The Moscow Speech That Came Just Before YouTube Deleted His Channel
On Sept. 18th, Caleb Maupin addressed the World Public Assembly in Moscow. The gathering brought together 6,012 participants from 154 countries, “united by our commitment to promoting public dialogue and strengthening trust and mutual understanding among people and peoples.”
Caleb Maupin was specifically asked to address a panel called “The Spirit of Elbe,” named for the historic handshake between U.S. and Soviet forces at the Elbe River on April 25th, 1945. Peter Kuznick and Matt Ehret spoke on the panel as well.
Within hours of his speech, YouTube deleted the channel he had maintained for over 18 years, since 2008. It is not clear why this decision was made. But here is the speech that the founder and director of the Center for Political Innovation gave in Moscow—one that may have driven the tech monopolies to try to silence his message.
The Spirit of Elbe: Why Mass Movements Change History
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
The historic handshake between the United States military and the Soviet Red Army on the Elbe River, signifying that victory over the Nazi menace was approaching, cannot be properly understood without recognizing that it was made possible by one key factor: mass social movements.
Before he was a statesman, Joseph Stalin was an activist. He left seminary school and organized workers. He led strikes of oil workers in Batumi. He was an editor of Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper known for its short worker correspondence articles, just a few paragraphs long, in which ordinary people described their factory conditions. Stalin emerged to lead the Soviet Union because, while figures like Lenin and Trotsky had a literary reputation, Stalin was the organization man. He knew the peoples of the Russian Empire well, and he understood how to get things done and build an effective organization.
The Soviet Union sat at the center of a mass movement, and in 1935, at the 7th World Congress, Stalin gave the podium to the Bulgarian revolutionary who had just been released from Hitler’s prison, Georgi Dimitrov. Dimitrov reoriented the global communist movement to focus on defeating the menace of fascism, sending international brigades to fight in Spain, blocking the parade of Oswald Mosley at London’s Battle of Cable Street, and supporting U.S. President Roosevelt against Henry Ford and the National Association of Manufacturers, who sought to depose him in a coup.
As the Red Army battled the invaders, French activists organized La Résistance, American communists lobbied Congress demanding a second front and more aid, and Mao’s Eighth Route Army fought Japan.
Why is this such an important point to make in 2026, when we are discussing history? Because there is an urgent need for such a mass movement today. During the Great Depression that preceded the Second World War, the understanding was that the economic crisis was rooted in the irrationality of capitalism, the anarchy of production for profit. Technological advances that should be making life more prosperous by making it easier to generate wealth were leading to poverty and unemployment.
The same is true today, and Artificial Intelligence, self-driving cars, and all the wonders created by human brilliance hang over the dying system of the West like a curse. The Adam Smith free-trade economic order cannot handle the fruits of the computer revolution. So it becomes more desperate, and just like in the 1930s, the ruling elites battle against each other, and many see more war and the possibility of a low-wage police state on the horizon.
The world is divided between the sections of the planet under the domination of the old economic order rooted in colonialism and those states that have emerged from popular anti-colonial struggles. States rooted in mass movements and the wave of hope that followed the Second World War amid the economic expansion have presided over development where profits are not in command, but rather the revolutionary anti-colonial state directs state industries as well as market forces to ensure the growth of living standards.
This model of human-centered development, protecting traditional values and investing in human beings as great assets to make society wealthier, is on display before the entire world as a successful alternative. The Russian President’s successful restructuring of the economy since the 1990s is one example. China’s rise from the Century of Humiliation is another. Nicaragua’s great expansion and the heroic achievements of the Alliance of Sahel States in West Africa all demonstrate that governments rooted in social movements that seek to expand production and raise up their people are the way forward.
What my country needs more than ever is an anti-war government, a government that focuses on win-win development and trade with countries around the world rather than militarism and internationalist monopolism. America needs a government of action that will fight for working families. The overwhelming majority of U.S. society would benefit from an improved relationship with the BRICS world on the basis of understanding that a multipolar world is inevitable and the age of empires centered around great financial metropolises is over. The civilizations of the land and the people who inhabit the land are the future, and the empires of the sea, the Atlanticist order, are the past. The massive global opposition to Israel’s crimes is a demonstration of how much humanity is beyond tolerating the crimes of the outdated colonial order.
We need to build the Bering Strait tunnel and connect the Russian Far East with Alaska. We need to end all unilateral sanctions and establish partnerships in technology and scientific research with the great powers of the world. We need a society that looks to our children as the future and invests in cultivating their creativity and youthful energy to completely reinvent the world.
Part of moving toward this in the United States is countering the lies of mainstream media, and that is why I am so proud of all the work I have done as a reporter at RT.
Beyond knowing the truth, a movement is needed. The American people know enough to want a better way, but they can only get what they desire by entering politics for themselves and becoming awakened and active.
My organization, the Center for Political Innovation, aims to facilitate such an awakening and inspire the American people to envision a new America beyond imperialism, and the real potential for a new future beyond Wall Street profits and war, with humanity rising to new heights.
