• Bloodshot [he/him,any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    There were quite a few people online, who after the attempted coup in Venezuela, and to lesser extent the successful one in Bolivia, would handwring about Maduro and Morales:

    "I don't support what happened in Venezuela, but let's not pretend Maduro is a good guy, or is implementing liberatory socialism. I oppose both the government and the opposition, and support the people in a bottom-up assertion of their power."

    The problem with this is A) Speech is performative, and B) it's idealism. What I mean by the former is that, even if your position is honest, and even if it's the correct position, by doing anything other than voicing ardent opposition for the coup while it's happening you are giving it legitimacy (to the extent what anyone says online matters at all). You may say "Maduro is evil because he is not far enough left" but what a liberal hears is "Maduro is evil, so it's a moral imperative to get rid of him". You saw similar things about Soleimani after the airstrike; playing up how evil he was after stating that the U.S. was wrong to do this only justifies what the U.S. did.

    The second problem, its being idealist: even if it'd be best if the people united in a grassroots manner, organised together, overthrew Maduro and imposed Anarcho-communism, even if that's the best idea, that doesn't mean that it's a currently extant force. What you might wish were there just doesn't exist in order to support; they are not a real party to this conflict, and so you end up opposing both existing sides and supporting a phantom.

    I don't necessarily believe this is an Anarchist tendency, as the meme would imply. I think it's more likely a Twitter tendency, where you are pressured to have the "most correct" take, in order to be superior to and more nuanced than everyone else.