Communists Shut Down TPUSA Bigots at ASU Campus

On October 14, TPUSA members harassed a queer ASU professor, Dr. David Boyles, leaving him with a bloodied face and broken nose. This is yet another heinous attack by a group dedicated to fostering bigotry on campuses. TPUSA is a far-right, billionaire-funded, hate group. It has a “professor watchlist,” with the stated aim of exposing and documenting college professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The response from the ASU administration has been tepid, at best. Essentially, a hate-motivated assault was committed with no consequence, and these individuals and their group have been allowed to continue their activities on campus. These clowns are even trying to spin the story to seem as if it was their “journalists” who were attacked, not the other way around. The surveillance video footage very clearly shows otherwise, yet these individuals have faced no repercussions for their disgusting behavior.

Socialist Revolution at ASU decided that it was time for students and workers opposed to oppression of any kind to take the fight into our own hands. Our comrades energetically went to other organizations on ASU campus in an attempt to build a united front against these queer-bashers. We raised the necessity of mobilizing en masse to combat the pernicious ideas of the far right. It is only the methods of class struggle that can get rid of these far-right bigots.

Unfortunately, despite numerous organizations sympathizing with what we were attempting, with some groups even committing to mobilizing their membership, the leadership of these organizations were nowhere to be found on the day of the event. Every effort was made to include YDSA, Phoenix DSA, PSL, MEChA, and UCW (United Campus Workers) in the planning and implementation of this action, but in the end it fell to the comrades of Socialist Revolution to lead the way. Hopefully we will be able to join forces for other efforts in the future.

On November 1, the ASU chapter of TPUSA attempted to hold its regular meeting. Dozens of young people and workers committed to driving these bigots off campus showed up roughly an hour before their meeting was set to begin in order to occupy the space and shut their meeting down. Comrades began chanting slogans, such as “1, 2, 3, 4—we see through your culture war! 5, 6, 7, 8—You won’t divide us with your hate!” and “Culture war or class war—we know what we’re fighting for!” This was much to the consternation of the TPUSA organizers who were trying to hold their meeting.

Being the cowards that they are, TPUSA’s organizers called the police more or less right away. The anti-TPUSA contingent was told that we weren’t allowed to disrupt the meeting and had to leave the room. A very helpful ASU employee informed us that we were allowed to stay in the hallway, as long as we did not block the door. So we filled that hallway with approximately 60 people, including some 35 members of the IMT, and filled the next two-and-a-half hours with revolutionary speeches, chants, and songs.

Groups like TPUSA rely on protection from the state and the campus bureaucracy to exist. One of the cops who showed up, Officer J. Tropp, badge number 971, even began to fraternize with the TPUSA members and accepted food from their meeting. Their ideas are deeply unpopular and they represent a tiny minority in society, but the capitalists instinctively know what a united working class would mean for them and are willing to spend billions and billions of dollars to cut across that unity.

Unbeknownst to us, TPUSA had invited a special guest speaker to their meeting, R.C. Maxwell. Maxwell is a far-right journalist who was invited to speak and facilitate a discussion on investigative journalism. A cursory search of this individual’s so-called “journalism” reveals that he is merely one of those obnoxious types who jam cameras into people’s faces and ask ridiculous questions, hoping to fluster their victims into saying something they can mock. The vast majority of people in society have zero time for this sort of nonsense and instinctively understand that the nonsense these “journalists” spout is absolute garbage. Maxwell seemed to be under the impression that we were there to protest him specifically. Sorry buddy, you’re not that big a deal.

In addition to Mr. Maxwell, there were also a couple of “journalists” known as “Campus Crashers” who also like to target individuals and aggressively confront them with nonsense questions. These jokers tried to use these tactics on a couple of our comrades, asking things like, “why do you support pedophilia?” and other absurdities. But sane  people recognize that defending LGTBQ rights has nothing to do with  “supporting pedophilia.” When confronted with educated communists who are prepared to patiently and clearly explain their positions, these buffoons simply make themselves look foolish.

TPUSA and R.C. Maxwell attempted on social media to make it seem as if their meeting went off without a hitch and that this was somehow something other than utterly humiliating for them. Maxwell claimed on Twitter that his speech was a success, though something tells us the chanting and singing was at least a smidge distracting. Let’s just say the acoustics of the space were quite favorable for our endeavor. From what we could tell from outside the room, those inside gave up on having an actual meeting and watched the World Series baseball game while eating Chick-fil-A instead. Several of their members didn’t even bother to go into the room, but chose to gawk at the protestors instead.

The stated goal of this protest was to send these queer-bashers running with their tails between their legs, and that is precisely what we accomplished. Realizing that they were outnumbered and that we would not relent, TPUSA’s members left the meeting space long before the end of the World Series game. We, on the other hand, met a number of interested new young communists, sold roughly $50 in press materials, and gave ASU’s student body a tiny glimpse of the power of mobilized workers and students.

The success of this event clearly showed that coordination and planning, boldness, and political clarity can bring scum like TPUSA to their knees. But shutting down meetings is not enough to rid the world of bigotry and discrimination. For that, we need to fight for the total transformation of society. And to wage that struggle to victory we need a mass communist party.

The capitalist system and its defenders, the Democrats and Republicans, rely on the so-called culture war hysteria that groups like TPUSA whip up in order to divide the working class. Only the working class has a vested interest in fighting homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and every other form of oppression that exists in class society.

But a communist party will not fall from the sky; it must be built. If you are a communist, let’s work together to build the future mass communist party to serve as the revolutionary leadership the world needs. If you are local to the Phoenix area, we hope to see you at this weekend’s Marxist School at ASU, and if you live elsewhere in the US and want to help build a branch or communist cell, contact us for more information!