My fault for going on twitter BUT WHAT THE FUCK DOES “BEING A STALINIST” MEAN IN FUCKING 2022? This is basically shit stirring against an imaginary boogeyman
The best post in r/CompleteAnarchy of all time:
It’s the larp honestly. The entire tankies vs anarkiddies “debate” is pure larp. The stakes couldn’t be lower. Its kids playing in the sandpit, arguing who gets to be who in their Russian civil war/spanish civil war game. I honestly get it, “let’s pretend socialism is massive, very influential, actually has a shot, so the differences between different socialist visions and strategy actually mean something”. But it’s just that: playing pretend.
Its just endlessly regurgitating a century old conflict. Oh yeah sure “the tankies” are gonna “kill” “us” because that’s what “they” also did to “us” back then. Same with “social Democrats killed rosa luxemburg”. Come on man. You’re just saying that to pretend you’re anything like those people and not just posting pictures online. Even the communists in the spanish civil war were more committed to socialism than you are. They literally put their lives on the line, even if you think they’re wrong.
Damn, i love it.
It reminds me of a tweet i saw a while ago (in spanish, paraphrased):
"Fuck off, you are not a revolutionary communist fighting against revisionists, you are in your home in your pajamas about to have dinner and watch a movie, stop LARPing"
If only the ratio of a take like that to "omg red fash autho tankies right wing lenin" wasnt 1/100 it could have been a salvagable :reddit-logo: sub
Also im gonna keep shitting on socdems thank you very much
Do soc dems organize beyond democrat elections? In insert major city they definitely have numbers but I've only seen them organize for elections.
They're actually good here too. It just doesn't ever click in my head that the DSA is a sucdem org because all the members I know are some form of communist.
Maybe it is time to be the bigger person.
It's still all just a big LARP. This isn't Yalta. You're just one group of internet weirdos arguing with another group of internet weirdos.
Being "mature" doesn't get you anything, because there's nothing at play.
Sure. But that's IRL. Totally different standards for social interaction.
BUT WHAT THE FUCK DOES “BEING A STALINIST” MEAN IN FUCKING 2022
Literally nothing. Some leftists literally think their online spats with other lefties is like a Black Army / Red Army skirmish. They think we're at that level, incredibly funny given the state of "the left". Imagine getting a union drive started, then breaking it up because one guy has a black flag or hammer & sickle in their twitter username. Finally getting a strike going then breaking it up because one guy voted Bernie, meaning he's a socdem he will shoot me just like Rosa!
American leftists will see a deadly pandemic, a crashing economy, the posibility of a war in eastern Europe, a coming Cold War between 2 superpowers, the rise of Fascism in the West and think "yeah, its the Stalinists who are the Problem right now"
They only want THEIR picture of socialism to succeed, even if they aren't all that clear on what that is.
It's a dogwhistle for MLs. They can sugarcoat it all they want but these radlibs are referring to MLs aka "tankies". Unless there's a brand of "Yes we are MLs. Yes we don't agree with CCP. Yes we exist. Critical support to US imperialism. :so-true: "
Yeah, it serves as a shorthand for calling MLs genocidal maniacs because they and their audience believe Stalin was a Hitler
I've been in both Marxist and anarchist orgs and the distinction in America is basically nothing except aesthetics, like some wave red flags and have Lenin and some use punk stickers and black flags. A lot of food not bomb folks I've hung with will throw the word tankie or stalinist around, but it didn't mean anything practical. They still hand out food and it's cool. It just meant they'd use different words to describe stuff. I've hung out with trots from Socialist Alternative too and they'll say Stalinist or lifestylist but again the practical distinction is nothing and it hardly informs organizing.
The only slight distinction I could draw from ML orgs and more anarchist orgs around where I live is the ML folk occasionally try to endorse candidates in local elections and the anarchist folk don't do that. All the orgs do mutual aid (sometimes refusing to work together out of petty differences) and all of them do socialist propaganda.
Also in total I'm describing maybe 30 people between all the organizations mentioned. I can't imagine being a "Stalinist" having any practical impact in anything.
Thank you for this. It's sports team shit because the divisisions that animated these sectarian squabbles practically don't exist any more. Materially we are in pretty much the same boat.
It's also baffling to me that such grand statements can be made about who you should and shouldn't work with when like... A large city will have maybe a handful of socialists in total. There are so few of us in America and even fewer taking part in orgs. There aren't enough of us to have petty sectarian differences and yet somehow here we are. Like when I hear "Don't work with Stalinists" they might as well be saying "Don't work with Sarah and Steve. They're not cool."
Which actually is how it works a lot of the time. Parties split over petty personal differences rather than anything meaningful.
Just take the comrades you have, everyone. I beg you.
This reminds me of when I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in years to see a screening of an anarchist movie about the Spanish Civil War (of course). At the end the general mood in the room was "fuck those commies, now and forever." My takeaway was that alot of communists with experience from the Russian Civil War were trying their hardest to save the situation in Spain. I don't know or care about the details, so I won't die on this hill.
Anyway, more importantly, I didn't understand why a bunch of stinky people crammed into this room even related to anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.
I'm gonna vent in a way that might be a little sectarian. I've worked with a lot of anarchists that are much better and more committed organizers than I've ever been, but there's also a very large contingent that seems to reject the value of experience and cultivated skill. This applies to things like appreciating peoples' actual experiences trying to build socialism, or efforts to do actual union organizing in the US, to really mundane matters like accepting that there's a proper way to build a safe wall in your squat. Some of these people are not cool.
I think that's where a lot of the failures of hardcore anarchist ideology lie. And trying to pretend like you have any connection to the Spanish Civil War, the black army, or even worse, groups like the Zapatistas, is incredibly cringe.
That being said, to even it out a little, the anarchists in my area tend to be a) the only ones bothering with mutual aid, which I think is important, and b) the only ones that show up to stuff like Indigenous solidarity rallies (I tend to see the Trots most often at anti-war or foreign policy-related actions).
A couple years ago the Maoists and anarchists teamed up to kick the Trots out of the May Day rally, if that doesn't prove how silly this all is.
Waiting for the day with Gonzaloites and Trotskyites team up to kick out the anarchists out of the May Day rally
Red Guards and Gonzaloites team up to kick out the Trotskyites the following year
The year after that, they're all in death camps together blaming each other for the rise of Fascism.
"
♫ dontcha worry it's only a shower / for your clothes here's a pretty flower ♪"
Where I've lived for the past several years the only action is with the anarchists, so I support them absolutely, and to stay in their good graces I avoided the socialists (who weren't doing much anyway).
:rat-salute:
They didn't change the world, but they annoyed the shit out of the right people and fed a lot of people that needed help.
They didn’t change the world, but they annoyed the shit out of the right people and fed a lot of people that needed help.
This accurately describes the extent of most praxis in the Imperial Core if you want to stay alive. Slow down the machine, help everyone you can, raise hell.
I mean, most communists :10000-com:% also do this with Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. It's a pretty understandable response to have a sense of camaraderie with past movements and revolutionaries.
That being said, to even it out a little, the anarchists in my area tend to be a) the only ones bothering with mutual aid, which I think is important, and b) the only ones that show up to stuff like Indigenous solidarity rallies (I tend to see the Trots most often at anti-war or foreign policy-related actions).
Hell yes, I've noticed that too. Anarchists also tend to almost always be intersectional. Pretty hard to be a class reductionist if you're Anarchist, because you already see The State as another axis of oppression.
I also know these anarchists. Building shotgun shacks in parks for the homeless is cool and good cause the city isn't doing anything and it beats a tent but that's where it ends because trying to actually get the government to do its job and house the homeless is collabo with a state and we need to prove The People (in this case a dude with a beard and his friends and like 20 or so who will show up when it's convenient for them) can Do It Themselves with Mutualism or whatever. Turns out they totally can't.
trying to actually get the government to do its job and house the homeless is collabo with a state
That's where a marxist can help. That said, we should all be aware by now the American State is against any attempts at reform. There's a reason the Black Panthers decided to build their own clinics and food banks.
It's not sectarianism to make constructive critiques for the betterment of the movement.
That might be it! In any case, it looks really cool. Thanks for that.
I'll just decide to only hear what I want to hear. Problem solved.
My experience with small business owners in the US tells me those people would absolutely burn it all to the ground if it meant people they didn't like couldn't have it, either.
I mean, look at the self-own by a bunch of small business tyrants so they don't have to pay above $15 an hour.
They already do it, no? Like you already throw away food if you can't sell it.
They're basically doing this right now by refusing to pay higher wages even though their employees are quitting and no one is applying for their shitty ketchup sandwich boutique or whatever the fuck rich white people eat.
without any pickles or black pepper because both of those are "too spicy"
Stalinist means anyone who questions the (disproven) US narrative built by William Randolph Hearst, personal friend of Hitler's
I didn't know Hearst was a nazi, but I am not surprised.
:caught-in-4che: I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin.
