They frequently call anarchists who are unsupportive of the US state department line on practically anything tankies.
Deeply unserious people that unfortunately do not only exist online.
The meme is well designed, love the chaos star especially and love to see more balaclava girlies. And I can sympathize as I’ve certainly encountered very bizarre takes by terminally online internet leftists in favor of weird shit like being in favor of the Ukraine invasion or thinking the DPRK is some secret paradise.
However, by and large I’ve gotten to the point where anytime I hear the term ‘tankie’ thrown around it feels thought terminating. I’ve been called a tankie for being opposed to the US invading North Korea, or for supporting indigenous land return. But here’s a bigger problem I’ve encountered: I volunteer every week at a local free store run by anarchists and I also have done organizing work with local ML parties. Anytime the local MLs want to get involved in the free store, or collaborating on any mutual aid projects the Anarchists have going on its cold shoulders all around “Oh no, those people are Tankies. We can’t trust them.” It’s gotten to the point where everything is separate and there’s no talking to each other. One time a Communist party member mentioned they knew someone who could do free glasses repair and thought it would be good for them to come to the free store, and when I brought it up folks just didn’t wanna hear it or criticized “the company I keep” as if that would taint them. It’s just disheartening because all these MLs locally are almost all LGBTQ, poor/working class, disabled, etc. Just like the Anarchists and want a lot of the same things. I really think anti-communist propaganda has created such an unnecessary divide in our organizing. I’m not asking folks to all just get along and agree, I want different orgs to have their autonomy and own ways of thought. I would just want people to focus their ire on people who ACTUALLY make life shit for us, especially here in the west, which is our own capitalist state and the capitalist class.
Thank you for indulging me by reading my long silly comment.
I have encountered this sort of thing as well in my grass touching endeavors, and it is really disheartening.
I have encountered this sort of thing as well in my grass touching endeavors, and it is really disheartening.
There aren’t enough emojis to express my
I see infighting as a symptom of (a) we are losing badly or (b) everybody is waaaay too comfortable. If it’s particularly bad I’ll remind everybody that the fucking liberals restored democracy to Spain. Infighting is wrecker behavior, at best, whether they mean it intentionally or not. At worst they’re It reminds me of a toxic strain of Christians that justify their shitty behavior because Augustine or Luther wrote a vague sentence.
The non centralized non hierarchy thing goes so far in my town that it’s basically anarchists and their particular friends doing basically diy charity work without the resources of larger orgs doing the same because they’re government funded or whatever or just volunteering for ngos or doing community gardens. They don’t really do anything more radical than a church group but really gotta do the aesthetics of radicalism so people know where the innefecutal and inconsistent aide comes from. The idea of doing anything more than that until Critical Mass happens and then a general strike solves everything is offensive and authoritarian.
Also the general strikers will snap into a focused understanding of prefigurative revolution without substantial political education or a coherent line beyond anti-capitalism and “hierarchy is always bad and wielding authority makes you immediately and irrevocably evil”
No party organizing or preparatory groundwork necessary!
International Longshoremens Association: we’re on strike but we’ll keep shipping military stuff for the empire because we’re the “I LOVE AMERICA” Union!
I does accomplish doing just enough to make yourself feel good while spinning the same low stakes wheel cause deep down you’re fucking terrified of what will happen if you take the next step and you’re terrified because you don’t believe in seeking the associative power to not make yourself incredibly vulnerable should you do anything even somewhat more radical than food not bombs. You got crushed by the police state and get to lick your wounds and do the same thing again and feel like you’re ungovernable for it, you keep restarting from scratch cause you are governable. It’s a fantastic self defeating cycle to burn out of.
While I understand this sentiment, there’s several key issues for why Anarchism in my (rural) neck of the woods is the practical organization.
There aren’t any communist or other organized non-Anarchist leftists for hundreds of miles. Sadly socialist/communist/ML orgs are typically found in larger cities, but not in the rural and smaller towns. It’s the classic Marxist Town/Country divide at work, including suspicions and outright hostility towards Big Cities and their organizations. Anarchists take this seriously and build what we can with what we have, including strict operation security, because…
We’re surrounded by several local and national armed right wing militias and their sympathizers, which make openly organizing dangerous. We are outnumbered by orders of magnitude. We all keep a low profile otherwise we could be shot from fanatics, to say nothing about the cops. This is enabled by…
Reactionary liberals that don’t take #2 seriously. Even the small local unions are deeply liberal and reject open leftists of all stripes.
While we are decentralized and work locally, we also affiliate with other Anarchist groups. Unlike #1, I know two Anarchist orgs locally and several within a short drive. It’s incredibly easy to build up a small Anarchist group from what you have than organizing along more ML lines, sadly, because of #2 and #3.
Because of all the above, we have limited options and bodies. Most of us are poor and barely tread water economically. We make do with what we have.
I get the frustration over knee-jerk anti-authortarian Anarchists, which I constantly remind my people that we are not Anti-archists. I’m currently the resident Anarcho-Marxist simply because I’ve read the most ML theory, and I push communal organization through the guise of Disaster Preparation. That is the one universal experience that I can trojan horse leftist ideas and praxis without triggering their programmed anti-communist antibodies. It’s not much but it’s honest work. At the same time, and I hate to say it, I must point out to our ML comrades that the Left in the US is gutted. Even the ML groups I talk to struggle in their own cities due to infiltrators, cops, and liberals. They are usually forced to act locally as well. This isn’t a critique, simply pointing out the reality of our collective situation. It sucks. At the same time, most MLs in the cities have a much larger population to draw from, and that can offer protection and strategies all their own. To me this fits into my Anarchist worldview of diversity-of-tactics, and MLs should play to their strengths!
I practice Anarchism because, for better or worse, the tools are right at my feet to pick up where I’m at. I can organize (and radicalize) a neighborhood here and a restaurant there. It’s slow, but there simply nothing else at hand.
Also I wish churches in my area would act more like my group, but despite practically tripping over churches in my area I rarely see Christians in the field.
All in all, the circumstances of the Rural make traditional organizing out here as difficult now as it was for Lenin.
I agree with your overall sentiment but it feels to me like you’re an anarchist because you’re working with what you’ve got, considering the circumstances I wouldn’t define what you’ve talked about as specifically anarchism. If there is no party to organize around, doing what you can isn’t really anti-ml at all. As you said the left is gutted but at least my local (in a city) anarchists are more about preparing for a mad max style apocalypse via community gardens etc than having people not dress folk punk for a second or work with layers or whatever. They want society to change to suite their bohemian lifestyle and have zero regard for everyone else. They think everyone when freed of capitalism will wanna be just like them.
Yeah came to quote that post. Local anarchists here are actively hostile to any sort of communist organizing. We have had our outreach events hijacked or even trashed by anarchists doing the work for feds. Leftist unity is cute and fun on Hexbear, but it does not at all reflect my irl experiences.
They frequently call anarchists who are unsupportive of the US state department line on practically anything tankies.
Deeply unserious people that unfortunately do not only exist online.
I have encountered this sort of thing as well in my grass touching endeavors, and it is really disheartening.
There aren’t enough emojis to express my
I see infighting as a symptom of (a) we are losing badly or (b) everybody is waaaay too comfortable. If it’s particularly bad I’ll remind everybody that the fucking liberals restored democracy to Spain. Infighting is wrecker behavior, at best, whether they mean it intentionally or not. At worst they’re
It reminds me of a toxic strain of Christians that justify their shitty behavior because Augustine or Luther wrote a vague sentence.
The non centralized non hierarchy thing goes so far in my town that it’s basically anarchists and their particular friends doing basically diy charity work without the resources of larger orgs doing the same because they’re government funded or whatever or just volunteering for ngos or doing community gardens. They don’t really do anything more radical than a church group but really gotta do the aesthetics of radicalism so people know where the innefecutal and inconsistent aide comes from. The idea of doing anything more than that until Critical Mass happens and then a general strike solves everything is offensive and authoritarian.
Also the general strikers will snap into a focused understanding of prefigurative revolution without substantial political education or a coherent line beyond anti-capitalism and “hierarchy is always bad and wielding authority makes you immediately and irrevocably evil”
No party organizing or preparatory groundwork necessary!
International Longshoremens Association: we’re on strike but we’ll keep shipping military stuff for the empire because we’re the “I LOVE AMERICA” Union!
Oh
I does accomplish doing just enough to make yourself feel good while spinning the same low stakes wheel cause deep down you’re fucking terrified of what will happen if you take the next step and you’re terrified because you don’t believe in seeking the associative power to not make yourself incredibly vulnerable should you do anything even somewhat more radical than food not bombs. You got crushed by the police state and get to lick your wounds and do the same thing again and feel like you’re ungovernable for it, you keep restarting from scratch cause you are governable. It’s a fantastic self defeating cycle to burn out of.
While I understand this sentiment, there’s several key issues for why Anarchism in my (rural) neck of the woods is the practical organization.
I get the frustration over knee-jerk anti-authortarian Anarchists, which I constantly remind my people that we are not Anti-archists. I’m currently the resident Anarcho-Marxist simply because I’ve read the most ML theory, and I push communal organization through the guise of Disaster Preparation. That is the one universal experience that I can trojan horse leftist ideas and praxis without triggering their programmed anti-communist antibodies. It’s not much but it’s honest work. At the same time, and I hate to say it, I must point out to our ML comrades that the Left in the US is gutted. Even the ML groups I talk to struggle in their own cities due to infiltrators, cops, and liberals. They are usually forced to act locally as well. This isn’t a critique, simply pointing out the reality of our collective situation. It sucks. At the same time, most MLs in the cities have a much larger population to draw from, and that can offer protection and strategies all their own. To me this fits into my Anarchist worldview of diversity-of-tactics, and MLs should play to their strengths!
I practice Anarchism because, for better or worse, the tools are right at my feet to pick up where I’m at. I can organize (and radicalize) a neighborhood here and a restaurant there. It’s slow, but there simply nothing else at hand.
Also I wish churches in my area would act more like my group, but despite practically tripping over churches in my area I rarely see Christians in the field.
All in all, the circumstances of the Rural make traditional organizing out here as difficult now as it was for Lenin.
I agree with your overall sentiment but it feels to me like you’re an anarchist because you’re working with what you’ve got, considering the circumstances I wouldn’t define what you’ve talked about as specifically anarchism. If there is no party to organize around, doing what you can isn’t really anti-ml at all. As you said the left is gutted but at least my local (in a city) anarchists are more about preparing for a mad max style apocalypse via community gardens etc than having people not dress folk punk for a second or work with layers or whatever. They want society to change to suite their bohemian lifestyle and have zero regard for everyone else. They think everyone when freed of capitalism will wanna be just like them.
Yeah came to quote that post. Local anarchists here are actively hostile to any sort of communist organizing. We have had our outreach events hijacked or even trashed by anarchists doing the work for feds. Leftist unity is cute and fun on Hexbear, but it does not at all reflect my irl experiences.
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Same.
This kind of BS is common in my locale unfortunately