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Bob Avakian

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Bob Avakian
Avakian in 1980
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Incumbent
Assumed office
1975
Preceded byPosition established
Personal details
Born
Robert Bruce Avakian

(1943-03-07) March 7, 1943 (age 82)
Washington D.C., U.S.
Political partyRevolutionary Communist Party, USA (1975–present)
Other political
affiliations		Peace and Freedom Party (1960s)

Robert Bruce Avakian (born March 7, 1943)[1] is an American political activist and Maoist philosopher who is the founder and chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP). Avakian is widely considered a cult leader.[2][3]

Early life

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Avakian was born on March 7, 1943, in Washington, D.C., to Ruth and Spurgeon "Sparky" Avakian. His father was an Armenian American lawyer, civil rights activist, and later as an Alameda County Superior Court judge.[1][4][5] After spending his first three years in the Washington metropolitan area, he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence in Berkeley, California.[1][6]

Political activities

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As a student at UC Berkeley, Avakian became involved with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Free Speech Movement[4] and the Black Panther Party.[7] In 1968, he wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party's publications[8] and in July 1969, he spoke at the Black Panther Party conference in Oakland, California.[9] Avakian was a member of the SDS Revolutionary Youth Movement II faction, and ran as the RYM II candidate for National Secretary at the 1969 SDS National Convention. Avakian was defeated by Mark Rudd of the faction later known as the Weather Underground.[10] During that period, Avakian was a founding member of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union[11] alongside Leibel Bergman.[12]: 101 

In the early 1970s, Avakian served a prison sentence for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration.[4] He was charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to protest Deng Xiaoping's meeting with Jimmy Carter.[7][13][14] After receiving an arrest warrant, Avakian went to France and applied for political refugee status.[1] In 1980, he gave a speech to 200 protestors in downtown Oakland[15] and his police assault charges were dropped a few years later.[1][7]

Avakian has been the RCP's central committee chairman and national leader since 1979.[15][16] In 2016, the RCP USA and others helped form the organization Refuse Fascism, which called for Donald Trump's removal from office.[17]

Cult of personality

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The RCP began developing a cult of personality around Avakian as part of the 1979 pivot catalyzed by the Deng Xiaoping protest trial. The goal was to both increase support for Avakian in the legal arena while also making RCP a more revolutionary organization, inspired by Joseph Stalin's cult of personality, Mao Zedong's cult of personality, and the more recent Free Huey! campaign in which Avakian had participated. Relying on the theory of Georgy Plekhanov and framing the development of a cult as a scientific organizational strategy, Avakian was put forward as a larger-than-life figure to revitalize the group.[18]

Members of both the left and the broader public often see the RCP as a small cult around Avakian. This perception was noted in The Indypendent in 2014,[19] Harper's in 2016,[20] Mic in 2017,[21] and Vice magazine in 2022.[22] Members and groups on the left, in organized labor, and in protest movements have called RCP a cult. In 2016, former USLAW national coordinator Michael Eisenscher called RCP primarily "a cult around Avakian".[20] In June 2022, a coalition of 23 abortion rights, feminist, and mutual-aid groups released a statement denouncing RCP and the affiliated anti-abortion organization Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, and of the RCP as a cult.[22][23][24]

RCP members celebrate the organization as a cult of personality around Avakian.[25][20]

Legacy

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Avakian is a controversial figure. Supporters see him as a revolutionary leader and claim his body of work has advanced communist theory and represents a "pathway to human emancipation" from the capitalist system.[26][27] Detractors criticize the RCP as a cult of personality around him,[28] which the party has called "lies and slander".[29]

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James LeGros portrays Avakian in the 1995 Mario Van Peebles film Panther.

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d e Avakian, Bob (2005). From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist. Insight Press. ISBN 9780976023623.
  2. ^ Merlan, Anna (August 4, 2022). "The Abortion Rights Group Other Activists Want Nothing to Do With". VICE. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  3. ^ "Is This Communist 'Cult' Trying to Hijack Abortion Movement?". The Daily Beast. July 10, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  4. ^ a b c Baum, Richard (2010). China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom (1st ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 241. ISBN 9780295800219.
  5. ^ DelVecchio, Rick (February 2, 2002). "'Sparky' Avakian – racism-fighting judge". San Francisco Chronicle.
  6. ^ RNL Show, November 2022. "The Bob Avakian Interviews": Part 1, Part 3
  7. ^ a b c Oppenheimer, Mark (January 27, 2008). "Free Bob Avakian!". Boston Globe.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ Werkmen, Dirk (March 10, 1968). "Freedom: The Birth of a Party, 1968". Independent Star News. p. 5.
  9. ^ Benson, George S. (March 28, 1972). "Looking Ahead". The Evening Independent. p. 11.
  10. ^ Sale, Kirkpatrick (1974). SDS. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 412, 521, 566, 576, 592. ISBN 0394719654.
  11. ^ Baker, Ross S. (November 22, 1970). "A History of The Weathermen". Express and News.
  12. ^ Elbaum, Max (2002). Revolution in the air : sixties radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London: Verso. ISBN 9781859846179.
  13. ^ Avakian, "Bob Avakian Speaks on the Mao Tsetung Defendants' Railroad and the Historic Battles Ahead", Introduction and pp. 18—21.
  14. ^ Athan G. Theoharis, "FBI Surveillance: Past and Present", Cornell Law Review, Vol. 69 (April 1984); and Peter Erlinder with Doug Cassel, “Bazooka Justice: The Case of the Mao Tse Tung Defendants – Overreaction Or Foreshadowing?”, Public Eye, Vol. II, No. 3&4 (1980), pp. 40—43.
  15. ^ a b "Scores arrested, Injured In May Day Violence". Logansport Pharos-Tribune. UPI. May 2, 1980.
  16. ^ Unknown (December 6, 1979). "Communists get year sentence for disruption". The Daily Tar Heel. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. p. 2.
  17. ^ Montgomery, Blake (September 7, 2017). "Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Antifa Network That's Trying To Solidify A Nazi-Punching Movement". BuzzFeed. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
  18. ^ Leonard & Gallagher 2015, pp. 228–230
  19. ^ Dock, Sam (November 21, 2014). "My Afternoon with Chairman Bob Avakian". The Indypendent.
  20. ^ a b c Keizer, Garret (February 2016). "Left of Bernie: On stupidity and transcendence". Harper's Magazine. Vol. February 2016. What the R.C.P. has come to be best known for, however, is its unqualified veneration of Bob Avakian. He contends that the creation of a personality cult around his leadership was both deliberate and strategically desirable....Eisenscher does not hold the Revolutionary Communist Party in much esteem. He sees it primarily as 'a cult around Avakian.'
  21. ^ Smith IV, Jack (November 2, 2017). "The far-right thinks a violent antifa overthrow is coming Nov. 4, but the truth is far stranger". Mic. The RCP is often referred to as a communist doomsday cult that is obsessed with Avakian, its mysterious leader, and hastens unto a final emancipation of humanity through a populist revolution.
  22. ^ a b Merlan, Anna (August 4, 2022). "The Abortion Rights Group Other Activists Want Nothing to Do With". Vice. Retrieved August 12, 2022.
  23. ^ Mackey, Robert (July 14, 2022). "Abortion Rights Activists Call New Group Leading Protests a Front for a Far-Left Cult". The Intercept.
  24. ^ "Statement Against RiseUp4AbortionRights". Retrieved August 12, 2022.
  25. ^ Oppenheimer, Mark (January 28, 2008). "How Maoists Are Like Scientologists". But, more important, both [Scientology and RCPUSA] are terrific latter-day examples of cults of personality.... And Avakian's supporters have been increasingly frank that they actually want a cult of personality around Bob Avakian (although they call it a 'cult of appreciation').
  26. ^ DelVecchio, Rick (April 29, 2005). "Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to communism". SFGate. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  27. ^ "Praise and Reviews". Insight-press.com. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  28. ^ Weir (2007). "Maoism". In Weir, Robert (ed.). Class in America: H-P. Greenwood. p. 492. ISBN 978-0313337192. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  29. ^ "Stop the Lies and Slanders: Bob Avakian and the RCP Are the Exact Opposite of a "Cult"!". Revcom.us. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
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