By Ed Dalton

Workers World Party (WWP) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) attempted to hold a protest at the intersection of East Riverside Drive and South Pleasant Valley in Southeast Austin this past Saturday. But the area is home to revolutionary forces, the enemies of revisionists. Masked militants descended on the revisionist protestors almost immediately.

Both the WWP and PSL are nearly identical “Marcyite” revisionist organizations that trace their origin to the late American former Trotskyite and revisionist Sam Marcy who founded the WWP. Marcy’s revisionist politics defended social-imperialism and all revisionist governments.

A reader leaked information to Incendiary from a WWP chat group in the Signal app.

“Anytime PSL or Eno[ch] are involved, [the militants] are going to come. They smashed the mega[phone], tore up signs and were very intimidating,” a Marcyite said in the chat.

The confrontation was of no surprise since the Maoist movement has had longstanding issues with the PSL and WWP, which include PSL harboring a rapist as well as WWP’s Austin branch collaborating with a federal informant and fascists, detailed in previous Incendiary reports.

Masked revolutionaries, who outnumbered the revisionists, gave a list of demands to the lead organizer of the WWP in Austin, “Enoch,” the former leader of Central Texas Socialist Rifle Association.

The demands read: “1. that you make a public acknowledgment and apology for the fact that you [Enoch] worked with a federal informant, 2. we also demand that you have members of PSL leave this protest, 3. we also demand that you put away all WWP propaganda or it will be taken from you.”

A Chicano militant could be heard saying, “Will you meet these demands? If you do not meet these demands, we will have to ask you to leave.”

“How exactly would you do that?” Enoch said. “Eat my ass, that’s my demand.”

Immediately after, a woman militant rushed forward and seized his megaphone by force. Other militants went in and confiscated PSL and WWP propaganda signs and leaflets.

Enoch, visibly shook, stumbled back and turned around to lift his shirt, flashing a previously concealed sidearm in an attempt to menace the Chicano militant. This kind of threat is typical of white men who come into the barrio from Northwest Austin. These types quickly morph from activist do-gooders, degenerating into racist stand-your-ground types the moment their ego is bruised by people of the oppressed nations.

It was the Maoists who appeared resolute in the face of Enoch’s desperate menacing. Without stepping back and with the same even, calm, and direct tone the masked militants continued pressing the issue of Enoch’s collaboration with the known FBI informant.

After refusing to submit to the demands issued by the masked militants, and after the use of force by women and Chicano militants, Enoch went to claim to stand for these groups by saying that he was part of an organization that trains “LGBT people” and, in his stumbling words, “color of people” in “self-defense and arms training.”

Moments later Incendiary witnessed Enoch provide a statement to the Austin Police Department who, at that point, had arrived to protect him and the WWP-PSL contingent from the revolutionaries of the barrio.

As the red-masked militants dressed in military fatigues departed in an organized manner, a WWP member from out of town began calling the militants “police” in spite of the fact that their organization’s local leader was at that very moment filing a police report against the militants. WWP and revisionists in general are always ready to use bourgeois law and order against community members and revolutionaries who oppose their traitorous activity.

According to sources on the ground, the action was carried out on the basis of the demands given, against WWP and PSL and where they chose to have the protest. It had nothing to do with the nature of the protest taking place. The militants made it clear they were not there over any disagreement with opposing US intervention in Venezuela, emphasizing their support for the Venezuelan people against US imperialism.

The Southeast side, locally referred to as the 41, has long been a base of Maoist operations, which include tenant organizing, anti-police organizing and confrontations with local fascists.

Since the confrontation, members and supporters of WWP and PSL have been silent on the matter on social media in an attempt to regroup and hide their embarrassing failure to protect their signs and equipment from being confiscated by revolutionaries.

Incendiary received a video of masked militants burning the confiscated materials which we will make available in the coming days.

No group has claimed responsibility for the confrontation successfully carried out against the WWP and PSL.