I think we're all in agreement that organisers who end up clout chasing (like ??? just suck some politician's toes or something it'd be easier) aren't good for any social movement, but I think that what the OP and the OP's OP were referring to were legit just organisers in the sense of in labour as well as in protests
They also dragged my boy Fidel, and thats crossing the line
Slate.com just ran an interview with a historian of anarchism and he said he was first drawn to people like Mao and Ho but then realized that “revolutions always lead to worse regimes than they replaced” so he started looking into the Paris Commune and CNT/FAI. Successful revolutions are never pure enough.
Reminds me of a friend's mum who went to Vietnam. For context, she really despises Mao. The friend and the dad wanted to go to Ho's mausoleum, and she refused to go on the basis that he was a horrible communist dictator. She still didn't want to go after it was told to her that he died before Vietnam was even unified. She even said that he wouldve committed atrocities if he as alive when it was reunified on the basis of him being a communist. Tbh, I'm not even sure if you can really pin anything on Ho that isn't a fabrication anyway
I was just reading What Is To Be Done by lenin last night and he specifically talked about avoiding demogauges who were just there to be popular but have no answers on the actual big picture struggle. So turns out lenin agrees!
Yeah, but there's a difference between critiquing the role current "organizers" have on movements, their ability to co-opt movements, etc and critiquing the very concept of organizers, of any kind, and the post seems to be doing the latter, and I think that's kinda silly.
Aussie Anarchist
So for context, Anarchism is practically dead in Australia. Even at it's lowest point in the USA it was more alive than at any point here in the last 20 years. The people posting stuff like this are entirely online.
The biggest socialist orgs in Australia are mainly Trotskyists, with the major ML parties being the ACP and the CPA. I know a few other organisations that I'm not even sure are anarchist, but they're tiny.
In my experience (and age range), socialists here usually come about through things like SAlt or the CPA and I never could identify any distinct anarchist formation. So my guess is that Australian anarchists mostly come about to their ideology through the internet, like I had a few years back lol
As it was told to me, most anarchists were kind of consumed by the Greens in the 90s. Despite the party trying to purge leftists, they never really reclaimed their own identity and have remained sort of hidden in the enviromentalist movement. The last anarchist I talked to wasn't part of the Greens, but was still just trying to organize Extinction Rebellion protests.
Those aren't the only anarchists though obviously, but I really couldn't tell you what the others are doing.
I know a fair few, spread around the IWW and there's a group in brisbane that has a lot of em too
Yeah I considered mentioning the IWW, but the only one I've actually talked to was a weird Young Labor guy who was definitely not an anarchist.
There's also an anarchist group that some fascist attempted to bomb a few years back in Melbourne. I don't know much about them, but if they pissed some nazi cunt off enough to try that then they must be doing something right.
Literally the only thing the working class has is organisers and organisations
The enemy has endless capital, the intelligence services, the politicians in their pockets, the newspapers, social media and the algorithms which display our information
It's why so many (existing) Socialist countries put such enormous emphasis on organisation
It's also why AntiCommunists put so much effort into propagandising people against organising with shit like "muh bureaucracy"
Hhnngg colonel, I'm trying to do socialism but the gov't is dummy thicc and the clap from my bureaucracy keeps reinforcing hierarchy
They're being useful idiot kids. It's easy to dismiss organizing if a self-professed anarchist thinks that all organization is a threat.
Why are there so many confused people in politics... if there are no organizers, then everyone is doing extra work to be their own organizers.
It’s easy to dismiss organizing if a self-professed anarchist thinks that all organization is a threat.
It's easy to dismiss the labor aristocracy because of their endless history of betrayal of workers. https://workingfamilies.org/2019/09/working-families-party-endorses-elizabeth-warren-for-president/
if there are no organizers, then everyone is doing extra work to be their own organizers.
Marxists actually hate the idea of the working class taking power of their own lives, Marxism Leninism is functionally fascist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism
Unlike other forms of Marxism, autonomist Marxism emphasises the ability of the working class to force changes to the organization of the capitalist system independent of the state, trade unions or political parties. Autonomists are less concerned with party political organization than other Marxists, focusing instead on self-organized action outside of traditional organizational structures. Autonomist Marxism is thus a "bottom-up" theory: it draws attention to activities that autonomists see as everyday working-class resistance to capitalism, such as absenteeism, slow working, socialization in the workplace, sabotage, and other subversive activities.
Marxism Leninism is functionally fascist
lmfao nice bait
autonomist Marxism emphasises the ability of the working class to force changes to the organization of the capitalist system independent of the state, trade unions or political parties
Prove it.
they’re doing the CIA’s work for them
it's our favorite game, Tankie or Neoliberal?
"foreign propaganda is destroying our bourgeois democracy by critiquing its leaders as having betrayed the proletariat"
“foreign propaganda is destroying our bourgeois democracy by critiquing its leaders as having betrayed the proletariat”
No one is talking about the president or senators when they say "organizers"?
I thought anarchists wanted to get rid of meaningful hierarchy and abolish the authority that one person or class has over another
yeah thats exactly what it is. This facebook post absolutely reeks of some wrecker page made to make them look bad.
You realise a cursory scroll through their page reveals that they are in fact, extremely online, and extremely anarchist, and have been so for a long time. They do have evidence of doing/promoting mutual aid which is great but sometimes their takes just are terrible
anarchists wanted to get rid of meaningful hierarchy and abolish the authority that one person or class
Opposing protest organizers is in line with this definition, though, so long as any particular anarchist believes it is "unjust authority."
Guys there is literally no difference between the state and a group with effective leadership
every successful movement in history involved a bunch of people with no direction running around doing their own thing
anarchy is where organization is bad and the less your organize the more it's anarchy
please bro just reject hierarchies with me bro
In my experience every anarchist I've met irl has been super cool, very on board with left unity. But for some reason there's so many online "anarchist" that are just fucking dumb (looking at you Vaush). I've also seen people putting lib unity (as in libertarians/anarchists) before left unity, which just makes me think they have no real values
"Libertarian unity" is not a real concept. Literally nobody in real life supports that, it's an AnCap fantasy.
I know, that's why it's so bizarre to me that I've seen people who call themselves anarchists wanting to unite with libertarians
Irl anarchists and internet anarchists are not the same. All the anarchist groups in my area actively participate in labor organizing and tenant organizing. They know you need to get people organized if you want to accomplish anything.
When people organize in person they just have to do the thing they're there for. Its not a matter of ideology. Though that's not to say when they go home they don't have shit views. I've organized with plenty of people who are cool and then i see them post the most lib shit online. I think libsoc ideology like dsa and anarchism (broadly speaking) is probably the prevailing leftist ideology in the US, tho i think its more of a surface level ideology for people who have only recently been involved with the left. Not to say anarchism or libertarian socialism itself is that, just people gravitate towards those groups because they're the most easily accessible and so you'll see a lot of very lib shit come from it overall in spaces like reddit, twitter, facebook, discord, etc.
This is extremely niche, but has anyone read about Kevin Smith’s experience working with Bruce Willis? As I recall, Smith approached Willis about doing a movie together because he appreciated his hatred for the Hollywood authority figures in charge of Live Free or Die Hard, only to find out that Willis just hated all directors and was impossible to work with.
This reminds me of that, a little bit.
A few things - what it seems to push forth is that all forms of hierarchical structure is terrible. It's not specific as to what context it refers to "organisers" in but here's a few off the top of my head. This ain't exhaustative btw, its just what i see the problem is.
In most proper leftist organisations I've seen, organisers are typically cadre, or those who have shown committment to the professed cause and have displayed their ability to coordinate resources and efforts well, on top of maintaining a consistent message. They are looked up to, because they have "earned" their position, they have shown that they can handle it when shit goes down. However, this does not mean that they are "above" anyone in some unjust hierarchy. It usually just means they have more responsibility - they can be subjected to critique and recall, if it is justified.
Secondly, it's unwise to assume that all of your comrades are going to have the same amount of time or energy, or can put the same amount of effort into the liberatory struggle, for a variety of reasons, like working, or family, or study - also, some people are just more able to administrate than others. It's even less wise to assume the same in a mass movement or even in labour organising - the failure of horizontalism in Occupy in the late 2000s is an example. If i remember right, it bogged down decision-making, and allowed for opportunism to seep into the movement. Additionally, if your enemy is way more organised than a mass movement will most likely ever be, a non-hierarchical horizontalist movement is probably gonna get steamrolled.
It's also kinda wack? All leftist formations depend on organisers, to some extent. How else are you gonna work with the working class in a unified front to advance their interests
