this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Anarchism
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I'm not sure I really agree with your first point, I think finding a way to find allys in all leftists would be worth it, even if it has a dark history. Things can be better.
But holy shit their reaction was intense. And the idea that their arguments were in defense of left unity was pretty silly... 99% of it was just "anarchists wrong and evil", and there is wild amounts of sectarianism going on just within hexbear that I'm sure lent energy to this.
I respect how you reacted under pressure. I really respect any admin of a website that can show that much restraint when dealing with personal attacks and people you explicitly disagree with.
But yeah the lethality of leftist infighting is maybe a topic that deserves more delicate conversations than memes.
not only is that not what we said, but db0 actually said that about us
I was there, I can form my own opinions, thanks. It was hyperbole, but that was the general level of arguments being made.
If you want left unity, it was a nonsensical way to behave. It was just more sectarianism. It does make sense as a way to behave if you just wanna argue... So thats what I assume the real intent was.
the meme being posted was "modern MLs are bloodthirsty monsters who will kill you if they ever get in power"
When you view a group as evil, that view tends to result in double standards for behavior, which is what you're doing.
I'm probably going to dip because I'm too mad to be civil right now
Hi, if you read what I said I also did not like the meme originally posted. I'm just trying to be constructive about it instead of angey and loud.
Edit: "angey" was a typo but it makes me laugh
And y'all had a chance to prove the meme wrong by not turning it into a dick measuring contest with spamming equally shitty sectarian shit that on hexbear would get you kicked out (anarchists are worthless, anarchists can't coordinate, etc.),. And it always ends like this. Anytime i mention that in the hungarian revolution the workers councils were a way more significant factor than any western influence and they literally set up groups to hunt nazis the same agresszive smug shit arrives from people who never read anything about the topic apart from the fucking Aptheker book. I feel like the ML userbase (who are right about basically anything when it comes to capitalism) would rather off themselves that even admit that any ml leader even marginally engaged in self-serving abuse of power. Of course anarchists who aren't familiar with the site wont be happy.
How many people did we shoot in the thread? Are you that easy to pander to?
Ask them about Khrushchev and co's destalinization or 70s Mao or Gonzalo.
afaik hexbear unanimously hates Gonzalo, which is throwing me off trying to interpret this comment. not being snarky
All three are examples of ml leaders who took huge Ls abusing their power that nobody is afraid to criticize. I'm not familiar enough with the boiled baby guy to say whether he was actually an ml or if it was another pol pot situation.
Gonzalo was a self-proclaimed Maoist, part of the reason we say ML-MZT and not MLM in English
If you want criticism of a self-proclaimed ML (and don't count Pol Pot because that claim was not even paper thin), Khrushchev is someone we all hate who has slightly more of a claim to the title, though naturally I would argue that he is a revisionist.
If you want criticism of an actual ML, we criticize Stalin and Mao all the time, but usually not on "selfish abuse of power" terms because that generally isn't what they did compared to simply being a bit reactionary or foolish (often right and left deviationism, respectively, though that is a slight stretch for the Four Pests case).
Naturally, if it is an ideology we believe in, then actions we disagree with are generally going to be outside of what we consider those principles to be.
I don't know much about the Hungarian uprising. If the Soviet response was unjustified and draconian when they could have worked something out, that's fucked up.
Do you have any reading recommendations?