GenZedong

So my opinion on the whole "patriotic socialist" thing is that it's basically a few good insights stretched far beyond what they can reasonably support. Haz and Maupin, to their credit, saw something that nobody else in the American left was really cognizant of: namely, that since the 1970s there has been a confluence of Trotskyism with orthodox Marxist-Leninism, so that a whole lot of "tankiesm" in the US is actually revisionist. (Sam Marcy and the Workers' World Party, who tried to downplay the differences between Trotskyism and the historical practice of actually existing socialist states, is a big reason for this shift). Thus, a whole lot of American communists actually hold, consciously or unconsciously, that Europe and the US are where genuine revolution actually happens; socialist countries on the peripheries are to be supported because they are, under the calculus of liberalism, "underprivileged," not because they represent a genuine path forward for humanity. This is basic dilution of Leninist thought.

However, having recognized this, CPI, Infrared etc. made the leap of assuming that the entire American left from McCarthyism onward was unsalvageable, and that the only way forward was to adopt tactics used by the CPUSA during the 1930s. (Because of their emphasis on Black nationhood and building parallel political infrastructure, the Black Panthers are often regarded by patsocs as a successor to the 1930s CPUSA). Thus you get the current reworking of "Socialism is 20th Century Americanism," and other attempts to create a left-wing American nationalism -- the idea being that since it almost worked before, it has a good chance of working now. I've said before, and will say it again, that I'm convinced neither Haz nor Maupin is really sincere in their patriotism. Certain things they let slip from time to time betray it: Maupin listing the crimes of the American government, Haz stating that it was during the War on Terror that he recognized the true nihilistic essence of American culture, etc. It's a tactic, and not necessarily a good one.