Defending the PCP

You said it better than I ever could. A popular people's movement needs to be actually popular with the people. The Shining Path was absolutely atrocious. Completely unjustified violence and retaliations in order to just get in power.

I feel like the article made some arguments that could hypothetically work if there were proper context, goals, and strategy in mind. Like, sure, in some contexts excesses are expected and accepted, but did you actually do something positive in that work. Sure, the state probably used a lot of violence too, but was the PCP aimed at them in response or mostly targeting civilians? People can do good with hatred as a motivation but can you really say violence is acceptable purely as a manifestation of hatred for the oppressors? (If the tone is not clear these questions are directed as Gonzalists, not you Comrade Salad).

What episode of the deprogram is it? I think I’ve listened to all of them, but I don’t remember one on Gonzalo. Any specific reading recommendations? I don’t want to pick up some random bourgeois book because then I’d be fulfilling the MLM stereotype of MLs being “left anti-communists” not believing lies about Stalin, but believing those about PolPot and the PCP.

I have seen a disturbingly large amount of Khmer Rouge support from self-proclaimed "Maoists." it almost seems like some of them love the idea of purging all of the "ideologically impure" from their nation.

The PCP were a disgusting abomination. On the same level as the Khmer Rouge.

Back when I used reddit, there was this weirdo in r/communism who only posted pro-Khmer Rouge stuff. There's some odd people out there.

for me they completely rejected praxis and established a complete militarization of the party. Unlike the CPC or the maoists in india and the philippines, which establish civilian facilities such as schools, toilets, housing and food, the PCP snubbed this, since the doctrine of the concentric concentration of the three instruments demand the party to act like a militia group. Just violence, pure violence, and the reason for this is they believe that outside revisionist elements will infiltrate the party and corrupt it, despite revisionism actually coming from inside the party politics, such as what we saw during the twilight years of the soviet union, or some chinese "communists" which wanted shock therapy in the country.

The shining path even abandoned Marxist-Leninist-Maoism and just stuck to their deranged ideology of "gonzaloism". And the PCPs continued path of MLM puts them at odds with other MLs groups. Their broad definition of revisionism lands the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of the Philippines as revisionist, as these groups do not apply elements like the militarization of the party.

If someone said the same things but about Ukraine, the Bolsheviks, and Stalin, you all would rightfully be outraged at such dishonesty and propaganda. But since this is about a party you so staunchly disagree with, you'll swallow up bourgeois propaganda.

Such revisionists, since they have not expelled their bourgeois mindset and bourgeois class stand, are still prone to getting weepy at the death tolls thrown about by “senderologists,” bourgeois academics, and even sources that are in the direct employment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a State plot most comparable to our COINTELPRO in the US. They study sources like Ivan Degregori, who was one of the top leaders of Truth and Reconciliation. He shared positions in Truth and Reconciliation with reactionary Peruvian Army generals like Luis Arias Graziani, ex-congress members like Beatriz Alva Hart and Rolando Ames, several catholic priests and bishops, and a conservative Protestant church leader, Lay Sun. This assortment of reactionaries were all partisan in the counterinsurgency against the revolution in service of the State, composed of Fujimori endorsers and people who supported Alan Garcia. Degregori, for his part, as an anthropologist, lends academic legitimacy to what amounts to a well-oiled anti-Communist slander campaign. ...

These liberal humanists will decry the violence of 1983 and in doing this they decry the PPW in Peru and denounce its leader, Chairman Gonzalo. They insist with no regard to historical materialism or the most accessible facts that this “massacre” alienated the peasant base and actually bolstered the number of death squad recruits, harming the revolution itself. This is nothing but a fabrication. The masses themselves understood this action, supported it, and themselves carried it out at the behest of the Party. This was not the activity of “outside agitators,” shadowy Party agents from alien backgrounds. Much as with the rationale used by other liberals to dismiss the most rebellious activity of the US masses, the liberal mind makes fairytales and conjures ghosts. The Party is, in the liberal mind only, understood as divorced fully from the revolutionary masses, carrying out massacres nearly unprovoked based solely on a metaphysical bloodlust.

Let’s look then at the facts: The People’s War in Peru only grew stronger from 1983 into the 90s. When they began advancing upon Lima and other major cities, the peasant militia and people’s committees grew year by year, and with them grew the EGP and the PCP itself. The revolution spread like wildfire, from the Andes to the jungles and into the slums of Lima, which began choking the city from the countryside. The prisons were organized, and whole areas stopped using Peruvian State currency and began using the currency of the PCP. Such places were the most developed and advanced base areas of modern times and far exceeded any current example. The New State was already functioning throughout large areas of the country.

https://www.demvolkedienen.org/index.php/en/t-international-en/2833-asi-mueren-los-enemigos-de-la-clase

After the capture of Gonzalo and the establishment of the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Degregori, much was spun to portray the PCP as a bloodthirsty organization that led to the deaths of 70,000 people, half of which are attributed to the PCP. What is not mentioned in these liberal humanitarian reports is the crimes for those “civilians” that ranged from collaborators with the police and Marines, cattle thieves, wife beaters or other rural tyrants. These nuances are left out of course as they serve the ideological justification that rebellion is wrong.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission monopolizes legitimate justice and violence to be only dished out by the bourgeois state, at no point in the commission was a representative of the revolution given equal place, in spite of the Commissions posturing condemnation for the Fujimori government.

https://redlibrary.xyz/works/strugglesessions/enemies-of-the-communist-party-of-peru.pdf