Caleb Maupin
Join the party! Communism |
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Opiates for the masses |
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“”Communist Billionaires- No contradiction!
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—Caleb Maupin[1] |
—Caleb Maupin[2]:1:36 |
“”Wow, wow! [Any criticism of him is] just a pack of lies! You know, Caleb's anti-racist, Caleb's anti-imperialist. Caleb, you know, Caleb is one of the smartest, most well-informed people about Marxism I've ever heard. People LOVE my lectures and all of that!
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—Caleb Maupin, upon being "cancelled by the fake left"[3] |
Caleb "Borger King" "Spanky Tankie" Maupin (1988–) is an American Nazbol "patriotic socialist", cult leader,[4] and YouTuber. He is a frequent contributor to RT and Press TV, having previously been a correspondent for both.[5][6] After some years as an activist in the Workers World Party, his career seemed to begin in earnest during the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. He dramatically claimed to Press TV in 2012 that OWS was going to escalate "into a civil war against the 1%".[7][8]
He has since become many tankies' journalist-of-choice. Incidentally, Donald Trump also called Maupin his "favorite reporter" in an offhand 2016 comment while taking questions from the press. Maupin proceeded to dedicate a whole video to analyzing the interaction.[9][10] Currently, Maupin leads the Center for Political Innovation (CPI), a political organization he founded. He was once "expelled" from the group by its executive committee due to alleged sex-pest activity, leading to its temporary "dissolution" of sorts, but the CPI reformed since he legally owns it.
He is featured as a character in a mod for the grand strategy video game Hearts of Iron IV, for some reason.[11]
Early years[edit]
He states that he first read the Communist Manifesto when he was in fifth grade (i.e. ~10 years old), though couldn't understand it.[12] He grew up in rural Ohio, reaching his teenage years during the Dubya era while in a conservative environment that was supportive of the Iraq War.[13] He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College (which is also in Ohio).[14][15]:description Maupin appears to have gotten his start as an activist in the late 2000s with the Workers World Party (WWP); among the earliest accounts of his activism is a puff piece in the WWP's newspaper about a college debate he took part in as a member of the youth branch for Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST), itself a division of the WWP.[14]
Beliefs[edit]
He believes in two main human drives, the tendency to create and the tendency to destroy. In this vein he founded the CPI on an ideology he calls "the City-Building Tendency". It has likewise just about become a running gag for him to label his opponents "Malthusians" and "degrowth supporters": supposedly those are the "vandals" trying to destroy all his great cities. He has taken this to a comical extent, sometimes claiming that the resources sustaining human population growth and luxury are literally unlimited. This once succeeded, somehow, in making Jason Unruhe (a Maoist–Third Worldist he debated) the voice of reason.[16][17][18] Maupin's detachment from material reality in this way is hypocritical since he often cites Friedrich Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific to attack his left-wing opponents as "utopian", i.e. idealist.[note 1]
Maupin holds up China as "the greatest success story" and "the cutting edge of Marxism", telling his viewers they should read the works of Xi Jinping.[21][22] In that vein, he's sometimes promoted "socialism with American characteristics" (somewhat of a synonym for "patriotic socialism"), an apparent borrowing from the term socialism with Chinese characteristics, which refers to the Chinese state's governing philosophy. It's also somewhat comparable to the ideological branding done by the Communist Party USA to present communism as "
20th 21st century Americanism".
Religion[edit]
Raised in a Christian background and briefly having previously been atheist when he was younger, currently he is a Christian socialist.[23] His actual denomination, if he adheres to one, is not clear, although he states that he's not Catholic.[24] A 2021 book edited by Maupin and another CPI member, consists mainly of transclusions from the Bible, MLK Jr., and Daniel Ortega (president of Nicaragua), aiming to demonstrate that "Jesus is a socialist".[25] He occasionally laces religious references into his lectures, speeches, etc.
He has argued that "atheism, and anti-moralism, and what they call philosophical irrationalism is the religion of the ruling class."[23] To Maupin's credit, at least, he states he is not in favor of a theocracy and any socialist movement of his would be inclusive towards people of a diverse range of religious beliefs, including atheists, Jews, and Muslims.[23]
Zionism and Jews[edit]
Maupin is an anti-Zionist, having written a whole book about it: Satan at the Fountainhead: The Israel Lobby & the Financial Crisis (2015). This book, which seems to have been the first one he ever published, was accused of pushing disguised antisemitism within its anti-Zionist approach.
"Synthetic left"[edit]
He has a tendency to describe his more left-wing opponents as being of the "synthetic left" or "fake left". He tends to place people he perceives as New Left or postmodernist sorts in this category. He sometimes claims the "synthetic left" is literally funded or organized by the US government. An example is when he claimed this about Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2018, essentially saying they are just a government-backed tool to destroy the Nation of Islam.[26] Some of his claims in this department are a bit more on the plausible side, such as his allusions to the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom and its promotion of certain types of art (see: "modern art and architecture § was the CIA responsible?" for more on that).
BreadTube beef[edit]
Maupin has had a longstanding dislike of the left-wing YouTubers that make up BreadTube, whom he often calls "synthetic leftists". Best as anybody can tell, this began in 2020 when Maupin debated Vaush on the topic of tankies.[27] Vaush took the position that tankies do not value the same things that most of the left does and, as such, should only be viewed as comrades under extreme caution — while Maupin compared Vaush to Joseph McCarthy and said he wanted Albert Einstein to be punched in the face by Antifa.
A few months later, Thought Slime, another left-wing YouTuber, made a video criticizing comments that Joti Brar made about transgender people during an interview with Maupin.[28] Maupin uploaded a response to this video where he defended Brar, along with Louis Farrakhan for some reason, and criticized Thought Slime for having "slime" in his background and therefore not caring about beauty or something.[29] This video went on to earn a response from Thought Slime[30] along with The Serfs[31] and BadEmpanada.[32]
In between Thought Slime's original video and his uploading of his response to Caleb, The Serfs released a video on tankies more generally in which they criticized Maupin for engaging in various dog whistles common among the far right along with ignoring the impact the energy sector has on our worsening planet, all while acknowledging Caleb does make valid points regarding the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.[33]
His book[edit]
In 2021, Maupin published the book BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism[34] in which he criticizes several major figures in BreadTube. The book is full of various distortions about the people Maupin talks about. For example, regarding Vaush, Maupin writes "He also baited this author for allegedly being 'anti-American', which is a very odd accusation for a supposed Marxist and Anarcho-Communist to make."[34]:19 However, as Vaush later explained during a debate with one of Maupin's fans,[35] Vaush did not take an issue with Maupin being anti-American but instead criticized Maupin for not having any other ideology outside of dislike for the United States. In other words, Vaush's criticism of Maupin was not that he disliked America, but that this seemed to be all his ideology consisted of.
Regarding Thought Slime, Maupin makes this bizarre point:
How many of Matt’s mostly teenage and largely transgender audience have actually committed suicide after stewing with Matt for hours on their dark feelings? The answer is of course unknown.[34]:24
This comment is especially odd not just for the obvious reasons, but also because Thought Slime has specifically talked about people telling him his content made them reconsider committing suicide and saved their lives.[36]
Foreign connections[edit]
Maupin's most obvious foreign connections are found in his past as a correspondent working for RT (previously called Russia Today) and Press TV, which are news networks operated by the Russian and Iranian governments respectively. This section describes some of his other links abroad.
Russia[edit]
In 2018, Maupin spoke at the "Alternatives to Globalization Conference" while a couple feet away from Aleksandr Dugin,[26] an infamous "National Bolshevik" (i.e. Russian third-positionist of sorts) and Eurasianist (a prominent cultural assimilationist ideology among Russian conservatives). Dugin, in turn, has connections to numerous Russian government officials through his organization, the International Eurasian Movement.[37] Maupin's attendance at the conference (seated next to Dugin, in front of the flag of the International Eurasian Movement) and Dugin's apparent approval of Maupin's statements are the most glaring reason that some label Maupin himself a "red-brown."
Iran[edit]
Strangely, Maupin was involved in an international maritime incident in 2015, in which he was onboard an Iranian ship that was carrying cargo to Yemen.[38][39][40] The attestations of Maupin (apparently the only American on the ship[41]) and a handful of other activists onboard were central to a factual dispute over whether the vessel was being escorted by Iranian warships. It was also suspected that the ship may have been carrying a supply of weapons for the Houthi rebels, although this was not confirmed.[42][43] By Maupin's retelling, the port (at Al Hudaydah) was bombed the day they were meant to arrive there, though it's not clear whether that supposed bombing ever actually happened.[41] The Iranian ship ended up in Djibouti (a tiny African country) instead. Any humanitarian aid on-board was surrendered to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), who were being allowed to deliver such aid to Yemen via the same port.[44][45][46] He adds that this incident led to him personally attending a speech by the Grand Ayatollah of Iran, Ali Khamenei.[41]
Center for Political Innovation[edit]
CPI, also known as the Center for Political Innovation, is an organization Mapuin founded and runs.
Sex-pestering[edit]
“”Sexual frustration seems to be a big component of Left pessimism, as its most infamous recruit demonstrates.[34]:144
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On August 20, 2022, a post was made to the website Medium made up of the testimony of former members of the organization, arguing that he had engaged in various abuses of power, including sexual harassment, turning members against one another, lying about people who fell out of his good graces, and engaging in the same tactics of actual cult leaders. One particularly heinous story sees Maupin getting a member of CPI fired from their job, forcing them to go into sex work in order to survive, only for Maupin to hire this person as a sex worker later on.[4]
Easily, the most infamous part of the article is its reference towards spanking. You see, Maupin has an obsession with spanking, which he had previously attempted to frame as academic in nature despite it being a fetish. According to the testimonies, Maupin would regularly attempt to rope random people, especially women, into conversations about spanking for the purpose of masturbating to them later.
The CPI's executive committee voted to "unconditionally expel" Maupin from the very group he founded due to the allegations.[48][49] Subsequently, they also unanimously voted to "dissolve the organization in its entirety".[50] Because the CPI is registered under his name, however, it later reformed again under his leadership.[51] Still, Maupin remained quiet for some months between the controversy and the group's reformation.
On November 6, 2022, Maupin uploaded a video where he discussed the allegations against him. However, instead of taking accountability or even arguing against what was said, he instead does little more than insult those who came forward and misrepresents the claims made in the original Medium post.[2] Sometime the same month, the original post was removed by Medium, due to a policy on sharing private phone conversations without consent.[52]
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
Social media[edit]
Books[edit]
Ever since 2015, he seems to self-publish a new book on a roughly annual basis.
- Satan at the Fountainhead: The Israel Lobby & the Financial Crisis (2015)
- Oil and the Global Capitalist Crisis (2016)
- The Rise and Fall of the U. S. Communist Party (2016)
- The 2016 Elections and the Crisis of American Liberalism (2017)
- Getting Rich Without Capitalism: America's Way Out (2018)
- City Builders And Vandals In Our Age (2019)
- Kamala Harris & The Future of America: An Essay in Three Parts (2020)
- BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism (2021)
- Jesus is a Socialist (2021), primarily transclusion from other people's works, rather than original writing.
- The Ideological Foundations of the City-Building Tendency (2022)
- Where is America Going?: Marxism, MAGA and the Coming Revolution (2023)
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Even considering space colonization, we are likely limited to the Local Group
of galaxies (or, some roughly similar limitation) unless we can exploit faster-than-light travel (which is entirely hypothetical). There is no other way to do so due to, basically, the exponential expansion of the universe pulling galactic groups apart from each other.[19] The Local Group is still quite large, but it is not unlimited. Also, "mere" interstellar travel
is insanely resource-expensive. There are also a number of very extreme problems
with interstellar travel which would require addressing,[20] although it is at least (most likely) physically possible to eventually overcome them with rational planning.
References[edit]
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (March 19, 2018). "Communist Billionaires- No contradiction!". Facebook.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Caleb Maupin (November 6, 2022). "Time To Finally Talk About What Happened...". YouTube.
- ↑ I survived being cancelled by the Fake Left, you can too! We need strong socialists by Caleb Maupin Aug 14, 2021 YouTube
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 August 20, 2022. "Caleb Maupin's Former Comrades Speak Out, His Abuses Must Stop!". Medium, via the Internet Archive. (Second archive). (Third archive). (Fourth archive).
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (June 19, 2014). "US observers report on Syrian election at UN". PressTV, clipped onto YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (January 19, 2021). "Adverse effects in California concern vaccine optimists". RT, clipped onto YouTube.
- ↑ John Hudson (May 31, 2012). "Occupy Wall Street Is Waging a Civil War in the US". The Atlantic.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (June 1, 2012). "'Civil War Against The 1%' Says Communist". PressTV, clipped onto YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (January 2, 2017). "Is Caleb Maupin Donald Trump's Favorite Reporter? Watch The Clip, Decide For Yourself". YouTube.
- ↑ Michael Crowley (May/June 2016). "The Kremlin's Candidate". Politico Magazine.
- ↑ "Characters / Twilight On The Anthropocene United States". TV Tropes.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (August 13, 2022). "Learning from the Communist Manifesto". YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (June 11, 2018). "Caleb Maupin replies to a Third Worldist". YouTube.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Tyneisha Bowens (March 16, 2008). "FIST member defends socialism", archived December 17, 2014. Workers World.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (May 3, 2017)."Anti-Israel Jews outside the White House". YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (December 20, 2018). "Marxism is about growth!". YouTube.
- ↑ Jason Unruhe (September 15, 2021). "Big words from a guy who dog whistles to fascists and lives in a fantasy about infinite resources and a 'socialist' China. Material conditions were abandoned almost a century ago." Twitter.
- ↑ Jason Unruhe (January 1, 2021). "Socialism and billionaires: An Unruhe/Maupin Live Stream". Maoist Rebel News, on YouTube.
- ↑ Oliver Kimmance (July 29, 2021). "The limits of human exploration: Problems and solutions to cosmic space travel". Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.
- ↑ Nick Beckstead (June 22, 2014). "Will we eventually be able to colonize other stars? Notes from a preliminary review". Oxford University, Future of Humanity Institute.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (May 20, 2018). "Xi Jinping & Chinese Communist Party are the cutting edge of Marxism". YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (November 30, 2017). "I love One Belt, One Road! China has a great plan!". YouTube.
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 (August 20, 2023). "Caleb Maupin on 'Godless Communism'". Strange Bedfellows Podcast, clipped via YouTube.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (December 26, 2022). "I'm not Catholic. ;)". Twitter. (Archived).
- ↑ Caleb Maupin, Keaten Mansfield (September 19, 2021). "Jesus is a Socialist". Center for Political Innovation.
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 "Caleb Maupin speaks next to Aleksandr Dugin at Alternatives To Globalization Conference in 2018". The Internet Archive.
- ↑ Are Tankies Comrades? Debating Caleb Maupin
- ↑ Fake Materialism for Real Transphobes
- ↑ "Thought Slime" Serves Imperialism - A Different Kind of Socialism
- ↑ Abandoning counter-revolutionary SLIME and adopting Maupin-thought!
- ↑ Caleb Maupin VS Thought Slime (nazbol? tankie? reductionist?)
- ↑ Caleb Maupin Embarrasses Himself in Incoherent Response to Thoughtslime
- ↑ Tankies: The Documentary (a dumpster fire deep dive)
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism by Caleb Maupin
- ↑ GETTING SO MAD THAT *I* HANG UP | Debating a Tankie Viewer
- ↑ Having a little meltdown (CW: Suicidal ideation)
- ↑ Andreas Umland (May 15, 2009). "Russia's Creeping Fascism". openDemocracy.
- ↑ (May 17, 2015). "Iranian ship carries aid and activists into waters off Yemen". Reuters.
- ↑ Deirdre Griswold (May 20, 2015). "Let the Iranian relief ship pass!". Workers World.
- ↑ Caleb Maupin (May 12, 2015). "Why I'm aboard Rescue Ship". Mehr News Agency.
- ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 Caleb Maupin (December 14, 2018). "Why do leftists burn the American Flag?". Facebook.
- ↑ Jonathan Saul (May 19, 2015). "Iran aid vessel not escorted by Iranian warships - activists. Reuters.
- ↑ Lolita C. Baldor (May 19, 2015). "Iran warships escort cargo vessel toward Yemen". Military Times. The Associated Press.
- ↑ Jonathan Saul (May 22, 2015). "Iran's Yemen-bound aid ship docks in Djibouti, WFP to deliver aid cargo". Reuters.
- ↑ Aiswarya Lakshmi (May 23, 2015). "Yemen-bound Aid Ship Docks in Djibouti". MarineLink.
- ↑ (May 13, 2015). "Yemen conflict: Aid effort begins as truce takes hold". BBC News.
- ↑ Totally not a fascist btw
- ↑ (August 21, 2022). "An important update from the Center for Political Innovation". Center for Political Innovation, via Twitter.
- ↑ (August 21, 2022). "Statement on the Allegations of Abuse & Sexual Misconduct Leveled Against CPI Director Caleb Maupin". Maintrend News. Center for Political Innovation.
- ↑ (August 21, 2022). "...the Center for Political Innovation has unanimously voted to "dissolve the organization in its entirety and all operating facets." Center for Political Innovation, via Twitter.
- ↑ "Center for Political Innovation Inc.". OpenGovNY.
- ↑ (November 23, 2022). "Caleb Maupin's Former Comrades Speak Out, His Abuses Must Stop!" (repost). Libcom, via Anarchist Federation. Quote: "Original blog post hosted on Medium was taken down due to the platform’s policy on sharing phone conversations and direct messages. A living document is maintained on Google Docs."