 “I don’t care if your ideas and methods seem heterodox. Can you advance the class struggle forward?” Carlos L. Garrido He’s the name on everyone’s lips. Whatever you think of him, at just 24 years old, Jackson Hinkle is a bonafide political force. Host of The Dive and co-founder of the Institute for a Free America, the California native boasts an impressive following. Late last year, Hinkle — thanks mostly to his pro-Palestine content — became the world’s most viral Twitter personality. The self-described communist garnered a whopping 3.5 billion impressions in just one month. Elon Musk, Twitter’s megabillionaire owner, only managed 3.1 billion despite rigging the algorithm to promote his posts. When not posting about Palestine, Hinkle tweets in support of other anti-imperialist struggles. Most recently, Hinkle has emerged as a prominent opponent of American efforts to coup Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Hinkle even visited the coastal nation to monitor the latest presidential election and interviewed its besieged executive. While international commitments send him to far-flung corners of the globe, Hinkle remains committed to building the American Communist Party. As a member of its Executive Committee, Hinkle has been central to the launch of this budding political organization. While still in its infancy, the American Communist Party has already begun cleaning and clothing communities. It has even started developing relationships with other anti-imperialists throughout the world. The Party’s International Secretary Chris Helali recently met with Nicaraguan ambassador Mauricio Lautaro Sandino Montes at the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. And the Party’s Secretary of Education, Carlos Garrido, met with the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela last month. Given Hinkle’s centrality in the party, his contacts in Yemen, Russia, and elsewhere may also develop connections with it. The American Communist Party has 13 chapters in the United States and Canada with more soon to come. Hinkle is not just a social media presence but does anti-imperialist work on the ground too. Given that, you might expect the Left to uniformly embrace him. But opinions are divided. Detractors see Hinkle as more enemy than friend. Socialism Done Left, a popular creator of political explainer videos, has called him a “conservative [grifter]” for his attempts to court Republican voters. Progressive YouTube streamer Vaush even went so far as to compare Hinkle to neo-Nazis. Hinkle’s defenders are no less forceful. They see him as a principled and savvy media operator, and a standard bearer for their foreign policy aims. For example, The Midwestern Marx Institute said those opposing Hinkle “side with the forces of empire.” Similarly, RTSG — a leftist research collective — considers Hinkle authentic, committed, and willing to sacrifice for righteous causes. Now, Hinkle is of course far from perfect. Given the accelerating climate catastrophe, his environmental views — for example — are sometimes wildly errant. Hinkle calls himself “pro-fossil fuel” despite the need to “keep it in the ground” to avoid apocalyptic global temperature rises. Yet this doesn’t justify abandoning him. The campsite rule provides a useful guide to assess whether Hinkle’s environmental views should be disqualifying. It asks if the person’s influence is a net positive. The rule gets its name from campsite signs that urge campers to leave the grounds better than they found them. Undoubtedly, we’re all flawed. But the campsite rule counsels that, if the figure left the world better than they found it, you should support them. It’s a fundamentally utilitarian but fairly ironclad premise. Despite erroneously promoting fossil fuels and calling environmentalism “anti-human,” Hinkle passes the campsite test. Hinkle’s ecological views are a vanishingly small part of his public presence. The bulk of his advocacy is anti-imperialist, exposing American empire and promoting those fighting to dismantle it. Hinkle’s fans know and love him for that, and may not even be aware of his environmental stances. Just as many leftists revere Joseph Stalin despite his affinity for oil drilling, they should support Hinkle. Yet much of the Western Left seems content to purity test and summarily discard Hinkle for his least savory views. That is misguided as it risks letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if you grant that Hinkle has some bad takes, most are good. That’s especially true of the ones about he’s most vocal about — supporting economic independence and opposing exploitative neocolonial powers. While those are the perspective he foregrounds, critics often fixate on Hinkle’s supposed social conservatism. Yes, he seemingly isn’t a rigid adherent of Western gender or sexuality theory. In fact, he appears to tolerate if not celebrate governments that endorse more traditional cultural values like Russia and China. It’s understandable why leftist critics might reject what they see as Hinkle’s traditionalist streak. But it’s telling that they focus on Hinkle’s social views and not his foreign policy. The reason is simple. An unnerving number of Western leftists either don’t care enough about imperialism or, worse, believe State Department lies. Too many professed socialists in the imperial core have drank the proverbial Kool-Aid. On issues from the Russo-Ukrainian conflict to airstrikes in Yemen, they sound just like John Bolton and Victoria Nuland. Vaush and his ilk seemingly take pride in being NATO’s biggest cheerleaders. Somehow the communists of the West cheerlead the world’s foremost anti-communist alliance. It’s no wonder they don’t credit Hinkle for his anti-imperialism; they’re on the opposite side of the struggle. That’s no accident. For decades, elites have sought to sow within the Left the seeds of its own demise. In 1950, the CIA created the Congress for Cultural Freedom — a covert anti-communist civic organization. The Congress for Cultural Freedom operated in a smattering of countries throughout the West, and 35 globally. It pushed intelligentsia — including ostensible progressives — to denounce socialist experiments, pulling the public away from Marxism and toward colonial capitalism. The Congress for Cultural Freedom dissolved in 1979. But an unfortunate number of Western leftists still follow its playbook. Jackson Hinkle is not one of them. He’s an unabashed anti-imperialist stalwart, and even shines a light on the clandestine actors who seek to thwart his movement. Because Hinkle’s advocacy is comprised of overwhelmingly constructive positions, his impact is — on the whole — positive. He’s moving things in the right direction. Therefore trying to cancel Hinkle is actually anti-progressive. Western leftists harm their political ends Hinkle is helping advance by preferring to sacrifice that progress for purity’s sake. Other critiques are more targeted and specific to Hinkle’s tone of commentary. Some contend that he jettisons nuance, painting the world in a Schmittian black and white of good versus evil. They see Hinkle’s adoption of conservative buzzwords like “deep state” and “cabal” as regressive and divisive — unbecoming of a political analyst. But there are a few points here. First, Hinkle is still quite young. He hasn’t been on the far Left for very long. Like many young radicals, he began as a garden variety progressive before his recent political maturation. In other words, Hinkle is just 24. Give his skills of political analysis time to develop. They are already far beyond his years. Greater nuance will come and early signs are apparent to anyone who listens to his Rumble show The Dive. But perhaps Hinkle isn’t a conventional political analyst. Maybe he’s better thought of as an agitative propagandist. Hinkle’s Twitter feed is one of forceful and repetitive political slogans that unambiguously express where his followers should stand. That is the essence of agitative propaganda. And the numbers don’t lie: Hinkle is one of the most effective digital propagandists on Earth. The movement needs people like him as revolutionaries of old recognized. Yet by far the biggest problem Hinkle’s leftist critics have with him is his promotion of “MAGA communism.” Founded by fellow American Communist Party Executive Chairman and content creator Haz Al-Din, the apparent oxymoron consists of two basic premises. First, MAGA communists believe the irreverent movement behind Donald Trump held the potential to radicalize the American Left and Right. Second, they observe that many Trump fans detest the status quo and therefore might be open to communist ideas. MAGA communism was fundamentally an attempt to court Trump’s working-class base, rather than writing them off as a “basket of deplorables.” To that end, MAGA communists used patriotic imagery typically monopolized by the Right to woo Trump’s nationalistic base. And that elicited the ire of many. Progressive author and academic Alexander Reid Ross dubbed MAGA communism “a deranged fringe movement.” Sam Seder, host of the left-wing Majority Report radio show, called it “word salad.” Others are even harsher. Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks suggested MAGA communism is akin to Nazism, coopting socialist rhetoric for fascist aims. The criticism seems a bit hysterical when you consider that MAGA communism largely just synthesizes longstanding, formerly uncontroversial leftist ideas. Start with the idea that the Trump movement could create space for a more radical Left. Hinkle and his ilk were hardly the first to say this. It was the primary reason cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, to many’s surprise, endorsed Trump in 2016. Even the late socialist commentator Michael Brooks, who ultimately endorsed Hillary Clinton, echoed the view. He said the rise of Trump and Bernie Sanders strengthened his conviction that the status quo could be broken. While Žižek faced backlash for endorsing Trump, his belief that MAGA could help catalyze a radical Left was widely shared. Yet Hinkle’s fellow leftists attack him for believing the same thing. Similarly, Hinkle caught heat for believing the Left should try flipping Trump voters instead of dismissing them. But those same critics lauded Sanders for entering the lion’s den of Fox News to present his case to conservatives. In 2019, Jacobin magazine — America’s largest socialist publication — denounced the idea that most Trump voters are “an irredeemable monolith.” And it stressed the need for leftists to try reaching them. Hinkle merely shares this view. Unlike Jacobin, however, he has gotten seemingly endless flack for it — unjustifiably so. MAGA communism isn’t a flavor of fascism, as Kasparian suggests. It’s merely a mode of outreach to anti-establishment conservatives. Hinkle is pulling people toward leftism — not Trump. Proof of this is that — especially as of late — Hinkle relentlessly criticizes the former commander in chief. Hinkle calls him “Zion Don” and “disgusting” for his pro-Israel exploits and has likened Trump’s genocide support to Nazi apologia. But that doesn’t stop critics from attacking Hinkle’s use of patriotic symbols like the flag and other mainstays of Americana. This practice too was not just historically uncontroversial but a strategically obvious way for the Left to broaden its appeal. For example, renowned social scientists Karen Stenner has long called for leftists to adopt unifying symbology. In The Authoritarian Dynamic, Stenner advocates championing the pledge of allegiance and other patriotic practices to keep reactionaries at bay. What felt like common sense from the ivory tower suddenly became toxic when Hinkle said it. Perhaps that’s unsurprising. After all, it’s easy to hate Hinkle, who’s a confessed provocateur. He admits to phrasing things in inflammatory ways for clicks. But he’s far from the only one doing that. Controversy and intrigue are the keys to survival in this saturated media market. Hinkle’s simply doing what it takes to elevate his message, which is a generally positive one. In that respect, he’s hardly unique. Yet, in other respects, he absolutely is. Hinkle’s aesthetic isn’t that of the typical Western leftist. Between his movie star headshots and shirtless gym selfies, Hinkle doesn’t look especially bookish. He doesn’t wear flannels or don spectacles. Nor does he have the sort of beard that is oddly ubiquitous among white men on the American Left. Hinkle’s leftism is virile and manly. Andrew Tate and his acolytes tell men to reclaim their masculinity by being sexist, materialistic degenerates. Hinkle is an antidote to this toxicity, telling men to instead reclaim their masculinity by being fiercely anti-imperialist. In other words, Hinkle speaks to disaffected young men and channels their frustration into productive causes. For a long time, leftists have urged their side to do just that. Vaush and Kasparian did an entire segment condemning the leftist folly of ceding alienated young men to the Right. Hinkle doesn’t fall into that trap. Rather, he couples traditional masculinity with a compassionate politics — thus demonstrating that you can simultaneously be tough and kindhearted. Hinkle is precisely the sort of positive masculine influence the Left sorely needs. Yet the musclebound, cigar-smoking commentator who dates models seldom if ever gets credit for that. Just looking at Hinkle, you’d probably guess he’s a conservative. He looks like your high school bully, and was himself homecoming king. That Hinkle superficially resembles the out group might reflexively bias some leftists against him, at least partly explaining their disdain. But it’s incumbent upon them to overcome that base instinct. The popular criticisms of Hinkle lack teeth, and his impact is overwhelmingly positive. Hinkle achieved fame promoting exactly the sort of anti-imperialist positions necessary to overturn capitalist hegemony and build a better world. It’s an inspiring story — a dose of optimism in a political context that provides no shortage of reasons to despair. We should celebrate — not hate — Hinkle’s rise, and hope that more Hinkles will soon emerge. Author Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected]. Archives August 2024
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