The Red-Brown Paradox: National Syndicalism within the Modern Far-Left

In one of my previous articles, I stated that “if earlier forms of fascism emerged from currents within the left, could a new left‑originating variant appear again? Preventing future left‑wing expressions of fascism requires beginning with a precise, grounded understanding of what fascism actually is, since genuine anti‑fascism depends on that clarity”.

Pierre Tru-Dank, also known as Joshua E. Masters, was a once-contributor of “leftypol”, that sponsored a Richard Wolff lecture at the Judson Memorial Church Assembly Hall, with Wolff referring to the community as an "interesting group of people”.

He recently translated a book of Edouard Berth “The Misdeeds of the Intellectuals” (French: Les méfaits des intellectuels). Here, Edouard Berth is a theorist of French syndicalism and disciple of Georges Sorel who co-founded the Cercle Proudhon, a group that gave birth to syncretic and proto-fascist revisionist Marxist ideology called “national syndicalism”.

Pierre Tru-Dank is being displayed as a left-wing content creator by Leftypedia, an online English language socialist encyclopedia dedicated to providing a coherent platform about leftist politics hosted on Miraheze. His name appears as a left-wing content creator in IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) subreddits and some other socialist subreddits such as socialism. In those reddit communities, he is mostly considered as a Marxist-De Leonist.

On Feb 21st of this year, Pierre Tru Dank released an article entitled “An Outline of Socialist Industrial Unionism for the 21st Century”, in which he co-authored with Shandon Simpson, otherwise known as “Zoran Zoltanous”, publishing articles on the “The Fascio Newsletter”. In the article, they highly quoted the American Marxist Daniel De Leon who developed Socialist Industrial Unionism, Georges Sorel, Proudhon, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. It would be a bit strange for those who are not familiar with their contents but it’s normal for the proto-fascist national syndicalists, classical fascists and national Bolsheviks to quote the national syndicalist thinkers such as Edouard Berth, Georges Valois, Hubert Lagardelle, and Georges Sorel along with National Bolsheviks thinkers such as Karl Otto Paetel and Ernst Niekisch in addition to prominent socialist thinkers such as Proudhon, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels.

Also, it’s to note that Pierre Tru-Dank was once a member of American Communist Party (ACP), the MAGA Marxist-Leninist party with founder like Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din who are inspired by Aleksandr Dugin, the philosopher of Fourth Political Theory. However, Pierre Tru-Dank resigned from ACP voluntarily in November 2025. Currently, he is known to have founded a syndicalist organisation in Canada called “Canadian Syndicalist Federation”.

Given the fact that Sorelian (revisionist) Marxism—which merged revolutionary syndicalism with nationalism and helped give rise to proto-fascist national syndicalism and fascism, combating fascism effectively requires a strong ideological counterforce. Since historically, all forms of fascism have rejected liberal principles like democracy, open migration, individualism, limited government, and civil rights, a key strategy could involve championing these liberal values. A more radical approach might involve advocating for international solidarity beyond the identity politics in the light of social justice, stateless solutions to intersectional oppressions, acknowledging the uniqueness of the individuals, the recognition of class struggle as a driving force of the history and defending universal human rights along with the civil liberties of every human being.