Pro-CCP socialist party organizes Propaganda under cover of “Stop Asian Hate” protests

On March 27, a radical pro-Chinese Communist Party socialist organization took advantage of a recent rash of assaults against Asian Americans to hold a series of national rallies promoting pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.

The rallies, organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) under the banner of the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition, were reportedly held in 60 cities across the country, including most notably: Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago. While most rallies were relatively small affairs, some in larger cities –notably San Francisco – reportedly featured several thousand people in attendance.

While the rallies purported to be in response anti-Asian hate crimes, the groups held signs demanding an end to “China-Bashing,” and multiple speakers adopted Chinese regime propaganda talking points, particularly opposing claims regarding the CCP’s role in allowing the Wuhan virus to spread abroad, and accusing the U.S. of “imperialism” and “militarism.”

The language of protest organizers mimicked that of Chinese state-run media which has likewise blamed attacks on “white supremacy” and has increasingly echoed American leftist critical race theory and BLM-style talking points.

The protests said very little about apparent causes  of recent Anti-Asian hate crimes, which have largely carried out by African American perpetrators. Black on Asian crime is not a new phenomenon, as the San Francisco Chronicle documented in a 2010 piece.

The PSL is a socialist party which formed as a splinter out of the Workers of the World Party (WWP), a Pro-Maoist, Pro-North Korean communist party founded in 1959. The PSL appears to have taken over control of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, a WWP front which is best known for organizing Marxist groups in anti-war protests in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

The PSL openly lauds the Chinese Communist Party. In 2007, PSL leader and A.N.S.W.E.R. National Coordinator Brian Becker wrote in the party’s paper that the PSL undertook a two year-long analysis of the CCP. As a result, they drafted a party platform entitled, For the defense of China against counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment. It was “designed to prepare the party to politically intervene in the case of a sharpening of the class struggle in China and especially in the case of a U.S.-backed counterrevolution.”

While offering some criticism of China for what the party sees as departures from its true communist roots under Mao, the PSL nonetheless vows “our Party would offer militant political defense of the Chinese government in spite of our profound differences with so-called ‘market socialism.’”

PSL is so openly pro-regime, that other socialist organizations have criticized the party for white-washing the Tiananmen square massacre.

The PSL recently produced a pro-CCP online course in cooperation with the Qiao Collective, an international pro-CCP group which identifies itself as “A diaspora Chinese media collective challenging U.S. imperialism.” Qiao Collective routinely translates regime Chinese language propaganda into English for broader consumption. Qiao Collective full backs the regime on all topics, and does not shy away from even controversial ones, such as defending the regime’s brutal policy against the Uighur population, and endorsing the Hong Kong crackdown and labeling Hong Kong protestors “right-wing” and even racist.

Like PSL, Qiao Collective has also received criticism from the left for its overtly pro-authoritarian and pro-regime stance. Brian Hioe writing in New Bloom magazine –whose masthead promotes, “radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia Pacific”—described Qiao Collective under the derogative leftist slang as “tankies.” Hioe writes:

Very little of Qiao’s thought is creative or new, instead primarily consisting of warmed-over tankie thought. The term “tankie” originated as a term for leftists that uncritically supported the Soviet Union, despite the willingness of the Soviet Union to violently repress popular uprisings such as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Decades have passed, yet tankies have hardly changed, continuing to uncritically back authoritarian governments that they view to be socialist, downplaying any domestic repression of political dissidence and claiming that these countries outstrip capitalist nation-states in economic productivity.

British journalist James Bloodworth, compared Qiao Collective to Russian state-controlled media outlet, Russia Today (RT), which exists to translate the Russian government’s positions into Western-approved sound bytes. Bloodworth writes,

Together with denial and obfuscation when it comes to the projection of Chinese power, the Qiao Collective pushes Chinese state media which depicts western nations as in the grip of strife and malfeasance. The Russian television station RT has long deployed a similar tactic. Western audiences are urged to scrutinize their own governments and to “Question More” — until RT turns its attention to Russia, when this critical approach is replaced by the party line from the Kremlin.

As tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise, we can expect continued propaganda measures and protests from Pro-CCP elements within the United States. We should fully expect groups like the PSL to use any topic, including unfortunate events like recent anti-Asian violence, as an excuse to conduct “militant political defense” of their Chinese communist regime.