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Bob Avakian

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Robert Bruce Avakian (born March 7, 1943)[1][2] is an American political activist who is the founder and chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP), a group often described as a cult surrounding Avakian.[3] Coming out of the New Left[4] of the 1960s, he is credited with the organization’s ideological framework, "the New Synthesis" or "New Communism".[5]

Bob Avakian
Avakian in 1980
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Incumbent
Assumed office
1975
Preceded byPosition established
Personal details
Born
Robert Bruce Avakian

(1943-03-07) March 7, 1943 (age 81)
Washington D.C., U.S.
Political partyRevolutionary Communist Party, USA (1975–present)
Other political
affiliations		Peace and Freedom Party (1960s)

Early life

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Avakian was born on March 7, 1943, in Washington, D.C., to Ruth and Spurgeon Avakian. His father was an Armenian American lawyer, civil rights activist, and later judge on the Alameda County, California superior court.[1][6][7] After spending his first three years in the Washington metropolitan area, he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence in Berkeley, California.[1][8]

Political activities

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As a young man, Avakian became involved with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement[6] and the Black Panther Party.[4] In 1968, he wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party's publications[9] and in July 1969, he spoke at the Black Panther conference in Oakland, California.[10] By the time that the SDS split into three factions in the summer of 1969, Avakian was a leading member of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II faction, and was their candidate for National Secretary. Although defeated for the top position by Mark Rudd of the faction soon known as the Weather Underground, Avakian was elected to the National Interim Committee.[11] During that period, Avakian was a leading member of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union[12] alongside Leibel Bergman.[13]: 101 

In the early 1970s, Avakian served a prison sentence for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration.[6] He was charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to protest Deng Xiaoping's meeting with Jimmy Carter.[4][14][15] After receiving an arrest warrant, Avakian went to France and applied for political refugee status.[1] In 1980, he gave a speech to 200 protestors in downtown Oakland[16] and his police assault charges were dropped a few years later.[1][4]

In 2005, Avakian published an autobiography, From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist.[1][17] He has been the Revolutionary Communist Party's central committee chairman and national leader since 1979.[16][18] In 2016, the RCP USA and others helped form the organization Refuse Fascism, which called for the removal of Donald Trump.[19]

In August 2020, Avakian released a statement about what he called the "growing threat" of fascism in the United States, calling on supporters to use "every appropriate means of non-violent action" to remove Trump, including voting for Joe Biden for president, while continuing to organize for revolution.[20]

Legacy

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Avakian is a controversial figure. He is viewed by supporters as a revolutionary leader whose body of work has advanced communist theory and represents a "pathway to human emancipation" from the capitalist system.[21][22] He is criticized by detractors for an alleged cult of personality around him,[23][24] which the party has called "lies and slander."[25]

Bibliography

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Books

Films

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James LeGros portrays Avakian in the 1995 Mario Van Peebles film Panther.

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Avakian, Bob (2005). From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist. Insight Press. ISBN 9780976023623.
  2. ^ "Bob Avakian (BA) — Official Biography".
  3. ^ "ABORTION RIGHTS ACTIVISTS CALL NEW GROUP LEADING PROTESTS A FRONT FOR A FAR-LEFT CULT".
  4. ^ a b c d Oppenheimer, Mark (January 27, 2008). "Free Bob Avakian!". Boston Globe.
  5. ^ "A more in-depth introduction to BA's new synthesis of communism". revcom.us. Retrieved December 27, 2017.
  6. ^ a b c Baum, Richard (2010). China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom (1st ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 241. ISBN 9780295800219.
  7. ^ DelVecchio, Rick (February 2, 2002). "'Sparky' Avakian – racism-fighting judge". San Francisco Chronicle.
  8. ^ RNL Show, November 2022. "The Bob Avakian Interviews": Part 1, Part 3
  9. ^ Werkmen, Dirk (March 10, 1968). "Freedom: The Birth of a Party, 1968". Independent Star News. p. 5.
  10. ^ Benson, George S. (March 28, 1972). "Looking Ahead". The Evening Independent. p. 11.
  11. ^ Sale, Kirkpatrick (1974). SDS. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 412, 521, 566, 576, 592. ISBN 0394719654.
  12. ^ Baker, Ross S. (November 22, 1970). "A History of The Weathermen". Express and News.
  13. ^ Elbaum, Max (2002). Revolution in the air : sixties radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London: Verso. ISBN 9781859846179.
  14. ^ Avakian, "Bob Avakian Speaks on the Mao Tsetung Defendants' Railroad and the Historic Battles Ahead", Introduction and pp. 18—21.
  15. ^ Athan G. Theoharis, "FBI Surveillance: Past and Present", Cornell Law Review, Vol. 69 (April 1984); and Peter Erlinder with Doug Cassel, “Bazooka Justice: The Case of the Mao Tse Tung Defendants – Overreaction Or Foreshadowing?”, Public Eye, Vol. II, No. 3&4 (1980), pp. 40—43.
  16. ^ a b "Scores arrested, Injured In May Day Violence". Logansport Pharos-Tribune. UPI. May 2, 1980.
  17. ^ DelVecchio, Rick (April 29, 2005). "Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to communism". San Francisco Chronicle.
  18. ^ Unknown (December 6, 1979). "Communists get year sentence for disruption". The Daily Tar Heel. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. p. 2.
  19. ^ Montgomery, Blake (September 7, 2017). "Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Antifa Network That's Trying To Solidify A Nazi-Punching Movement". BuzzFeed. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
  20. ^ "Statement by Bob Avakian on the immediate situation and the upcoming elections". us3.campaign-archive.com. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  21. ^ DelVecchio, Rick (April 29, 2005). "Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to communism". SFGate. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  22. ^ "Praise and Reviews". Insight-press.com. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  23. ^ "REVCOM Archives". October 29, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  24. ^ Weir (2007). "Maoism". In Weir, Robert (ed.). Class in America: H-P. Greenwood. p. 492. ISBN 978-0313337192. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  25. ^ "Stop the Lies and Slanders: Bob Avakian and the RCP Are the Exact Opposite of a "Cult"!". Revcom.us. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
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