Communist Party leader Bob Avakian has announced his support for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election.

Avakian, the founder and leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, told his followers in a statement on Saturday that they should vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

“At this critical hour, every appropriate means of non-violent action must be utilized to remove this regime from power,” said Avakian in his statement. “And if, in spite of mass protest demanding the removal of the Trump/Pence regime, this regime remains in power when it is time for voting, then — using all appropriate means to work for the removal of this regime must include voting against Trump.”

Avakian went on to clarify that he does not want his followers to vote for a third party candidate, and that their vote must be for Biden.

“To be clear, this means not a ‘protest vote’ for some candidate who has no chance of winning, but actually voting for the Democratic Party candidate, Biden, in order to effectively vote against Trump,” wrote the communist leader.

Avakian added that he still considers Biden and the Democrat Party “representatives and instruments of this exploitative, oppressive, and literally murderous system of capitalism-imperialism,” but that all of that needs to be disregarded for now, as ousting Trump is more important.

“But this election is different,” affirmed the communist leader.

“The question is not whether Biden and the Democrats represent something ‘good,'” Avakian continued. “Biden is not ‘better’ than Trump, in any meaningful way — except that he is not Trump and is not part of the move to consolidate and enforce fascist rule, with everything that means.”

“To approach this election from the standpoint of which candidate is ‘better’ means failing to understand the truly profound stakes and potential consequences of what is involved,” he added. “The fact is that there can be one — and only one — ‘good’ that can come out of this election: delivering a decisive defeat to Trump and the whole fascist regime.”

Bob Avakian has also endorsed violent fringe movements in the past, such as the Shining Path — a Maoist rebel movement that tried to overthrow the government of Peru by using guerrilla warfare — in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In May — before the death of George Floyd — Biden called for “revolutionary institutional changes” in America.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.