speech there as if it was something to be proud of. He later did provide some context over why he attended the conference and clarified some of his comments in his speech (although it’s buried in some of his horribly structured and excessively long streams so it’s understandable why there hasn’t been much pushback on the “Caleb is a Nazbol!” narrative). By “international bankers” he said he was referring to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) which is made up of literal international bankers who have a horrible history of peddling predatory structural adjustment loans with conditionality that can threaten both the political and economic sovereignty of the Global South countries and ultimately make their people even further impoverished with neoliberal austerity.
He clarified that he disagrees with the rest of Dugin’s views which he had described as being too conservative or right-wing, but he thinks some of his arguments in opposition to Western imperialism are worthy of recognizing in spite of the bad optics. The “promoting weakness” line refers to one of his main talking points in the past where he argues that the Western left is addicted to losing with continuing to pursue lost causes like social democracy and that the revolutions that have succeeded have been unfairly demonized as authoritarian dystopias by Western propaganda to promote Western imperialism with Western leftists uncritically consuming and believing that propaganda. He argues that figures and movements from Rosa Luxemburg to Revolutionary Catalonia are almost universally championed by the Western left is because they lost so quickly before capitalist propaganda could arrive to vilify them. His belief is that as a consequence of the Western left internalizing anti-tankie propaganda, they have adopted less threatening socialist ideologies like anarchism and social democracy that are too “weak” to overthrow the global capitalist order.
Providing a lot of these clarifications and context would have been nice to have in the description of the Dugin conference video he posted and he could have avoided a lot of this controversy. Instead he idiotically posts the Dugin video without any context whatsoever and allows people who he’s had heated struggle sessions online with before (like Bad Empanada, The Serfs, Thought Slime, and other anarchists over issues related to China, Stalin, Soviet Union, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Western propaganda, imperialism, and even silly shit like leftist aesthetics) to blatantly misrepresent his views in bad faith, try to prove that their unrelated arguments against Maupin were actually now right all along because he can now be smeared as a toxic Nazbol with all of his positions now being red-brown conspiracy theories, and get him fully cancelled. It’s a bit ironic considering Caleb actually does have a long history of successfully debating against fascists. He has complained in the past that he wish he hadn’t heard of few disturbing anti-Semitic comments during some of his visits in Iran and has described anti-Semitism as “socialism for fools.”
Caleb likes to talk about his meetings with socialists and anti-imperialists in the Global South in his streams and the types of criticisms that hears from them about Western socialists. A common complaint that he says he hears from them is that the leftists in the West dress very sloppily and don’t care enough about aesthetics. This is what he said ultimately motivated him to wear suits in his videos and in any of his public appearances even if it’s a bit awkward looking. He likes to get into a lot of online fights against anti-tankie radlibs and anarchists in particular who believe in anti-communist propaganda. In response to what he perceived to be personal or bad faith attacks, he would usually respond by essentially insulting their appearances and portraying them as losers who looked like they’ve rolled out of a dumpster. He’s done this to Bad Empanada, Thought Slime, Vaush, and I think maybe some others who personally attacked Maupin earlier. Consequently, this just further devolved into bigger shitstorms of personal attacks and misrepresentations of each other’s actual positions. Maupin then like a dumbass gift wrapped the Dugin speech video to everyone online that already hated him and it was over. This is really what started the portrayals of Caleb being a Nazbol to take off and spammed all across social media.
He also has done dumb shit in the past like praising Joti Brar from CPGB-ML because he thought her strong record as an anti-imperialist and her work in Palestine for example basically absolves her of her cringe divisive transphobia. After their interview together where she randomly shoehorned a bizarre transphobic rant at the very end and he didn’t really offer any pushback against it, he did strongly condemn transphobia as another form of human rights abuse in his following streams and mentioned his past participation in protests against transphobia as a member of the Workers World Party. He argued that Joti Brar shouldn’t be fully and permanently cancelled even if she’s dead wrong on trans issues.
So, Maupin is clearly not an actual Nazbol or a reactionary Red-Brown like he’s being portrayed as by some online lefties that he's had personal beefs with, but he is a naïve moron for thinking that being a communist associating with sketchy figures like Farrakhan, LaRouchies, Dugin, and CPGB-ML that have problematic reactionary pasts even for the purported sake of anti-imperialist solidarity wasn’t going to somehow come back to haunt him. Caleb Maupin actually does provide a lot of great content covering the history of the socialist movement in America and covering geopolitics from a leftist anti-imperialist perspective which are arguably glaring blindspots for the online left right now, but he’s effectively destroyed his own reputation at this point with mostly self-inflicted controversies like this.
Holy shit, thank you for this. I appreciate the nuance. This is kind of that shitty tendency of white cishet comrades, I've noticed, that they tend to blithely embrace whoever says what they like and tend to have blinders on for what they don't. They seem to not understand optics or the fact that someone who is anti-imperialist but also extremely bigoted is going to, y'know, turn off people who you want to join your movement.
who is this? why do I see so many posts about twitter losers on here? I don't get it
Oh he's a lot less online than most Twitter losers actually, but he's still a goddamn moron
I just don't get why we ever care or post about these people at all
I mean he's a prominent communist and a voice on the American left, it just sucks that he sucks
I've literally never heard of him before and I thought I knew my loser-ass online "communists" pretty well
I mean he's pretty active offline which is why I assume you haven't heard much of him, he's only come up because his dumbass started talking about how he's not transphobic or whatever
well I hate him, he's someone I didn't know about and now that I know about him I just hate him