"Democratic" anti-communism
On the “ecosystem of alliances” for regime change in China
(This is a long one and may get clipped off… sorry in advance! Click the title above!)
A confluence of events has recently thrust China into the discourse within the Democratic Socialists of America:
The Chinese-diaspora Qiao Collective held a forum “China and the Left,” which a contingent of DSA elected leaders and other members attended informally
Following the passage of a national platform plank to “turn away from a new Cold War with China and instead seek to promote peaceful resolution of disputes with China and work with China on climate change and the threat of pandemics,” DSA’s International Committee has begun ramping up its programming to match
The announcement of the U.S.-U.K.-Australia nuclear alliance AUKUS and the bipartisan US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) has many on the left debating what orientation we should have towards these escalating tensions.
One specific strain of left thought has pushed members to oppose DSA’s move to fight the new Cold War with China, attempting to elevate aggressive opposition to the Communist Party of China alongside opposition to U.S. imperialism as vital tasks for the U.S. left.
This article will be an exploration of the loose confederation of organizations and activists that this strain of thought emerged from, a rhetoric that should be understood as part of a history of “anti-communism from below” which has influenced disastrous regime change efforts against sitting governments in the USSR, Poland, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Middle East, and around the world.
By understanding these relations, as well as also taking a healthy skeptical view of unrooted “opposing” organizations such as the Tricontinental Institute or the Qiao Collective, we can see a dual need. First, to be critical of tired anti-communist voices within DSA, and second, the need for stronger democratic mechanisms in order to forge our own path in opposing U.S. empire and choosing our own ecosystem of alliances carefully.
Gene Sharp and anti-communist “resistance to dictatorship”
Referred to as “the most influential American political figure you’ve never heard of,” scholar Gene Sharp’s work holds the key to a generation of American regime change efforts around the world. A “quiet but vital counselor to anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward,” Sharp is the author of the book “From Dictatorship to Democracy” which outlines a playbook for toppling “dictators” that has become indispensable for maintaining U.S. hegemony. It outlines what it refers to as “A Conceptual Framework for Liberation,” an opposition to an unspecified and apolitical “dictatorship,” although socialist states are Sharp’s principal practical focus and the source of most of the book’s case studies.
Core to Sharp’s proposed path forward is a focus on developing “independent” institutions not under the discipline of the targeted power:
“One characteristic of a democratic society is that there exist independent of the state a multitude of nongovernmental groups and institutions. These include, for example, families, religious organizations, cultural associations, sports clubs, economic institutions, trade unions, student associations, political parties, villages, neighborhood associations, gardening clubs, human rights organizations, musical groups, literary societies, and others.”
For Sharp, this theory of “independence” from state power has its roots in a Reagan-era libertarian ethos that calls attention to the inherent violence of the “centralized state.” As Marcie Smith writes:
“Sharp was not an economist, and he never spoke of the “market” or “privatization.” But to invoke “alternative,” “independent,” “non-State” social groups and institutions calls to mind entities like businesses, banks, foundations, non-profits, religious organizations—all of which are privately controlled, and none of which are required, as a matter of law, to submit to any internal democracy. Turning over public schools to hedge fund financed-charter companies certainly diffuses state power—but it also decreases the degree of democracy in public education. Thus Sharp’s was a theory of state transformation easily compatible, philosophically and practically, with neoliberal free market fantasies and programs of vast privatization—as demonstrated by the course of the USSR’s collapse and the Color Revolutions, where Sharp’s ideas were pivotal.”
Following its 1994 publication, From Dictatorship To Democracy became central to regime change operations across the world — many of them funded or supported by the U.S. through a diffuse network of human rights Non-Governmental Organizations, often directly funded by CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy or other NGOs.
For example, in the film Bringing Down A Dictator about the overthrow of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, a representative of a Belgrade human rights organization discusses receiving funds from the U.S. organization Freedom House to print and hand out 5,000 copies of From Dictatorship To Democracy. This book became a “User Manual” for Otpor (“Resistance”), the organization that led the charge to oust Milosevic.
Following the success of this opposition movement, the leaders of Otpor took their work to the global stage. According to Wikileaks communications from US intelligence contractor Stratfor, “After they toppled Milosevic, the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS - Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies... or in other words a "export-a-revolution" group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions.”
“They are very impressive group of guys,” wrote Stratfor’s Marko Papic. “They just go and set up shop in a country and try to bring the government down. When used properly, more powerful than an aircraft carrier battle group.”
CANVAS and their “Sharpist” approach to revolution has been tied to many U.S. affiliated regime change efforts, including Juan Guaidó’s failed coup attempt in Venezuela. Nicaraguan opposition leader Felix Maradiaga called Gene Sharp a “teacher” (“maestro”) in a blog post reflecting on the scholar’s legacy.
Wherever they occur, it’s clear that these “democratic” overthrows rarely result in positive outcomes for the working-classes of the targeted countries. Life expectancy in the Russian Federation dropped sharply following the “shock therapy” of post-Soviet transition. The “Arab Spring” revolutions of the mid-2010s, which followed the Gene Sharp playbook to a T, resulted in the cementing of military rule in Egypt, the destabilization and brutal Civil War in Syria (not to mention the rise of ISIS), and the open-air slave markets that now run rampant in Libya.
What’s important here is not the personal politics of any individual actors in this network, but rather the “ecosystem of alliances” between NGOs, Western-allied trade unions, and movement leaders that the U.S. empire develops and weaponizes against left-wing states as part of its broader project of maintaining hegemony. It’s often only through the passage of time and the gradual withering away of the need for secrecy that any of these individual connections might become clear, but examined together we can see the outlines of a distributed system for regime change that has been carefully developed over the past century. If we can see the ravages of this system at play against Indonesia, the USSR, and South America, why would it be such a leap to assume it could be used against a standing socialist power like China?
Anti-communist resistance and the Hong Kong struggle
As U.S. left organizations like DSA deliberate on the correct response to increasing tensions, some voices have sought to steer DSA away from its democratically-developed position of principally focusing on opposition to the U.S.’ new Cold War. Publications like Lausan and New Bloom, which are not DSA outlets but include some DSA members as contributors, as well as DSA’s Tempest Collective, have served as a platform for members who have levied direct and public criticism of elected DSA leaders or other members just for attending events with speakers like Vijay Prashad or the Qiao Collective.
These critiques ramped up with opposition to DSA’s national adoption of the internationalism Resolution 14 (which passed with over 65% of convention delegates voting in favor) as well as a recent push to have DSA sign on to a statement opposing the intimidation of Civil Society Organizations in Hong Kong (which failed by similar margins within the International Committee during an open vote in the Asia/ Oceania Subcommittee and the IC-wide China Working Group).
Founded in 2014 amidst a Taiwanese student movement opposing a trade agreement with China, New Bloom magazine claims to offer “radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific.” New Bloom is largely a platform for Diplomat and Washington Post contributor Brian Hioe to write on topics like the “Statist Nationalism” of Disney’s Mulan and the “Manichaeism with Chinese Characteristics” of the Qiao Collective’s recent event — though occasional guest contributors write pieces like one comparing and contrasting Taiwanese and Palestinian conditions of “statelessness.”
Hioe is a former Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, an organization which publishes the annual “China Human Rights Report” and sponsors international conferences like “International Conference on the Deterioration of Human Rights and Crisis of Nationalism in China,” and “Collaboration and Strengthening the Tibet Movement.”
Lausan’s contributor list is more varied, though Hioe has provided support to the fledgling outlet, including serving as its domain registrant according to Whois records. Lausan publishes a variety of pieces that take a “from below” analysis of conditions in Asia, which often means a “Neither Washington Nor Beijing” analysis that posits the Chinese state as an assumed enemy of its own working class.
Familiar strategies of “nonviolent resistance”
Throughout the 2019 Hong Kong protests triggered by the proposed extradition bill, connections to a Gene Sharp style “nonviolent overthrow” strategy were easy to make. Hong Konger Fred Chan Ho-Fai wrote the New York Times article “A Hong Kong Protester’s Tactic: Get the Police to Hit You” which outlines the “Marginal Violence Theory” behind the protesters’ escalating tactics:
“Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to respond with unnecessary force, as happened on June 12, then the public will feel disapproval and disgust for the authorities. The protesters should thoughtfully escalate nonviolence, maybe even resort to mild force, to push the government to the edge. That was the goal of many people who surrounded and barricaded police headquarters for hours on June 21.”
One article in New Bloom from Ting-An Lin, entitled “Understanding The Feasibility Of A Non-Violent Movement Against Dictatorship in Hong Kong,” directly connects the actions of the protests in Hong Kong to Gene Sharp’s philosophy of “nonviolent” regime change. Railing against the “extreme oppression of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)”, the author writes on the goal of “overturning” the dictatorship of communist rule.
“Gene Sharp’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy describes non-violent protest, though in the book he uses the term “political defiance,” as the means to overturn a dictatorship and establish a democracy,” Lin writes. “Sharp is a pioneer of research into non-violent protest. Apart from theoretical analysis of non-violent resistance, in his book, Non-Violent Action Now, he elaborates on 198 forms of non-violent protest. This book has been translated into many languages and it is said that it has been influential on many protest movements, leading Sharp to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
In dealing with the question of what comes after the overthrow of the Chinese state, Lin writes that “if the aims of the movement are understood as to overthrow an authoritarian government and establish a democratic system of government, one can say that the principles of democracy are realized in the movement itself. This will constitute an important basis for the establishment of a democratic system of government.”
Lin’s assumption here is that the movement that succeeded in weakening the regime via decentralized resistance will somehow be strong enough to seize power in the resulting vacuum. Following the logic of Sharp, the replacing of a communist state with a liberal capitalist one is wholly compatible with the democratic fight against “authoritarianism” — and indeed the most likely outcome in any of the scenarios that involve the end of the Communist Party of China.
HKCTU and the fetishization of “independence”
The throughlines of the From Dictatorship to Democracy blueprint are also apparent in these outlets’ reaction to the recent dissolution of the “independent” Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), a labor union group which had come under fire for political activity in support of the 2014 and 2019 protest movements. Proponents of the HKCTU claim that it was a necessary counterbalance to the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), a larger group which has more formal links to the Communist Party of China.
The union’s political work grew ever closer in allegiance to the anti-Beijing movement, with the HKCTU calling for general strikes to support the 2014 and 2019 protests and taking an increasingly hard-line against mainland influence in Hong Kong. And while there’s little argument that HKCTU has performed positive economic struggle (including a dock worker’s strike that resulted in an almost-10% pay increase for several hundred workers), the question of “independence” is assumed as a positive factor here in a way that deserves further interrogation. One would be well-served to remember the way these “independent” groups can serve as a wedge for U.S. empire and are crucial to the U.S.’ regime change strategy; for example, CIA contacts funded striking labor union and trade groups in Chile to create a pretext for the 1973 coup against the socialist Allende government.
In a Lausan article entitled “What the global labor movement can learn from the repression of Hong Kong unions,” Promise Li writes repeatedly on the need for “independent” trade unionism, explicitly with a goal of combatting the Communist party’s perceived domination in Hong Kong Affairs.
Li writes that “the CCP also understands that the only way in which its power can be challenged en masse is not through an isolated Hong Kong independence movement, nor the lobbying efforts of anti-communist diaspora dissidents, but the power of everyday workers to connect across the workplace and borders to counter its deep reach at the point of production.”
The word “independent” shows up throughout Li’s piece, and though he attempts to paint HKFTU’s role as a moderating or depoliticizing force, there’s little discussion about a political alternative to communist party power, just non-communist worker organizing as a decentralized attempt to counter the CPC’s influence.
Acknowledging that the alliance with pan-democratic movements and increasing political activity “has its costs” in sidelining the economic struggle, Li also discusses that HKCTU “has openly received NED funding—a US-backed institution associated with many destabilizing US imperial initiatives in the global South.” Indeed, this relationship with outside labor and “human rights” NGOs seemed to be the major issue in the increasing pressure on HKCTU to disband, with many pro-Beijing outlets and state media calling attention to the links between the labor union and the outside NGO network centered around U.S. empire.
In the lead-up to the 2021 DSA Convention, a Tempest magazine piece, also by Li, repeated this focus on “democratic minority or non-state elements” for solidarity, contrasting mass organizations with minority organizations that are perceived to be operating properly “democratically.” In this piece we see democracy again reduced to perceived “independence,” calling for the need for “independent, democratic decision.” As Lenin scoffs in “Left-Wing” Communism in response to similar lines of thinking from the German left opposition: “(independent of proletarian state power!)”
Civil Society networks and the HKCTU
Some DSA members recently started an effort to have the organization sign onto the “Joint Statement Condemning the Intimidation of Civil Society Organisations in Hong Kong,” a call to publicly oppose intimidation of the HKCTU as well as the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, another NGO which lists as its goal to “[Support] a democratic & independent labour movement in Asia.” I performed a random sampling of 25 organizations who signed onto the statement, and it included:
3 Environmental and Supply Chain NGOs like the Czech NaZemi and the International Campaign for Responsible Technology
2 Human Rights organizations, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Solidaritas Perempuan in Indonesia
5 groups that seem to have been spun up to do advocacy work directly in response to the escalation of tensions in Hong Kong, including two outposts of “Students for Hong Kong” that host events like the “Rally Against Authoritarianism” at Berkeley’s campus
8 Labor support NGOs like the Malaysian Labour Law Reform Coalition and the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum
4 labor organizing formations like Worker's Initiative Kolkata and Kilusang Mayo Uno in the Philippines, which seem to be more organic in formation
Interestingly, this group includes the UK’s UNISON, which recently provided last-minute support to a Labour party rule change giving MPs more power in selecting Labour leadership
The sample also included the Socialist Party of Malaysia, the Anglican Sungkonghoe University, and Lausan Collective.
It’s hardly deep conspiratorial thinking to see in this list the outlines of a familiar apparatus: a diffuse network of global nonprofit organizations and purpose built advocacy groups, alongside a few organic labor and socialist formations.
The DSA International Committee's membership in the Asia/ Oceania Subcommittee and the IC-wide China Working Group ultimately voted 11-31 against signing onto the statement, with internal discussion focusing on the utility of making a statement on the matter, as well as some of the considerations discussed in this piece.
Forging our own path against U.S. imperialism
In an article on #ForceTheVote earlier this year, I described the social media fervor around the call for a procedural floor vote for Medicare for All as “the natural outcome of a contradiction between unrooted apparatuses: a media ecosystem (Dore and friends) and a political apparatus (progressive/socialist Congressional Representatives) both unaccountable to any formal organizational project — with a formal organizational project (DSA) that has failed to bring either apparatus under its direct marshalling.”
Though I’ve put the principal focus of this article on analyzing the “independent media” ecosystem of the pro-regime-change left, it should be noted that many of the pitfalls of an unrooted media apparatus can be applied to “opposing” organizations, including the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, the Qiao Collective, or other groups which have joined DSA in making a call against the new Cold War with China.
For example, though I personally admire the work being done by Tricontinental, particularly their report on the eradication of extreme poverty in China, one could easily levy similar “critiques by association” of connections to the global nonprofit industrial complex. Vijay Prashad has appeared on the podcast of openDemocracy and the institute received $13M in funding in the 2019 calendar year from unknown sources.
Media groups like the Qiao Collective and the Grayzone which advance a narrative critical of U.S. intervention in China can also have the issues that come with not being connected to an actual mass organization. They can misrepresent nuanced issues to score political points (for example claiming that HKCTU was “founded and funded” by the NED), and their reflexive anti-U.S. empire analysis can sometimes take them in strange directions like opposing vaccine mandates.
All of these “ecosystems of alliances” have their own material basis; they are all rooted in different forms of struggle and class composition. This is a reality that we will never escape from. What we must build is the muscle to to take a critical view of the landscape before us as part of the socialist project of capturing and radically transforming the apparatuses of power towards democratic ends. And these questions are not abstract. As Lizzie M, Michael S, and I wrote for DSA SF’s Fog City Rose:
“The challenges faced by countries fighting for socialism and against U.S. imperialism are ones that we as U.S. leftists will need to reckon with if we are ever to build a movement large enough to capture state power and develop a working-class apparatus for social development. Though the role of these global movements in socialist transformation is yet to be determined, we cannot simply prejudge that role and cut ourselves off from the global movement to dismantle and disempower U.S. empire.
And it’s difficult to imagine the fledgling U.S. left’s efforts playing out differently. Had Bernie Sanders won the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, he would be seated with a confusing and contradictory mandate from the people of the U.S. A significant minority of Americans believe abortion should be illegal, still, and the specter of a Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade looms over Washington. In parts of the U.S. new laws threaten abortion access with less direct but still threatening enforcement mechanisms. Meanwhile, parts of the country’s police force remain controlled by violent gangs. There are socialist organizations within the U.S. that claim positions both to DSA’s left and to its right. What steps should a socialist party building power take here? How would it navigate internal and external challenges from those who would sooner see millions dead than a single successful socialist project?”
These are the questions that we can answer through a well-formed, democratic, and critical analysis of conditions around the world as we work to build a movement against U.S. imperialism here in the belly of the beast.