Anti-anarchists sometimes like to accuse “anarchists” of having terrible opinions, and then if you’re like “I’m an anarchist and that’s not true” they say “Oh, I mean internet anarchists.”
I’ve seen some of you mirroring this rhetoric and complaining about “internet anarchists.” This is playing into anti-anarchist rhetoric that discredits anarchism and divides the movement. You don’t have to prove you’re one of the good ones.
We used to call those people “baby anarchists.” They weren’t pretenders who we had to distance ourselves from, they were uneducated people who needed some pointers on things like cooption, anti-imperialism, lesser evilism and the non-profit industrial complex.
Don’t distance yourself from internet anarchists, educate baby anarchists.
I got banned from /r/antiwork for saying this, but it’s true. The whole “tankies vs anarchists” thing is just terminally online bullshit. This isn’t interwar Germany, this isn’t 1910s Russia - we’re all on the same side against capitalism and our difference of opinion on whether or not China is good literally doesn’t matter even a teeny tiny bit because none of us will ever effect what goes on in that country.
What!? No! That would be pragmatic, we can’t have that! Our politics must be entirely based around aping the aesthetics of past revolutionaries, basing things around the material conditions of the time and place you are in is for armchairs! What are you, some kind of person who doesn’t have the flag of an obscure revolutionary party behind them that they feel compelled to explain to everyone they get in a video call with at great length?
You don’t have to do anything of course. Especially if you are in a place were nothing concrete exists movement wise.
But at the end of the day ,i think, in organizing and in propagandizing people “combining different aspects of various tendencies to fit your material conditions” isn’t a thing and you would arrive at the same and better and more efficient actions by following the tactical approach of whatever analysis you view as the best and more concrete way forward and the correct and coherent stuff of what you are actually doing either way is still in line with what X approach and analysis would suggest, just without acknowledging it
There is no combination and synthesis of tendencies and approaches into new stuff that somehow works better and keeps everyone happy. Looking deeper into it every general set of organizing, tactical and rhetorical choices you or your group or org undertakes will be in line with some tendency and spawn from some ideology and worldview. Even of people personally might think “oh I’m just chosing what feels Like the best choice at the momment”. Even if you personally refuse to take a label and think you are “picking and combining aspects of different stuff” when organizing etc truth is that in practice all that still falls under what some specific tendency or ideology would “suggest” and it would be counterintuirive, self sabotagingand inefficient to not,sooner or later, find which framework is that ,that best encompasses those beliefs and actions and preferences of yours, that would have led you to the same correct choices in organizing and rhetoric while avoiding and that bethe mistakes st traces the correct way forward . And to not proceed in your organizing and approach with all the mountains of tools ,theory, experience and history of that framework by your side, having something concrete that will point to the best courses of action and choices based on the material conditions of each situation.
That’s what tendencies/ideologies do and you act under one despite not wanting to label yourself or wanting to label your choices as some new and distinct combination of aspects of tendencies . So it’s better to acknowledge it, understand it and others, embrace it, hone it
we should still cheer on :assad-must-stay: on the grounds of self-preservation though
On a related but separate issue, I personally think it’s a bit naive to assume all those anti-imperialist takes are simply baby anarchists who need further educating, and not the work of dedicated astroturfers. The same goes for the bizarre “patriotic socialist” crap that’s seemingly being pushed on the ML side. I realize I might come off as paranoid, but I just think the level of psychological manipulation that happens online is probably worse than we realize and something we should at least pay attention to. After all, it’s not as if we haven’t seen this kind of manipulation before.
The CIA did a ton of shit with waay less impact, so no, you are not paranoic.
Poison the well with braindead takes is not only effective vut they must be having a LOT of fun. Imagine being the shitstain who gets paid six figures to post about how bed times for children are dystopian.
the “everything is CIA” meme makes me want to blow my brains out, and in that regard it’s more fedpilled than any particular twitter rose emoji idiot’s hot take on whether it’s okay to shoplift. if there was a vital, thrumming popular left that was doing a good job of educating agitating and organizing the masses and something like class consciousness were more widespread, i would find it noteworthy and suspicious that an obviously idiotic, contradictory, and discursively destructive point were gaining traction. but i live in the united states some 30 years after the destruction and pillaging of the soviet union. i was radicalized by tumblr posts when i just as easily could have been radicalized by 4chan posts. most of my participation in politics is arguing on sites that profit off my use of those sites, no matter what i say or do, and i am a perfectly typical internet user. i know how fucking deranged this state of affairs makes people, and i know we can all be fucking idiots without having to be get a paycheck from the FBI.
I certainly don’t think “everything is CIA”, and I’ve had plenty of wrong/bad opinions myself, so I get that there are real people out who fit what OP is describing. I’m just saying that it is well known that powerful interests use various means to try to shape online discourse their direction, whether it’s the CIA, FBI, police departments/unions, corporations, political groups, etc. In particular, when there’s a clear narrative being pushed from multiple places and especially from “influencers”, it’s worth considering that there might be more behind it than just bad opinions, even if there are also many real bad opinions out there.
:bean:
