Ukraine Free Territory
Literally bandit kingdom under an absolute leader
Stalin vs Spanish Leftists
The USSR was the only nation to provide any support to the Republic, and it was the anarchists that fucked up by being unable to organize any kind of national army and just letting the fascists roll up their ‘independent’ cities one by one. Saying “it was Stalin’s fault” is the anarchist stab-in-the-back myth.
Mao
I’ve never heard of the ‘Manchurian communes’ and neither has wikipedia (which would never miss the chance to play up a supposed communist atrocity) and ah yes, that famous leftist tendency “intellectuals”. Not saying the Cultural Revolution was correct, but you also can’t just blame one person for it.
Hungarian Worker’s Councils
A fascist counterrevolution, Hungary was an Axis power and it was a mere eleven years after WW2 - for “”“worker’s councils”“” they sure lynched a lot of Jewish people! Read this.
Futhermore, did even a single one of these leaders claim to support an abstract “left unity”? Lenin sure didn’t:
“Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.”
Nor did all the millions and millions of workers who supported each of these leaders. How unfathomably arrogant to think that the millions of committed revolutionaries that worked tirelessly to build socialism in these places were too fucking stupid to see they were working for the ‘wrong’ ideology, that they should have rejected their leadership organization and just slotted in your preferred coterie of “libertarian socialists & anarchists” and that would have simply solved all their murderous authoritarian ways. A nice horizontal, non-hierarchical, non-coercive network of free-organizing collectives would definitely have stood up in the face of the Wehrmacht, wouldn’t it!
Now, ironically the “tankie” instances in this federation actually have rules about sectarianism so I wouldn’t post this on there, but I have no qualms saying it here (you can feel free to ban me though, if you want to indulge in the ultimate irony). So I can say that I am sectarian, because revolution is a problem that has a correct answer - there’s the answer that saved hundreds of millions of lives from fascism, and then there’s the ‘answer’ that lets online “”“leftists”“” living eighty years after the fact feel smugly superior to the people who actually fought and bled for a better world. Further reading on this matter:
- “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder - Lenin
- A Critical Read of Animal Farm - Jones Manoel
- Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism - Michael Parenti (<- especially this)
Edit: I was kinda pissed off when I wrote this so my dismissals of those points were definitely sloppy - though in hindsight with this guy “more nuance” would probably have been a waste - but I absolutely can’t tolerate such ignorant attacks against the projects that actually came the closest to human emancipation anywhere in history. Regardless, I don’t want any anarchist comrades to feel like I’m attacking them, and although I obviously believe MLism (and the collected work of its offshoot branches) is the best basis for the theory and practice of revolution, the good work of anarchist groups that were able to keep fighting in the imperial core when Marxist groups were stamped out can’t be ignored. If you punched a fascist then you’re a comrade of mine.
I’ve never heard of the ‘Manchurian communes’ and neither has wikipedia…
I think they might be referring to these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Association_in_Manchuria https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francesco-dalessandro-the-forgotten-anarchist-commune-in-manchuria
I don’t have enough intimate knowledge to be able to comment though, apart from my natural suspicion that once again, as usual, the anarchists will paint their lack of political efficacy as moral virtue and communist nefariousness, though I’m happy to be corrected.
Wait, did they seriously confuse Chinese and Korean? I guess I shouldn’t have expect much from a comic that depicts Mao with slanty eyes.
i mean it was located in Manchuria if you want to be charitable, but it was fuckall to do with Mao in any case–he was busy getting encircled by the nationalists at the time
You’d be opening an can of ethnic worms over the technical historical ownership of North-East China / Manchuria / Dergi Ilan Golo / (the northern part of ) Goguryeo (who’s legacy is claimed by South Korea to further justify shitting on China because they got little dog syndrome)
Online “leftist” losers love to pretend that they can discard the past in favor of their stupid orientalist gamer view of politics and act like they’ve done something
Marxist Leninists stay winning
and ah yes, that famous leftist tendency “intellectuals”. Not saying the Cultural Revolution was correct, but you also can’t just blame one person for it.
I would assume this is referring to the aftermath of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but those intellectuals were pretty much all rightists
“Nor did all the millions and millions of workers who supported each of these leaders. How unfathomably arrogant to think that the millions of committed revolutionaries that worked tirelessly to build socialism in these places were too fucking stupid to see they were working for the ‘wrong’ ideology, that they should have rejected their leadership organization and just slotted in your preferred coterie of “libertarian socialists & anarchists” and that would have simply solved all their murderous authoritarian ways. A nice horizontal, non-hierarchical, non-coercive network of free-organizing collectives would definitely have stood up in the face of the Wehrmacht, wouldn’t it!“
Well fucking said Comrade. This part right here is the thing that always clinches it for me. Whatever can be said in anarchisms favor as an ideology, it all dissolves once the question is asked “how does Anarchism defend itself from a fascist state?”
I don’t have a single issue with anarchists that have the humility and intellectual honesty to accept the clear and obvious shortcomings of Anarchism in regards to revolutionary defense. In fact I admire them for wanting to reconcile those contradictions. It’s not an easy task and that’s what accounts for their rarity more than anything else IMO.
If you call yourself an Anarchist because you have aversion to hierarchy, violence, and big books, you’re just a child, or more likely, an American with the political understanding of a child.
Fucking heroic post o7
I’m assuming.you’re just ignorant of Makhno, and not intentionally spouting century old propaganda but here. From the article "Makhno’s anarchism, however, was not confined to verbal propaganda, important though this was to win new adherents. On the contrary, Makhno was a man of action who, even while occupied with military campaigns, sought to put his anarchist theories into practice. His first act on entering a town – after throwing open the prisons – was to dispel any impression that he had come to introduce a new form of political rule. Announcements were posted informing the inhabitants that they were now free to organize their lives as they saw fit, that his Insurgent Army would not “dictate to them or order them to do anything.” Free speech, press, and assembly were proclaimed, although Makhno would not countenance organizations that sought to impose political authority, and he accordingly dissolved the Bolshevik revolutionary committees, instructing their members to “take up some honest trade.'” Does that sound like a bandit king?
The USSR absolutely betrayed the Spanish Anarchists, this isn’t controversial at all. Here’s a well sourced thread from someone who wrote a research paper on the topic breaking it down.
I don’t know enough about Hungary to have an opinion on the matter and can’t be bothered to do all the reading for it right now. Based on your characterizations of previous libertarian left movements I’m going to assume you’re full of shit though.
Hard agree on “left unity”. Authoritarians and libertarians shouldn’t waste their time on trying to get along, it’s counter productive.
Further reading/listening for anyone interested:
The State is Counter Revolutionary is a theory and history series covering the Russian and Chinese revolutions. The Maoist one may be of particular interest to you.
Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth
Yes, I spoke in anger and I don’t really know that much about Makhno, I also don’t care because he’s an irrelevant footnote. The proletarian masses spoke, they chose who to give their energy and strength to and their choice was the Bolsheviks. Those Bolsheviks safeguarded the Soviet people against the capitalists literally turning out the bowels of hell upon them. Without the Red Army, the genocidal colonial expedition of Nazi Germany would have exterminated every single person between Ukraine and Siberia. And the Red Army was ONLY built through the absolutely tireless work of millions upon millions of workers building socialist industry under the guidance of the Communist Party. Communist Parties! Each region had its own branch! Each nation had its representation guaranteed! Soviet linguists helped invent alphabets for languages that had never been written down before, so they could record their oral histories and partake in the creation of culture on an equal basis with other nations! Truly the actions of a totalitarian dictatorship.
Ah, but it’s much easier to talk about “authoritarians and libertarians” and read the opinions of a bunch of white westerners who know better, than read the words of the people who built socialism under constant siege from the world empire. Hypocritically (?), I’m not interested in reading anything you have to link because I’ve already passed through the phase of anarchism I had before stumbling across The State and Revolution. I’m pressed because I used to be you until I got schooled, and had the humility and intellectual honesty to actually try and learn more. So go and read Blackshirts and Reds, S&R, Losurdo’s Stalin, Vijay Prashad’s Red Star Over the Third World and Washington Bullets and then come back and tell me whether or not you followed my footsteps or just bounced off back into “western-left” arrogance.
Authoritarians and libertarians
I don’t give a shit what you say, if your politics is “authoritarian bad and libertarian good” you’re a fucking idiot.
Oh look, a leftist “enlightened centrist”. Please, provide us your grand left unifying theory that will bring about peace and prosperity for two mutually exclusive schools of thought. Authoritarians and libertarians got lumped together a long time ago and it’s been made abundantly clear that that was a mistake. We should stop trying to force it. It’s counterproductive
Who said I was pro-left unity? Im a Marxist Leninist. Did the name not say “stalinism” loudly enough?
although ill take a real anarchist to work side by side with over your illiterate ass any day. Your ilk are charlatans and failures, always have been, always will be. Stop wasting our time with your illiteracy.
So you’re a Marist lenninist who’s against left unity and thinks that people who are either only pro authoritarian or pro libertarian are fucking idiots? Do I need to spell that out more or are you aware of how stupid you sound right now? Are you sure I’m the illiterate one in this exchange?
bitch I actually read theory, i don’t ascribe to “authoritarian” or “libertarian” as political movements. Its not a word used by any Marxist movement nor theorist that has actually accomplished something besides never getting past local party level.
you don’t even understand the world well enough to be mad at me properly. Do I have to spell it out for you or do you want to continue to roll in the mud with your ignorant pig friends?
Stay mad. Your politics are shit and no amount of theory is going to change the oppressive nature of the world you want to create. Dress up the attrocities your ideology represents in all the $5 words you want. It won’t change the fact that at the end of the day you’ll be another reactionary supporting a new generation of bourgeois pigs ruining life for the rest of us. I read state and revolution too, it was mid. Find a different Russian dipshit to base your life around, there’s better ones out there.
They are saying the lense of authoritarian/libertarian as a system of values is stupid
Makhno
Imagine stanning a guy who armed and trained pogromists on an oopsie, and then in exile didn’t have the spine to support a much better anarchist seeking to kill a notorious leader of pogroms. Makhnovists are people who look at Trotsky and say “we need someone even less dignified, someone who accomplished still less and was spiteful and shit-flinging to even more people” and old Nestor comes to their rescue. Go follow his example and publish a newspaper that no one reads except to disparage it while alienating every leftist in your life even despite having the common enemy of the boogeyman tankies, and then die alone.
So correcting a patently false characterization = stanning makhno? K lol. Are you trying to out trivia me or something? Keep spouting whatever little bits and pieces of history you’ve managed to warp to fit your own preconceptions and leave the real conversation for people who don’t need to have their politics spoonfed to them from a bunch of state capitalist dictators that have been dead for decades
I’ve only referenced things that Makhnovists agree to, it’s hardly the Bolshevik history of him. You can be extremely charitable in sourcing and still come to the conclusion that Makhno was mainly pathetic and harmful (though platformism is interesting). I also think that enabling actual genocide is a little more than “trivia”, but it’s not owning the tankies, so I can see why you would be uninterested in it.
Makhno did, in reaction to a rather brutal set of evidence that you can’t just toss out arms and training everywhere and tell people to sort themselves out, fight at least some of the fascists he equipped and made a more pointed effort of helping the surviving Jewish people with community defense, but the underlying problem of him overwhelmingly serving to spread violent chaos in a state that had already been war-torn twice over remained, and that’s part of the “banditry” accusation.
freedom under Makhno has been overstated.
https://isreview.org/issues/53/makhno/
click here to expand, it's a long excerpt
When occupying cities or towns, Makhno’s troops would post notices on walls that read:
This Army does not serve any political party, any power, any dictatorship. On the contrary, it seeks to free the region of all political power, of all dictatorship. It strives to protect the freedom of action, the free life of the workers against all exploitation and domination. The Makhno Army does not therefore represent any authority. It will not subject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role is confined to defending the freedom of the workers. The freedom of the peasants and the workers belongs to themselves, and should not suffer any restriction.61
But left in control of territory that they wanted to secure, the Makhnovists ended up forming what most would call a state. The Makhnovists set monetary policy.62 They regulated the press.63 They redistributed land according to specific laws they passed. They organized regional legislative conferences.64 They controlled armed detachments to enforce their policies.65 To combat epidemics, they promulgated mandatory standards of cleanliness for the public health.66 Except for the Makhnovists, parties were banned from organizing for election to regional bodies. They banned authority with which they disagreed to “prevent those hostile to our political ideas from establishing themselves.”67 They delegated broad authority to a “Regional Military-Revolutionary Council of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents.” The Makhnovists used their military authority to suppress rival political ideas and organizations.68 The anarchist historian Paul Avrich notes, “the Military-Revolutionary Council, acting in conjunction with the Regional Congresses and the local soviets, in effect formed a loose-knit government in the territory surrounding Guliai-Pole.”69
[…] skipping a paragraph and a quote for brevity
Anarchist attacks on the Bolsheviks’ civil war policies often focus on the severe military discipline, conscription, grain requisitioning, and creation of a secret police. Yet, under the same conditions of civil war, Makhno’s army adopted all these measures, albeit with different names.
military discipline and conscription:In his army, Makhno claimed that units had the right to elect their commanders. However, he retained veto power over any decisions.71 He increasingly relied on a close group of friends for his senior command.72 As Darch notes, “Although some of Makhno’s aides attempted to introduce more conventional structures into the army, [Makhno]’s control remained absolute, arbitrary and impulsive.”73 One regiment found it necessary to pass a resolution that “all orders must be obeyed provided that the commanding officer was sober at the time of giving it.”74 As the war went on, his forces moved from voting on their orders to carrying out executions ordered by Makhno to enforce discipline.75
The pressures of war forced Makhno to move to compulsory military service, a far cry from the free association of individuals extolled in anarchist theory. Tellingly, all the anarchist histories call it a “voluntary” mobilization (complete with quotation marks).76 Historian David Footman describes the linguistic back-flips:
Accordingly, at Makhno’s insistence, the second Congress passed a resolution in favor of “general, voluntary and egalitarian mobilization.” The orthodox Anarchist line, expressed at an Anarchist gathering of this period, was that “no compulsory army…can be regarded as a true defender of the social revolution,” and debate ranged round the issue as to whether enlistment could be described as “voluntary” (whatever the feelings of individuals) if it took place as the result of a resolution voluntarily passed by representatives of the community as a whole.77
Just in case people did not understand the meaning of “voluntary,” the Makhnovists issued a clarifying bulletin:
Some groups have understood voluntary mobilization as mobilization only for those who wish to enter the Insurrectionary Army, and that anyone who for any reason wishes to stay at home is not liable…. This is not correct…. The voluntary mobilization has been called because the peasants, workers and insurgents themselves decided to mobilize themselves without awaiting the arrival of instructions from the central authorities.78
The Makhnovists needed conscription for the same reason the Bolsheviks did: the bulk of the peasantry was sick of fighting. The difference between the two is that the Bolsheviks had a political outlook that saw conscription as part of a transitional period with the future depending on world revolution, when the productive power of humanity first unleashed by capitalism could be brought to bear on all spheres of life, in the interest of the vast majority. The peasants of Russia and the Ukraine were still using wooden ploughs and harvesting by hand. They stood to gain immensely from an increase in both productivity and leisure time. In contrast, Makhno had no similar perspective and had no generalized plan or vision for the future.
food requisitioning:An army needs to eat. As they moved through the Ukraine, locals would point out the kulaks who would “agree” to provide food.79 Despite orders to the contrary, Makhnovists would loot town after town, adding to the workers’ misery. One witness recalled:
Food supply was primitive, on the traditional insurgent pattern: the bratishki—the Makhnovists’ name for each other—would scatter to the peasant huts on entering a village, and eat what God sent; there was thus no shortage, although plundering and thoughtless damage to peasant stock did occur; I saw them shoot peasant cattle for fun more than once, amid the howls of women and children.80
From their earliest days, they took the equipment they needed from those who had it.81 As they passed through towns and villages, they required the populace to quarter them.82
secret police:While condemning the Soviet Cheka as an authoritarian betrayal, Makhno created two secret police forces that carried out numerous acts of terror.83 After a battle in one village, they shot a villager suspected of treachery with no trial. They summarily executed many of their prisoners of war.84 Their secret police were tasked with getting rid of “opponents within or outwith [sic] the movement.”85 Their activities led to one anarchist Congress asking Makhno to explain his activities:
It has been reported to us that there exists in the army a counter-espionage service which engages in arbitrary and uncontrolled actions, of which some are very serious, rather like the Bolshevik Cheka. Searches, arrests, even torture and executions are reported.86
This is an excerpt from a longer article. I added the three headings for readability
turns out that, regardless of ideology, the material situation of a revolution drives how groups act
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Literally bandit kingdom under an absolute leader
Classic imperialist shite of “spreading freedom” no better than any other imperialist. DOobetter.
The USSR was the only nation to provide any support to the Republic, and it was the anarchists that fucked up by being unable to organize any kind of national army and just letting the fascists roll up their ‘independent’ cities one by one. Saying “it was Stalin’s fault” is the anarchist stab-in-the-back myth.
You can lie to yourselves all you want. Anarchists remember the backstabbing very well and the real reason why they couldn;t fight back efficiently. I’m not here to discuss with tankies though. Plenty has been written about this stalinist revisionism already.
A fascist counterrevolution, Hungary was an Axis power and it was a mere eleven years after WW2 - for “”“worker’s councils”“” they sure lynched a lot of Jewish people! Read this.
Ah yes, everything USSR wanted to conquer or quiesce is “counterevolution”. Kronstadt too. Same exact bullshit every imperialist nation cooked up to invade and take over. Y’all ain’t foolin’ anyone you know.
So I can say that I am sectarian, because revolution is a problem that has a correct answer - there’s the answer that saved hundreds of millions of lives from fascism,
Lol, where? Show me one ML nation which is not totalitarian right now, or didn’t fall back into capitalism and fascism as soon as it inevitably collapsed from the mortally defective ideology of leninism.
You can lie to yourselves all you want. Anarchists remember the backstabbing very well and the real reason why they couldn;t fight back efficiently. I’m not here to discuss with tankies though. Plenty has been written about this stalinist revisionism already.
My dude, the vast majority of Republican tanks were provided by the Soviet Union. Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia article about tanks in the Spanish Civil War shall we: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tanks_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War#Tanks_supplied_by_foreign_powers
Locally produced tanks: 24-32
Soviet tanks: 331
French/Polish tanks: 64
Paraguayan tanks: 1
So out of the 420-428 tanks deployed by the Republicans, more than 75% came from the Soviet Union. This is not “backstabbing.” If the Republicans didn’t want the Soviet Union to “interfere” with their civil war, they could have fun with their 89 tanks versus the Francoists’ 280 tanks. Yes, when you accept material aid from another country, that country has a say in the trajectory of your political project. That’s literally how all aid works. The Soviet Union was not a charity. If the Republicans did not want the Soviet Union to interfere with their political project, they could’ve just rejected the material aid. But to accept the substantial material aid and then cry about Soviet interference is called being ungracious. It’s called biting the hand that feeds you.
So out of the 420-428 tanks deployed by the Republicans, more than 75% came from the Soviet Union.
Stop the fight!
I haven’t even gone over how some of the colonized Moroccans sided with the Francoists while none of them sided with the Republicans. You would think that the side with the socialists and anarchists would be on board with decolonization, but I guess it’s horizontally organized society for white people, brutal colonial regime for brown people. The white people can own the means of production while the brown people can labor with them.
this is a ridiculous mischaracterization, the Moroccans didn’t ‘side’ with Franco, the only Moroccans left with guns were the comprador regiments after 7 years of slaughtering the independence movement. it was still militarized and patrolled by those fuckers. You wanna talk about Popular Fronts being pro-colonial, look at France’s not supporting decolonization, the Spanish one had no grasp or opportunity. if they’d somehow dropped some rifles into Morocco, if the people had the spirit to rise up at all the French would’ve bombed them to keep it from getting into their bit of Morocco
Lol the soviets are not a charity. Omg the fact that you post that imperialist drivel unironically is just the cherry on top. I don’t have to add anything here.
I don’t have to add anything here.
I’m sensing a pattern
Is the pattern that I don’t have patience to entertain fools?
The pattern is that you grandstand about being above arguing to avoid needing to engage with their actual positions
man, debate me bros are the fucking worst…
Then why are you masochistically staying here as if you do?
It’s a mystery!
Japanese fascists were a far bigger threat to the Soviet Union than the Nazis during the 1930s. Japan already sacked Nanjing. In one city, the Japanese fascists butchered the same amount of people as the Francoists did for the entire civil war. This is how brutal the Japanese fascists were relative to the Francoists. And unlike the Francoists, the Empire of Japan actually tried to invade the Soviet Union but got owned before venturing too far. Why should the Soviet Union send those 400+ tanks to Republican Spain without expecting something in return? If anything, the Soviet Union shouldn’t have wasted material with a lost cause that is Republican Spain and shipped those tanks to the Republic of China instead where they wouldn’t be squandered. One tank to Spain is one less tank to China. Frankly, Stalin bet on the wrong horse.
That’s the kind of unfiltered tankie logic I so enjoy see expressed for all the leftists to see.
I don’t think a racist comic is a good look for anarchism, but you do you.
Maybe Mao is just enjoying a really pretty sunrise.
“fascism bad” is tankie logic now
are you saying it was an IMF style financial imperialism dirty loan?
Genuine question!
I am saying that the soviets were never about emancipating the working class. They were always about making them a satellite state
when the soviets were first formed, they were the working class, so what do you mean? at what point in the degeneration of the workers state are you discussing?
I am talking in context of the Spanish Revolution
emancipating the working class. They were always about making them a satellite state
the working class of spain, the state of spain
“Totalitarian” is a totally made-up, meaningless distinction. There is no conceivable metric by which you could call any socialist state “totalitarian” that wouldn’t apply a hundredfold to the US Empire. Seriously, this conversation cannot continue unless you read Blackshirts and Reds, it sums up every point I could make to argue with you with much more depth and eloquence. If you have the slightest pretention to intellectual seriousness, go and read that. Then, once you have, message me and I’ll send you a link to season 3 of a podcast called Blowback, covering the Korean war. I think you’ll find it informative.
I’ve taken a harsh tone with you, because you need to be jolted out of this fundamentally incorrect mindset. But if you read what I’ve suggested and actually process the information, if you try to understand the societies you harshly criticize in the depth and richness of their actual existence and not the literal Saturday morning cartoon evil version you’ve had ingrained in you by a multi-trillion dollar propaganda campaign, you’ll arrive at the same opinions I have now - including feeling the way I do about people espousing the views you have done. Until you understand that no “western” country has EVER come closer to socialism than the USSR, China, Cuba or the DPRK (or even had the merest potential to) you are not only useless to the international cause of the workers but an active detriment, a stooge of the Empire that is currently enslaving humanity. That might only manifest as irritating, trivial anticommunist memes on a backwater internet forum, but it still might as well be fought against, and if there’s the slightest chance you can be educated into a helpful comrade then I might as well try.
No I’m not going to go do homework just to argue to you. Just because I disagree with tankie talking points doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.
In any case you’ve missed the point that the “closest to socialism” doesn’t count for shit. It will never be socialism. In fact it’s just state Capitalism and always devolves into Capitalism. That’s what ML always leads to when left to it’s own designs. This is undeniable by now.
In fact it’s just state Capitalism and always devolves into Capitalism
I will reply with a meme
I’m not going to go do homework just to argue to you
Then that’s the end of our conversation. I’ve pointed out a direction in which you can expand your knowledge, even if it’s just knowledge of what your “enemy” thinks - you can have some intellectual curiosity, or you can not, but in the latter case there’s no reason for me to spend further effort trying to force it upon you.
Very enlightened of you, thank you, master.
you’ve not read shit, the only thing you’ve won is the ability to be the smuggest idiot ever
No I’m not going to go do homework just to argue to you. Just because I disagree with tankie talking points doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.
“leftists” actually knowing what they’re talking about and reading theory challenge (impossible if you did it you would be a tankie)
Just because I disagree with tankie talking points doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.
That is true! What have you read about the Spanish civil war or the ukrainian anarchist movement from an ML perspective? I’ve read a fair amount of critique of the situations from an anarchist perspective and I still broadly agree with the ML take on the situation.
Goddamn! People, please! Posting a meme is not an invitation to invite me to a debate on the historical context of the Spanish Revolution. Cheezus. There’s dedicated anarchist forums for that!
You complain when people take your post seriously, you complain when people dismiss it, you complain when people “put words in your mouth” and whine about straw men but do exactly those things to others, you write pages of comments but suddenly refuse to elaborate when pressed on an inconvenient point.
What are you doing here besides sectarianism and acting like a horse’s ass?
Look mate, I don’t owe you shit. Not even an explanation. But I’ll tell you this, seeing tankies evolve into their “debate me bro” forms is amusing to me. Seeing them get more and more upset because I refuse to play their game is amusing to me. Seeing them think I’m very upset is amusing to me.
This is all the more amusing because I didn’t even try to annoy tankies but they came over here to be annoyed.
Look into your heart, you know this to be true.
Y’all are buzzing around an anarchist community as if I personally kicked your hornet’s nest for posting this one meme. This is amusing to me.
Y’all are good peeps when dunking on libs, but fucking hell, choose your battles, eh?
Goddamn! People, please! Posting a meme is not an invitation to invite me to a debate on the historical context of the Spanish Revolution
Why don’t you be a good little authoritarian and lock the thread then, or is that M next to your name just there to show you like taking Ls after Ls like a Masochist.
I just love to be dunked by my Hexbears mommies and daddies.
Okay, would you prefer to instead talk about the lack of anarchist purges in China and how in the meme you shared, everyone has eyes except for Mao who has slits instead? Can we talk about how that is in inappropriate way to depict Asian people?
Yes it is. If you don’t like it you can always delete your post Lmaoo. You don’t get to decide how people react to your post.
I mean, you’re free to challenge me all you want and I will continue to make fun of you for it
Wasnt the japanese the ones to end the commune in manchuria?
If your action is to punch left, your output is to move the current situation rightwards.
This goes for both anarchists and lemmygrad types, who equally harm the collective movement by punching left at one another.
If the marxist brigades, (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine(DFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC)) in Palestine can prioritise the need for cooperation even with hamas in order to put up a resistance against oppression, we can all do the same when we have fewer reasons to fight.
Sure, but there’s a reason the anarchist presence on Hexbear haa dramatically waned over the years. Like how much is anyone actually valuing left unity while federating with an instance that memes about killing anarchists? A lot of the early drama came out of specifically ML’s harassing people associated with anarchists, like that John Kerry shit, including accusations of an “anarchist cabal” (which to be fair remains extremely funny to this day).
And this exists alongside an attitude that left unity in fact is a waste of time, that communists and anarchists want fundamentally different things. And when you combine that with memes about anarchists being reactionaries and feds (oh, but not our anarchists!) and glorification of figures that killed a lot of anarchists and the occasional “anarchists get the wall” memes, like you can’t be comrades with people who fundamentally see you as a problem to one day violently remove. There cannot be useful criticism without mutual trust, and I don’t think there has been that trust in quite a while.
I’m not convinced.
Every single anarchist community singularly dedicated to anarchism off reddit has waned over the years. Hexbear has retained anarchists better than Raddle for example which has about 20 users left over.
Anarchists seem content to exist in spaces that aren’t dedicated to anarchism, as offshoot spaces on the side of other content that latches onto them. This is a problem honestly because those spaces are almost always controlled by bougies rather than proles, if/when the left becomes a real threat those spaces will be shut down just like the marxist ones have been getting shut down on reddit lately. Antiwork got kneecapped by wreckers and bankers for a reason for example.
that communists and anarchists want fundamentally different things
I don’t believe this. I continue to believe that we want the same thing and disagree on the method of reaching it. I actually think we both fundamentally have the same criticisms of the socialist state even, there’s a reason communists want a stateless society, we know states aren’t good.
Every single anarchist community singularly dedicated to anarchism off reddit has waned over the years.
It’s also my observation that most dedicated anarchist spaces seem gratuitously anti-ML in a way that Hexbear, at least, is not gratuitously anti-Anarchist. Granted, there are also places where MLs are needlessly anti-Anarchist and I’m sure there are anarchist spaces out there who are not as hostile to MLs, but if the comparison is Hexbear specifically then Hexbear is more neutral ground than most other leftist spaces.
That is very strongly evidenced by the OP itself, which only exists so anarcho-bidenists can fear monger to their fellow rubes about how the tankies want to shoot them, which there would be no impetus for if not for MLs in some spaces visibly calling for left unity.
The obvious explanation for this is just the more general observation that most anarchists in the real world despise Marxists. In anarchist circles in private the discourse than ML’s are a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, sex-worker-phobic, misogynistic red fash is very, very present, and honestly pretending otherwise is simply ignoring the obvious truth that becomes evident if you actually spend much time in read-world anarchist and Marxist circles, simply for the sake of preserving the appearance of an artificial, digital ‘left unity’ which neither has any bearing on actual organization nor does it provide a serious basis for any actual platform of organized socialist activity. We can get together for the same marches, social movements, or for forms of local mutual aid and aid for the homeless or refugees, but this does not ever really extend beyond that in my experience, and the reason is that anarchists have a fundamentally different conception of politics and organization to Marxists, and especially to MLs.
Anarchist presence on Mastodon has been fine. Raddle has the issue of Ziq being shitty to people and fostering a space only really welcoming to a specific brand of post-leftist, and so far the fact that Lemmy has been made by ML’s has stifled interedt in a specifically anarchist Lemmy instance. Though even then Raddle still has more visibly active anarchists than Hexbear, and if you go by specifically anarchist discussions the anarchism community on Hexbear has always been anemic.
Having been here from the start and watched people leave, it’s always been the overt sectarianism that gets cited. Hexbear is not a revolutionary movement, it is an internet forum, and while it started out as a space that wanted to specifically be an actual social space for leftists in general it has absolutely become an ML centric soace to the exclusion of pretty much any other tendency. And for all some might say they think we have shared goals, it tends to not mean much when there has always been a contingent that has viewed driving off other tendencies as praxis.
I would agree that it would be better to have an actual anarchist presence on kbin/lemmy and that the objection to using the software is silly, but a lot of anarchist reddit spaces have dealt with specifically ML wreckers trying to to gain control of subreddits for shits and giggles, so I don’t think I can convince anyone this wouldn’t be more of the same.
Anarchist presence on Mastodon has been fine.
Mastodon is the kind of place I referred to in my previous comment.
Having been here from the start and watched people leave,
I don’t know who you’re talking about but Hexbear is more active today than it has ever been.
it’s always been the overt sectarianism that gets cited. Hexbear is not a revolutionary movement, it is an internet forum, and while it started out as a space that wanted to specifically be an actual social space for leftists in general it has absolutely become an ML centric soace to the exclusion of pretty much any other tendency.
It used to have a bigger problem with anti-trot sectarianism, far more than anarchism. Anti anarchist sentiment was always explicitly stamped on whereas anti-trot stuff was encouraged, we even have emotes left over from this time like
. This changed however at some point and some of the only times I’ve been moderated is because I still make trot jokes. We have trots on the site now too so I’m not really being good to them when I do.a lot of anarchist reddit spaces have dealt with specifically ML wreckers trying to to gain control of subreddits for shits and giggles
Which ones?
and some of the only times I’ve been moderated is because I still make trot jokes
They can’t take it from us!It’s instinctive I swear. It’s really hard to stop.
Mastodon is the kind of place I referred to in my previous comment.
Not really sure how that’s particularly waned, relative to anything else. Anarchist instances can be pretty large, and Mastodon (and the other twitter-like federated projects) as a whole is a much larger thing than Lemmy at present. That is where you’ll find actual orgs with their “official” accounts after Twitter started banning them.
I don’t know who you’re talking about but Hexbear is more active today than it has ever been.
ML’s on Hexbear are active, yes. I don’t really see other anarchists very often, we’re more often referred to than actually present. I don’t really think I see much other htan ML’s represented in general, which is absolutely a decline from when the website started and certainly from when the subreddit was still not banned.
It used to have a bigger problem with anti-trot sectarianism, far more than anarchism.
The trot in question got orriginally targetted in part due to their association with anarchists, which again the phrase “anarchist cabal” will always be funny. But part of why there was resistance to that sectarianism was becuase there were anarchists present to push back on it, which over time a lot of us have burned out on the community. And so like 90% of the time it seems like posts are mostly complaining about anarchists, which I imagine is probably exhausting for whatever anarchists remain.
Which ones?
GenZanarchism was probably one of hte more notable ones that got cheered on, though people have been trying to fuck with r/anarchism for a while which had that space paranoid as shit. I remember on the Discord we were looking over some screenshots over some drama about needing to disassociate with a server of Reddit subredit moderators where someone told someone else to kill thesmelves, and part of those screenshots was them with a channel dedicated to fucking with anarchist subreddits.
You can just go to the dunk thread for this thread and see the upvoted replies, like those just plain stating they don’t really advocate for left unity either.
people have been trying to fuck with r/anarchism for a while which had that space paranoid as shit.
Literally run by feds. Anyone fucking with that sub is wasting their time it will never fall out of their hands.
What does that even mean? It runs on elected mods, with a separate subreddit that posts notable mod actions for transparency. Do you think there’s any non-fed anarchist subreddit, or are you just fedjacketing as a bit or because their opnions annoy you? Antiwork actually had Laurelai Bailey, an actual known snitch, we actually do know that there was fed shit going on there - I have never heard an actual serious accusation about r/anarchism of all places.
LIke unless your’e going to hand me actual evidence that morrigan or someone is actually a cop, this is the kind of thing that I’m talking about. That fedjacketing shit is toxic, it gets people paranoid, it’s a traumatic thing to go through, so the general expectation is that you don’t ever call someone a cop or a fed without actual evidence to back that up.
slrpnk.net is an anarchist instance, and this instance is also meant to run on anarchist principles btw. Unfortunately the /r/anarchism people were not willing to consistently push to abandon reddit, and when they did, they were promoting raddle which is very insular, so most of the people who like threaded discussions remain there.
I don’t get anarchists that insists in stay on reddit.
Probably not real anarchists, or they just lack understanding (or are in-denial) about where that platform is headed and don’t realize that Reddit’s enshittified future doesn’t include them whether they choose it or not (Anarchism isn’t seen favorably by many people, execs at Reddit inc. likely feel the same way).
Good to know and glad we’re federated with ya!
Edit: Ahh geez this is OP didn’t realize that. this comic is really racist towards Mao :(
Communists and Anarchists are most certainly not the same. I’m not really sure how anyone can entertain this idea if they have actually spent times in active anarchist and Marxist circles, let alone engaged in militant activity with either where both the need for cooperation and the apparent inevitability of conflict and tension become obvious, and make obvious in turn that these difficulties do not just boil down interpersonal issues or grievances but are political in nature. There are profound conceptual, theoretical, ideological, practical and organization differences, as well as sociological.
It’s all well and good to say that they are ‘fundamentally the same’ (what does ‘fundamentally/essentially the same’ even mean here? It seems vague, ambiguous, or if you are choosing as the criterion for that that we want the same form of society at the end of the day, this amounts actually only to a very weak form of agreement in all honestly. It’s like saying that Communists are the same as Reformists Socialists because the latter also want (sometimes genuinely) a form of socialist economy and are genuinely deluded as to the means to get there (i.e. reformism). The difference is in terms of political method, and the distinction is one of revolution vs reformism. Sure, Communists share a belief in the need for revolution to get there with anarchists, but they have different different concepts, theories, practices, conceptions of organization and politics, which implies deep theoretical and practical-organizational differences.
Furthermore, Communism in this sense remains an ideal (which is fine), towards which we agree on the most general and abstract features and agree further that this is the ideal form of society which we would like, indeed must for the sake of the human species, move towards. The anarchist conception of revolution is very different from the communist conception, and what comes during the revolution, how we get there, what is necessary, how we should actually do all the actual work of organizing the working class (which marxists recognize as necessary but which anarchists have either been unwilling to do the work needed to accomplish or who they neglect as many now see focus of parties on class-based organization to be a form of class-reductionism), disagree on the fundamental questions of revolution, the state, parties, legislation, prisons, and so on.
There are also Christian Communists (non-Marxist) would also want a stateless, classless, moneyless society. I commend them for that, and they are definitely potential allies, but that doesn’t mean they are going to be reliable political allies in the long-term, nor does it imply that their views are fundamentally the same as mine. The fact that they are not going to be ready to do the things necessary to actually construct socialism, let alone communism, means that realistic political unity with them is limited at best. The same goes for anarchism in the minds of Marxists, most obviously MLs.
The period of transition from capitalism to communism will likely take hundreds of years. Socialism is a centuries-long project which we have only just begun. Calling the immense, profound differences of opinion between Communists and anarchists over this historical process towards Communism something which does not amount to a fundamental difference seems not only confused, but positively idealistic to me.
Saying that the difference lies simply in the means to get there is ignoring the fact that this is a massive difference with direct implications for the feasibility of long-term, substantial, deep political cooperation. It also reflects that the routes through which Marxists and Anarchists get to the conclusion of the need for revolution for the sake of a classless, stateless, moneyless society are very different.
Just to give a revealing sense of the depth of this divide: There are people in this thread who have cited Murray Bookchin, who towards the end of his life not only explicitly stated that he would rather side with liberal governments against Communists because the former believed in ‘personal freedom’, but then later when on to repudiate anarchism right at the end of his life, calling modern anarchists a form of lifestyle movement with no real political potential, and it’s worthwhile to note that he came to this conclusion during the 90s and 2000s, i.e. when Marxism and Communism were at their lowest ebb and the international leftist movements in the West were being dominated by anarchist and post-left lifestyle movementism, calling for distributed (non-existent) networks of supposedly distributed organization based on ridiculously minute identitarian difference (i.e. identity politics). The period since the 90s have done nothing but refute the idea that the predominance of anarchists on the western left would revitalize the prospects for revolution there. The opposite is the case. The potential for revolution has correlated inversely with anarchist predominance. Frankly this doesn’t surprise me, as the anarchist circles I’ve encountered have almost always been far more bourgeois, less proletarian, than Marxist circles (especially if we are talking about militant circles), though I admit that this is anecdotal.
Good thing that State Capitalism isn’t “left”
Poster gives very reasonable and logical arguments for avoiding left infighting;
Debate pervert OP: “I’m the one true leftist”
“I’m not punching left, I’m just drawing the borders of the left to neatly exclude you”
Yeah mate, no criticism is allowed. If someone says they’re left and do right wing things like exploit the working class, it’s sectarian to call them on it.
You posted a meme, not criticism. Then when anyone charitably assumes you have something of substance to say and responds in kind, you say “whoa it’s just a meme, what are you, a debate bro?”
It’s been very clear that I am not in a mood to debate or argue in the length. I don’t owe you explanations. I’m allowed to just shit post. I call people debate me bros when after I told them multiple times that I don’t want to debate, they insist. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp
or argue in the length
You’ve made about 30 comments in this thread
I know, It’s glorious how mad y’all are because I won’t debate you.
I don’t owe you explanations.
Tell us about the emotional labor of arguing next, you radlib piece of shit
Sorry I don’t speak tankie
Lol get bent you do-nothing trickster imp. Begone
But but… I live here!
Your thread has been seized for re-distribution
It’s ok, so long as y’all have fun. I don’t believe in private property
I honestly find this behaviour incredibly disrespectful to the people that are currently dying as they do real resistance. Are you opposed to the Palestinians too then? The leftist brigades of Palestine are all “tankies” and Hamas are considerably worse (but resistance is more important than broaching the issues with them). Do you wage sectarian bullshit against them too from your comfortable room while they fight and die for the cause? Serious question.
You think posting on online forums make a lick of a difference for those who “do real resistance”? You’re in the left shitposter heaven and you come here to judge me? Seriously?
The vast majority of the people here found their way into the left through learning in the online posting grounds before eventually joining orgs. Anyone that thinks what we do online doesn’t matter is not really thinking straight.
You didn’t really answer the question though and it concerns me. Are you opposed to the Palestinian resistance currently fighting for freedom?
Oh come off of it. There’s a pretty big difference between such struggles and the impact of arguing online.
I also don’t answer because I don’t like to be interrogated like this.
You fucking liberals make anarchists look bad.
I also don’t answer because I don’t like to be interrogated like this.
No, it’s because you don’t have a leg to stand on and you’re an intellectually dishonest coward who wants to fling shit and then cry when people push back
I didn’t fling anything, y’all came to my place, remember? Also stop acting like a “debate me, bro” already! You won’t goad me 😁
No. There fundamentally is not.
This space is not “pretend” while the offline world is “real”. The people here are real people (I hope lmao) and the emotions people have here are real.
One day we will all be thrown into our own very real resistance. Are you willing to die for it? I am. I’ve said many times that I will die in bed an old lady in a currently non-existent socialist state or I will die in the fighting to bring it about.
We post here and have some fun and argue and do all sorts of shit in our off time. But in our on time? A lot of us are genuinely active in political orgs. Here in the UK it might be resisting landlord evictions through Acorn, performing party work or shutting down weapons factories through Palestine Action. Do you think sectarianism would benefit orgs like Palestine Action shutting down zionist weapons factories? Whose principle need is BODIES willing to get on rooftops and smash up these buildings and get arrested? Does reducing the pool of people that would join that org benefit them in any way by being sectarians? Does it matter whether someone on the roof of an israeli weapons factory waves a black flag or a red flag? Of course it doesn’t. And the people who try to flare up sectarian bullshit anywhere are rightfully shouted down or expelled because all they are functionally doing by punching left is weakening those orgs and their ability to do praxis.
That doesn’t change online. The number of people who actually transfer from the online space to offline organising is directly tied to the sectarian bullshit that occurs. There are dumbass marxists that refuse to take part at certain orgs because of some anarchist sectarian bullshit and there are dumbass anarchists that refuse to take part in some socialist led things because of sectarian bullshit.
If I saw anyone at the march in London this weekend say a single fucking word about sectarian shit I would have punched them in the face.
This shit hurts the left. There is no case for it benefiting the left in any way.
One day we will all be in an existential armed struggle ourselves. Really consider the priorities. There is no benefit to any of this shit, and in fact it risks harming support for Palestine. I assume you’re not anti-Palestine, even though you won’t state it. If you can support Palestinian resistance despite Hamas, you can support marxist-leninists despite sectarian disagreement, and you already are doing just that by supporting Palestine. Not to mention that almost every single fucking pro Palestine march currently happening is being organised by the “tankies” you’re currently railing against.
Oh and just in case - anyone that doesn’t support Palestine deserves a brick to the back of the head.
We’ve spoken about this before, you and me, iirc. So long as y’all keep doing anarchist direct action for mutual aid, we can be allies. Once you start trying to seize hierarchical control like some illuminated vanguard, is where it gets difficult.
This meme is about exactly this difficulty.
Let’s be serious for a moment, y’all descended on me shit-posting about well known problems anarchists had with MLs. Y’all don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You had the counter-arguments ready to post. But I’m not here to debate with you and we won’t solve these disagreements here. You know what you know, I know what I know. We can agree to disagree.
But then y’all got mad that I didn’t debate 12 people at a time, as if I have nothing better to do with my life on the comments of a shitpost. You can’t handle one single anarchist making one single meme in an obscure anarchist sub.
This all has nothing about us being able to collaborate on things that matter. When we do those actions, nobody is going to say “Aha, I remember what you wrote in lemmy.dbzer0.com that one time about leftist unity”. This is all about 1) the ego of those hexbear tankies who couldn’t handle not being debated and 2) The shitposters of hexbear who just came here to have flamewars because the mods of hexbear apparently don’t control anything anymore and your “left unity” only goes so much as someone disagreeing with your takes and then they’re a “liberal” and therefore fair game.
I am honestly not upset. I’m am however just disappointed at the greater hexbear behaviour…
are you going to do self criticism or just keep shitting your brain and posting ass memes
Ah ok, so nothing could possibly go wrong if you keep pushing this. You won’t lose any allies cuz they’re already secret right wingers. Do they know that?
If the marxist brigades, (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine(DFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC)) in Palestine can prioritise the need for cooperation even with hamas in order to put up a resistance against oppression, we can all do the same when we have fewer reasons to fight.
🙄
In my experience the hexbears are the most aggressive sectarians on lemmy. They also openly simp for autocrats and make tyrants into folk heroes.
in my experience you never post anything leftist on lemmy and your political comments are all about tankies or US electoral politics
I just don’t bother arguing with the campists anymore
or posting anything anti-capitalist, as far as I’ve seen
Sure. But this is, frankly, a pretty idealist take imo that ignores not only the fact that in actual practice there is frequent tension and conflict which has real basis, but real and deeper theoretical differences as well as ones of praxis and organization. We can wish for this form of left unity you are describing all we like, but it doesn’t erase the deal differences between communists and anarchists.
In my personal experience, Communists have been far more eager, happy or willing to work with anarchists when it comes to practice on the ground than vice-versa, and I think it’s important to note that these forums are not representative of the actual relations between Communists and Anarchists on the ground, which are frequently tense because Marxists will often spend months agitating and entering workplaces, doing the grunt work, only for reformists and anarchists to show up at the end at points of more intense political struggle and gain political credibility for their ‘participation’. Another related issue here is that, in practice, anarchist circles are on average more liberal, individualist and identitarian than Marxist orgs interested in forming parties. The emphasis on decentralized, distributed organization, justified by whatever post-structural idealist nonsense is currently in fashion, is not conducive to working with actual Communist (read: Leninist) orgs.
Not to mention that - and this is again to indicate that these forums like Hexbear are in no way indicative of actual relationships between Communists and Anarchists - that most anarchists despise Communists, most obviously Leninists, and would despise Lemmygrad and Hexbear types most of all. Like the view of us as ‘Red Fash’ is close to the mainstream view among most Anarchists, and it’s frankly ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
Marxists will often spend months agitating and entering workplaces, doing the grunt work, only for reformists and anarchists to show up at the end at points of more intense political struggle and gain political credibility for their ‘participation’.
happened to you a lot?
This is why left v. right seems like the wrong dimension to be worrying about IMHO. Up v. down is the only dimension that matters. Is coercion acceptable or not is the question. It doesn’t matter what reasons or methods are used, dominating or attempting to dominate is wrong whether one is capitalist or Marxist.
I don’t think it counts as “punching left” when the one doing the dunking believes the dunkee is to the right of them. The way you’re using that phrase renders it meaningless.
‘Tankies’ (for the lack of a better word) have been against communism throughout history. It’s disingenuous to assume they could be capable of unity
I always wonder what the political left would look like in different European countries in the 20th century had it not been for the influence of the Soviet Union. Soviet influence ran, in my humble opinion, like poison through the veins of European socialist organisations. It seems to me like successful left wing mobilization is directly correlated with a relative lack of Soviet influence.
Yeah. They executed a lot of leftist thinking and set back progress for decades. And inadvertently were the reason for the red scare still deeply ingrained in many
Even ignoring the executions, they set the party agenda for a lot of European communist parties, struck down independent local organization (which were more in line with traditional communitarian ideas), and made the political left wing something that could more legitimately be written off as a foreign influence rather than a legitimate political movement because to an uncanny degree, that was just what it was.
This reflects my impression in countries like France - in Spain they of course took it to another level.
Stalin was also partially to blame for the rise (and, to give him his due, fall) of Hitler. The recalcitrance of the Communist party in Weimar Germany was a big part of what prevented a left coalition from being able to take power and cut the Nazis off at the root.
To be fair, in the German context the conservatives were also terrified of the socialist democrat party, who were relatively moderate and if I remember correctly did not have too close ties with Soviet. Hindenburg made the fatal mistake of being more afraid of moderate socialists than of radical fascists.
I also wouldn’t give Stalin too much credit for defeating Hitler. The Soviet Union only turned on Germany when they were invaded, and Stalin’s military strategy was ruthless and incredibly inefficient. When the Red Army freed Europe I’d argue it was in spite of Stalin rather than because of him.
Maybe I’m looking at history with a view to avoid giving Stalin credit for anything, but turning on a fascist country only when they invade you does not impress me much, and ordering your soldiers to march into a meat grinder without weapons is not an efficient military strategy.
Many anarchists were simply murdered:
- nazy-germany the anarchist movement was whole-sale murdered. Since then there is no anarchsist movment in germany.
- franco-fascist-spain he murdered 200,000 anarchists after the civil war
- ukraine machnowiki anarchists
- russian anarchists and many more…
that is the reason why there is no anarchist movement in europe today. Before these events Anarchists were a major part of the workers movement.
Most people nowadays also seem to buy into the idea that anarchists worship chaos and destruction. I’m not sure exactly where that idea comes from, but it’s certainly convenient.
I’m not sure exactly where that idea comes from
It’s been propagated by the detractors of anarchism. The same defamation was used towards the republic when monarchies where the rule rather than exception. People often equated the concept of a republic with chaos and disorder, just like they now do with anarchism.
You mean the coup, revisionist, governments of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and the following reactionary anti-communists that destroyed the USSR were actually bad for leftism? Color me shocked.
Even “tankies” would agree that all the anti-communism, anti-Stalinism and anti-Leninism of the USSR after Stalin really fucked communism and leftism all over the world.
Or do you think “tankies” think the USSR after Stalin was “based”? What even is this take?
What even is this indeed. I was talking about the influence of the Comintern, through which the Soviet Union set the agenda of socialist parties all over Europe.
The Comintern ended in '43, but there’s a broken part of the European left that never stopped sucking up to Russia. These days they’re thankfully just a bunch of weirdos that nobody really gives a shit about, but back in the 30s this stuff mattered.
Your point being the USSR was influential because it was… what evil?
Doesn’t it make sense they were influential because they were like the only socialist state at the time? And they actually did support many, if not most, anti-colonial and leftist movements all over the world. Like, if you were a leftist in Africa, and needed help fighting against colonialism and stuff, there was only the USSR around to help you. And they did help, a lot.
They had the largest increase in quality of life in history prior to China, they pioneered space exploration and computation. They had the most advanced laws to protect minorities, to guarantee equality for women etc. Their universities were free for people on the 2nd AND 3rd world to attend.
How exactly were they so terrible? And please, don’t list things every country did exactly the same or worse.
Or do you think all the good they did is completely nullified by the bad?
Would it be best for humans to stop trying to do good, never try to learn from the bad, and just give up?
I recommend reading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia!
It’s a great read and gives a lot of insights into the dynamics I’m describing. The infighting between leftist fractions gets pretty technical, but Orwell does a great job with it.
Orwell is a piece of shit traitor who worked for the UK government to fight communists. AND he was a racist piece of shit. I will never read any books by him, thanks.
I refuse to read explicit anti-communists who worked for fascists states outing communists and disrupting their parties.
Chef’s kiss
The USSR has been bad since the USSR existed
Uhum uhum, it’s been “bad”. Like it’s only been one of the best countries in history, if you like, actually materially analyse human history and stuff.
Do people like you think what, Sweden is a good country? Or there has been 0 good attempts at social organization in human history, and we better just kill ourselves and give up?
Or rather, my personal position is that indeed the USSR sucked (likely in different ways than you think), and it was still one the best nations ever. We should learn from what it did right, but also what it did wrong.
Brother u on some liberalism
Brother YOU are on some liberalism lmao what are you talking about?
anarchism is when people are doing kinda sorta okay sometimes please ignore the genocides
Just call em authoritarians. That’s what they are
Anarcho-bidenists have this weird habit of talking about themselves like they are Jewish or something in the sense of having a history of brutal persecution, even if the speaker in question is just some white guy from a liberal family with absolutely no connection to those historical anarchists except for that they now also call themselves an anarchist. Is really weird and LARPy.
In the crosspost, a comrade added:
Its a way for boring people who hate reading to tap into that “the communists KILLED my PEOPLE” narrative, its like a politcal personality starter pack. You get an underdog “subversive” ideology, a formative tragedy and an eternal enemy!
Unlike tankies, who are definitely not weird and larpy about their ideological forebears. /s
Nice strawman you erected there.
Slapping informal fallacy names on sentiments you dislike is not, in fact, a very good approach to almost anything.
That’s the only response I can do to you putting words in my mouth. Don’t know why you’re complaining
you putting words in my mouth
You posted a meme. Use your words if you don’t want people misconstruing whatever you’re trying to say.
Fuck you, you’re not my real dad!
you don’t know that for sure, do you?
Posts words
words are read
“DON’T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH TANKIE”
“okay then use your words to explain why me reading what you wrote misrepresents you”
No :3
I think OP is just a genuine fucking idiot and the reason they can’t answer seriously in a single conversation in this thread is because there’s just nothing behind their eyes to respond with
I’m not particularly putting words in your mouth, I am giving an opinion on what you said (or, rather, the subgenre of statement). You could explain, if you were so inclined, how this characterization is inaccurate rather than merely saying that it is inaccurate, but then that would require something other than a listicle on Wikipedia.
Why should I argue “I’m not an elephant” as we say in my country? This is patently absurd. You erected a strawman and I called you out. As far as I’m concerned, case closed, unless you can point where in my words I acted like a marginalized class because of historical anarchists.
Look again at the fucking meme in the OP. “oh, the tankies killed us anarchists in these historical conflicts, and they will kill us anarchists in future conflicts too if we don’t stop them!”
Just saying a fucking fallacy name isn’t a counterargument anymore than saying “you’re wrong” is a counterargument. Actual arguments require making inferences, not just stating premises.
Personally, I think that someone leading insurrections against institutions that have overwhelming popular support due to actively working to give people healthcare, food, etc. is clearly a counterrevolutionary prick and an anarchist who opposes a project that feeds the children for the first time in centuries because it’s not a syndicate is being myopic at best, but that’s just me.
Personally, I think that someone leading insurrections against institutions that have overwhelming popular support due to actively working to give people healthcare, food, etc. is clearly a counterrevolutionary prick and an anarchist who opposes a project that feeds the children for the first time in centuries because it’s not a syndicate is being myopic at best, but that’s just me.
I applaud your Quixotic efforts to get them to argue about the topic instead of arguing about the meta argument in the most self aggrieved way.
Personally, I think that someone leading insurrections against institutions that have overwhelming popular support due to actively working to give people healthcare, food, etc. is clearly a counterrevolutionary prick and an anarchist who opposes a project that feeds the children for the first time in centuries because it’s not a syndicate is being myopic at best, but that’s just me.
If we were in a hypothetical revolutionary situation led by anarchists that was genuinely and successfully challenging state capitalist power here in the UK then I, as a Marxist-Leninist, wouldn’t be like “Erm, guys, you haven’t sufficiently considered Lenin! Aren’t you aware that the hijacking and reconfiguration of the state for socialist purposes is a necessary transition period towards communism?” I would get behind the fucking barricades with them.
There’s a difference between opposing lesser evilism in the context of Western capitalist electoral politics between two bourgeois parties, and like, being anti-ML or anti-anarchist in actual revolutionary situations (and not stupid fucking hypothetical internet arguments) because “it’s not doing communism right.” Unless there were like, REALLY fucking big problems with what the group is doing, I would just shut up and not weaken the overall movement. As Awoo stated, this is literally what ML groups are doing in Palestine as we speak.
Look again at the fucking meme in the OP. “oh, the tankies killed us anarchists in these historical conflicts, and they will kill us anarchists in future conflicts too if we don’t stop them!”
No, it means “Don’t trust tankies, don’t believe their tales in leftist unity”. Even if we just accept what you just wrote, it’s still nowhere near claiming we’re a marginalized class. That’s just a very uncharitable reading of this meme.
Just saying a fucking fallacy name isn’t a counterargument anymore than saying “you’re wrong” is a counterargument. Actual arguments require making inferences, not just stating premises.
Yes it fucking is! I don’t have the patience to argue every inane claim people are throwing in here. I got shit to do.
Personally, I think that someone leading insurrections against institutions that have overwhelming popular support due to actively working to give people healthcare, food, etc. is clearly a counterrevolutionary prick
I wouldn’t call them “counter-revolutionary” as there’s nothing revolutionary about supporting the status quo, but otherwise we agree.
and an anarchist who opposes a project that feeds the children for the first time in centuries because it’s not a syndicate is being myopic at best, but that’s just me.
We also agree. But typically it’s the MLs who refuse to support such anarchist projects because they’re not led by MLs hierarchically.
you haven’t done anything but bitch and moan at things you don’t understand. No wonder you hate tankies! You have zero political literacy!
Snk- erected.
Damn. This shit is depressing. Self proclaimed “leftists” still out there complaining about “tankies” in 2023. Truly embarrassing for everyone.
If the anarchists in the soviet union were allowed power, general plan Ost would have come to fruition. Anarchists have historically not been able to lead mass industrialization in a coordinated way, and have not been able to lead successful military campaigns across territories as large as the USSR. If the soviet leadership didn’t protect the revolution from anarchists, part of my family would have died in a death camp instead of being liberated from one by red army soldiers.
But the tankies stabbed the pure hearted anarchists in the back! Okay, maybe the anarchists shouldn’t have been idealists who cared more about coops than actually prosecuting a successful socialist transition. Literally read Lenin’s interaction with the anarchist prince.
Anarchists have historically not been able to lead mass industrialization in a coordinated way
Because its not anarchists job to do that but worker’s job, and they are very good at self-organizing.
have not been able to lead successful military campaigns across territories as large as the USSR
You say this as if they had multiple chances to do so lol.
Because its not anarchists job to do that but worker’s job, and they are very good at self-organizing.
The anarchist workers didn’t do a good job. The popular front workers did a better job, the Soviet workers did a better job.
You say this as if they had multiple chances to do so lol.
They had a chance in Catalonia, a much smaller field, and couldnt coordinate there.
Ah, at least we come to the crux of the disagreement. “Anarchists, babies! MLs, strong!”. It always comes down to that, but it’s refreshing to see you just straight up say it sometimes, so that people can see it.
Anyway, please take your historic fiction in the appropriate places. I can pull stories out of my ass as well, but that convinces no-one.
PS: I like how you sneaked in that call to emotion at the end. Very manipulative. Love it!
Have you read anything about the failures of coordination among the anarchist militias in Catalonia? Or their failures of economic coordination beyond the local level?
Have you even absorbed the critiques enough that you are in a place to argue against them?
Because this is serious stuff that you should be educated about before you make judgements about it.
I’m very sympathetic to anarcho syndicalism, but it showed its weaknesses in Spain and sectarian anarchists blame it on the USSR instead of learning from it.
PS: I like how you sneaked in that call to emotion at the end. Very manipulative. Love it!
It is not socially well adapted to declare “appeal to emotion” when someone is communicating why something is personally important to them. What I’m doing is expressing myself in a normal human way, and you consider that manipulative?
Have you read anything about the failures of coordination among the anarchist militias in Catalonia? Or their failures of economic coordination beyond the local level?
Ah, nice try, but I already told you I’m not going to debate you on the Spanish Civil War. Why don’t you go to the places where there’s anarchists up for that sort of thing?
What I’m doing is expressing myself in a normal human way, and you consider that manipulative?
You implied that not crushing anarchists would have directly led to a successful genocide. Ye it’s pretty manipulative.
Ah, nice try, but I already told you I’m not going to debate you on the Spanish Civil War.
I asked you if you’ve even read anything about it, not if you want to debate me about it.
You implied that not crushing anarchists would have directly led to a successful genocide. Ye it’s pretty manipulative.
It isnt manipulative to point out that my family would have been killed if the anarchists won, it is giving you an explanation for why I have little sympathy for complaints by anarchists repeating the “stabbed in the back” myth instead of actually digging into the history of their project and learning from its failures to do better next time.
I asked you if you’ve even read anything about it, not if you want to debate me about it.
That’s how they get you! taps forehead
It isnt manipulative to point out that my family would have been killed if the anarchists won,
lol, yea it is. You don’t have any idea what would have happened if the anarchists won. Maybe they Spanish revolution would have worked without the backstab and Hitler would have expended himself. Who the fuck knows. It’s pretty manipulative to posit a major historical event going completely differently would have worked out the same way except that it would have led this one really horrible thing which everyone has an emotional reaction to. Cmon…
That’s how they get you! taps forehead
If the goal is to get you to read yes, that is the secret tankie plot, to make you a better anarchist who is able to grow from previous failures instead of acting like an aggrieved post ww1 german soldier.
It’s pretty manipulative to posit a major historical event going completely differently would have worked out the same way except that it would have led this one really horrible thing. Cmon…
Were any anarchists talking about the need for massive industrialization at any cost in the late 1920s early 1930s in the soviet union? No? Then if the anarchists were in charge, yes, the nazis would have won and been able to implement plan ost.
Were any anarchists talking about the need for massive industrialization at any cost in the late 1920s early 1930s in the soviet union? No? Then if the anarchists were in charge, yes, the nazis would have won and been able to implement plan ost.
Tell me when the novel comes out.
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- I’m not going to debate you, I’m just going to talk shit.
The difference is that I shit my pants and cry when you respond to me
Apparently shitting my pants is enough to have two dozen hexbears hopping mad to the point that they’re trolling through the comments days later trying to dunk on me. Stay mad, bby!
Everybody who calls me on my behavior is mad and no that’s not a transparent coping mechanism
Oh sorry I didn’t know “you shit your pants” and similar terms was your collective hexbest at a call out.
In that case I do apologize for thinking the random shitposts on random comments were due to anger. You’re clearly trying.
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debate pervert
I mean you are the one who has left your containment instance to fight over a meme.
PS: I like how you sneaked in that call to emotion at the end. Very manipulative. Love it!
Go back to Reddit.
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tankie calling an anarchist a “centrist liberal”
I don’t even need to check what instance you come from hexie
Ah, at least we come to the crux of the disagreement. “Anarchists, babies! MLs, strong!”. It always comes down to that, but it’s refreshing to see you just straight up say it sometimes, so that people can see it.
Anyone paying attention to what they actually said and not your petulant response will notice how far your characterization is off from the actual source. You’re putting on a shameful display.
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com hey why not this specific criticism?
Remember when you acted like I was only insulting you and not making valid criticisms? Why don’t you reply to the valid criticisms instead of the insults you deserved when it became clear you refused to engage in good faith?
Because you’re patronizing. Y’all are patronizing af. So You don’t deserve nothing else but the ridicule and sarcasm I’ve been giving.
Y’all can insult me all you want. Don’t worry, I can take it. There’s a reason my comments are still open to y’all.
Oh wow you actually responded.
So are you going to apologize for lying, or is it just onto this new latest excuse?
Again, you’re being treated the way you deserve to be treated. It’s not happening in a vacuum. If you had acted like an adult in the first place no one would be treating you like a child.
I am incapable of lying. So I have nothing to apologize for.
But do keep up the patronizing attitude. It’s a winner for sure.
You force people to explain things to you like a child when you lie like this.
Listen dummy: you acted like you were only getting insulted and that there was an absence of genuine criticism. So then I pointed out the criticism you lied and pretended didn’t exist.
Then like the child you are, you changed your story and decided all of a sudden you weren’t responding because you didn’t like being treated like a child. Not even acknowledging your previous lie or the effort you forced others to go through to get past it.
Such is the manner you act like a child.
Hexbear comes here to be the debate bros they try so hard to dunk on. They are dying looking for just one little morsel of dunk. Not a good showing, not a leftist unity moment lmao
The post exclusively attacks Hexbear’s ideological “left unity” position so it’s kinda fair game for people from that position to want to say something in its defence.
The people doing marxist sectarianism instead of defending left unity are being dummies though.
What could be more left unity than MLs and anarchists coming together to embarass liberals?
this meme is explicitly anti-left unity, as is the OP
not a leftist unity moment l
You can’t be a fucker like OP and then complain about the lack of unity in response
You criticize Hexbear for dunks, but also criticize them for responding at length with citations.
parentiquote.txt
Death to America
Wait I didn’t mean to criticize citations I love citations mb.
What did I say I’ll edit it
Hexbear comes here to be the debate bros they try so hard to dunk on.
What sort of behavior are you critiquing here?
Personally I think “debate bro” stuff is more arguing for the sake of arguing/bending over backwards to defend even trivial or weak points, maybe with a sprinkling of going back-and-forth long after it becomes clear you’re at an impasse. I don’t see a lot of that here anyway.
It involves a wide variety of behaviors, including the stuff you said, but primarily the first thing that comes to mind for me is the behaviour of trying to force/coerce people to engage in debates/discussions that they don’t want to have or are otherwise unprepared to have, usually on the bad-faith preposition that anyone who is unwilling to participate in said debate/discussion must only be unwilling for the reason of being wrong.
debates/discussions that they don’t want to have or are otherwise unprepared to have
I see your point, but I think this is seriously undermined when you have someone like OP who is willing to post all day about this, and occasionally willing to dip their toes into trying to raise real points, but then throws up their hands and says “hey it’s just a
jokememe” whenever they’re in a tough spot.
Straight up misgendering half the posters lol
Please don’t. I take that seriously and it is obtuse to pretend you don’t know the phrase “debate bro”. It was a cultural reference, and I have no intention at any point of misgendering anyone.
Use debate nerd instead in cases where you don’t want to gender people.
Debate pervert is also great
“debatenerd” I’m picking this up! But in my defense, I was saying “debate me bro”, as in, someone who says “debate me, bro”
So, there is this cool thing you can do called making memes gender neutral instead of calling trans women bros.
Since you take misgendering extremely seriously, I thought you should know about this neat trick.
This is a meme I am referencing after seeing it on hexbear. Specifically imitating their language to make a point. Maybe we should talk to them about it too. I obviously hadn’t considered the full implications, and will not use that phrase anymore, for sure.
You may also have seen “debatelord”
I don’t remember seeing that specifically, I might have, but I did specifically see the other several times.
I tend to use the term “debate pervert”
Gender is incompatible with left unity, therefore no they didn’t
gotta make sure your insults are inclusive or something, I guess
broooo come on I thought we were cool
I’m not trying to make enemies, or say hexbear is as bad as people make it out to be
This thread is just no good
I mean communists are not well known for agreeing on things and not arguing about stuff.
I’m not saying I think this is the end of leftism as we know it or anything. I’m just appreciating the bar fight I guess.
It hasn’t been a friendly thread.
If OP had the tiniest scrap of good faith in their being, things would have gone differently
I mean they just shared a meme from an instance you aren’t federated with and quickly had like 20 people trying to demand complex conversations about history with them.
A lot of the complaints directed at them would be better served directed at whoever made the meme.
Maybe don’t share history memes you don’t even remotely understand that vilify people whose perspective you don’t remotely understand? Dude has received some real softball questions and whiffed.
But OP doesn’t give a shit, his ideology is “Dae tabkies bad” and the actual historical claims are secondary.
They’re starving, man
don’t worry you won’t be relevant enough to be shot.
don’t worry, we won’t let you shoot anyone.
“we won’t let you shoot anyone.”
-Liberals standing proudly in front of nazis while captain america music plays
lol tankies in real life protect the status quo from popular movements every chance they get. Fuck outta here.
I don’t see Canadian parliament clapping for no tankies
Yes, the canadian parliament, that famous hive of anarchist ideologues…
You said status quo.
Yep I did
Hmmm, yes, we clearly can see here who has their back to the cops.
we can’t, the image is removed you fucking idiot
The image is fine. You just have a shit connection.
Or you have shit hosting
It’s already back up, FYI. But stop leaking internal details of your reverse proxy in error messages.
We already clarified hexbear is blocking it. Keep up. And this is an internal url. Good luck connecting to it. But ye, thanks for attacking my hosting capabilities. Very cool y’all are.
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🤷
I have no doubt you’ll turn us over to the freikorps at the first opportunity.
Wouldn’t be the first, second, or even tenth time.
sure you will. you all have historically always succeeded in suppressing ‘tankies’.
You could try a worldview that was less abrasive and alienating?
Lol just joking, we know you love the hate you spew.
4/10 Can’t tell if you’re trying to be sarcastic or not. Work on your trolling more.
its hard to joke with someone that has no clue what the historical context is
Try not being so authoritarian?
“Well, that post from yesterday has probably cooled off by now, it was fun while it laste-”
200 new comments
spoiler
It’s a good day to be a communist online
Meme has been ammended to not be racist. Sorry about not paying close enough attention to it. I’ve been having issues with my object storage and I’ve been trying to fix it. In the end I decided to rehost on imgur.
What’s a Tankie?
EDIT: The range of definitions below is interesting
A slang term for authoritarian communists.
It’s for liberals what “woke” is to conservatives.
A white kid from North America who simps for Russia and China despite never having set foot in either
Tankies are not at all a uniquely US phenomenon
When it describes 95% of the ones I’ve come into contact with, that’s what I’ll describe them as
Outstanding comments as always, Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug.
To give a nore detailed answer… Tankies are “lefties” who have failed to realize one or two extremely important facts about the world:
-
“Strong men” are not a good thing. No matter your political opinion, using force to get it is literally incompatible with many leftist teachings. The very act of violent rebellion requires the use of force that many believe a government shoudn’t have. Thusly, any violent revolution stands a STRONG chance of being shunned by those who do not want a government with sanctioned violence. Getting a “leftist” government through basic violence WILL result in a fascist government. Always.
-
Strong men cannot be allowed unjust power no matter how just they are. They cannot be allowed power because despite how cliche the expression, “power corrupts”, it is wholly true. It doesn’t matter how good a particular ruler is. If the levers of power exist, someone WILL pull them very bad directions.
Basically… Tankies are leftists who have not or cannot think through how authority is actually bad to allow to exist in any unchecked form. They think a ruler who does good things is good, when most leftists SHOULD be answering they don’t want any ruler.
The horseshoe theory exists because of tankies and extremists. If you want leftist policy but want to achieve it through uncouth means, that’s definitionally authoritarian in nature for many answers, and authoritarian answers should be antithetical to the left. Even forcing a utopia still creates a coercive government.
Thusly, any violent revolution stands a STRONG chance of being shunned by those who do not want a government with sanctioned violence.
I disagree with this part. Violent revolution—violent opposition to our oppression—is absolutely necessary. However, turning it on ourselves—that is, in any direction other than that which opposes authority—is a recipe for disaster as you say.
It’s not violence itself that is the problem. There are literally always forms of violence sanctioned by every single political philosophy (including absolute pacifism/non-violence, which sanctions violence performed by the state even if its subscribers often don’t realize this). The question is how and when that violence is performed and by whom, and the anarchist/non-authoritarian answer is that it must only be in the struggle for liberation, not the fight to gain and maintain power over others.
I absolutely agree. Peaceful protest has never brought meaningful or lasting change. Violent uprisings are the only way to reduce unjust hierarchy, because those in power have never given it up willingly.
I am not advocating for peace above reason. I am advocating for wisdom in violence. Violence is UGLY no matter who is doing it or why. If you mistakenly think ignorant people will view a conflict and rightfully determine who is fighting for a “good” cause, then you are quite an ignorant fool yourself.
Just look at the Palestinian conflict. Basically ANY activist that believes in violence would be OK with violence happening. Violence happens.
Do people guess who the good guys are correctly? Or are tensions flaring up HARD despite there being ample information about who is killing whom?
Unending storms of propaganda do a lot to influence how ignorant people react in a situation. And it serves to keep them ignorant as well.
(Not the person you were responding to, but that’s my take on how people often react regarding Palestine.)
Exactly. That is why choosing words carefully is very important when wording political messages, and even more important when deploying violence.
Without basically every major media outlet backing Israel, they would’ve been condemned even harder than China did over the ongoing Uyghur genocide.
Indeed it is not violence itself, otherwise even getting arrested would be more contentious of a topic. Though the point I’m trying to point at is: Doing so in a revolution is COMPLETELY opening up the Paradox of Tolerance.
My point is not that violence cannot be used. It’s that you step fully in to the realm of the Paradox of Tolerance, where less intelligent or less informed people can and DO misconstrue whos violence is just and whos is not.
The point is to aim for the least possible violence so there is far less noise for people to sort through. It is a warning about how a well intentioned revolution can (and has many times in the past) turn in to just another fascistic movement.
I am NOT saying violence is useless. I’m saying don’t be an ignorant hick and think a gun is the answer to every problem. It very often can make situations much worse than they have to be.
Yeah. Totally fair.
pacifism/non-violence, which sanctions violence performed by the state
Maybe this is a silly nitpick, but: you can say it unintentionally empowers or enables state violence, but it doesn’t sanction state violence. (FWIW I’m not a pacifist)
I’d say that’s a meaningless distinction, and that actions speak louder than words. But as you will.
-
Someone that thinks people are cool but states are cooler
“Tankie” was a term used to describe those that supported Khrushchev sending tanks to hungaria during that whole thing. Now, it’s been swallowed by western “leftists” and spit out to mean, in summary, “i can’t imagine anyone being more left than me, so they must be secret fake leftists that are actually fascists and golly gee i’m so smart.” comrade brain_in_a_box said it very well that it’s just the lib/soccdem/anarchist version of “woke:” just a random buzzword to refer to anything they don’t like.
A liberal who waves a red flag and pretends they aren’t liberal. Often they call everyone else (including us) liberal. 😂 😉
I’m sorry to be the fun police, and this isn’t particularly related to everyone else’s arguing in this thread, but I’ve always been kind of bothered by the, like, pink wojak, you know? Especially given the origins of wojaks and who popularized them, the idea of using “and he was shaking inconsolably, speaking irrationally, gnashing his teeth to smithereens, with a red face and blood-shot eyes with tears like waterfalls” as a punchline… Well, that makes it sound like that’s something to point and laugh at, doesn’t it? So I worry that things like that end up reinforcing the sort of civility culture in general, and anti-autistic sentiment in particular.
Just, my two kopeks, as it were.
You know, there’d be a whole lot less gish-galloping propaganda in the comments here if you were to defederate hexbear. Just sayin. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hexbears don’t bother me, but I seem to be bothering them quite a lot
Just like with fascists though, it’s better not to let them propagandize, even if you aren’t personally triggered by it.
Eh half of them are just making asses out of themselves by going full mask off. I don’t think they’ve had a great showing.
The quality of their arguments doesn’t really matter though, nor does it matter whether they’re able to convince a majority of people. What matters is that they can reach the few people that will find their overall presentation intriguing enough to merit further investigation, and then pull those people down the rabbit hole. It’s the same strategy that fascists use, just red-flavored instead of brown.
It also makes the space overall less appealing to your actual target audience, which is a cardinal sin of online community management.
…gonna pop in and agree, dbzer0 may have got carried away with engaging with them.
Hexbear also doesn’t have downvotes, their instance heavily emphasizes commenting to show the quality of a post, rather than vote, in most cases anyways.
But they do definitely rally behind their own and do both, as seen in this thread. It’s like kicking a hornets nest.
Just saying, if you have Kbin nazis tempting you to defederate hexbear, you need to reevaluate how you’re carrying yourself.
What an impressive turn out. Looks like they’re all using the exact same “arguments” (a combination of manipulation techniques and logical fallicies) that they use every single time.
It’s worrying how much of a presence these people create in online discourse because they come out in full force, dominating and suppressing anyone or thing that challenges them. There is no healthy debate.
But i suppose it all makes perfect sense; these people glorify the state, single party rule and dictatorship. Their behavior is a logical result of these beliefs
