Victims testimony in the link. Left the Party a few months ago but refrained from posting about it out of “discipline/not wanting to hurt the movement” on hexbear dot net but this shit is simply beyond the pale. anyone thinking about joining a socialist org deserves to know about this horrific garbage.
Obviously there’s no quick fix to patriarchy orremoved culture but the rotten, misogynistic, apologist, opportunist Becker clique has got to go if this org is going to be anything more than a hotbed of abuse and exploitation. I genuinely loved and respected my rank and file comrades, this shit makes my blood boil.
Just want to share a tid bit about Brian Becker. My first introduction to him was on Sputnik Radio’s Loud and Clear podcast, where he co-hosted with John Kiraikou… The former CIA officer, who in 2007 seems to have just blurted out in an interview that the CIA was waterboarding people during the Bush administration… He left the CIA in 2004, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of the torture. Gina Haspel was directing the program at the time, and so she was implicated, she was later Appointed deputy director under Trump 1, and director under Biden. Kiraikou served 2 years in prison for that interview. The thing is, in the podcast he always portrayed himself a having been a whistle blower, and that he was trying to take down Haspel like he was some kind of hero. I’m not clear on the details of the case though.
At any rate, he gets this co-host gig with Brian Becker on a explicitly socialist podcast produced under the umbrella of “Russian State Media” Sputnik Radio. Brian Becker is an old head activist, I’ve heard him many times talk about protests he participated in back in the 80s or so.
Both of them offered pretty principled takes as far as I could tell at the time, but it’s been years since they cancelled the show and parted ways.
But what the fuck is a founder of a revolutionary ML party doing, chumming it up with an “former” CIA officer? It’s weird imo.
While I’m in no way saying that the PSL has any particular claim to being “the real communists”, it feels a bit weird to immediately try and retroactively discredit them as leftists in the wake of this. Yes, real leftist orgs can absolutely have predators hiding among their ranks, just like any other organization can, and instead of implying that this sort of thing could never happen to us true leftists, we should remain alert to this possibility.
I’ve heard words to those effect spoken in at least one leftist org.
delusional
I don’t think we need to reach for “CIA assets” as an explanation for PSL’s limitations. Its far more simply explained by: “demcent organization has ossified leadership clique”. Tale as old as american communism.
Yeah, I don’t think Becker is an asset, he’s done decades of legit activism with Code Pink, About Face, and other good groups. But there’s def assets placed in every org, you can’t avoid it. It’s just so weird that there’s any relationship there at all.
While true, it is still super weird that a higher up in a communist party is pals with a “former” CIA officer.
Its not weird if Becker is more focused on building his independent media personality. Its not like sputnik news is a bastion of communist sympathy either. Dude sounds like Glen Greenwald mixed with Lyndon LaRouche.
Yeah, the show is defunct and now it’s just him and the producers from it putting on The Socialist Program podcast.
Or Russian communism.