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.
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.