Caleb Maupin
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Streams of clarity, irony, humor and wisdom seen & overheard on the Net
Dispatch dateline: 23 December 2020
This chat also addresses some uncomfortable truths, the main being that as a serious and sincere activist for structural change you can't be overly sensitive to social pressure, especially that dictated by cultural fads. Nor should you ever be willing to betray your moral values—morality understood in the broader political sense, not narrowly religious—for the sake of "popularity". This implies some hard choices, notes Maupin. Standing up for what's right and true is often a lonely experience. A life at times of isolation, unfair misunderstanding and even persecution beckons. Yet choices have to be made, and in a world of deliberate chaos with intentionally upended values, it's crucial to remain clear about the relative urgency and overall importance of various cultural and class issues dividing (and confusing) the public.
Such an issue, says Maupin, is LGBTQ and communism, the fight against imperialism and its endless wars. True, communists were slow to recognize the validity of gay rights and in many places were not exactly in the vanguard to effect remedial changes. Such changes did come, however, notably in places like Cuba, where machista culture had to give way to the push for revolutionary fairness to all. The onetime hostility to homosexual culture on the part of old-line communists has helped to divide progressives. In this context, the fake left is too quick to condemn (and abandon) countries and leaders in which a longstanding culture of conservatism criminalize homosexuality. But the reality is that for reasons of culture or religion, or both, many millions of people in the developing world still look upon gay lifestyles as practiced in the West as abhorrent, a sign of social decadence if not outright mortal sin. These nations, however, while often steeped in machismo and religiosity, may also be at the receiving end of the empire's underhanded regime change ministrations designed to destroy their sovereignty. In all such cases, the duty of the left is first and foremost to defend such nations from imperialist meddling (whatever the pretext may be). Unfortunately, today's "left", says Maupin, is happy to mobilize with alacrity on behalf of symbolic racialism or gay rights, leaving few things unturned to give the "Trans community", for example, their well deserved human rights (remember the national brouhaha over transgender bathrooms?), or to assure the oligarchy appoints women and black or brown faces to positions of nominal power in the imperial hierarchy. BUT, says Maupin, such faux egalitarian battles cannot be put at the front of our political obligations (in fact cynical gender, sex or racial symbolism is totally unworthy of support by thinking people on the left), while ignoring or even supporting imperialist wars and blatant regime change ops around the globe, meddling which invariably destroy entire nations triggering massive death and destruction. Nor can a true leftist ignore the constant warmongering by establishment channels—media, politicians, CIA, security agencies, etc.—all clamoring for confrontations with China, Russia, Iran and other powers, the first two more than capable of devastating the United States homeland in any kind of retaliatory attack. It's an insanity, a demonstrable crime against humanity that cries for resolute opposition, but the official "left" is too busy picking other battles. It's a disgusting travesty alright, notes Maupin, and we agree. —PG
Caleb Maupin has worked as a journalist and political analyst for the last five years. He has reported from across the United States, as well as from Iran, the Gulf of Aden and Venezuela. He has been a featured speaker at many Universities, and at international conferences held in Tehran, Quito, and Brasilia. His writings have been translated and published in many languages including Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is originally from Ohio. As a reporter with RT.com, Maupin's focus has been the United States. He has had many intense interactions with US State Department spokespeople including John Kirby, Mark Toner, and Heather Nauert confronting them about diverse issues like Syria, Russia, and the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons. Maupin was the primary US correspondent for RT’s international broadcasts during the 2016 Presidential elections. He reported from both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and also directly from the riots in Oakland, California, during the aftermath of the vote. 
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