cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10514053
Russia has built a network linking socialist and anti-globalist groups abroad under the banner of support for left-wing causes. The effort often starts with seemingly benign events such as community cleanups and discussion clubs before developing into street protests, disinformation campaigns, sabotage operations in Western countries, and even recruitment for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Insider has identified several British and U.S. citizens who were recruited to fight for Russia with the help of “communists” and far-left activists.
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In the name of the left
In late April 2026, the founding forum of an international socialist network called the Sovintern was held at Moscow’s House of Unions. The event was organized by the party Spravedlivaya Rossiya (lit. “A Just Russia”). The name Sovintern echoes the Comintern, the Soviet-era Communist International that Moscow used in order to coordinate foreign communist parties and advance Soviet influence abroad.
The Kremlin did not hide its warm attitude toward this kind of international activity: the event opened with a welcoming address from Vladimir Putin himself. Sovintern’s stated public task was to create as much information content as possible. Each participant was expected to spread common narratives back home, thereby motivating potential future participants to join in the efforts to discredit their own national governments.
Like the Comintern once did for the Soviet Union, the new organization also appears to function as a cover for Russian special operations abroad. In fact, several of its participants are directly involved in recruiting foreign soldiers for the war in Ukraine.
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One example is the American Communist Party (ACP). The party was founded only recently — on July 21, 2024 — by two Russophile Marxist-Leninist streamers: Adam Tahir, who uses the public name Haz Al-Din (and is also known as Infrared), and Jackson Hinkle. Their left-wing identity does not prevent them from being ardent admirers of the fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.
Historically, communists in the United States have been represented by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), whose leadership once actively cooperated with Soviet intelligence. The founders of the new ACP previously belonged to the shrinking CPUSA and have so far set up small chapters across the United States, as well as a branch in Canada. The party’s official activities are limited to community cleanup days, aid to the poor, and peaceful protests glorifying Stalinism and Chinese socialism. Party supporters also back Hamas and Hezbollah. Several members are even fighting against Ukraine on Russia’s side.
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In the UK, similar activity is handled by the Workers Party of Britain and its affiliated movement, no2nato. The party is headed by George Galloway, 71, a frequent guest on Russian propaganda shows. Aside from the direct disinformation work of its leader, the party’s members are also on the lookout for potential mercenaries.
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Until the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia used a network of state-controlled cultural centers and associated agents abroad to recruit agitators and, at times, fighters for proxy military structures. The Insider previously described how this worked using the example of Alexander Ionov, president of Russia’s Anti-Globalization Movement.
After the full-scale war began, most such organizations were expelled or shut down across the Western world. As a result, semi-legal and often highly marginal socialist and far-left cells became disproportionately useful.
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Recruitment [of foreign soldiers for Russia’s military] continues to this day. In late April 2026, Canadian Ryan Gallant — a member of his country’s branch of the American Communist Party — arrived in Irkutsk via China. Stimson said on his blog that the recruit was a professional helicopter pilot.
Sometimes the path is more complicated. One example is Kalen Pavan, a 17-year-old Canadian cadet who was recruited through socialist chapters and arrived at the Interbrigades headquarters in the Donbas in 2024 … When it turned out that Pavan was under 18 and had lied slightly about his age, he was recruited by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service, and sent to the European Union — first to Denmark and then to Poland — for intelligence work. But he failed the assignment and was detained and convicted.
That example, however, appears to be more the exception than the rule. Those who leave for the war usually do not return home, either because they are killed in “meat grinder assaults” or because they risk criminal prosecution. If a recruit survives, after a while he may become a colleague of recruiters … and begin looking for new recruits himself.
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Makes sense based on what I see on the far-left side of lemmy.
The left on Lemmy despise the ACP and Dugin, this is a smear article.
It lines up with what I see here.
You won’t be able to find a single ACP supporter here. Go read more.
I have never seen supporters of the ACP or Dugin here. Support for Russia is only of the critical kind, purely with respect to their opposition to western imperialism, which is completely hegemonic. There’s no support for Russia’s economic system beyond dispelling the idea that Russia is about to collapse, which is a wartime bit of propaganda, not material reality. The war has ironically strengthened Russia’s position by severing it’s ties to western economies, and has brought it closer to China.
A lot of people here are against Russia’s genocide in Ukraine and a lot of people deny it’s even happening.
This is what you simp for and they hate you, too: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/
Advocating for the end of Russia’s genocide of the Ukrainians isn’t ‘simping’ for the US it’s just basic human decency.
War isn’t genocide. Russia and Ukraine are at war, while Israel is committing genocide against Palestine.
Like I said many people are denying the genocide of Ukrainians by Russians.
Sure, same with people denying white genocide in South Africa.
Are you parroting white supremacist talking points now too?
tankies you mean.
Name a “tankie” you’ve interacted with that supports ACP.
If they’re dumb enough to fall for that shit, I find it very hard to pity them.
Yeah, they are insufferable. They are the lefts MAGA
They’re just dumb-ass authoritarians who bought the Bolshevik and Stalinist pitches. Rule number 1 is see what people do, not just what they say.
They’re just nationalists for countries they don’t live in, they don’t have any libretory praxis or ideas beyond “Murica Bad”, which even though I agree that America is in fact bad, is not doing a god damn thing to address anything!
They consider themselves leftists but I don’t think they’ve earned it, they’re just liberals who’s thing to care about as anti-imperialism.
All they do is appeals to power (protests, statements) never any building of power (organizing, mutual aid) or exercising power (disruptive direct action)
They’re fine with imperialism and constantly make excuses for it as long as it’s not the American or British kind.
Campists*
libslop
Yeah, I really like this one. He’s got quite a few videos that are good.
I’ve also renewed calling Chinese Auths «Dengists».
Camp lemmy didn’t like this at all.
Because Dengism isn’t anything other than a dismissive left com term for anyone on the left that doesn’t wholeheartedly dismiss the reforms under Deng.
Liberals have no idea what any of these words mean they just get the “and they’re bad” vibe from context. Like children playing with toys.
Oh hi TheOubliette 👋
What are your thoughts on Mandarin nationalism?
I’ll be happy to discuss that after the topic at hand, though it seems you’re trying to avoid it.
Which is confusing as hell, because they unironically like Deng and think everything he said was great.
Dengism is not an ideology, that’s why Marxist-Leninists tend to disagree with being described as “Dentist.” Deng just applied Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of China contemporary to him, he didn’t invent anything new.
Because the current communist leader and previous leaders currently held in favor must be seen in the same camp as the Original Glorious Leader and blessed by him from the heavens, even when it’s blatantly not true. Therefore it’s Maoism, not dengism. The illusion of continuity and complete unanimity of all party decisions, past, present and future must be maintained at all times.
Why is confession confusing???
I guess, if he’s cool and right, why would you dislike being associated with him? Like, if we were talking animal biology, and someone called me a Darwinist, my main thought would be “oh no, and you’re not?”.
There’s a few things like that, where they’re weirdly bashful about their own ideas, despite being in an online space where a big part of the point is that they can openly believe whatever, and maybe the mods even agree with them.
The “Darwinist” example is a good one because that’s generally not the term used in biology for what Young Earth Creationists think they’re doing by using the term dismissively. Evolutionary theory is much richer than Darwinism alone and within it there are disagreements among people, some calling certain views “Darwinist” in a way that is critical, seeing adaptation everywhere in evolutionary history even when it’s unjustified. Creationists just use it as a way to act like it’s a religious dogma, a camp, and therefore on equal footing with Young Earth Creationism rhetorically, and below it to their audience (who believe in creationism already). They typically don’t even know what the term means and can’t discuss the topics involved.
Pretty similar to this thread where terms are thrown around as insults, no understanding is evident, and simply inventing associations and alleged dogmas gets a free pass from those who have never investigated the topics whatsoever.
But “Dengism” isn’t even a thing among the left, there’s very little to it, it’s just reforms in the 80s and people argue over whether they were good or bad and how much. There are no socialist parties that organize themselves around “Dengism”, that’s like having an entire party centered on No Child Left Behind or something. Oh you’re a CLBer!?
Pretty sure 邓小平 is dead, so imperialists can absolutely reclaim his praxis. We already do the same with MLs, McCs, and other Hitlers.
But I don’t see folks calling me Bakunin, even when I tell them I praxis vanguardism as a mammal.
what is a tankie? are marxist leninists tankie?
By use, a tankie is anyone vaguely on the left that doesn’t fall for every US state department criticism of other countries.
Historically it was a left com / Trotskyist dismissive term referring to communists that justified the intervention in Hungary, with tanks, in 1956. But liberals don’t understand history or politics, nor are curious about them, and the only real content is to imply that the target is bad and not to be believed.
Those who support AES states.
Not unless they look up to and defend to authoritarian imperialist regimes like Russia or China.
Which goes against the whole tenant of Communism. Where the point is to eventually remove any form of authority.
A communist organizes to overthrow the bourgeois state and class and establish a new order in its place. Historically the term has referred to revolutionary socialists, particularly Marxist-Leninists, who have by far had the most success in revolution. The aftermath of revolution has never practically been immediate transformation, but to enact major changes unacceptable in reformist contexts and defend the revolution and its process.
There are no “tenets” of communism outside this context. Maybe you’re referring to Marx’s conception of communism as a classless, stateless society? From each according to their ability, to each according to their need? This was always in the context of a historical process wherein there was first a dictatorship of the proletariat and the development of productive forces to even make communism possible. It is a prediction of what people will do when the bourgeois are no more, when they can demand more from life, over a long-running process.
They’re people who simp for fascists pretending to be communists and think that anyone critical of those fascists has been brainwashed by the west (despite us being critical of the western fascists too)
that seems to be too subjective who is a fascist pretending to be communist? was lenin that? was castro that? were stalin or mao that? And as far as I know putin doesnt even pretend to be a communist
Yeah exactly. Modern Russia is not communist or even socialist in the slightest, if anything it’s a straight up kelptocratic dictatorship and proud of it. China is a totalitarian dystopia that executes political prisoners. If anything leftists should be opposing these governments.