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.
Right? The end goal is a stateless, classless society. Anarchists get what they want, Communists get what they want, everyone is happy. We are anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists above all else. Tendency is nothing more than a means to an end, and those means will vary depending on the situation. There is no single correct answer once you expand beyond the community level. Different communities experience different means of oppression, experience different material realities, and face different challenges. They will be forced to take different approaches to overcoming these challenges even if they subscribe to the same theoretical orthodoxy. This is OK. This is cool and good.
(As an armchair radical) What isn't good is this bullshit where armchair radicals and back seat revolutionaries gatekeep the mechanisms by which revolution must take, and discard all deviations as reactionary. A lot of this is due to ignorance, but these antagonisms are easily turned into a negative feedback loop. We should avoid feeding into them.
Call out the obvious wreckers, but when you decide to take a swing at them, either do your homework and calmly present a compelling case, or chill out for a moment. The worst thing you can do is cut corners and provide a lazy argument. This only causes people to circle their wagons and drive the wedge deeper.
The other thing we should avoid is conflating awful social media celebrities with movements. "Communism" and "Anarchism" are both incredibly diverse revolutionary movements with hundreds of years behind them and dozens of subtendencies, and to reduce either to the dimwitted takes of some vain clout-chasing dweebs on the Internet is negligent reductionism. Ignore the dumbasses and their unthinking followers. Remember that corporate social media is a counter-insurgency tool and does its best to promote misleadership. Don't take that anger out on people who are desperately looking for answers in the midst of the crisis of capitalism. Use it productively to steer people towards productive endeavours.