First Published: The Call, Vol. 8, No. 13, April 2, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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More than forty years ago the fascist Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan initiated a crusade against “Bolshevism” which was to provide them with the ideological preparation and justification for their naked aggression leading up to World War II. “The rulers of these three states,” said Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov at the time, “think that it is sufficient for them to utter the words ’anti-communism’ and all their international felonies and crimes will be forgiven them!”
Today, a new such anti-Bolshevik crusade is in the making by new fascists who are once again preparing to throw the world into war. The new Hitlerites are the rulers of the no-longer-socialist Soviet Union and the object of their anti-Bolshevik crusade is socialist China.
In the United States, the clearest expression of the Soviet strategy is to be found in the pages of the Daily World, published by the sellout Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). The Central Committee of this party and its chairman, Gus Hall, have recently thrown themselves into a flurry of “anti-Maoist” activity–issuing statements, holding demonstrations, calling for conferences, etc. Their objective, according to a statement in the March 13 issue of the Daily World, is to “forge a worldwide movement of all progressive forces, and all men and women who love peace, to put a stop to the lunatic upward spiral of dangerous Maoist actions.”
The statement, printed under the headline “CPUSA urges anti-Maoist unity,” argues that the forming of this anti-Maoist front is “of the highest urgency.”
Flowing from this view, the CPUSA organized a demonstration outside China’s UN mission last month and a host of “emergency rallies” against China’s action in Vietnam. In those trade unions where they hold influential positions in the bureaucracy, CPUSA members have introduced resolutions condemning China and urging workers not to load or unload cargo headed for China. In mass organizations like the National Lawyers Guild, CPUSA members tried to block the Guild from sending a delegation to China.
Although none of these moves has yet succeeded, they illustrate the growing intensity of the modern anti-Bolshevik crusade.
In more subtle ways, the CPUSA and their masters in the Kremlin are seeking to unite at various levels with powerful U.S. politicians and businessmen who can be conscripted into their “anti-Maoist” army.
If all this sounds like a page stolen from Hitler’s book on how to hide the fascist danger by whipping up anti-communist hysteria, it should. The propaganda that accompanies all these organizing efforts is done in Hitler’s old Big Lie style–tell the biggest lies and most grotesque distortions of the facts often enough until they become accepted as truth.
A sampling of the “big lies” spread by the Daily World: China’s leaders are bent on provoking a “nuclear war that could destroy the human race”; “feudalistic warlord mentality” dominates the Chinese Communist Party and has led China to try to conquer Vietnam and all Southeast Asia; China was trying to “Chinify” Kampuchea by removing “all the Kampucheans to populate the country with Chinese and turn it into an organic and inseparable part of a new empire with Beijing as its capital”: and so on with the most absurd statements that lack even the smallest kernel of truth.
Why this sudden flurry of attacks on “Maoism”? After all, the Soviet Union and its revisionist cohorts around the world have been openly opposed to China and Mao Zedong Thought for almost two decades now, ever since Mao Zedong refused to follow Khrushchev down the path of restoring capitalism in the once-socialist USSR.
The answer, once again, can be found in Hitler’s blueprints. When you are carrying out aggression yourself, brand others as the “aggressors.” When you are methodically gearing up for war, create a smokescreen to divert attention elsewhere. For Hitler, the smokescreen was “Bolshevism.” For Brezhnev, it is increasingly becoming ”Maoism.”
China represents a powerful roadblock to the Soviet Union’s expansionist drive, and it is for this reason that the international revisionist machinery has set its sights on trying to isolate China and “Maoism.” China is not only actively speaking out and warning the countries and peoples of the world about the USSR’s hegemonic ambitions, it has also shown by its practice in Vietnam and elsewhere that it will not cave in to the military pressure of the Soviet Union and its frontmen.
In awakening world public opinion to the true nature of the Soviet Union and the danger of appeasing it, China has achieved considerable success lately, as more and more people see the truth in the Chinese view through their own experiences with the USSR.
To draw the historical parallel again, it was precisely when the communists were scoring some successes in mobilizing public opinion in Britain, France and the U.S. against the Nazi war machine that Hitler saw fit to launch the anti-Bolshevik crusade full blast. His propaganda was sufficiently successful for a time to allow the Axis to seize sizable parts of Europe, Africa and Asia before the top politicians of Britain, France and the U.S. were willing to recognize the need to cooperate with the communists against Hitler.
Returning to today’s situation, let us look at what the revisionists are actually trying to accomplish in building their “anti-Maoist” front.
Vietnam, having already conquered Laos three years ago, invades Kampuchea at the end of 1977, sets up a puppet government and installs an occupation army of 150,000 troops. Meanwhile, Vietnam is occupying some of China’s islands, persecuting ethnic Chinese inside Vietnam and launching border provocations against China. All this fits in with the Soviet Union’s plans for achieving hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and, in fact, few of Vietnam’s expansionist moves could have been carried out without Soviet advisers, military equipment and cash.
When China carries out a limited military counterattack against these Vietnamese provocations, the Soviet Union immediately sends out the word to its assortment of friends, allies and puppets that an “emergency” solidarity movement with Vietnam should be created, taking opposition to China as its starting point. Rallies are held, money raised, “Chinese war crimes” tribunals are convened, and so on down the line. In building this movement, the revisionists bank heavily on the fact that progressive opinion throughout the world shares a strong emotional attachment to the Vietnamese liberation struggle and that many people still do not see clearly that Vietnam has become a frontman for Soviet interests.
But don’t allow yourself to be taken in by this nicely-orchestrated situation. To give “emergency support” to Vietnam in the real world of today means that you are endorsing the Soviet-Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea. Raising money for Vietnam, under whatever pretext, means contributing to the military hardware needed to try to suppress the Kampuchean resistance. And joining in the building of an “anti-Maoist” front means that you are willing to join with the revisionists in charging that it is socialist China and not the Soviet and American superpowers which are threatening the world with war.
In building this “anti-Maoist” front the revisionists, not unexpectedly, are getting a little help from their friends. The Guardian newspaper, which even in its most “anti-revisionist” period was never willing to take a firm stand of opposition to the USSR, has now put the Soviet Union under its “socialist world” column and declared that “China’s class-collaborationist line” is “the principal deviation from Marxism-Leninism in the international movement,” even more of a deviation, according to the Guardian, than Soviet revisionism. As for the “Revolutionary” Communist Party, it has already outdistanced Gus Hall’s group in its social practice of building the “anti-Maoist” crusade by physically attacking Chinese government offices in the U.S., defacing Chinese cultural exhibits and threatening to assassinate China’s leaders.
All this is reminiscent of how the Hitler fascists got a helping hand from Leon Trotsky and his group of international splitters inside the communist movement. When Stalin sought a collective security arrangement with the West against Hitler, the Trotskyites of the 1930s denounced it as an “incitement to war” in the very same way that the RCP and Guardian are denouncing China’s effort to delay the outbreak of war today by seeking unity against Soviet hegemonism.
Some people may be taken in at first. Certainly, Hitler succeeded in fooling many people at first, even donning the cloak of “national socialism” to appeal to the left and the workers’ movement. Today, the international picture is even more complicated than it was in those days, and the truth about what is taking place in Indochina, Angola or the African Horn is not always easy to see at first glance.
But history will show the “anti-Maoist” crusade to be one of the supreme Big Lies of all time. Whatever smokescreen it is able to provide temporarily will be torn away, and the naked aggression of the Soviet Union will be seen clearly behind it.