A group of 10 demonstrators affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party last Thursday busted the classroom of renowned historian Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, who specializes in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, shouting, “No class as usual today!” The Yale Daily News reported.
Raymond Lotta, the group’s leader, announced, “Timothy Snyder, your professor, is locking you into this oppressive system.” Lotta then screamed about Israel’s action in Gaza being a “genocide,” and claimed Prof. Snyder “is brainwashing you with lies and slander about communism. The stakes could not be higher.”
The RCP’s website declares that “The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA has taken on the responsibility to lead revolution in the US, the belly of the imperialist beast, as its principal share of the world revolution and the ultimate aim of communism. This Party is built on and takes as its foundation the new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward through the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian.”
Bob Avakian, 81, used to belong to the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Berkeley and wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party’s publications. In the early 1970s, he served a prison sentence for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration. In 1979, he was charged with assaulting a police officer during a demonstration in Washington, DC protesting Deng Xiaoping’s meeting with Jimmy Carter. Avakian made like Polanski, jumped bail and fled to France. In the 1980s, he came back to the US, and his police assault charges were dropped.
Avakian is hailed by his smattering of supporters as the revolutionary leader who has advanced communist theory toward a “pathway to human emancipation.” His detractors, which include a few dozen individuals who struggled to read his stuff, say he is a mini version of the great Soviet personality cult.
Last Thursday, Prof. Snyder tried to push the noisy commies out of his classroom and took a phone away from one communist who was recording the whole thing. Snyder grabbed the phone, saying, “You don’t have the right to film me.”
Lotta, for his part, imparted his brand of wisdom, yelling, “Where’s Snyder’s moral outrage over US-backed genocide in Gaza?” and “Hitler killed 6 million Jews and Stalin saved 1.6 million Jews.”
Of course, in 1953, the same Stalin planned to murder all those saved Jews, on Purim, but, thank God, he died, on the week of Purim (March 5, 1953, Purim was on March 1).
A Yale University spokesperson told The Yale Daily News “The university takes the disruption of campus activities and student safety seriously and follows these guidelines regarding free expression and peaceable assembly.”
Or, as the RCP puts it, “Making revolution against a powerful and vicious enemy—and going on from there to bring into being a whole new world, without exploitation and oppression—is an incredibly challenging and complex process.”
