I get the impression that 95% of the people here are some flavour of ML.
Maybe this is why I think the space is more ML than it is because I see terms like imperial core. Would you say that you roughly agree with Lenin in regards to Imperalism, but disagree with democratic centralism?
Some common takes are not related to ML/Anarchist split, but are unpopular with anarchists (Vaush hate, Breadtube hate, not voting, anti-electoralism, anti-harm-reductionism, shitting on AOC, etc.)
I lean towards anarchism myself, and most of the anarchist stuff I've read has been pretty anti-electoralism and anti-social democracy, so I don't get why reddit anarchists have gotten so liberal.
It’s a long term op. Started when the CIA saw how useful anarchists could be when some went to rojava (which was based) but the CIA could see how they could drag the ideological space over a bit until color revolution didn’t seem that different to your average anarchist. It’s a fucking op.
He said he’s not a communist, but have never said anything anti-USSR or more broadly anti-communist.
Guy seems to focus on Germany issues and debunking crap histories of WWII, he’s doesn’t seem interested in much beyond that.
In his 1000 subscriber Q&A he answers this question, here's what he says in that video:
"It's not that I'm such a big fan of the SPD in the 20s and 30s, they weren't really the good guys either in a lot of cases, It's just that I'm a fan of history and like the idea of people coming together to fight for democracy against the forces that try to destroy it."
i dunno if he's said anything more recently, I just remembered this but I haven't been subscribed to him in a while.
Three Arrows is good, lots of debunking Holocaust denial / Wehrmacht apologia from a modern German perspective.
BadEmpanada is not quite breadtube but he does good vids and he posts here too (or at least he used to post in the old sub, idk if he migrated).
something something master's tools something master's house
matrix room replacement for the discord when
Contra
I think that she was a bit more left than now, that she did want to express multi faceted views, was much closer (timeline and relational) to the university and academic debates and thus tried to present a bit of leftism with a fun take. That said, she wasn't openly advocating for any explicit revolutionary stream.
Now Contra got money from the videos, which changed her relation to society, she has a lot of input from viewers all over the spectrum, which also skews her views. It might be that she hides her power level, but I doubt it.
Well that's a shame. I remember when Breadtube started, the goal behind it was to push back on all the right-wing propaganda on youtube and try to radicalize people. It seems like instead of radicalizing people it's just de-radicalized people who were already on the left.
Breadtube started good for like 6 months then got co-opted by libs.
It's not deradicalised people who were already on the left. It's just that people making these vids are just radlibs, and they don't know enough about anything. Almost none of them belong to any kind of larger structure, to an organisation or something, or have participated in serious organising and unionising etc. A leftist who has never tried any of that stuff, has never come in contact with serious people who are attempting that, who has never been part of collective struggle etc and thinks they are qualified to talk about stuff after just reading the wiki page about Rojava or even worse, watching vids by other libs who stan democrat slay kweens, is not a leftist.
They're all either utopians, laser-focused on idpol, secretly reactionary or just complete ultras. And that is predictable. It is also predictable that if they continue being as individualistic as they are, if they continue being absent from any serious organising, and if they continue having their audience enforce their echo chamber, chances are they will all end up reactionary.
Anarchists are the canonical anti-electoralists so the whole trend of online "anarchists" telling people to vote for Biden is extremely weird. A real anarchist would call Lenin a lib for justifying bourgeois electoral participation under any pretext at all.
(disclaimer: not an anarchist, but I have known of anarchism since a while before 2016)
yeah that seems more like shit that's unpopular with succdems than anything else
reactionary co-opting Marxist-Leninist or Maoist terminology
TFW Russian nationalists use Stalin imagery :stalin-shining:
tbh it was inevitable the second Koch got back from germany and decided to go cryptofash with the trojan horse of liberty
didn't even know who vaush was til I got on here and I was pretty active on the sub before it got banned
conversely, I've got an anarchist friend who joined the dsa on the opposite end of things because they're the most active leftists in their area besides some vanguardist MLs with a particularly shitty idea of what that means
I had an automod rule that deleted any post or comment with his name in it lmao
genius
full LARP
Door-to-door canvassing to spread disinfo to suppress the primary vote seems more like they got compromised by bad actors than anything else. Tbh the biggest larpers I've met IRL are bougie kids that are into the soviet aesthetic and have no discernable politics.
Did go to a Castro-themed columbus day party thrown by some ansyns once, and that was pretty sweet. Thought it was a larp til I learned the hosts were red card carriers
That’s because I had an automod rule set up that deleted any post or comment with his name in it lmao
Suddenly it makes sense how Vaush came out of nowhere.
We need an automod here.
Re: China struggle sessions, I've gotten into a few of them here, taking the "Adrian Zenz may be a grifter, China might not be committing a literal genocide, but they're still doing Islamophobic racial profiling on a mass scale, that's grotesque, and it's sad you can't admit it" position. I often end up with a better ratio than my interlocuters. I think the people in the "I will defend China forever, always" camp are very loud but don't have nearly as much support among the userbase as they claim.
While I think this is fair, I think there's a level of critical support required, or even a degree of critical neutrality - at absolute worst someone might argue China is as bad as western imperial countries, but most of us don't live in China but those western countries.
This is a good take. China seems to be handling radical islamism x1000 better and more humanely than places like the U.S, france, etc., but that isnt saying much.
Do we have a wiki? It would be useful for things like this, theory libraries, etc.
These are all really damn good points that I hadn’t considered previously. We’re obviously not going to budge on some of those aspects as a site (no left anti-communism, no cia propaganda, neutrality on china), but the trying to educate anarchists thing really stands out to me as somewhere we could improve. There’s a bullshit “aNaRcHiSts jUsT dOnT kNoW tHeYrE MLs yEt” trope that I think is toxic.
Criticising Leninism is not left anti communism tho and a lot of users act like it was and some prominent users are def only here to push their agenda on others.
And it really is a turn off when i am being "lectured" on my own country's history by westerners for example because i dared to question the party line.
Anarchists are supposed to be the ones who really hate voting but online American leftists are a bit confused.
I also think people reflexively gravitate towards anarchism since it doesn’t have any major failures like Leninism (since it hasn’t been tried outside of small-scale wartime rebellions). I think people are uncomfortable going around and championing the ideology that produced some of American education’s most devilishly portrayed people, and anarchism is an explicit rejection of those people. It soothes the mind by giving you a revolutionary fervor but without the weird looks when you tell people you agree with the guy that killed the sparrows for being bourgeoisie.
This is obviously only applicable to the new “lifestyle” anarchists that have only been leftists for like 4 months and haven’t read theory yet or organized. Anarchists older than 17 years old are usually more nuanced in their views.
cool, im an anarco-obiden-bama democrat. Nice to finally meet someone with the same political beliefs as me.
Yes, I'm an anarchist and a communist. I've seen several other anarchists around here too. There's room for disagreement with other leftists, but we are still on the same side here.
Seems like a lot of people make light of liberatarianism or joke about anarchists being liberals here. Does that not bother you?
In the popular discourse "libertarian" means "right-libertarian", and yeah, right-libertarians deserve to be dunked on. There is some actual sectarianism here sometimes, which isn't good, but on the other hand, there are internet personalities like Vaush and NJR who call themselves anarchists but are practically libs or socdems, hurting our cause. Also, when more sincere anarchists like Noam Chomsky have bad liberal takes like lesser-evilism, I think it's fair to criticize them for it.
Youtube is becomeing a big problem IMO. I can agree to disagree with someone like Sam Seder for pushing social democracy, but Vaush is either a psyop or an irresponisble jack ass. We need to actively discredit fools like him.
makes it pretty clear that he uses Marx and Kropotkin purely for aesthetics as he either hasn't read or doesn't agree with either
I am a marxist. I agree with Lenin on most things and I get a lot of inspiration from Mao.
Vaush is not a principled anti-imperialist. I am cool with anarchists, but I am more than happy to go toe to toe with an anarchist over imperialism related issues.
If you just prefer decentralized politics over demcent or whatever, you do you as far as I am concerned.
I’m aspiring to be an anarchist. I find it a bit cringe to call myself an anarchist when I’m not doing praxis, but ideologically I want an anarcho-communist world and am trying to get there via anarcho-syndicalism and organising with the IWW.
I’d like to see more anarchists here to talk about organising strats, doing DA, mutual aid, smashing the fash and all that. I love the dirtbag leftist thing. I love seeing liberals get shut down, but I do find some of you get caught up in the spectacle of electoralism, doomerposting, and incantations to revive Lenin or whatever.
I don't think we need incantations to revive Lenin, he seems to be alive and well in China, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK etc.
I’m into networking and view all things as interconnected networks - brains, galaxies, cultures, the Internet. An interconnected, federated ancom world makes the most sense to me. Borders are cringe. Hierarchies are cringe.
I’m aspiring to be an anarchist.
If you need any help studying for the certification exam, hmu.
I firmly believe sectarianism is liberalism.
You are god damn right
Depends on your defintion of sectarianism. I think anarchists are wrong, but that fighting with them only really serves the bourgeoisie within the principle dialectics at play within the imperial core.
Wrong to the extent that it's not my prefered strategy and not the strategy I would personally advocate for.
As individuals we need to make a decision and be focused or
To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction; to work perfunctorily and muddle along--"So long as one remains a monk, one goes on tolling the bell." This is a ninth type.
Bro I wrote this as I peed, got up and washed my hands and looked down and saw this lmfao
I know some guy in Tacoma who claims he’s one. Apparently the entire metro area wept when he left tinder.
There’s probably some anarchist crust punk who’s handle is Toyota Tacoma
I'm a centrist. ie, a Luxembourgist.
We've got plenty of anarchist comrades around and they're all pretty cool when we're not having our regular sessions of "Was Stalin Sometimes Bad?"
I can't find any actually credible source on this and Siberian Times is not one.
The DNA test or the pregnancies?
Cos there were internal soviet investigations confirming the latter.
Both of these things? I can only find tabloids and shit pop history books when I look for it.
So, by "Shit Pop History Books" I'm assuming you're referring to Montefiorre's Young Stalin, where the pregnancy claim is first validated by previously sealed soviet records. The claims are well documented in existing before hand but until those records were unsealed they seem to have been largely dismissed as propaganda.
While Montefiorre is a pop historian and Young Stalin wasn't peer reviewed, book reviews of it were, and they seem to accept Montefiorre's claims and validate that he did have access to those sources. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/young-stalin-by-simon-sebag-montefiore-new-york-alfred-a-knopf-2007-xxxii-460-pp-notes-bibliography-index-illustrations-photographs-maps-3000-hard-bound-1695-paper/3EB95BEB9D3367869D5377B5861C5817
Further I can't find anyone offering any pushback, which the record keepers probably would. If you really doubt it I suppose you'd have to go to Georgia yourself. Further, I can't find anyone offering pushback to the Siberian Times' claims of the DNA tests, which I'd expect, given the international and republishing of those articles Stalin's surviving grandson the articles claim provided the DNA would.
For all of this to be a complete fabrication there would have to be a conspiracy on the part of the record keepers, Stalin's grandson, the Siberian Times, a highly successful British pop historian, and Yury Davydov and his family or the DNA clinic. For such a large, diverse and unlikely conspiracy to have been assembled and apparently executed without a single leak or hitch you'd expect a much larger payoff than a single round of the news cycle in April 2016 which didn't coincide with any larger wave of anti-Soviet propaganda.
Given, if not an abundance, then as much evidence as can reasonably expected (where else would a DNA test be first reported except in national news? Why wouldn't new details about Stalin's personal life surface in soviet records about Stalin's personal life unsealed for the first time?), and no falsification of or even pushback against of this evidence by parties who have both the ability and motive to I don't believe there's really grounds to doubt the claims.
I do not see any reference to that claim specifically, and cannot find any real academic reference to it anywhere, despite it being of interest if it were verifiable.
I also do not see how the conspiracy has to be so large? I see no credible source on the DNA test, Stalin's grandson,, etc. Only tabloids, and no credible international republishing. It also does not appear to be a notably widely spread story, certainly not enough to warrant attention for pushback.
What, to you is a "credible source"?
This daily mail article for instance: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-454291/Stalin-lover-aged-13.html
Is by Montefiorre, the guy who published the book Young Stalin. reviewed in peer reviewed journals, where the sourcing and research he did for the Young Stalin is praised.
Not tabloids or news websites well known for publishing falsehoods. Some academic backing for Montefiorre's claim since 13 years it has been published.
Not a fucking daily mail article.
Simon Montefiorre is heavily cited and published in peer review journals. Young Stalin is a work of pop history but he's a serious historian.
Furthermore, reviews of Young Stalin are published in peer reviewed journals praising the books research and sourcing, and not pushing back against any of the claims.
There's noone saying this is fabricated, and many people involved who, if it was fabricated, have both the motive (barring a grand conspiracy) and the ability to utterly destroy this story's credibility. They haven't.
Why in your conspiracy, would Stalin's grandson who the articles claim provided the DNA to be tested go along with the lie?
Assuming he's not in on it, why would the DNA clinic?
Why would Montefiore, a prestigious academic and pop historian gamble his reputation and credibilty on a fabrication which gained him so little?
Why would Yury Davydov and his family and friends in Novokuznetsk lie?
Why would the keepers of the records Montefiorre was given access to?
More to the point, why would they all get together and decide to lie about the same thing for so little benefit to any of them?
If there was a grand conspiracy to fabricate this why is so little use being made of the story?
You're fabricating a grand conspiracy where no evidence or even trace of one exists because you don't want to accept that Stalin probably raped a 13 year old.
Are you really trying to claim that a journal's review of a pop history book, which doesn't address the claim, is the same as the claim itself being peer reviewed? That is not how peer review works.
I have seen no evidence beyond low-traction articles in tabloids that Stalin's grandson, a DNA clinic, etc are making any such claim.
Where is any academic discussion of this at all? Why if it is so true is it limited in reach to right-wing press and pop history?
None of this, or anything regarding Stalin's character has anything to do with the political validity of Marxism-Leninism, any more than (also unverified) claims about Makhno's treatment of women does upon anarchism.
Look, I don't really have a stake in convincing a stranger on the internet about this.
You're claiming, on no basis, something with a lot of evidence for it, is false.
Montefiorre's peers, the keepers of the records he examined, and Stalin's family haven't pushed back against Montefiorre's claims.
Stalin's grandson hasn't pushed back against claims he provided DNA to the clinic, nor have the people who the internationally circulated news articles claim to be the descendants of the woman Stalin raped, nor have the rest of Stalin's family.
Information often takes a while to to percolate through academic circles, especially information as obscure as the sordid details of Stalin's youth. As a qualified historian myself I hope you'll believe me when I say that among most schools of academic historians (although I can't speak specifically for historians of the Soviet Union) biographical histories of "Great Men" have been out of fashion for a long time. As to why the right or western capital in general might not want to draw attention to powerful pedophiles, I'll leave that up to you to figure out.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Yeah, I know.
Nevertheless it's a slightly less authoritarian tendency, though that mostly comes down to their material analysis rather than any real foundational disagreement.
