A few days after President Trump called Kamala Harris "a Marxist" after the last presidential debate, Newsweek put on its "journalism" cap and attempted to debunk that claim, saying they decided to ask some "real" communists from the Communist Party U.S.A., a depleted husk of an organization which must have maybe 100 members.
They asked Joe Sims, a longtime CPUSA functionary who now serves as the "co-chairman" of the operation, and who is probably the only one allowed to speak to the press. He came to the phone for Newsweek easily.
So is Kamala a Marxist?
"We don't see anything in the platform or statements of the current or former Democratic Party standard bearers—Biden, Obama, Harris, etc., that indicate they are Marxist," Sims said. "What we do see is the standard GOP charge of 'socialism' used by Mitch McConnell, Trump et al. going all the way back to Joe McCarthy. No surprise here!
"Again, we've seen this script before—overt racism, alongside vague allegations of 'Marxism' deployed to divide and divert working-class people from uniting and bettering our situation.
"Donald Trump's red-baiting and racism are old and tired divide-and-conquer devices. Trump used both last night. But the American people know better. It didn't work against Obama and it won't work now."
So there you have it: Joe says Kamala is not a Marxist. Therefore, Trump lied.
That was what Newsweek thought it "proved" as it consulted all those real communists, meaning, just Sims.
It's nonsense. What Newsweek didn't do was go look through the easily found archives of the Communist Party U.S.A.'s public documents, which shows quite a bit of approval of Comrade Kamala and her doings. They defend her. They advocate for her. They praise her Marxist outlook.
Here's a May 2024 piece written by Juan Lopez, another longtime functionary who now runs the San Francisco Bay Area branch of the CPUSA. The topic of his discussion was whether the Democrats were left-wing enough ahead of their 2024 convention to make the communists happy. Juan brought up the 2020 convention to argue that they were. I boldfaced the money quotes:
The day before the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC) leading progressive women’s groups held a summit aimed to ensure women’s perspectives were front and center at the Democratic convention.
The summit’s stated aim was to elevate women’s voices, especially women of color who have been a crucial voting bloc, to ensure that issues especially affecting women, including access to abortion, paid family and sick leave, pay equity among many others, were uppermost in the conversation.
Mindful of majority public sentiment at the time and the general view of delegates, then vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris warned of the damage of “structural racism,” which she said leads to “injustice in reproductive and maternal health care, excessive use of force by police, and our broader criminal justice system.”
That's a pretty good Marxist argument right there, with a nice use of Marxist language and reasoning that you find in those quarters.
But it gets better:
These clearcut facts, I believe, show the “lesser of two evils” characterization of the Democratic Party holds no water.
For the viable left, including the Party, it is important to recognize the symbiotic relationship in fashioning strategy and tactics now, when the country is facing a fascist danger represented by Trump and Republican Party, and the necessity to build a peoples united front to defeat it.
I can only suppose the battle between labor and its strategic allies on the one hand and capital on the other over control of the Democratic Party will intensify, if we manage to win and secure the November elections and subsequently to isolate and incapacitate far-right/fascist political and economic power.
Who is this "we" you speak of, Kemosabe as you talk of winning elections? And note that they've got big plans for us conservatives once they "win" the coming election.
That's about all you need to know about CPUSA support for Harris, and their plans to "win" the election with her, followed by plans to punish their opposition, the way communists always do.
But this is far from all of it.
In 2020, they urged their members to get out there and vote for Biden and Harris because they like the Democrat party's slide leftward along its Bernie Sanders lines:
The progressive changes in the Democratic Party will continue. Bernie Sanders’ clear message to his supporters is that their campaign made progress in bringing vital issues like the $15 minimum wage, Green New Deal, and Medicare for All into the mainstream, but to continue and win those fights it is urgent to defeat Trump by voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Anita Waters, an elderly, but probably not longtime, functionary from Ohio, (who ironically looks like a classic childless cat lady in the video that follows below), has lots of grievance politics to attach to Kamala in her 2020 piece:
While women in general do not vote as a bloc, African American women have emerged as a potent force in electoral politics. In 2016, for example, 98% of Black women voted Democratic. The following year, U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama won his seat with 98% of Black women’s votes. This year, African American women helped propel Biden to the nomination, probably as strategic voters, then issued a powerful challenge to the presumptive nominee demanding that he select a Black woman for vice president. On August 11, he announced his selection of California Senator Kamala Harris.
She's quite approving of that in her piece, adding:
The selection of Kamala Harris no doubt brought joy and enthusiasm to a number of constituencies, including HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities) alumni and citizens of Jamaican and of Indian heritage, and the all-important bloc of Black women voters. They feel vindicated with Biden’s choice, and with a 77-year-old white man at its top, the ticket is less likely to suffer from the benevolent and hostile sexism that was experienced by Clinton in 2016.
Another reaction to 2016 was an acute awareness of sexism in media coverage of women candidates. Even before Harris was selected, women’s organization leaders issued a memo entitled, “We Have Her Back,” addressed to “News Division Heads, Editors in Chief, Bureau Chiefs, Political Directors, Editors, Producers, Reporters and Anchors,” warning against the sexist scrutiny and stereotyping that has long plagued all women candidates, and is especially amplified for Black and Brown women.
Biden’s selection of Harris was so widely predicted that it seems “safe”—polls had shown Harris to be the favorite of intended voters—but having an African American woman on the Democratic ticket does represent a breakthrough in U.S. electoral politics.
In another piece that ran as an article on their site, by someone named Adam Keller, an Israeli "peace" activist celebrating Prime Minister Netanyahu's electoral defeat in 2020, was quoted as congratulating Harris in 2020, as reprinted from the People's World, which is the CPUSA paper:
Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, congratulates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their hard-fought victory and their impending entry into the White House. This is a great day for the whole world. We congratulate American democracy, which managed to shake off and oust a president who trampled on the most basic of democratic norms and still persists in futile efforts to cling to his fading power.
Meanwhile, get a load of this 2020 video of Sims and his minions (his Politburo?) discussing the morning papers and the communist life together the way Gus Hall used to do years ago -- with high words of praise for Kamala, and note the section where the group collectively goes 'ooh' at the mention of Comrade Gus, a Minnesota Man who was curiously like Tim Walz:
So privately, they love Harris, and say so over and over in the clip, but they also note amongst themselves that they know that the public reviles communists, which would explain why Sims tailors his message to Newsweek about Kamala Harris not quite being a Marxist as if to throw the public off and deceive them ... while in these little-watched tapes, and on their website, Harris is just the person they want to win the election.
We can also see that in Angela Davis's endorsement of Kamala Harris as reported by the People's World. Angela, who ran for president as Gus Hall's running mate years ago, is not a member of the party anymore, she says, but remains a "small-c" communist, and is pretty close to them as a vaunted grand lady of the communist legacy.
Speaking in Paris a few weeks ago, People's World reported that Davis said she liked Harris and wanted Harris to win, not on her race, but on her radical left-wing ideas and agenda, which warms the cockles of every communist's heart.
A similar dynamic has been sparked by the entry of Kamala Harris into this year’s race for the White House, Davis said. The point of winning, however, is “not to put people into office only because of their race or gender,” she cautioned.
“When we engage in electoral politics, it can’t be just because a particular individual is running for office,” Davis told the crowd, “it is to enlarge the terrain of mass struggle, to guarantee a space for the trade union movement to win victories, for the women’s movement to win victories, for people of color to win victories, for working and poor people to win victories.
“That’s why we urge people to vote, isn’t it?” she asked before turning to the audience with a smile and saying, “You know that here in France for sure.”
... and ...
Though she said voters should not be motivated by race or gender considerations alone, Davis emphasized the historical importance of Harris being the Democratic candidate. “Black women are so marginalized in society that Kamala’s candidacy means something spiritually to Black women.
“But when you reach that level,” nominee of one of the two major parties, “you have to be the face of capitalism, militarism, and neo-colonialism.” Harris, Davis warned, “has told us she will be that face, that she will build the most lethal military apparatus ever.”
As dangerous as that reality is, however, Davis said, “There’s more to think about: Harris is not a fascist, and the other person running for president is.” That’s why she said there’s “no question about who progressive people should vote for” in the U.S. election. Trump, whom she never mentioned by name, must be defeated, but getting Harris into office isn’t the end of the road.
She encouraged her listeners to think of voting as a collective and strategic act—in their own struggles in France as well as when they’re analyzing why the labor movement, communists, and the left in the U.S. urge a vote against Trump and for Harris.
“It’s not just about electing Kamala Harris,” Davis again said, “it’s about opening space for those of us who are more radical than Kamala Harris to put the pressure for change, especially in the first place when it comes to the genocide in Palestine.”
See, only Kamala will open that door for them. Like Sims, she's cautious and qualified in public of her support, but there's no question she's endorsing Harris as the best means of achieving the communism she desires.
So to claim, as Newsweek does, that Kamala is no Marxist is kind of naive, given the enthusiasm seen for Harris all over the CPUSA's website and in its newspaper. Imagining that no one's looking, they're open as can be about their support for Harris and the Democrats.
On related matters, the CPUSA Political Action Commission also big on the Democrat talking point that 2020's election was the freest and fairest ever -- ooh, look at that "meticulous" language in this 2021 piece, commenting on conservatives who questioned the 2020 election:
Their aim is to push the Big Lie that Donald Trump “won” the election last Nov. 3 despite overwhelming proof that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected with 81 million votes to 74 million for Trump. It was the most enormous voter turnout in history, the cleanest, fairest, most carefully observed election, and the most meticulous vote count ever.
In the rest of their piece, they called for getting active in supporting various Democrat bills to rig the election into a permanent one-party state.
Sound a little communist? It is.
In another piece on the Jan. 6 riots, where something called the "D.C. Metro Club of the CPUSA" spent a lot of time naming groups of people communists really, really, really don't like, a lot of whom I've never heard of as being present at those riots, but are special disfavorites of communist regimes in other countries:
On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, during the congressional certification hearing for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, a violent fascist coup attempt was made in the streets of D.C. and on Capitol Hill in an effort to reverse the defeat of Donald Trump. The coup attempt appears to have been coordinated throughout the country. Fascist Trump supporters from the likes of the Proud Boys; Q-Anon conspiracy theorists; American Firsters; the Boogaloo movement; III Percenters; Turning Point USA; right-wing Vietnamese, Cubans, Venezuelans, Falun Gong cultists, Hong Kong and Tibetan separatists, and Iranian monarchists; and actual Republican elected officials were actively encouraged by the extreme-right forces of the U.S. Senate, such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (claiming Hitler was right), members of the Trump family, and backers like Roger Stone, to take part in this insurrection.
That suggests a bit of foreign sponsorship, since nobody but nobody thinks about overseas Vietnamese or Tibetans, or for that matter conservative antichavista Venezuelans as troublemakers or extremists, except, well, the CPUSA, and odds are high that these groups weren't there, anyway, but don't imagine the FBI is curious about that.
The bottom line here, is that Kamala is a big favorite of the Marxists even as characters like Sims and Davis officially say she isn't quite one of them. Actually, the evidence shows that she is, and she's the candidate they'll fight to elect, given how much she promises them.
That ought to be a warning to everyone else that a vote for Comrade Harris is a vote for communism.
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