Mao More Than Ever (Boston communists say they want a revolution.)

The Boston Phoenix ^ | 07/01/05 | Mike Millard

[raccoonradio]

Boston communists say they want a revolution. Now they just have to agree on how to bring it about.

A pimple-faced teen with Coke-bottle glasses and a self-satisfied smirk stands near the doorway of Harvard Square’s tiny Revolution Books. He’s skinny and draped in a large black T-shirt adorned with a full-color portrait of Joseph Stalin, the iron-fisted despot responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of millions.

"Stalin is my friend," the kid says, at once cockily and geekily, as he stares at the floor.

"Yeah, yeah, but we can do better than Stalin," says the guy behind the counter who, even though it’s hot, is wearing a heavy sweater under his SERVE THE PEOPLE T-shirt. "We can do a lot better. You can have socialism without suppressing intellectualism." His name is George Bryant, and he’s a volunteer at this decades-old bastion of unabashed communist agitation, a bookstore that, amazingly, still survives in the ever-more-corporatized "People’s Republic of Cambridge." Bryant gestures toward a stack of books and DVDs from the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), whose chairman, Bob Avakian, is "really offering a deep critique of America and an in-depth defense of communism — in a sense reinventing it without throwing out the whole."

The kid and his friends, high-schoolers obviously flirting with jejune hard leftism, seem noncommittal and a little nonplussed. "What would you guys think about taking a bunch of these?" Bryant asks, offering a stack of the Maoist RCP weekly newspaper, Revolution, for them to proselytize with. The kids demur, and they leave.

[raccoonradio]

Boston...what else is new. The Hillary endorsement should come any time now.

"Come the Revolution, Comrade, we'll all be eating strawberries and cream."

"But I don't like strawberries and cream."

"Come the Revolution, YOU'LL EAT strawberries and cream!!!"

>>Is it a valid fear? Dotterman doesn’t think so. But he points out that commies creep out the Bushies more than they did their predecessor. "In the Clinton administration, when a person applied for a green card or citizenship, they were not asked if they are or have ever been a member of the Communist Party. That phrase has been reinstated on the applications," he says.

[SunnySide]

" Boston communists say they want a revolution."

Translation: We commies don't want to or have to work for a living. That's for the honest law abiding stiffs we leach off of every year. Thanks to the ACLU and easily manipulated welfare programs.

[johnb838]

we want a revolution too.

Bring. Them. On.

[MNnice]

" That phrase has been reinstated on the applications," he says."

Really? Show me.

[SAJ]

They always seem to forget just who has the weapons, and the ammo.

Too bad for them, eh?

[SteveMcKing]

It's no secret among their leadership that revolution CANNOT occur as long as there is a strong middle class.

Their long term strategy, therefore, is to destroy the middle class a) with bad economic policy (taxation and job export, for example) b) by promoting social and cultural degeneracy via music, Hollywood, and the drug culture. These elements are specificly taylored to undermine stabalizing factors like family and personal standards.

When there is no middle class left, only peasants and rich liberals, then the revolution can happen.

[jocon307]

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow

[JOE43270]

I ready too! I'm tired of these #$%^#&*(!

[Mears]

Just light a cigarette in Harvard Square and everyone will run like hell----who needs guns?

[retrokitten]

I always think the same thing. Which side has the guns, morons?? Go a head and try it.

[ncountylee]

(Chicago)— The 28th National Convention of the Communist Party, USA was convened here this morning.

site ( Major Barf Alert)

http://www.cpusa.org/

[billybudd]

Take a walk down a block from Revolution Books and you'll see a super yuppified Harvard Square. It's funny how "out" communism is - even in the People's Republic of Cambridge.

[vaudine]

pitiful!!!!!!!!

vaudine

[Maceman]

Communism is far from the all-threatening bugaboo it was two decades ago — to most people, it’s just another discredited ideology, a failed experiment, a joke. Some joke. I'll bet they're in stitches in Castro's gulags.

I understand that life under Stalin was a laff riot.

[auboy]

But where are the John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy tees?

[Wolfhound777]

I am starting to see a pattern here.

Prior to that, his political connections wouldn’t allow it. He says he worked for Bobby and Ted Kennedy, and "doing that kind of work, for various government office-holders around the country, my fear of reprisal if I had joined the Communist Party always kept me from it."

Alpana Mehta first found herself thinking hard about Marx and Lenin in 1993, after she’d spent considerable time and energy helping get Bill Clinton elected.

Sullivan doesn’t think the tactics employed by the Communist Party USA are effective. "The CPUSA see themselves as just an extension of bourgeois democracy: ‘We can do a better job in the system than the capitalists. Just vote for us.’ They’re not about making a revolution. They’re about appealing to the Democrats."

[Maceman]

"I tell people, ‘Hey, three tours of duty in Vietnam earned me the right to be a communist, so you can go f**k yourself,’" says Gary Dotterman,

Change "three tours of duty" to "three months" and you essentially have John Kerry's presidential platform.

[kenth]

Interestingly enough, he doesn't state what army his three tours were with. And, yeah, that was basically JeffinK's platform.

[SteveMcKing]

"Which side has the guns, morons??"

Both. The shooting mostly happens overseas in places like South America or the Pacific Rim. They need to be taken seriously. They pledge their lives to Communism, and they are not stupid - they are evil.

These are the very characters who would gather personal information on POWs (like names and addresses of family, where their kids went to school, etc.) and mail it to North Vietnam so our soldiers could be tortured. They did it then, and they still do it now all over the globe.

Wish people here would stop cracking jokes and treat them like the deadly threat that they truly pose.

[Hugin]

"Yeah, yeah, but we can do better than Stalin," says the guy behind the counter who, even though it’s hot, is wearing a heavy sweater under his SERVE THE PEOPLE T-shirt. "We can do a lot better."

As Rush says, the left ignores all evidence of the failure of their ideas. It's just that the right people haven't tried it.

Back around 1970 I was a leftie and knew some hardcore commies. The funny thing is their debates sound exactly the same.