Ah, propaganda.

For the last couple of months, the monarchy of Nepal has been running a steady stream of faux news about a supposed split in the Communist Party of Nepal between the erudite and media-friendly Baburam Bhattarai, who conducted the last round of peace talks on behalf of the People's War, and the CPN Chairman Prachanda. Wild stories of infighting were spread via the Nepalese media by the Royal Nepal Army's commanders. Replete with baroque accounts of incarceration, imagined disputes regarding non-existent peace talks and the purging of Bhattarai's wife, it's as if the RNA has been reduced to writing political porn for their besieged sovereign.

This is the best story since now-King Gyanendra claimed that the palace massacre, which conveniently brought him to power, was the result of hash-induced frenzy where the crown prince was to have murdered his entire family before turning the gun on himself. You just can't make this stuff up. Or, more to the point, only a king could have the chutzpah to think anyone else would buy it.

Considering that the king has turned the entire Nepalese press into mouthpieces for his deeply unpopular regime, jailing those who resist, their repetition of government psyops is hardly surprising. No matter how crude the general cariacture of the Maoists presented in the world capitalist press, none have seen fit to dignify the King's claims with anything but total sketpticism.

But tall tales about Nepal abound amid precious little actual reporting. Blaming Nepals' king is easy, but closer to home the problem continues.

The house-broken left can always always be expected to call out "terrorists" and play loyal opposition, and Alexander Cockburn can be trusted to keep pissing on the leg of power. But apparently his CounterPunch newsletter can't quite deal with the return of the "c-word." Come on guys! Quoting Avantika Regmi's article from April 3:

"The Maoist movement that started quietly since its birth in February 1996 has taken such a violent turn that it's being seen as a Khmer Rouge in the making. In the Maoist mouthpiece website not only [is] the index page blood red in color, their objective also is of bloodletting: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun", a quote attributed to Mao." (Read article)

Wow. Maybe next they'll drag up Metternich's skeleton to save us from Jacobin ghosts. Or for an example of the willful confusions on the aesthetically-challenged left, the most recent in a series of shameful articles on Michael Albert's Znet goes so far as to advocate for more effective counter-insurgency by hoping for an alliance between the godking and the sidelined political class. Heaven forbid the non-coordinators over at Znet print the words of the rebels themselves instead of echo-chambering the increasingly shrill, irrelevent moaning of those scurrying for position around a despot's feet.

Once again, Monthly Review has done a real service by simply hosting several articles by Bhattarai on their website. Reading his thoughtful and deep analysis of the current political situation and Nepal's history is a good introduction to understanding how a revolution of millions grew from a few modest militants climbing the hills with shotguns.

Articles by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai:

June 2001: On the Palace Massacre in Nepal
January 2002: Birthpangs of Democracy in Nepal
September 2003: On the Failure of the Peace Talks in Nepal

and most recently, from March 2005:
On the Royal Dictatorship and the Need for a Democratic Republic in Nepal

Splits do happen, and revolutionary movements have eaten themselves alive in the past no doubt. But the rightwing's intellectuals of justification and the house-broken left are so used to believing their own hype about the inability of communists to conduct reasonable debate that they are forced to lie when confronted with a new reality. According to the Times of India, Bhattarai's joint response with his wife to the government's tall tales stated: "There is no personal rift between chairman Prachanda and ourselves."

Back in Realityland, the Maoists have launched a fresh nationwide general strike. Just don't expect to read about it on Znet, "where communism is so dead they have to keep killing it."