The American Communist Party (ACP) is a communist political party in the United States and Canada. The ACP formed in 2024 when its members split from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
The ACP officially espouses MarxismâÂÂLeninism, specifically Xi Jinping Thought. The ACP regards the Chinese view of the Sino-Soviet split as correct, considers the de-Stalinized Soviet Union as having been revisionist, supports the Cultural Revolution while also supporting Deng Xiaoping's pro-market economic reforms, and upholds Juche. The ACP and its leaders have voiced support for China, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, Nicolás Maduro, and the Russian "Special Military Operation", stating that "today, as 80 years ago [in 1945 as the Soviet Union], Russia remains at the forefront of the world liberation movement".
The ACP has been described as "MAGA Communist". Both notable ACP founders Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din have promoted MAGA Communism and similar "conservative communist" labels since 2022. MAGA Communism has been characterized as pro-social services, pro-tax cuts, anti-Zionist, anti-feminist, anti-queer, anti-"woke", and both anti-Donald Trump and pro-Donald Trump. ACP leaders argue that MAGA Communism is a tool to shift the American working class away from capitalism and toward communism.
Prior to 2022, one of the ACP leaders, political activist Jackson Hinkle, was a "Bernie Bro". Another ACP leader, Infrared streamer Haz Al-Din, previously supported the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, but did not vote for him; he also held Western Marxist and Bordigist views before embracing MarxismâÂÂLeninism. From 2022 to 2024, a group of self-described anti-revisionist MarxistâÂÂLeninists led by Haz Al-Din attempted to join and remake the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), in order to "reclaim" CPUSA from "liberals, federal agents and Democrats".
In May 2024, CPUSA's 32nd National Convention passed Resolution 5, which supported a "broad front to defeat Trump, Trumpism, and the MAGA Republicans". Al-Din's group opposed CPUSA's support for the Democrats and claimed that CPUSA had violated democratic centralism by suppressing opposition and limiting debate over Resolution 5.
In July 2024, the Infrared-led group split from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and created the American Communist Party (ACP). ACP described itself as "[a] reconstitution of the Communist Party USA", which had rejected MarxismâÂÂLeninism and embraced "allegiance to the Democratic Party". The ACP's founding executive committee included Jackson Hinkle, Haz Al-Din, and former Party of Communists USA (PCUSA) leader and International Freedom Battalion volunteer Christopher Helali. ACP has since positioned itself as a "patriotic" American alternative to CPUSA.
ACP's founding declaration stated that 29 CPUSA clubs and 3 PCUSA cells had switched affiliations to the new party. CPUSA leadership denied this and 10 of the listed CPUSA clubs denied signing it. In response, ACP argued "these accounts are controlled by" the "[Joe] Sims clique", not "authentic representatives of the clubs".
In April 2024, prior to the official founding of the party, ACP think tank Institute for a Free America hosted a Free America to Free Palestine event in Dearborn, Michigan, which attracted controversy for its unique mixture of anti-Zionist, pro-Russia, and MAGA rhetoric.
In August 2024, ACP joined the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (WAP).
In November 2024, in Orange County, Vermont, ACP International Secretary Christopher Helali won a write-in campaign for high bailiff, a largely ceremonial position, with 5% turnout. From November 2024 to November 2025, Helali was the only member of a communist party who held elected office in the United States. In November 2025, three CPUSA candidates would join Helali in holding elected offices after winning city council or school council elections.
In March 2025, Hrvatska radiotelevizija described Jackson Hinkle as "the most famous American communist today" during an article on Hinkle's speech to the Houthis. On return from a Yemen trip, US Customs and Border Protection briefly detained Helali, which Foreign Policy said "further cement[ed] his credentials" as an anti-imperialist.
In November 2025, Valley News reported that Helali owned one of Jeffrey Epstein's address books, which showed Epstein's connections to former US presidents, Israeli prime ministers, members of the British royal family, and Saudi Arabian officials. Helali stated that "Donald Trump's entry in this book is enormous, for example, and his name is highlighted". In 2021, Business Insider had publicized Helali's possession of the book, made a searchable copy, and hired a forensic expert who found that the book dates to 1997 and had not been altered.
In December 2025, Jesse Watters of Fox News showed footage of an ACP physical fitness camp, which Watters described as a Democratic Party-run "commie boot camp". In response, Stephen Miller claimed that the Democratic Party is a "communist party" that supports "DEI communism". Later in December, ACP member Addison Aronson was selected to join the Dubuque, Iowa Arts & Cultural Affairs Commission.
On February 13, 2026, ACP, along with various progressive organizations, hosted events both in New Jersey and Florida to commemorate the 84th birthday of deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. At the events, ACP speakers expressed full support for Kim's son Kim Jong Un and voiced support for his re-election as General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea at the party's 9th Congress.
ACP is officially a MarxistâÂÂLeninist party, and "upholds a Unified Tendency of MarxismâÂÂLeninism and rejects dogmatic, sectarian, and doctrinaire interpretations of its various historical expressions." In a 2025 ACP explainer video, Chairman Haz Al-Din stated that ACP regards Xi Jinping Thought "as the latest synthesis of MarxismâÂÂLeninism", and in an interview he described it as "the most advanced comprehensive development of Marxism-Leninism to date", descending from Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong's contributions. Al-Din argued that while the party acknowledges Deng's contributions to Marxism, Deng also "presented many problems, such as the ecological pollution, corruption, and wealth inequality", which had to be corrected. ACP defends Joseph Stalin and Stalinism, and cites "Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao" in its declaration. In contrast, CPUSA does not mention Stalin or Mao in its program. The ACP criticizes Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization, seeing it as historical nihilism and a significant factor in collapse of the USSR.
ACP's political position is disputed. Some commentators argue that ACP and MAGA Communism contains both left-wing and right-wing elements:
Some commentators describe ACP and MAGA Communism as leftist:
Some commentators describe ACP and its broader movement as rightist:
ACP has been described as MAGA Communist, an ideology which ACP founders Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din promoted since 2022. Despite being promoted by the party's founders, MAGA Communism is not ACP's official ideology. MAGA Communism is a conservative communist ideology which "cast[s] issues such as transgender rights, the climate crisis and racial justice as neoliberal distractions". Al-Din started MAGA Communism to reject an American left "out of touch with actual working people" and associated with alternative sexualities and a lack of patriotism. Al-Din argues that the American left is stuck in "ideologically pure but irrelevant spaces, subjugated by wokism", while Trump attracted working class voters and questioned the "dogmas" of "political correctness" and "globalization". Al-Din argues that Trump, despite being anti-communist, created a movement that can "achieve more left-wing transformations than the left itself".
ACP leaders argue that MAGA Communism is a tool to shift the American working class away from capitalism and toward communism. Bárbara Pereira, writing for the Brazilian newspaper Estadão, states that Al-Din hopes to win over working class voters with MAGA Communism by emphasizing the similarities between MAGA demands and socialist countries. MAGA Communism stresses that communist countries like Stalin's USSR never supported mass migration, had little tolerance for feminist and LGBT movements, promoted traditional families, and national pride. ACP leader Al-Din argues that "communism has always been historically conservative", patriotic, anti-liberal, and "anti-globalist". Sean Staton, writing in Cultural Logic, defends MAGA Communism as a heterodox MarxistâÂÂLeninist theory which sees MAGA as "a left-wing, inherently communist movement" and therefore holds that "the American revolutionary subject in present day is MAGA, itself, and it is the work of communists to articulate its needs and conduct mass politics". Al-Din sees other communist parties as captured by the "open society", a "non-state apparatus" composed of "NGOs, think tanks, universities, and lobbyists", which fights to preserve hegemony of "American financial capital". Daniel Vitar of LM Neuquén argues that this effort ultimately yielded a "strange political group that brings together people who hate feminism, environmentalism, and the LGBTQ+ movement".
In 2024, Al-Din stated that MAGA's anti-globalism "makes MAGA a viable basis from which to rearticulate the relevancy of communism", because "of course you put your own nation's workers first". In 2025, ACP leader Carlos Garrido described MAGA Communism as "a vehicle for viralization" and "a communism adapted to the unique conditions of the American class struggle". Garrido argued that "the MAGA working class showed every sign of being ready to be conquered by struggle", so MAGA Communists worked to "show MAGA that they could only make America great again, not through Trump and the two-party duopoly, but through communism". In 2025, ACP leader Jackson Hinkle argued that ACP supports MAGA voters and criticizes Donald Trump, arguing that "if Trump does bad things", such as "bombing Iran" or "not solving the illegal immigration problem", then "people from his movement will abandon him", which is why "MAGA is now surpassing Trump".
Renmin University of China professor Wen Tiejun favorably compared the persuasive power of MAGA Communism to nationalism in Chinese communism: "[H]ow can MAGA be combined with communism? [....] In essence, [MAGA] is nationalism. Consider the Communist Party of China's struggle against Japanese invaders â was it mobilising the masses through communist ideology and theory? No, it relied precisely on nationalism." Boston College philosopher Gregory Fried, writing in Studies in East European Thought journal, describes MAGA Communism as rooted in "Stalin's nationalist policy of socialism in one country in the 1930s", arguing that Stalin's views and policies became popular amongst Russian nationalists after the Russian Civil War.
Claudio Aguayo, writing in Cuadernos de Educación, cited Hinkle and MAGA Communism as an example of the "aestheticization of politics" discussed by Walter Benjamin. According to Aguayo, MAGA Communism is an "absurd project" and an "ideological aberration" as using the slogan "Make America Great Again" does not "magically connect with the reality of the American working class". Aguayo argues that MAGA Communism serves a "postmodern function" of providing meaning through aesthetics and is a "simulacrum", an attempt to escape the lack of meaning in late capitalism. MAGA Communists embrace the aesthetics of Stalinism as "a complete and total culture" with its own art, books, and music, in contrast, Aguayo argues that communist politics requires "radical rejection" of the aestheticization of politics in favor of the "politics of truth". Similarly, Bárbara Pereira of Estadão labels MAGA Communism "the portrait of an era in which ideologies merge without shame, in which coherence is a minor detail, and the power of narrative matters more than the truth".
ACP's program calls for the nationalization of large corporations; the cancellation of all debts; abolition of the US Federal Reserve in favor of a "People's National Bank"; "AI-driven national economic planning"; "the abolition of the University-Industrial Complex"; a right to refuse medical interventions; an end to "mass immigration" in favor of "population exchanges on a rational and planned basis"; and a moratorium on genetically modified food pending a âÂÂcomprehensive investigationâÂÂ. ACP supports Socialism with Chinese characteristics and supports the creation of "Socialism with American characteristics", which would adapt to "our nation's history, our values" to build "a communist order unique to the United States". ACP upholds "patriotic socialism". ACP supports anti-fascism, stating that communists must oppose "fascist tyranny", "racist nationalism" and "authoritarian repression".
ACP rejects and criticizes "woke culture" and its leaders have declared that "Marxism is not woke". ACP founder Hinkle called himself an "American Conservative Marxist Leninist" and argued: "Communism and Marxism historically have been conservative [...] It's a new era in the West that made it adhere to liberal-leftist values. This is not true Marxism. It's Marxism funded by George Soros". The Communist Party of the Russian Federation stated that ACP "relies strictly on class struggle, rather than on 'identity politics' â the so-called gender, race, and sexual struggles that are so popular today in America and Western Europe." ACP leaders argue that "the most absurd aspects of wokism" were intentionally designed to prop up the "dissident right", which they reject. Hinkle's list of political demands included banning "ANTIFA street terrorism", introducing "patriotic education", "pardoning" January 6 Capitol attack rioters, and "deporting" the Bush family, Clinton family, Barack Obama, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton to the International Criminal Court.
Al-Din has argued that his political movement is not against women, but opposes the "effeminization" of men, while Hinkle stated he would "protect our youth from trans terrorists and propagandists". Hinkle also wrote: "The US celebrates 'Pride Month' on June 1st. America is run by pedophiles, [while] Russia celebrates International Day for the Protection of Children on June 1st". Hinkle and the MAGA Communists opposed Cuba's legalization of gay marriage.
ACP leaders have described America as "occupied by" a Zionist "international monopoly cartel", and argued that the American working class must ally with the MAGA movement to fight "globalists" like George Soros. In October 2025, ACP leader Haz Al-Din told China Daily that the United States government is controlled by the "Epstein network" to serve "a small private cabal", which is why the US demonizes China (which he argued is outside of the Epstein network's control).
ACP is a second campist party that strongly supports an anti-imperialist "multipolar axis" against Western imperialism, financial capitalism, and globalism. ACP chairman Al-Din argues that "all nations today" must choose between "obedience to the ruling financial capitalist class or sovereign, national development". In an interview with the Yevgeny Prigozhin-backed United World International website, Al-Din stated: "The [main] problem [in the world] is what Michael Hudson calls Super-Imperialism, a system in which the United States acts as both creditor and debtor in the global economic system".
ACP's program calls for the "unconditional destruction of NATO". In opposition to NATO and the West, ACP and its leaders support an "axis" including Russia, North Korea, Hezbollah and Iran, Hamas, the Houthis, Nicaragua, Xi Jinping and the People's Republic of China, and the Haitian resistance led by Jimmy Chérizier. It also supported Bashar al-Assad and Nicolás Maduro, praising the former as a 'socialist hero'.
ACP opposes US support for Ukraine. The ACP supports Russian forces in the Russo-Ukrainian War, arguing that Ukraine represents the legacy of fascism while the Russian Federation follows the legacy of the Soviet Union in providing assistance to socialist and developing countries. ACP stated that the people's militias of Donbass "embody the American traditions of fighting for freedom". The ACP asserts its full support for the Russian "Special Military Operation" and has provided humanitarian aid to Donbass "to make the lives of people there better and help them fight NATO aggression". In May 2025, together with the Left Front, ACP made a declaration that "today, as 80 years ago, Russia remains at the forefront of the world liberation movement". ACP further stated: "The ongoing Special Military Operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine is the main epicenter of the modern anti-fascist struggle. The multi-vector policy of the Russian Federation, aimed at overthrowing Western globalist hegemony and building a new, just world order â such a policy corresponds to the spirit of the Great Victory and should be supported by progressive left forces around the world."
ACP is anti-Zionist and opposes US support for Israel. ACP supports an independent Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. ACP "does not recognize the illegitimate entity called Israel", calling it "the Zionist project, whose fascist character has long been evident to the world" which "has always been fundamentally contrary to the historical process by which nations acquire legitimate and authentic existence". ACP calls for Palestinian independence, stating that the Palestinian struggle "is closely linked to the struggle for sovereignty and self-determination at the global level".
ACP supports the Chinese Communist Party and opposes Taiwan independence.
In July 2024, immediately after its foundation, ACP signed a friendship treaty with North Korea as well as with the Georgian Communist Party, concluding the treaty at the house where Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia.
In December 2024, ACP sent 55 boxes of humanitarian aid to Donbass.
In January 2025, Hinkle interviewed Romanian politician CÃÂlin Georgescu, who finished first in the annulled 2024 Romanian presidential election. Hinkle praised Georgescu as "the man who leads the fight for sovereignty, Western values and Christianity, who wants to stop World War III"; he condemned annulment of the election as a "coup orchestrated by Sorosist globalists and NATO that blocked the campaign". Hinkle then interviewed George Simion, the leader of Alliance for the Union of Romanians whom Georgescu, who was banned from running, endorsed in the 2025 Romanian presidential election.
In February 2025, ACP met with the representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and Russian Left Front. ACP and the KPRF provided a diesel generator, food, medicine, and equipment for Russian forces in Donbass.
In April 2025, ACP representatives attended the KPRF's 2nd Anti-Fascist Forum in Moscow, Russia.
In July 2024, ACP congratulated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and recognized him as the legitimate victor of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election. ACP leaders Jackson Hinkle and Christopher Helali served invited as international observers and spoke in favor of Maduro.
In November 2024, the Workers' Cause Party (PCO), a Trotskyist party in Brazil, congratulated ACP on the election of Helali as a high bailiff, calling it a "historic achievement for the American left". Despite ACP's Stalinism and PCO's Trotskyism, PCO calls ACP its "sister organization".
On October 22, 2025, ACP International Secretary Christopher Helali spoke at the 9th International Anti-imperialist Conference in Caracas, hosted by the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (WAP) and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
On July 27, 2024, Helali met with the representatives of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF). The PPSF representatives praised the ACP for its "intellectual and political identity" and "its principled positions in support of the Palestinian cause and all just causes in the world", while Helali affirmed ACP's support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with capital in Jerusalem.
In February 2025, ACP leaders Helali, Al-Din, and Hinkle attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the third Secretary-General of Hezbollah. ACP leaders praised Nasrallah as a "hero of the revolutionary forces and freedom-loving peoples around the world".
In March 2025, on International Quds Day, party founder Jackson Hinkle gave a speech at Al-Sabeen Square in Sanaa, Yemen, during which he pledged ACP's support to the cause of the Houthi movement and decried the "terrorist attacks" carried out by the United States against Yemen. Christopher Helali and Hinkle spoke at a Houthi-organized pro-Palestine conference in Sanaa with guests including Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Zwelivelile Mandela, Clare Daly, and Mick Wallace.
In July 2025, Hinkle met with DoÃÂu Perinçek, chairman of Turkey's Patriotic Party, with ACP "partnering" with the Patriotic Party. Hinkle stated: "The Islamic world will unite against Israel and the West will stand against Israel. [....] If all forces that fight against imperialism â like Khomeini â come together, Russia, China, and the Democratic PeopleâÂÂs Republic of Korea will defeat imperialism."
ACP has fielded electoral candidates for local offices. Currently 2 ACP members hold public office.