Gonzaloism is a cult. One massive cult which destroys everything it touches and harms the people who are sucked under by it.
For the past few months, I was a part of this cult. I basically worshiped "Chairman Gonzalo", upheld him as a superhuman figure and "Great Leader" to the world communist movement. I was utterly fanatical. We all were.
We isolated ourselves from other communists. Even other Maoists whom we met we called "rightists" if they failed to adhere to the rigid set of dogmas that composes Gonzaloism. To us, you were either a "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist, with the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo" ("M-L-M, pM, CUVCG", note that you had to include the dashes even in the acronym, otherwise you were denying Maoism "scientific continuation".), or you were nothing.
My website was made to reflect the point of view of this cult. Every article had to pay homage to Gonzaloism in some form. Whenever mentioning Marxism, you always had to append it with "(today Maoism)" or else you were suspected of being part of the out-group.
We basically worshiped a group called "The Worker", which is tied with the "Committee to Reconstitute the CPUSA". The cult-like tendencies of this clique is detailed here. Every article from them had to be reflected in our project in some way. I kept regular email correspondence with them and held them in high regard, but never allowed to be an editor. This is one of the features of a cult; you are never good enough, always be servile to your betters.
Suddenly, Trump was not a fascist, because "The Worker" said so (they failed to comply with Gonzalo's narrow definition of fascism). Suddenly, the Black nation did not exist. And so on, and so forth. Supporters (potentially members; they kept their associations hidden) of "The Worker" joined our Discord server and propagated their views. There was an entire gang of "thought leaders" who could recite "The Worker" articles and quotations from Chairman Gonzalo in seconds, and their line was presented as an unfalsifiable truth.
This continued for a long time. Eventually, two of my best friends had a talk with me and told me their thoughts; I was in a cult.
At first, it was hard to believe them, but I eventually realized there was truth to what they said. They showed me a list of features of a cult and my group was increasingly meeting many of them.
I spoke with a Marxist-Leninist about this from a respected party of mine. He confirmed my suspicions but, even despite my Gonzaloism, offered me a path towards true proletarian organizing.
I decided — this had to stop. I started questioning Gonzaloism, even in small ways, but was immediately called a "rightist" and "dogmato-revisionist" by the Gonzaloites. The non-Maoists in the server noted their cult-like tendencies, their appeals to authority, etc. but they to were called revisionists and thus placed in the out-group.
I had enough of Gonzaloism. I purged the cultists and deleted my website.
From now on, I will commit to true proletarian organizing.
It is sectarian, .5/100 trotskyist groups would be a cult, same with MLs, and Maoists. 1:1 Gonzaloist are in a cult, same with Larouchites and Duganites.
You can call an ideology whatever you want, the fact is 0 Trot, ML, or Maoist groups are in a cult, because none of those tendencies are cults, they are the exact opposite: Marxists. Any tendency can be sectarian, and in different ways, and that's just the nature of the movements. It is getting better.
Like much respect, nothing against you personally, because I see this kind of stuff everywhere. We have to be able to criticize our own and other tendencies openly or else that is sectarianism, or maybe cultish behavior itself.
Produce an example that isnt like WSWS which is sectarian but not a cult, and I'll produce so-called ML and Maoist cults as well.
I wouldn't mention it if it weren't literally the largest and most annoying org I have to deal with. But it is, and that pumps out a lot of cultists before they burn out being abused to sell newspapers and often abandon political group participation altogether because of the experience.
That sucks. Not my experience with many Trot groups, though I can name bad ones.
I could name 6 just from local groups lmao
In my experience trot groups would only disagree with the number being higher than that in the sense that it would require acknowledging the other trot groups as being trot. Every trot and ex-trot I know in real life who has opinions about trot groups that they are not currently a part of would put this number higher if you stipulated "nominally trotskyist," and they are members/ex-members of and criticizing some of the largest trot groups in the US.
I think "Maoist" is sort of an unhelpful term, as exemplified by the fact that Gonzalites are Maoists but you counted them separately, but this hardly accounts for all the subsets of "Maoism" with a high cult propensity (Avakianites come to mind). Obviously, MLs have their own problems tied up with the history of the "cult of the individual" which goes some way to explaining all the disgusting chauvinist ML groups.