Follow Us

Meet Refuse Fascism, the domestic Maoist group endorsing Joe Biden

Refuse Fascism, a spin-off of chairman Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, is organizing a mass protest Saturday across the country.

Published: August 30, 2020 9:11am

Updated: September 5, 2020 12:45pm

Joe Biden doesn't endorse domestic Maoist revolutionaries.

But domestic Maoist revolutionaries are endorsing Joe Biden for president (at least until they can rid the country of President Trump).

The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is a domestic Maoist party led since 1979 by its chairman Bob Avakian. He and his party are committed to the overthrow of the U.S. government, along with the country's economic and social systems.

Avakian reviles Biden and the Democratic Party as "instruments" of the "literally murderous system of capitalism-imperialism." Nevertheless, in an Aug. 1 statement posted at revcom.us, the party's online outlet, Avakian declared that unless Trump can be driven from office by mass mobilization in the streets before Election Day, "the struggle against this fascist regime needs to include voting against Trump by voting for Biden."  

Refuse Fascism, a spin-off of the RCP, is organizing the "Protest Everywhere: Demand #TrumpPenceOutNow," a mass mobilization on Saturday stretching from Atlanta to Chicago, Los Angeles to Boston, and parts in between, including Washington, D.C., according to their website.

Actors Jodie Sweetin and John Cusack have lent their support to Refuse Fascism's demonstrations.  

Avakian created Refuse Fascism in conjunction with Sunsara Taylor and Carl Dix immediately following the 2016 election. By 2017, Taylor was demonstrating outside Trump Tower in New York City. 

According to Capital Research Center's Influence Watch, one of Refuse Fascism's financial backers is the Alliance for Global Justice, a fiscal sponsor to an array of left-wing activist groups. Alliance for Global Justice, which grew out of the Nicaragua Network, is financially supported in turn by the Tides Foundation, a grant-making foundation that functions as a pass-through for funding to left-leaning nonprofits. At the headwaters of this funding stream is billionaire liberal donor George Soros, who has given more than $20 million to the Tides Foundation through his grant making arms, the Open Society Foundations and the Foundation to Promote Open Society. 

RCP members wear black T-shirts emblazoned with "Revolution Nothing Less." 

Sunsara Taylor showed up in Minneapolis following George Floyd's death in June, and publicly told the local demonstrators what was needed was a revolution according to the tenets of Avakian's ideology as she led a crowd chanting, "1, 2, 3, 4 — slavery, genocide, and war — 5, 6, 7, 8, — America was never great," and "How do we get out of this mess? Revolution Nothing Less.

The Refuse Fascism orange t-shirts are branded with "Trump/Pence #Out Now," and their supporters have carried orange banners chanting, "F--- Trump" and "Trump Pence Out Now."

Avakian's winding path through far-left activism to leadership of the RCP goes back to his membership in the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which was founded by Tom Hayden and Bill Ayers, who later founded the Weather Underground.  

Professor Todd Gitlin of Columbia University was president of SDS in the early-to-late 1960s, when the SDS fractions began to splinter.

The RCP "have an M.O., which is of parasitism," Gitlin told Talking Points Memo after the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri riots, at which the RCP turned up.

"They glom onto a cause, and then they roll with it,” said Gitlin, author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage," an acclaimed social and political history of the tumultuous decade. "They read the papers, and they made a bee-line for Ferguson is what I would guess. They're always looking for signs of the coming revolution.

The RCP in 2008 promulgated its Constitution of the Revolutionary Party of the USA.

"Party members actively represent the communist outlook, method, stand, and morality among the masses, and live it in their own lives," states their 2008 RCP Constitution, "Party members do not believe in gods or spirits, and boldly oppose religious ideas among the masses."

In a June 2020 public statement, Avakian called for replacing the U.S. Constitution with his new 2010 Constitution for A New Socialist Republic in North America, which has been adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. 

RCP's Constitution calls for:

  • Abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of state economy
  • Atheism vigorously promoted
  • State-ruled economy
  • Means of production, private capital and wealth expropriated for the state without compensation
  • Only public education fostering communism
  • Supreme Court expanded to 15 members  
  • Inheritance limited by the state
  • Banking and financial systems state-owned and run

Just the News reached out to the Revolutionary Communist Party and Refuse Fascism. They declined comment.