The Importance of Defending Leadership

There were many very important developments in the past week—Biden’s bloody trip to firm up the Middle Eastern butchers under U.S. control… the continued horrors brought on by the virulent campaign to wipe out abortion… the ongoing destruction of the environment… all of which we cover this week.

But the one that may prove to have the most fateful significance was the rapid-fire series of attacks in a number of significant online outlets against Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights and, in particular, the fact that some of its members follow the leadership of Bob Avakian, BA. We go into these attacks in a number of ways in this issue. And we provide orientation for everyone reading this to be able to defend and fight for this leadership. (See the list below, under “Defending and fighting for BA’s revolutionary leadership,” for titles of and links to these articles.) For fight we must.

Society is cleaving apart in turmoil from top to bottom. The old ways of ruling and running things are no longer holding. At such a time in particular, the battle is not over leadership or no leadership; but what kind of leadership, to do what, with what aims, methods and principles.

There are the fascists, with their Dark Ages lunacy and their determination to destroy everything and anything that gets in the way of that; the Democratic Party with all its deception and its desperation to keep this imperialist system going under the rules that served it in the past; there are the forces caught up in the woke madness of trying to impose the rules in what they think of as their own little sanctuaries and sandboxes and attempting to cancel those who won’t abide by those rules (as they are now attempting to cancel BA and the revcoms); or there is in fact Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing, and the revcoms who follow that leadership.

Among those who run and control these media outlets are some who know that, and this is a large part of what is driving this attack. But the people don’t. And it’s on those of us reading this to tell them, even if and when it means serious and, yes, ferocious struggle to do so. In one form or another, this struggle is not going to go away. It is on us to take this up with real urgency and eagerness, and with the calm and confidence that flows out of our understanding of the enemy’s weaknesses, based on two rock-hard truths:

1) that this system is a horror for the vast majority of 7+ billion people in the world and that what is represented by the new communism is in the most fundamental interests of humanity; and

2) that this lashing out comes from a profound sense of that underlying vulnerability on the part of these representatives of capitalism-imperialism.

The articles and videos in this issue provide the tools to understand and spread why BA is under attack, the danger of this attack, and the importance of his leadership; and they provide tools to take on the wrong thinking among the people, as ferociously as needed.

Included in this issue:

* Bob Avakian: A Radically Different Leader—A Whole New Framework for Human Emancipation

* Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution, by Bob Avakian

* Organizing for an Actual Revolution: 7 Key Points

* Defending and fighting for BA’s revolutionary leadership

• Behind the Week of Internet Attacks on Bob Avakian and the Revcoms: Imperialist Fear Mongers and Their Servants
• Haters Who “Don’t Want to Hear About BA” Are Telling on Themselves
• Robert Mackey Dishonestly Demonizes Bob Avakian, Erases Revolution, and Trashes the Truth: WILL THE INTERCEPT STAND BY THIS?, by Sunsara Taylor
• The Intercept Readers Respond
• BA: A Contended Question
• Sunsara Taylor: In Reply to the Reactionary Hit Piece in the Daily Beast: Why I DO Follow Bob Avakian... and Why YOU Should Too
• In the 1960s, the Government Spread Lies to Foment Violent Conflict Within the Movement: The Lessons of That Time Need to Be Learned Anew Today
• A Reply to the “Statement Against RiseUp4AbortionRights”: In Defense of the Emancipation of Humanity and the Leadership We Need to Get There, by the Revcoms.

* Reposted from RiseUp4AbortionRights.org: We Need Honest Debate, Not Unprincipled Attacks: A Further Response to the Attacks On Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights

* January 6 Hearings—and the Violence of This System, by Bob Avakian read / watch

* Webb Telescope: “Galaxies at the Edge of Time!”

* Biden Goes to the Middle East—Provides Vivid Demonstration That: The Democratic Party Is a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

* The Bottomless Cruelty of a Depraved System—Denying Abortion to a 10-Year-Old

* The fight for abortion rights

• Sights & Sounds July 10-17: Protests Across the Country Continue Against Supreme Court Ending the Right to Abortion “This is a fight we will not give up”
• With the Federal Right to Abortion Decimated, There Is No Such Thing As a “Sanctuary State”: Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights Organizes a Mass Rally and March to Oppose a Fascist Attack on Planned Parenthood

* Imperialist Proxy War in Ukraine and the Looming Energy Crisis: This System’s Response? Accelerate the Climate Catastrophe

* From International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now: Defiant, Renowned Iranian Filmmakers Jailed—Global Demand for Their Release

* Reach Out to People to DONATE to the revcom.us Summer Fund Drive