I'd love to see those Hexbears have an answer for this!
Drawing those eyes on Mao, there is a reason you are afraid of communism enforced with violence
Us, if we fall for their lies again
What "we"? You're just a bunch of liberals playing dress up, your political involvement is just a performance that stops when you log out of reddit and vooote for Genocide Joe. No connection at all to the political legacy of the anarchists who risked life and limb for humanity.
And who even is they? Do these liberals think there are Marxist parties in the west very nearly poised to take power?
The hexbears and lemmygrads are gonna shoot me for my brave posting
There were plenty of anarchist and libertarian socialists in the Soviet Union that weren't insurrectionist counter-revolutionary opportunists that thought the best time for them to seize power and hit the full Communism button without building anything to actually achieve it was during times of duress, such as the civil war, the build-up to then during the second world War, the post-war rebuilding period in former fascist countries, the post-war rebuilding period in a reunified country freed from imperialist conquest, and so forth.
If I was as historically illiterate and ideologically ignorant as the person that made this and all the clapping circus seals applauding this, I would say something completely out of line like "in the history of left unity, anarchism and libertarian socialism has only attempted to emerge into the world in the form of a cancerous tumor on the Communist movement and never has nor is able to emerge into the world on its own feet." A completely unfair and intellectually dishonest statement that ignores the existence of anarchist communes in both the Sino and former Soviet states and erases their contributions to the defense of humanity and the revolution they made in fending off the imperialists and fascists and their contributions to the benefit of humanity and the revolution in their work among the people.
Also love the casual racism against Asians by depicting Mao with slit eyes.
Any recs on where to learn about those anarchist communes you mentioned?
I'll be real with you, it's info that I read in passing and later lost because I keep fucking up and not saving my tabs. (My web browser on desk top has "close individual tab" and "close all tabs except this one" right next to each other, and I have at multiple times lost a few years of research because of a slip of the finger)
From my recollection it was on a Russian history site I was translating that mentioned their existence through out the life of the Soviet Union as forms of experiments in alternative organizations of societies on a micro level.
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.
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!
The evolution from "Stalin didn't help enough" to "Stalin didn't help at all" to "Stalin actually killed them" regarding the Spanish Civil War is fucking wild.
Editing to fix my dog ass grammar
Anarchists cannot fail, they can only be failed. Further proving Western anarchists on the internet are libs who like the edge & aesthetic.
Meanwhile in the original thread I'm arguing with 'an historian' claiming Stalin sent 'his army' there in a sentence that presented it equally to both Hitler and Mussolini
I'm convinced that instance has the most tedious people on the planet
there's someone in the original .world thread lumping in anyone who opposes capitalism as being a tankie and someone else saying that anyone who doesnt support israel is a "genocidal tankie" and repeatedly accusing one of the anti-tankies in the thread of being a tankie because they haven't condemned hamas yet
I can understand getting fooled and believing all the bad stuff about Mao and Stalin, but I genuinely don’t understand how libs treat Lenin like a great evil. They can’t even give Lenin the “his revolution got out of hand when he died” point. I really don’t see what Lenin did that was extreme. The provisional government was about to be overthrown by reactionaries and they already attempted so before the October Revolution. He took power by popular support and most of his factions enemies were foreign to Russian soil.
I really don’t see what Lenin did that was extreme
According to the historical documentary film Anastasia (2020), he personally
Remember that netflix docu series about the tsar family where they intercut a recreation of their execution with a historian calling it(paraphrased) the most hideous and bestial crime of the 20th century?
Anti-communists can't help but reveal themselves as Nazis example #320,455,980,656
My favorite shot (aside from the one that killed bloody Nicky)
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Something doesn’t belong here, I wonder what it could be?
The only thing they did wrong was not executing the romanovs in public.
Well, to paraphrase Molotov, Lenin was even more harsh than Stalin, particularly to his allies. During the height of the revolution and civil war, if he got a letter from a peasant claiming communist party corruption or malfeasance in an area, he would deputize a university professor and some students to go check it out, and if evidence was found of that corruption or malfeasance to their satisfaction (which had no real legal precedent) they had the discretion to either eject them from the party or, depending on the severity of the offense, just straight up execute them, no trial. Which happened fairly regularly. It was not a case of "We have investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing."
Even if you think the evidence standards were lax in the USSR during Stalin's time (which imo they were basically the same as pretty much everyone else's at the time, they were just far more aggressive at pursuing legal actions against high level party members and generals) at the helm, he still always had trials before executing people, even going as far as trying people in absentia, something that Lenin would have considered a ridiculous liberal facade.
Don't get me wrong, these were harsh people, but in comparison to the consequences that would face them and the millions peasants they led if they failed, I don't think they were unnecessarily harsh.
Even if you think the evidence standards were lax in the USSR during Stalin's time (which imo they were basically the same as pretty much everyone else's at the time
Yeah people who complain about this don't compare 1930s Soviet courtrooms to 1930s U.S. courtrooms (because that would be whataboitism, not, you know, having perspective). Think of all the people who had confessions beat out of them or got railroaded on the flimsiest of evidence. Think of all the black people who never made it to the courtroom at all.
You don’t understand, the real tragedy is that powerful people had to face consequences for their actions. USSR bad because everyone was executed, but also USSR bad because the elite (lol) was never punished ever
Another one I've seen is blaming Lenin for the Russian Civil War and thus hanging all the war deaths on him as well as the deaths from the subsequent famine. He did advocate for turning the imperialist war into a revolutionary (edit: civil) war, so it's not completely absurd, but how many would have died if Russia had stayed in WWI? Insert the Mark Twain quote about the two reigns of terror.
Unsure where the author of this meme has heard either Lenin or Stalin call for left unity? Both were pretty clearly and consistently hostile towards Anarchism/Libertarian Socialism as well as what we'd call modern Social Democratic tendencies.
Only not including Mao because I havent read enough Mao and Khruschev because I honestly don't expect him to have written or spoken in particular about left tendency conflicts.
Really funny to just put "intellectuals" under Mao though.
If they wanted a remotely accurate meme they should have put "no unity with counter-revolutionaries" as the dialogue, since that at least gets at the core divide and argument of the conflict, both then and now.
Edit: Actually the more I look at it the funnier it gets, like theres no Kronstadt? You put "factory councils" over like the one specific thing everyone gets to hear about and have to have an opinion on? What is this, a crypto-Trotskyist meme?
One of the (more legitimate) grievances put forward by the anarchists is that the bolsheviks ended elections in the soviets and replaced elected delegates with Bolshevik appointees. During the Civil War and consolidation it made sense, but the fact that the soviets weren't democratize again during peace time was a failing (although, obviously, the time between the Civil War and the German invasion was brief). I think that's probably what it was in reference to?
the german invasion kinda fucked up the soviet union permanently, didn't it
Lenin did kind of revere Kropotkin, but you are right that it was explicitly part of their organization that "there is one party line, not two" and that the vanguard must behave in a unified fashion following the results of a vote or other method of decision-making.
and that the vanguard must behave in a unified fashion following the results of a vote or other method of decision-making
This is democratic centralism: Freedom of debate - Unity of action.
Mao was an anarchist for a minute and actually tried to set up a representational system where multiple anti-capitalist parties could hold office, but no liberals (it was during the Civil War and lasted about 5 minutes before getting replaced by a single party system)
Didn't mao write scathing critiques of anarchism after his experience with it?
tbf he did seem to incorporate some anarchist principles into his theory and he wasn't some kind of anarchist-hunter as the head of the CPC, he just concluded that they were substantially in error (as he separately said of many ML contingents).
Hit them with this, even if it’s wrong, it makes them very not mad:
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Not Pictured: Uncle Sam applauding Rojava for their help in stealing 80% of Syria's daily oil output.
This meme: Lenin hates Ukraine
Meanwhile Rosa Luxemburg be like "Lenin is too attached to the idea of an independent Ukraine"
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Anticommunism aside, since when were MLs pushing for left unity?
There used to be big tedious threads on /r/chapotraphouse basically along the lines of the thread we're dunking on (including plenty directed by MLs against anarchists). After enough of that shit and petty name-calling, most people were really sick of the infighting and it was decided that cth would be a left unity space.
While the subreddit was alive, the ratio of Anarchists to MLs waxed and waned but there was always a reasonably big contingent of both and other types of leftists to boot. I think more of the MLs made it over to Hexbear, but the left unity rule remains in place because fuck infighting.
Personally I'm all for left unity because I've learned a lot from Anarchist comrades and it's nice not see so much mud slinging.
Fair enough, although I find the image's implication that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Krushchev were pushing left unity to be baffling.
Just goes to show how they know shit about theory if they don't know that Stalin wrote "anarchism or socialism". Similar with the rest.
They think reading is totalitarianism authoritarianism 1984 vuvuzela Jorjor Binks
Standards of evidence is 1984, vibes-based analyses are good enough and if you say otherwise you’re basically Hitler oppressing them with concepts such as “you need to know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth”
WTF is a Libertarian Socialist? Isn't that like an oxymoron?
Think Kropotkin-style anarchism. "Libertarian" used to refer to anarcho-communism--communism without states, hierarchies, and so on--until Rothbard and company started using it to mean laissez-faire capitalism during the 20th century. Some anarchists will still call themselves libertarian socialists or left-libertarians (not to be confused with "bleeding heart libertarians" or "liberaltarians," which are as awful as you'd expect).
Ahh Captured term from
Thanks.Being an
and only knowing Libertarian as Ayn Rand and 
makes it a bit 
Yeah, that was their deliberate plan. Rothbard wrote:
For the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we have taken it over.
He was successful to the point that very few people use it in the old sense anymore, unfortunately. This is especially true in
Probably worth pointing out that Hitler talks about doing the same thing with the word socialism.
Socialism with kid-diddling characteristics
Really it's "socialist economy with a significant emphasis on individual rights, e.g., free speech." It doesn't sound too bad until you (paraphrasing Parenti here) contemplate the difficulties of actually running a state, confronting capitalist attacks on your state, handling reactionary groups within your state, etc. Basically "do you let the fascists publish their newspaper the day after the revolution?"
Was that "no bedtimes" struggle session on twitter real?
Basic summary is its supposed to be Communism without as hard of a grip on the state and structures of society, "without the authoritarianism" as ideological of an explanation as that is.
What if we made a proletarian state without capitalism then implemented absolutely nothing to protect itself from the re-establishment of capital?
Sounds really hot for those with a perpetual losing fetish.
Thanks. I'm a silly
that only knew Libertarian from the 
"I got mine fuck you" types we have here.
Id tell them that we arent building nations over here and our activism consists of feeding homeless people. So go on believing this if you want, but if it causes you to tear down our nice little mutual aid project then youre terrible.
The person who wrote this is convinced theyre sauron when we are all just regular orcs. You dont have the kind of leadership over whatever movement ends up forming the way Martin Luther King or someone like that did. Dont delusionally think you will.
