Otto's War Room (毛派): For whom the bells troll

The following has been submitted to Kasama Project.

Lately Kasama Project has had a lot of Toll messages—most likely from right-wingers. So I decided to do an article on such trolling. First, they may be annoying and detracting from what we are doing, but they may also be a sign that we leftist are being watched by the political right in this country.

It’s hard to say whether we should like this or not. Most of the time the right-wing in this country tries to pretend we don’t exist. That seems to work quite well for stopping the average person from finding out who we are. I know our local newspaper—The Wichita Eagle—routinely avoids mention of right-wing or left-wing groups. They seem determined to avoid using our names. A good example of this is Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church- the right-wing anti-gay organization. Even when they cover something the group does they refused to use their name. It seems they don’t want to give them any free publicity.

So maybe the attention we get from trolls is a sign they feel we have enough of a following that they can’t just ignore us.

As Mao (毛泽东) said:

I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.[1]

I don’t get as many troll messages on my blog; Otto’s War Room. I have received these two messages; the first was a response to an article about the Communist Party of India (Maoist):

Anonymous said...

Naxals sucks and so are those fucking Chinese who baking up them in India. They are motherfucking cowards stoping the growth of India, raping their own women comrades.

And then a comment against abortion:

Lester E. Rees said...

Scott Roeder was a hero! Regardless of the lies you lie-beral communist traitors spew out, Scott Roeder will spend the rest of eternity in Heaven after he dies!!! Praise be to God for compelling Scott Roeder to kill the monster "Doctor" George Tiller!

The Anti-abortion crowd routinely tolls blogs and newspapers. I’m not sure this is proof that my blog gets a lot of attention. They probably don’t care whether I get just a few readers or hundreds.

Kasama gets more readers than my blog and gets way more troll messages. One target of the trolls are those who claim to support Bob Avakian. While some of those messages may be legitimate support of BA, others are clearly fake and designed to divide leftist movements. Here is an example:

Guest - Lenin/Lennon - Posted on Wednesday, Sep 3 2014 6:24:42pm

I think there is a lack of leadership amongst the far left. BA fills that gap.

The clue here is “far left.” We don’t usually use that label and neither does BA and his Revolutionary Communist Party. This slip up lets us know that this person is just trying to stir up hard feelings.

And here is another BA rant—whether they are real or not:

Guest - John - Posted on Sunday, Aug 31 2014 10:24:19pm

Kasama are the biggest trolls of all time. They troll the RCP, and they trolled Nepal posing as the US representatives of the Nepali Maoists. To the oppressed youth of America, hear this Dare to struggle! Dare to win! Follow Bob Avakian

A common approach from the right is to accuse us of avoiding discussion. It not only implies that we “run from discussion” it also re-enforces the idea that we fit into the propaganda mold the right has accused of…relying on censorship.

The following is also about censorship:

Guest - Petey Rodriguez - Posted on Monday, Sep 1 2014 1:08:45am

I find it absolutely hi-larious that you Maobots can't even get along with each other! You guys are always running from discussion. Running from your own shadows! lololol

Some of the comments are outright racist. Not only does the following comment use racism it also tries to tie Kasama to Barack Obama and liberalism…which is absurd:

Guest - Petey Garcia

It's very clear by now to anyone paying attention that this Ferguson thing is being promoted and controlled by the Federal Government. Notice there are multiple Obama administration officials at Brown's funeral. Notice the involvement of the Attorney General and the likely move to force a prosecution of the cop with no evidence. Notice the CEO of Twitter and other leftist billionaires' direct participation. Notice Hillary Clinton's comments. It's all much ado about nothing because the evidence is coming out that this is just another case of a white man forced to use lethal force to defend himself against an out-of-control black man, something that plays itself out in America ad nauseum and that white people are very familiar with. They know that the media circus around Ferguson is mainly aimed at:

1) Whipping blacks into a frenzy of anger - a key political strategy for the Obama WH and Democrats for whom blacks form a major part of the key base.

2) Increasing Federal oversight and control of local police forces.

3) Challenging right-to-carry, "stand your ground" and "castle laws".. The idea here is to disarm the population. The implication is that whites possessing and/or using guns in self-defence is "racist" and therefore must be stopped, giving the state a monopoly on firearms.

Communists are playing right into this, not seeing that it is a sophisticated political maneuver..

And here is another racist rant:

Guest - Petey Rodrigues - Posted on Monday, Sep 1 2014 1:18:26am

You leftists are stupid. Race shouldn't matter, but you guys are always insisting that it does. You're always trying to push the idea that people of color are "oppressed" and therefore have no free moral agency or responsibility for their actions. That's super racist. Why don't we just cut the crap and talk about how Big Mike was robbing a little old lady 20 minutes before he was shot and how he shattered a cop's eye socket before he got shot. But I guess it's not his fault because in your view as a black man he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. You guys are such cowards you can't even respond because you're afraid. SCARED OF YOUR OWN SHADOWS! Here's some pics:

I didn’t get the pics and even if I did, the mainstream left didn’t use them so why should we?

Here are more attempts to tie Kasama into movements it has nothing to do with and in this case it is Islamic Revolution.

Guest - Petey

Communists support Islam because it is in opposition to Western Civilization and Christianity, which are the real enemies of the Communist movement. The goal is destruction of the West; genocide of it's civilization and wiping out of its Judeo-Christian cultural norms... Therefore Communists support any force which acts to this end, regardless of how "reactionary".. Pragmatism and opportunism are always the keys to victory for the Communist movement, as history richly shows.

When my first book was published, my publisher told me that the worst publicity is no publicity at all. Silence is the worst thing that an author—and I will ad—any writer or organization that uses writers—such as Kasama project.

So maybe trolls aren’t the worst thing that could happen to us. Maybe the troll’s friends will look at our site and that might be a good thing.

- សតិវ អតុ

[1] To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing (May 26, 1939), first pocket ed., p. two, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch02.htm