WWP/PSL/CIA: The Counterinsurgency Infecting the Left — Part One
A Counterinsurgency infecting the left
UPDATE December 30, 2023
Since this series of articles is gaining traction in light of the genocidal Zionist war on Palestine, we encourage readers to also check out our article on broadening the horizons of solidarity with Palestine here and the structural failures of the US anti-war movement here. They are far more relevant to the urgency of the current struggle.
—AMTF
This Document is the first part of a series exposing the PSL/ANSWER connections to the CIA/FBI. Content warnings will be applied for each article separately (Future sections are forthcoming)
Series Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction and Key Terms—A Primer
Part 2: Ray McGovern: Expert Anti-Communist—Nonviolence as Counterinsurgency
Part 3: John Kiriakou: Butcher and Torturer — the Farce of Whistleblower Allies
Interlude: Non-Linear Information Warfare
Part 4: Worker’s World Party: a confidence scheme
Part 5: Unmasking the Hydra: relationships between the “anti-war left” and the WWPSLCIA
Part 6: Ramsey Clark and the afterlife of PHOENIX, COINTELPRO, and MH CHAOS
Introduction
The Party For Socialism (PSL) is an ostensibly anti-imperialist organization that operates inside of the imperial core (amerika). Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition (ANSWER) is closely related to PSL, and shares many founders; we will treat them as part of the same project. The ANSWER coalition is a dominant and growing force within the amerikan Anti-War Movement— a movement which is also rooted historically and materially in counterinsurgency. The PSL has a long history of co-opting movements; this became particularly apparent during the 2020 riots in the United States.
While their abuses are endless and have been well documented in a variety of other places- we will not rehash those here. Previous articles have explored the right wing undercurrents of the PSL. This project aims to expose the links between the PSL/ANSWER and counter-insurgent government forces at the CIA & FBI.
This evidence will show that the Party for Socialism and Liberation is part of a *counterinsurgency project* of controlled opposition to shut down militant resistance against the United States government. Their abuses, their reactionary politics, and their cult-like behavior are not coincidental but a consequence of the organization being an arm of the empire.
Importantly, this project is about more than just the PSLCIA. There are many lessons here about the larger counterinsurgency methods of our enemies. We hope that you share this information with your people so that they may carry out their own investigations into the strategies, and specifically, the exploitable weaknesses of the settler colony known as the united states.
Key-Concepts
Domestic Counter-Insurgency—True anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle inside the imperial core must aim to destroy the amerikan government through guerilla war and protracted people’s war. This settler-colonial slave state is the beating heart of white supremacy and global imperialism, which will not be able to go down without a fight. Domestic Counterinsurgency can thus be understood as anything that strengthens the amerikan government, legitimizes the amerikan government, or otherwise sabotages militant organizing against the amerikan government.
Whistleblowers are not heroes1— Whistleblowers are not your friends. They are not friends of any liberation movement. Any actual whistleblower would be naming names and sharing things that truly compromise state security. If they are doing this then they will be hunted down by the united states and silenced. A whistleblower that doesn’t do this is still protecting the empire and working on behalf of them. If a whistleblower is still in the country and able to publish books and interviews, they are not our friend whatsoever. Even your settler 'hero' Chelsea Manning is co-operating with the feds. Snowden too is just another liberal collaborator and empire apologist.
Anti-War Veterans2 — The idea that “veterans” hold any special position or that their opinions matter “more” is a reactionary norm that reinforces amerikan exceptionalism. Would we glorify the voices of “anti-police kops” above the people they victimize on the daily? Why would we elevate those who participated in amerika’s global policing? The history of anti-war veterans movement reveals a long line of people who, after committing heinous war crimes, were entitled to build a career off of that once they’re done. Their class interests have never been rooted in anti-imperialism and internationalism. Instead they prioritize the harms to veterans and reactionary concerns such as “wasteful government spending”. Those who identify as anti-war vets and their organizations and those who uplift them are not our friends. They are our enemies and should be identified as such.
Neo-Colonialism—In Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism Kwame Nkrumah explains:
“Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defense and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler.”
Night-Visions: Illuminating War and Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain explains:
“The previous capitalist world order was bipolar, with everyone visible massed around opposing poles of oppressor vs. oppressed. It was colonized vs. colonizer, white vs. black, invader vs. indigenous. The growing chaos of the neo-colonial world order is that many different peoples—armed with conflicting capitalist agendas—have been loosed to fight it out… Trans-national capitalism is driving a certain kind of breakthrough idea, a “multicultural” worldview in which each people and grouping is freed and encouraged to explore its own capitalist agenda no matter what form it takes…Everyone is free to go for it, free to fight it out any way they want so long as they don’t endanger the system itself.”
In the context of this series, neocolonialism describes the shape-shifting nature of contemporary imperialism that absorbs and capitalizes on the emergence of new politics and identities. Subgroups are assimilated into kapitalism and bonded to imperialist interests, all for the purpose of maintaining material colonial domination.
Under neo-colonialism, no amount of ‘reform’ or ‘gradual change’ or ‘culture shift’ can lead to liberation. The empire and it’s willing servants will absorb every slogan, every politic, and and every movement that does not directly—militarily—contradict its existence. Abolition was always “spicy reformism” so it is no surprise that demands to “abolish the police” became “defund the police”. But who knows, maybe “Death to America” t-shirts will become as popular with settler-colonizers as “Che” shirts…
Non-Violence/Non-Violent Revolution3 — A “non-violent revolution” is imagined as nonstop endless protests and strikes that aim to get some form of “change”— either electorally or materially, whether those concessions are given or not. Or, just electoralism as a system itself which can and has been defined as a “political revolution”, being seen in various amerikan presidential campaigns, and used by politicians. Such class reductionist strategies are tantamount to begging for change. This strategy has only been effective in other countries when the protestors have been largely supported economically and politically by the empire.
Since the decline of the New Left, internal resistance against the amerikan government has been pacified into the ground. This culture shift is the consequence of a sustained CIA campaign to infiltrate leftist and anti-imperialist formations and subvert them with anti-communism. The Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) has been central to this counter-insurgent strategy and absorbs “decolonization” and anti-imperialist ideology into a twisted Neo-colonial business model. Non-violence educators focus on the “strategic value” of non-violence in order to misdirect would-be revolutionaries.
Non-violence is an op and we can prove it.
NEXT ARTICLE: Ray McGovern: Expert Anti-Communist—Nonviolence as Counterinsurgency
See Part 2 — Section on Gene Sharp for more information