Thread by @P_Kallioniemi

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American pro-Russian propagandist, communist and "journalist", Caleb T. Maupin (@RealCalebMaupin). He's best-known for running a communist, cult-like, pro-Russian "think tank", Center for Political Innovation.

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Caleb comes from a small, fanatic and ever decreasing group of people who call themselves communists. His activism goes back to at least to early 2000s, when he was active in the Workers World Party, and was publishing articles for their newspaper, the Workers World.

2/24

Maupin's also launched an organization called The Center for Political Innovation, or CPIUSA for short. According to Caleb, its mission is to "educate and foster visions for a future beyond capitalism".

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In reality, it's an outlet for pushing anti-US and anti-NATO narratives. It also shows many totalitarian regimes, including Russia and China, in a positive light.

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Caleb's spoken in a praising manner about the history of the Communist Party USA that was active in the 1930s and 40s, has spoken in solidarity with communist countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and PRC, and defended the Russian revolution of 1917.

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He's also very active in organizing various events and demonstrations. In Mar 2022, our favorite "MAGA Communist" Jackson "Z" Hinkle gave a talk on the topic of "Ukraine Crisis & US Media Deceptions" at Caleb's conference in Austin.

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In Aug 2022, Maupin and his colleagues opened a CPIUSA in Chicago in the most grandiose manner - the members of the club/cult held a sign with the letter "Z" and a flag with the symbol of the puppet state DPR. Also, a flag of China and of the US were present. According to...
7/24

..the organizers,the event was held "in support of Stalin,Putin,Mao,Z-occupation and separatists in Ukraine". In an interview to Newsweek, Maupin stated that "We at CPI celebrate the great moment in history where Russia, China and America stood together to defeat fascism."

8/24

At the same event, they gave Tara Reade, best-known for her accusations against Joe Biden for sexual harassment, received an award of some sorts.

Maupin's organization was dropped from the tankie gathering, War Against the War Machine, but was listed as its collaborator.

9/24

In a now removed post on Medium, Caleb's "former comrades" speak against him, claiming that "Caleb paid a member for sex who he knew was economically desperate, and then went on to push them out of the group and slander them."

10/24

They also blamed him for running CPIUSA in a cult-like manner. Based on one of these rather young ex-members of the organization, Maupin is "extremely persistent, pushy, wants to isolate you and he wants you to take huge risks with your employment/family...

11/24

...relationships to show your devotion and commitment to his group, and that he sends text message essays about why you’re wrong and bad."

Based on many of the ex-members speaking against Caleb, CPIUSA tries to recruit young people to work for their cause.

12/24

Keaten Mansfield, who allegedly worked/works as the Editor in Chief for "CPIUSA Media Dept.", told how Caleb tried to get an 18-year-old to "give up his old life, move to Chicago, forgo college, drop his plans, and just commit to CPI full-time".

13/24

Keaten continued that "This fits Caleb’s pattern of attempting to split young people from their families, take advantage of them to more easily manipulate them, and condition them for his cult."

Even fake news blogger Max Blumenthal has come out and called Caleb a "LARPer".14/24

Apparently Caleb's goal was to make enough money from CPIUSA so that he can quit his correspondent work he does for RT. Allegedly he'd also said that he will in a "compound" in the woods where he would live with "the kids," possibly referring to young CPIUSA members.

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Caleb's communism is a weird mixture of fighting against the "woke mind virus", "deep state" and "liberalism". He's a fervent opponent of the so-called "cancel culture" of the left and he was also a critic of the BLM movement.

16/24

Maupin can be positioned to the very far edges of the left, to the point in the horseshoe where it meets the far-right. Like Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, Maupin also promotes the idea of forgetting the political "left" and "right", prioritizing the common...

17/24

...goals of bashing the US "neoliberals", the "woke culture", and the NATO. This unification of far-right and far-left has been ongoing for a while, and some have named it accurately the "the red-brown horseshoe alliance".

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Some have referred to Maupin as a "nazbol", referring to the National Bolshevik movement started in 1993 by Eduard Limonov, Aleksandr Dugin and few others. Dugin's 1997 book, Foundations of Geopolitics (FoG) provided a blueprint for Russia's imperialist endeavors,...

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...and some have stated that he's behind the grand plan of invading countries like Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine. In 2018, Maupin had a chat with Dugin where they talked about various topics ranging from "Eurasianism" to fascism.

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If you want to torture yourself, you can find the talk here:

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To conclude, Maupin seems to try and create a cult-like communist movement that's not actually communist but fascist. To do this, he recruits and manipulates young people, while moonlighting as "correspondent" for RT. As ridiculous as Caleb's efforts to most of us ...

22/24

..Westerners may seem, they're often used for propaganda purposes in propaganda outlets like Russia's Sputnik, RT, Ruptly, and China's Global Times and People's Republic. In Apr 2023, Global Times interviewed the "ideological leader of CPIUSA", and in this interview Caleb..
23/24

gave a pretty grim report on the state of the US: " the US is falling apart - our trains are derailing, our water is not being properly purified, our power plants are collapsing, our roads and bridges are crumbling."

24/24

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