Red Guards (United States)

Red guard demonstration in Austin, Texas.

The Red Guards were a decentralized collection of revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and Gozaloist organizations in the United States of America.

Greatly inspired by the Red Guards during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Statesian Red Guards priorities included a strong opposition to Reformism, a militant focus on direct action and eventually, the start of a protracted people's war against the government, and taking "Anti-revisionist" stances againist groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

History

Formation

The Red Guard movement in the United States first originated in the city of Austin, Texas, when in 2015, Communists that were previously participating in an effort to form a communist party based around Marxist-leninist-maoist ideology split, and instead organized into a smaller group of Gozaloist cadres, known as the Austin Red Guards, whose activities were largely limited to charity and small-scale protests in favor of the lGBTQ+ community, which were commonly done under the slogan "serve the people."

Later on, the Austin Red Guards were able to gain popularity among other Maoists for their vocal denouncement of the widely-disliked Trotskyist party, the International Socialist Organization, among other infamous groups. The Austin Red Guards exploited this popularity that was created from their polemical attacks against opportunists to create similar Gozaloist Red Guard collectives (which largely fuctioned as merely front organizations) in other parts of the United States. These Red Guard organizations were allegedly created through coercively spliting rival Maoist collectives, or if that tactic failed, eliminating them as an effective organization entirely.

Statements of dissolution

On December 17, 2018, a Red Guards Austin (RGA) WordPress account published the statement, "This project has reached its conclusion, we are no more." A Red Guards Los Angeles (RGLA) WordPress published a similar statement on May 17, 2019, stating, "Red Guards Los Angeles, as of today, is no more."

Media

The publications Incendiary News and Tribune of the People have periodically reported on actions occurring around locations of some previous Red Guard activities. However, the actions reported on were carried out by different organizations or carried out anonymously. Photos of graffiti featuring hammers and sickles, Maoist and Gonzaloist slogans, and calls for justice alongside names of people who have been killed by police has been a common feature of the graffiti-related reports.

Incendiary News ceased publishing in 2020 after its former publisher wrote a self-criticism, citing poor leadership and rightist errors, and endorsed Tribune of the People, with the statement, "I call on all readers, all supporters of Incendiary, to all of its Support Committees, to cast away the stained and tattered paper and support the Tribune of the People."

As of 2022, Tribune of the People continued to publish occasional reports about workers movements, international Maoist activities, activities within the United States, and other news. Their most recent post (as of September 2022) was published on February 25, 2022, and consisted of a statement that had been posted by the Red Women’s Committee on DemVolkeDienen.org, regarding the then-recent developments in Ukraine, condemning both the "decade long encirclement of Russia by Yankee-imperialism and its cronies in the NATO" as well as the "attack of imperialist Russia on Ukraine" stating that "It is a sinister lie that this war is in the interest of the people of Russia, on the contrary it only makes Russia more dependent of Chinese social-imperialism." In another post from February 25, 2022 entitled "Workers’ Resistance Bulletin", which was described as "an overview of workers’ resistance, as well as the repression of workers, taking place all across the US, from small workplaces to large factories." It covered details of strikes and worker organizing in various U.S. states.