Not us Chapos specifically, but I see on reddit and fb a shit ton of actual vitriol spewn back and forth between MLs, ancoms, anarchists and others. To the point where they're banning and attacking others they deem too tankie or not woke enough. On here it's pretty dang inclusive. I haven't seen too much infighting, and who doesn't love the sarcastic jab every once in awhile?
The stuff that happened in Kenosha has me pretty dang shook, and it's not over. I have a friend who lives with his brother out in Kenosha, and this was minutes from his house. I live four hours away from Kenosha and I easily can see this going down in any city closeby me.
Right now it feels like the fascists outnumber us. Not only the out-and-out fascists, but there is a LOT of wishy-washy support for civility and police. When it gets down to physical violence and shooting from both sides, people won't distinguish the leftists from the nazis, they'll condemn both and want to go back to normal as quickly as possible.
So the only common struggle that we have is with each other. Socialists and anarchists both want to dismantle the capitalist system and achieve egality. We all want to keep this earth going for awhile, (well, except maybe for you posadists), and we all want to defend ourselves and defeat the fascists. We can only have the numbers high enough to do this if we can reach out, not only intersectionally and inter-ideologically, but in real life and in other social media spaces.
I could see this site getting large enough to have the strength to spread propaganda, infiltrate, and reach out. We should organize and develop strategies here (maybe have a separate community for it?) and try to get our ideals out into the world better. Because right now, it doesn't feel like too many people in the middle are ready to fight with us.
Idk, I just smoked for the first time in a week and this has been on my mind today.
I've cleverly sidestepped most infighting by being too dumb to read any kind of theory and powering my leftward movement solely with my instinctive lizard-brain hatred of Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro, and the hosts of Pod Save America.
This is the actually way to persuade a lot of people. Most regular folks will never read theory but they know who is fucking up their life
No, if you aren't shouting READ THEORY at everyone who has a wrong opinion are you really a leftist?
Things have honestly gotten so openly fucked up that you probably don't need anything more complicated than this to get somebody ready to storm the Winter Palace.
hearing Bryan from street fight (IIRC) say that it's ok to be dumb and be a leftist was an embarrassingly big turning point for me
You don't have to be Albert Einstein to grok that we should maybe distribute the combined resources and production of the world towards more than like 3 people.
Lmao that’s good enough! That was me until a few months ago when I really started to get into theory after I lost my job.
The fascists don't outnumber you. They can't mobilise numbers at all.
There are a tiny minority of fascists willing to just murder you. They are terrifying. And they are everywhere. But they absolutely don't outnumber the left. They don't mobilise, have no infrastructure and 99% sit at home, scared.
They SUPPORT the fascists willing to go out and kill, but they're almost non-factors. The majority will sit out any conflict. There is a false perception of size and numbers brought about by those that add their vocal weight support.
I really think this is very important to understand. The largest mobilisation of these fascists to ever occur was charlottesville and it took them months and months to achieve. Don't be fooled by average people vocalising support that will sit out of the real conflict. They're not their "numbers". The left mobilises in incredible numbers with ease and consistency by comparison. The people willing to actually engage in a conflict, in my opinion, are roughly even on both sides. Excluding the state from this of course.
God I wish I had your optimism about getting people engaged. Not saying your wrong just cynical is all
I see nothing but growth occurring. The left's ability to mobilise and its infrastructure simply continues to grow.
They are resorting to these actions because they are scared. This is an individual actor among a small group of 10 that showed up.
Their mobilisation is terrible and they are forced into these lone-attacker events because they have no other options. They can't get opposition numbers in the streets with clubs to clash with the left because everyone is content to sit at home and do nothing. They are loud online and incapable of mobilising. From last night's videos we saw clearly that they can't be viewed as a monolith either, the militia wasn't down with the police "pushing protesters towards the militia to deal with them" and that militia guy was content to say that on video to leftists effectively snitching on the police. I don't think we can even consider these chud militias to be up for a war. Some might be horrendous but... That shows more nuance to me.
We over-simplify the different groups into one cohesive monolith that seems insurmountable when in reality these factions are diverse and complicated. If we put the numbers down on a piece of paper and really assess things week to week month to month... I think the picture looks very different to the fear-posting we do here constantly. Yes, these attackers are terrifying, but this kind of attack is a result of their lack of ability to do anything else at all due to low numbers.
while I 100% agree that fascists are super minor chunk of people what im worried about is the leftist numbers are equally small and we will all become eaten by capitalist BS. Thanks fam for allowing me to suspend those anxieties for at least a bit
We're all in a permanent state of being eaten by capitalist BS but the reality of the strength of the fascists shouldn't be confused with that of the state or neoliberals.
What we SHOULD be concerned about is a real, actual, competent fascist in power. Trump is not that though.
Too often the left is conflating the forces of the state, the idea that Trump is an actual real fascist of the palingenetic ultranationalist variety, the neoliberals, and the actual fascists in the country as all the same thing. They're not. They're separate things and should be regarded as such. Sometimes they're aligned against the left, but, they are also aligned against one another in many ways.
We are doing ourselves a disservice by speaking of these various forces as one monolithic enemy. They are all enemies, but they are not the same force and the dangerous-fascists are actually far smaller than we are in mobilised numbers. I strongly believe that we need pushback against this view of all our opponents as one entity.
Just a thought about the overestimation of fascists here and elsewhere online;
For the amount of control the fascists fantasize about taking would simply require more amount of food/calories than are currently available to them. If they ever got together in serious numbers they would collapse within weeks if not days from not having the competency to feed and shelter themselves. They truly are pathetic wretches.
Murdering a few people at a time will never be a model for achieving sustainable victory for them, it can only come about through domination of political systems which is where the power of the People truly comes from. Our power.
an excellent responce we didn't ask but thank you for your input
Are you here to post hog? If not I'm going to have to ask you to fuck off liberal.
The lefty infighting you see in online communities is stronger than I think exists in real life. When you are talking with a fellow leftist in person, the things you disagree strongly about tend to fade away and become a lot less relevant because of whatever you are meeting about.
Honestly tired of the shit between anarchists and MLs. You know what it sounds like? It sounds like my dad getting mad at Canada for the war of 1812. At a certain point you got to drop the 100 year beef and realize you are in a new time and space. It’s so online.
More :clapping hands: clever :clapping hands: trolls :clapping hands:
Lmao you've posted all this bullshit in 11 minutes? Hell of a way to grapple with your sexuality.
From an anarchist that has been for several months now in Chapo, I second this.
That said if there is a place where there is rather covert anti anarchist sentiment it is here.
If this platform wishes to become a hot spot of umbrella organizing, that bit really deserves a bit of self crit.
But Chapo in general really has the potential to become an organization hub
I agree, us chapos need to do better at being inclusive toward anarchists and anarchists ideas. Just because anarchists are the minority in this relatively small online leftist space, that doesn't at all mean anarchists and their ideas should be marginalized.
well I assume they would want communists there. it's not a general leftist sub
that sub is an example of people totally against leftist unity, they seem to ban people for arbitrary reasons
they banned me because of some anime-related thread I made years back in a different sub, very weird
Somewhat related, but /r/BlackLivesMatter auto-permabans anyone who's posted in /r/conspiracy - which only recently became flooded by Trump supporters.
With all due respect, I've been reading /r/conspiracy for years, and while there was always an (((Illuminati)))/Soros/aliens/other really dumb shit element, I always found my thoroughly leftist posts upvoted and I'd say the majority of posters just wanted to criticize power and would argue down obvious racists. Like, you'd have both leftist and right-wing takes in the same post. And lots of others who're just there because they're excited for hidden knowledge - who may be swayed either way. Ceding that space to the right would be a mistake.
Now it's gone from 50:50 Right vs. Left to 90:10, but it's still not /r/conservative. It's a more friendly place than /r/neoliberal for sure.
And that goes for the realm of conspiracy theories in general. The most popular conspiracies are about the JFK assassination and 9/11, and then the shit like MKULTRA and Operation Paperclip that are 100% real, but no one ever discusses them except conspiracy theorists.
I was banned from it for asking a legit question about the cultural revolution they deemed “bating”
I was banned for "reactionary post history" with no other explanation
you ever thought of sticking a gun in your mouth, just for fun?
for legal reasons, i must state that at no point did I imply the firearm the poster in question should perform fellatio upon would be loaded
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it would be cool though
Well, I'm sure they know that they'd just respawn anyway, right? Because that's what happens when you eat a gun irl. Right?
sadly they left me blueballed, but thank you for your concern, comrade 07
Here's how he's actually justified his actions https://imgur.com/gallery/jArJz56
When I saw the title I thought, ‘this is going to be a post challenging able comrades to do at least ten pushups for each day we engage in leftist infighting, isn’t it?’
So now that’s what my comment is. Hit the floor and gimme ten, comrades o7
I'll unify with anyone against spooks and especially CIA spooks
I’ve noticed a lot of people who are attracted to leftist ideas are understandably broken and angry from their life experiences, and this can serve as a positive motivation for seeking change.
However, all too often, this manifests itself in a much more toxic way, causing people to lash out at groups or individuals over even the slightest of disagreements, or over some perceived slight.
We really need to confront this. If we go the route of chuds and refuse to discuss our thoughts and feelings in an honest and healthy way, it’s only going to hurt us going forward.
I often struggle myself with being open and honest about how I feel, so I’m right there with any of you out there who deal with the same issues. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a dedicated space for that kind of venting/support/self-improvement?
I really only ever get the sense that resistance to left unity only ever comes from anarchists. Like a lot of them are pacifist and hate MLs with a passion. The worst I see the other way is a mild disrespect of anarchist ideology.
When you visit r/COMPLETEANARCHY for example, they seem obsessed with tankies. Like I see more posting about tankies than about actual anarchism. I really get the sense that to them left unity is anathema to pacifist beliefs. If you search 'unity' in r/debateanarchism they seem to consistently reject the idea of left unity.
r/COMPLETEANARCHY is full of petit-bourgeois radlibs who think they are anarchists
When I pointed out how deleting that sub might be praxis I got shit on relentlessly
Well the main problem with that is that Reddit admins would just remake the sub and give it to reactionaries. Which would make no difference compared to how it currently is. Deleting the sub wouldn't actually accomplish anything.
I don't think any self respecting anarchist is a fan of completeanarchy at the moment, it's filled with 14 year olds and vaush fans atm
I'm not going to downplay how some extremely online anarchists are obsessed with the boogeyman of 'tankies', especially those residing in gentrified spaces like reddit or memesubs like the one you mentioned.
However. The way you're deflecting blame in your very comment towards 'them' is just another flavor of the sectarianist accusational tone towards some 'other' - and I don't think it's any more helpful than 'blaming tankies'. This phenomenon of leftist infighting, of sectarianism is certainly not something that "only ever comes from anarchists", your comment being evidence of that.
I don't think you're right about that.
I'm describing my experience here, but I've never seen any hate towards anarchists like I've seen them have towards MLs. Me pointing this out is not the same as hating anarchists, or even not wanting them on my team. I like anarchists fine even if I disagree.
My point is that every three days there's a left unity post and there's never any discussion that many (most?) anarchists don't want unity with MLs.
Fair, I might be wrong for sure.
But while we're describing personal experiences, I do see MLs calling anyone not entirely on board with any and all 'anti-imperialist struggle' CIA-assets, radlibs, what have you - and not just here and there, it's the go-to insults. Don't like surveillance in China? Must be a CIA-talking-points-regurgitating lib. I think what's alienating to many anarchists is this strict ideological homogeneity some MLs seem to demand from people or they'll not even recognize them as 'real' leftists. And that invalidation certainly leads to a reaction; anarchists calling MLs tankies cuz all they want is crushing people. It just feeds into the same cycle of reactionary sectarianism and thinking there's only one singular way to make things better and anyone seeing a different way is an enemy.
I'm just saying, there's fucked up folks on both sides here and we all need to make an effort. As others have pointed out, these ideological differences really aren't that important once you're doing actual work on the streets.
It could be my ML bias, but yeah it does seem to come from online anarchists more than the other way around. I do see MLs poke fun at anarchists because they've never had a successful experiment and for their participation in the Black Guard, but not much actual disdain.
The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be. In order for us to make concrete change in our social and political struggles, we cannot limit ourselves by adhering to a singular ideology. Our political and military body encompasses a wide range of belief systems from a wide range of cultures that cannot be defined under a narrow ideological microscope. There are anarchists in our midst, just as there are Catholics and Communists and followers of Santeria. We are Indians in the countryside and workers in the city. We are politicians in office and homeless children on the street. We are gay and straight, male and female, wealthy and poor. What we all have in common is a love for our families and our homelands. What we all have in common is a desire to make things better for ourselves and our country. None of this can be accomplished if we are to build walls of words and abstract ideas around ourselves.
of course, to press any revolutionary struggle into a label is going to be an oversimplification. I'd still consider them AnCom but what do I know.
Of course, the social struggles of exploited and oppressed people cannot be expected to conform to some abstract anarchist ideal. These struggles arise in particular situations, sparked by specific events. The question of revolutionary solidarity in these struggles is, therefore, the question of how to intervene in a way that is fitting with one’s aims, in a way that moves one’s revolutionary anarchist project forward.
In this light, revolutionary solidarity needs to take up the weapon of unflinching, merciless critique of all reformist, nationalist, hierarchical, authoritarian, democratic or class collaborationist tendencies that could undermine the autonomy and self-activity of those in struggle and channel the struggle into negotiation and compromise with the present order. This critique must be based in a lucid conception of the world we must destroy and the means necessary to accomplish this destruction.
of course, to press any revolutionary struggle into a label is going to be an oversimplification
very true, to be successful we will need at least some semblance of left unity
I’m an anarchist and I don’t think this is explicitly an issue with anarchism itself. The thing is, a lot of people, especially within the imperial core, can easily find themselves vaguely agreeing with the concept of being “anti-authority” without actually doing any analysis of what that actually means. They don’t question the imperialist brainwashing they’ve received because they think just blanketing “all hierarchy bad” over everything is adequate and so end up perpetuating imperialism.
Of course there’s genuine discourse and I’ve definitely seen my fair share of ML hate of anarchist, but I think a lot of the bs from the anarchist side, if you want to call these people anarchists, is from this type of person.
Relevant example of a libertarian dipping their toes in anarchism:
https://www.reddit.com/r/anarchy101/comments/igtsqk
Reaching out to good faith parties who aren't complete psychos but just misguided or curious can go a long way.
Everyone is finally (smartly) talking about arming up on the left. Getting a few boogs to see the light will save everyone a few steps. Get to them before the cops do like in Kenosha.
At the end of the day, we want our understanding to have spread far and wide. Just don't be smug assholes representing our cause, because that's counterproductive.
Most if the leftist infighting you see on Twitter or reddit is people who spend more time attacking the left for purity points, and is in turn acting against the interests of building power.
Anyone who starts a comment with the phrase, "I've seen so many so called leftists/progressives/socialists/ect." can kindly fuck off. If someone makes a bad point, disagree with that point, don't slander the left in the whole process.
I'm convinced that anyone who does this shit is into left politics for purely aesthetic reasons that are completely detached from any sort of material experience or concern.
Politics that relate to individual acceptance into a community or relate to anything around self actualization are the politics of those who have already achieved basic security.
I really want a rifle and live in a state where I can easily get one, but I don’t trust myself right now because of the state of my bipolar. But any comrade who can do it needs to arm up for sure.
