https://i.imgur.com/FYeoXx4.png
anti communist propaganda and misinformation about virtually every communist revolutionary leader and movement throughout history has always been one of the most serious impediments to leftist growth in the west. It has created such a deeply ingrained rhetoric that anti communist propaganda has also been actively used by libertarian socialists to coopt movements and take advantage of this deeply ingrained hatred in the west by acting as a surface level alternative. The fact that there is so little pushback against anti communist rhetoric and propaganda among these leftist spaces is telling enough to its usefulness and the rhetoric largely centering around it.
In media you only ever see communism portrayed as the evil Russians that need to be killed and anarchism as the cool defiant and rebellious crowd fighting back against the oppressing government. Its dishonest to dismiss it as nothing important when this continual peddling of misinformation pushed by imperial media at the behest of capitalist interests always finds its way into the left and isn’t only not actually pushed back against, but also actively embraced opportunistically in many cases. I've seen it in many mainstream places including anarchist subs, dsa groups, iron front type antifa groups irl and online, and general "leftist unity" spaces. Its by far the most pervasive narrative on the western left today, and therefor the most harmful.
I'm tired of it being defended, brushed aside, normalized, and rationalized away as just "difference in tendencies", and I find it deeply dishonest to actively enable and not call this out in the name of some presumed "leftist unity". Where is this so called unity exactly? I see only antagonistic and opportunistic use of this anti communism and never any push back against it because its been such a useful rhetoric for this brand of western leftism. How are people still not understanding that this state department pushed rhetoric is an immense impediment towards any large leftist movement?
This is not sectarianism or anti whatever, no one has to be a communist, i have no problem against other tendencies even if we disagree strategically on what the best way forward is. This is just a call for leftists to do better and learn to deprogram themselves and be more critical of their own biases and understand that having grown in a world that has declared war on communism and has engrained in the collective consciousness of the west a deep seethed hatred that they themselves are also exposed and influenced by this. Its everyone's duty on the left to fight back against this petty reactionary rhetoric and get people to stop peddling state department approved narratives.
I mostly just see people make the exact opposite claim, calling all existing socialist states and all communist leaders and revolutions and current communist parties and movements as "not real leftists" or "not real communists". its a brand of western leftism that's much more prevailing than arguments among marxists or other communist tendencies about specific strategies and ideologies.
I have seen both. I have seen self-styled MLs smugly claim that ML-led revolutions were the only successful revolutionary projects ever. I have seen self-styled Anarchists discount all the victories won by Communists as "not real socialism." Primarily, I find these self-assigned labels to be practically meaningless. Your revolutionary tendency is defined much more by your actions than your words, and for the most part, words are the only things the morons saying these things have. I might be most strongly influenced by the writings of MLs, but as long as I am sitting here shitposting on the internet instead of organizing my neighbouring tenants into a vanguard party, I am not an ML. I am a shitposter.
This shit is incredibly stupid. If you are an ML/MLM, one of the first things you should understand is the dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Practice informs theory, which in turn serves practice. This is straight from Mao. This includes Anarchist practice. As long as Anarchist practice is taking place, it will remain a source of empirical knowledge which should continue to inform us as we continue to develop our understanding of revolutionary theory. Regardless of your opinion on the viability of Anarchism in a vacuum, it is undeniably anti-capitalist practice, and thus something to be engaged with and learned from. The tendency to disregard the revolutionary struggles of Anarchism is closed-minded and self-defeating, and the retort that "If Anarchism were so successful, name one Anarchist state." is incredibly stupid.
On the other hand (in my humble opinion), a lot of self-styled Anarchists take anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian tendencies to an extremely reductionist and harmful place. A good Anarchist should naturally be suspicious of any hierarchical structure, but hierarchy is an inevitable result of our material reality. The aim shouldn't be to claim that anything with hierarchy in it is bad. Rather, the aim should be to cultivate a deep understanding of how hierarchy influences and corrupts our social structures. You will find hierarchy everywhere. You will find hierarchy in an Anarchist book club where the attendees hold shared respect for their well-read and insightful comrades. The point is to identify harmful hierarchies and take action to eliminate their influence - but this may require force (authoritarianism), and it may require organization (which brings inherit hierarchy with it). A good Anarchist will understand all of this inherently and deal with the trade-offs intelligently, but there are a lot of self-styled Anarchists who assume the position that any hierarchy must be destroyed.
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