On April 28th, the Georgia chapter of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) sponsored a pro-Palestinian talk on the Emory campus which was to have featured historian and activist Norman Finkelstein. However, Finkelstein abruptly canceled his planned speech. CAIR soon issued a statement blaming an unspecified “rogue actor” for adding a “divisive” last-minute speaker to the agenda:
“Today, we unwittingly damaged the movement for Palestinian liberation by allowing a rogue actor to brazenly hijack an event intended to highlight the Palestinian genocide and uplift the Palestinian movement. A student co-organizer commandeered this platform by inserting hateful and divisive guests into the program. He greenlighted a deeply problematic speech without sharing with co-organizers, prevented our attempts to reverse his last-minute changes to the speaker line up, prevented our staff from making statements on stage, and insulted our honored guests Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Ibrahim Awad, and Juilee Shivalkar.”
CAIR-GA Statement
Our group usually keeps a tight focus on exposing overt white nationalists and neo-Nazis, but there are times when our goal of antifascist education involves speaking about political actors whose motivations are not quite so obvious. With this post, we will identify and briefly give some political context to Grayson Walker, the “MAGA Communist” Emory law student responsible for the cancellation. While CAIR did not name Grayson Walker as the “rogue actor”, many other witnesses have already done so. This post is neither a full exposé nor a detailed timeline of the failed event, simply an alert to be aware of Grayson Walker and similar infiltrators who seek to exploit Palestinian suffering to curry social media attention for their niche cryptofascist political brands.
The word “cryptofascism” can evoke fanciful images of secret Nazi agents, but the historical reality is much more prosaic. A party or movement springs up claiming to be “above political divisions”, claiming to “synthesize left and right”, and then inevitably assimilates into the traditional right wing when their ideas fail to gain traction. These people often genuinely believe that they are not fascists, but they also tend to be sympathetic to outright fascists.
The “MAGA Communist” speakers invited by Grayson Walker — Jackson Hinkle and Adam Tahir/Haz Al-Din — fall neatly into this pattern. Here are some defining characteristics of their cryptofascist movement, which is also sometimes known as “patriotic socialism”:
- A social conservative identity and call to return to “traditional” values expressed through homophobia, transphobia, and clownish performative misogyny. For example, Hinkle and Haz are both full-throated supporters of sex trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate.
- A hatred of vaguely defined “elites” expressed through conspiracism and antisemitism
- Populist nativism and support for harsher, Trumpian anti-immigrant measures
- Campism: the naive belief that the world is divided into competing camps of states and that each state can be assigned into a good camp or bad camp. They regard China and Russia as the good camp, with the US state as the bad camp, until their MAGA Communist patriotic revival somehow takes over the US and redeems it.
- The invocation of a simplistic ideology-as-superstructure-only concept from early Marxist theory (this is a concept which many Marxists disagree with and have replaced with more sophisticated models of ideology, such as Gramscian hegemony).
- anti-environmentalism and pro-extractivism (support for the fossil fuel industry)
For this last point, it is worth noting that MAGA Communists have strong ties to the Lyndon Larouche cult, sharing not only their anti-environmentalist beliefs but also their underhanded tactics: Larouchites are known for targeting college students and for attention-grabbing publicity stunts. This idea that “any publicity is good publicity” is why this group calls themselves “MAGA communists” in the first place, because it attracts instant attention.
The “MAGA communists” have especially strong ties to the Russian state and far right, as shown by these recent photos.
As for sympathy with outright fascists, Kris Roman (seen in back) is a Belgian who heads a pro-Putin white supremacist group which receives little support in Belgium but often features in Russian media. Maryam Susli, known primarily as a Bashar al-Assad propagandist, has made an appearance on neo-Nazi and former National Justice Party figure Eric Striker‘s media and has been interviewed by KKK figure David Duke. Hinkle and Haz have also both streamed on white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ website after having been banned on Twitch.
Giving cryptofascists a platform generally leads to the platforming of their fascist allies, among other damage. By unwittingly allowing Grayson Walker even an indirect role in their event, CAIR-GA’s reputation was hurt and their members made more vulnerable. In a video after the event, Hinkle and Haz threatened CAIR directly, and Hinkle wielded a racist nativist dogwhistle against them, saying, “CAIR wants to come to my country, our country, and use their lobbying power to take your taxpayer dollars, just like the Zionist lobby…”. In light of how this country targets Muslim and Palestinian immigrants and refugees and treats Muslims as perpetual foreigners, this line of attack is especially egregious and makes a mockery of any “MAGA Communist” claim to Palestinian solidarity.
Luckily, autonomous protesters quickly circulated alerts about Hinkle and Haz, giving real information about their motives and cutting short the Haz speech. CAIR and other people present were able to limit the damage by not allowing Hinkle and Haz to speak and by issuing a swift apology afterwards. We encourage everyone in the Atlanta community to familiarize themselves with Grayson Walker and bar him from any political events, or else they, like CAIR, could fall victim to a similar publicity stunt. Please make public any new tips on Walker’s local political activity and/or email tips to us securely at [email protected].
No tolerance for racism, antisemitism, or Islamophobia in our city!