Galaxy Brain

"I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism" is a intriguing book by New York-based writer A. M. Gittlitz, published last year. It tells the story of the Argentinian Trotskyist revolutionary Homero Cristalli (1912-1981), better known under his mysterious pen name J Posadas (sometimes interpreted as Juan Posadas, sometimes as José Posadas). The movement around Posadas was notorious on the far left for decades, first because of its bizarre theory that a nuclear war would trigger a future socialist reconstruction of society, and later because of Posadas´ belief in UFOs, space aliens and the possibility of human-dolphin communication. I first heard of the Posadists in the 1980´s as "the Trots who believe that socialism will come from the Moon". Later, I wrote to the British "Revolutionary Workers Party" asking for Posadas´ notorious UFO article, but instead, I was sent a pamphlet about Charlie Chaplin (thank you). I also corresponded with ultra-Posadist Paul Schulz and tried to read his German-language material. Yes, it did mention Star Trek ("Raumschiff Enterprise" in German), Erich von Däniken and the lost continent of Mu... I have previously reviewed some of Posadas´ own works on this blog (click on the label "Posadism" below this post to access it). After reading "I Want to Believe", I can only say that I didn´t know half of it! 

What makes the Posadist current so fascinating is that it started out as a "real" Trotskyist tendency, and even had a modicum of support in the unions and the working class. Posadas (or Homero Cristalli, to use his given name) was an Italian-Argentine left-wing radical of a working class background. He only attented school for two years, and tried his luck at a wide variety of odd jobs, including minstrel singer and soccer player. Eventually, he became a union organizer and joined the Trotskyist movement. To make a long story much shorter, Posadas eventually split with the "official" Fourth International, creating his own "Fourth International (Posadist)" in the 1960´s. At the time, the Posadists had a real presence in several Latin American nations: Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba. They attempted to organize workers and landless peasants. In Cuba and Guatemala, they tried to influence left-leaning guerilla movements with varying degrees of success. Eventually, both Castro and Guatemalan guerilla leader Yon Sosa disavowed the Posadistas. In Cuba, the Posadists were rounded up and imprisoned after Castro had allied himself with the "Stalinist" Communist Party. Che Guevara negotiated a deal which permitted the Posadistas to leave prison and return to civilian life, on condition that they would dissolve their party and never again partake in political activity. In many other Latin American nations, the followers of Posadas were murdered outright by pro-American military or right-wing death squads. More succesful, perhaps, was a clandestine arms factory in Morocco, smuggling weapons to the FLN in Algeria. The factory had been set up by Fourth International leader Michel Pablo, and several Posadist militants worked there. 

Or so the story goes. Gittlitz admits that it´s difficult to know what *really* happened in many cases, so his story of the Posadist international should perhaps be taken as a first approximation of the truth, rather than as a story about "what actually happened". But yes, I´ve heard the Guatemalan part of the story from a reputable source (who believed that the Posadists really did embezzle MR-13 funds. Curiously, my source referred to the man as "Posades"). Other claims sound more fantastic. Did the Posadist International really have sections in far-away places such as South Yemen, Somalia and Madagascar? I doubt it. I heard too many examples of small left-wing tendencies claiming "sections" that on closer inspection turn out to be fictitious (or consist of one guy in a Paris student café). 

An interesting fact is that the crazy perspective of hoping for a nuclear war wasn´t entirely Posadas´ own invention. It actually comes from Michel Pablo, the leader of the Fourth International in the immidiate post-World War II period. Pablo´s belief in War-Revolution - that a Third World War is imminent and will trigger a world socialist revolution - is only one step removed from Posadas´ more dramatic demand for the Soviet Union or China to actually launch such a war by a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States. And yet, Pablo is seldom painted as barking mad. Perhaps he was a more erudite theoretician than the autodidactic Posadas? Gittlitz also notes the shift in Posadist politics circa 1968 (which seems to have co-incided with a similar shift in Castro´s policy, something not noticed by the author) from ultra-leftish guerillism towards a more pro-Soviet "popular frontism". Posadas even supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia! When Posadas was forced to leave Latin America, he went to Italy where his group entered the Communist Party and even sent a representative to Moscow for talks. The Soviet host wasn´t impressed and would later publish a polemic against the Posadists. 

Had this been all, Posadism would simply be regarded as a kind of ultra-Pabloism, and nobody would give a damn. What made the tendency memorable (and meme-able) is that somewhere along the line, J Posadas *did* go barking mad...

Juan Posadas did have authoritarian, puritanical and slightly megalomaniacal tendencies already from the beginning of his Trotskyist career. It´s interesting to note that he originally slavishly followed the decrees of the Fourth International leadership, Pablo in particular. I suspect this dogmatism was Posadas´ way of compensating for his lack of education. At some point, the Argentine autodidact decided to replace his guru Pablo with...himself. It was pretty much downhill from there. During the 1970´s, if not earlier, the Posadist international became a kind of "Jehovah´s Witnesses of the left", or a cult by any other name. The internal life of the organization strikingly resembled other cults, both political and religious: all power was in the hands of Posadas and his immidiate family, morality was puritanical, members were not permitted to have children, critics of the leadership were invariably denounced as "police agents" and expelled, all meetings were closed with shouts of "Viva Posadas", and the party magazines were filled with the rambling, incoherent and incomprehensible speeches of the great leader, presented as infallible wisdom. The political line also resembled the message of apocalyptic cults. After an event known as "the repression" (compare the Great Tribulation of Christian fundamentalism) during which many militants would be rounded up and killed, a nuclear war would follow (compare Armaggedon) and after the war, almost miraculously, the survivors would establish socialism on a world scale (compare the Millennium). 

In one of these speeches, Posadas mentions UFOs, claims that they are extraterrestrial craft, and that the aliens must be socialist. Perhaps they can even help humanity to fight for socialism? The speech was dutifully printed in the magazines of the Posadist "sections" and quickly made them the laughing stock of the entire left. Ironically, Gittlitz believes that Posadas himself wasn´t *that* obsessed with UFOs. It was simply one of many topics on which he had all-knowing opinions, but it´s hardly surprising that Posadas´ opponents jumped to the occasion. 

During the 1970´s, Posadas purged most of his old guard, was involved in several sex scandals (again like any cultish guru) and seems to have gone completely and utterly mad. For instance, he treated the birth of his daughter Homerita as an event of world-historic significance, and wanted to raise her to become the first enlightened socialist human (or something to that effect). Party members in Italy were instructed to visit the maternity ward where Homerita was born, stand around the bed of the mother and the infant, sing revolutionary songs, etc. The staff of the ward eventually had to silence them! Posadas´ message became more and more New Age-like. He believed that humans could and should communicate with dolphins. Indeed, all animals and plants would become tame and live in peace with humans under socialism, and some animals (if I understand his ramblings correctly) would even become as intelligent as humans (including the almost iconic dolphins). At this point, the Posadistas had no working class base left, the experienced militants were all gone, and most of the "sections" consisted of confused young people of the kind that might just as well join a religious cult. 

After the death of Posadas, two ex-Posadistas developed the UFO strain of his thought even further. One of them was Dante Minazzoli, who had been expelled by Posadas for whatever reason, but still continued to believe in the alien-socialism interface. He spent years as a kind of one-man entryist in ufological circles, trying to gently win them over to a revolutionary socialist perspective. The other was Paul Schulz, who told me that he had been expelled after the death of Posadas by the new leadership of the International. Judging by "I Want to Believe", Schulz was far crazier than I had previously thought. Apparently, Schulz became a trance medium, believed that he was in direct communication with aliens, and tried to win Swiss contactee Billy Meier for a socialist perspective. Meier never responded to Schulz´ letters... 

When J Posadas died, many assumed that his movement would die with him. However, it seems that the Posadist Fourth International still exists, led by Posadas´ son Léon Cristalli. Or perhaps there are now two Posadist internationals, the "European bureau" having split from the "Latin American bureau". Léon Cristalli´s wing of the movement (the Latin American one) supports Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and the populist spring in general. They believe that Russia is a "workers´ state". However, the most well-known revival of Posadism is in the form of jocular and ironic Internet memes. This "Neo-Posadism" rose to prominence circa 2016-17, at about the same time that Trump-supporting trolls filled Twitter and other social media forums with curious memes featuring Pepe, Kek, Harambe, Trump as the restorer of German Idealism, and what not. There is a fake Posadist group known as "the Intergalactic Workers League" and an equally fake "DSA Posadist Caucus". In this era of postmodern irony, J Posadas have been turned into a LARP...

While I consider "I Want to Believe" an interesting and indispensable read for those of us who give a damn about the 57 varieties of Trotskyism, I must say that the author comes across as something of a quasi-intellectual. I only skimmed the last chapter, where he discusses "the function of the joke and irony in history" (sounds like something Posadas himself could have written). Gittlitz is also somewhat sloppy, as when he refers to the Russian capital in 1917 as "Saint Petersburg" (it´s Petrograd), or claims that the Popular Front government in Spain had a conflict with Franco in 1935 (it wasn´t elected until 1936), or uses English words in weird ways ("principal" instead of "principle", etc). The author accepts a kind of mythologized Trotskyist history, in which Lenin wanted to see Trotsky as his successor, hundreds of thousand Trotskyists were sent to the Gulags, and Hitler feared a world revolution led by Trotsky. Nah, none of that happened, except in the fevered imagination of...well...Posadas, perhaps? It´s almost as if the author has gone native!

That being said, "I Want to Believe" is nevertheless recommended. Four stars out of five.