Edit for clarity: I'm not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I'm curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It's an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.

I've been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them "Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn't disavow them as though they're literally going to kill you."

Like there's some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there's a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.

Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn't teach you this why would you care so much?

  • bazingabrain
    ·
    19 days ago

    I did read about the person who popularised "authoritarianism" receiving CIA funding, but I've lost the bookmarks sadly, so now it's just a kooky conspiracy theory.

    that would probably be gene sharp, jacobin did a two part series on him.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]
      ·
      19 days ago

      There's a few of these figures who really poison-pilled the left, at least historically speaking - Gene Sharp, Saul Alinsky, Hannah Arendt... they are all on my shitlist.

        • REgon [they/them]
          ·
          19 days ago

          Any other good articles I can read on her and the rest of them?

          • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
            ·
            19 days ago

            here on Arendt

            https://web.archive.org/web/20241108153956/https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hannah-arendt-white-supremacist-456007

            Her own words are enough lol, have you considered that forced desegregation is totalitarian???

            https://www.normfriesen.info/forgotten/little_rock1.pdf

            Mark Tauger on Applebaum’s shoddy Soviet scholarship

            https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/review-of-anne-applebaums-red-famine-stalins-war-o

            • REgon [they/them]
              ·
              19 days ago

              Appreciated. You can always archive an article to avoid giving clicks

                • REgon [they/them]
                  ·
                  19 days ago

                  I usually use the internet archive https://web.archive.org/ but there's a few different ones out there. You can also use it to bypass paywalls

            • ReadFanon [any, any]
              ·
              19 days ago

              Hannah "Um ackshually totalitarianism is really bad, I'm gonna have a relationship with the Nazi philosopher now" Arendt

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        19 days ago

        I'm extra mad at Arendt right now because "little eichmanns" is such a perfect encapsulation of what we're seeing with libs and both Palestine and trans genocide within the us, and extended to other genocides - indigenous, disabled people - and day to day evils like prisons and homelessness.