They’re just like maga, “Debate me bro.” And then they proceed to reject all the facts and logic that you provide, while getting upset when you dismiss the alternative “facts” that they make up.
Like, what is this? “Argues without insulting us” AND “Argues without tone policing”? So, what, tankies want to be the only ones who can tone police and insult their counterparts in an argument?
Like, pick one or the other and apply the same rules to both sides. Ideally neither side throws insults, and either side can tone police. But don’t say “we can do both, and you can do neither.” That’s the same “rules for thee, not for me” rhetoric that all authoritarians use, whether on the left or on the right.
There’s no rationally debating them. It’s like trying to rationally debate maga. They’ll ignore everything you say and make up scenarios that would make you the clear loser, and then bludgeon the strawman to death with insults and repeat themselves over and over no matter how many times you point out how irrational they’re being…
Something all too common with extremists. It’s fruitless to argue with facts and logic™ since they live in a different reality.
The only way to get through to them is playing therapist and figuring out their emotions and getting them to question themselves. Questions like, why does China have a stock exchange? Why can’t you be gay in Russia? Why did Lenin say don’t let Stalin take control? That’s why they band together so much and silence all opposition that ask questions, they can’t risk thinking inwards. They need to affirm each other, while non-extremists don’t need to, since reality is on their side.
I agree mostly with that but i also, personally, need to keep on top of adequately questioning my own reasoning.
Just because i think reality is on my side doesn’t make it automatically true, I’m not immune to propaganda or fallacious logic.
Even worse (for me personally) is the trap of assuming my subjective (and relatively well reasoned ) correctness in other conversations carries over in to whatever conversation I’m having right now.
A sense of conversational and intellectual superiority can be an insidious path to closed mind.
Tankies are sometimes called red fash since they argue in support of fascism as opposed to actually caring for the people. I mentioned it before, Tankies don’t operate on the basis of parties or workers. They are authoritarians, so when they mean CCP, they mean Xi. When they mean Russia, they mean Putin. That’s why if you explore their spaces and engage with them, they will almost never actually argue for the workers or people
They love their “strong” leaders and deify them – I mean, really, who has photos of a dead dictator in their room? What is that?
If you take their theory at face value, correct. If you observe their attitudes and actions, you see that they don’t really care about implementing those theories. They only discuss them to give themselves a veneer of moral superiority.
Stalin didn’t lift the proletariat out of poverty; he merely starved and murdered all the peasants who didn’t join his party. He didn’t liberate the masses, he implemented a highly oppressive surveillance/police state.
The average anarchist will be the first to try to bully someone into complying with their preferred systems of social order. They only want there to be no government so that nothing can stop them from forcing everyone else to conform to their will.
That’s what I mean by “covert” fascist. Nominally leftist, practically not.
I don’t like a lot of the self-proclaimed anarchists for that specific reason. They give the rest of us a really bad look. They miss the whole point of being anti-authoritarian, anti-heirchical, anti-coercisive, and anti-capitalist.
I understand why they are that way, I’m like 99% sure it’s a neurodivergent thing (black-and-white thinking, rejection of authority, failure to recognize social norms, we pretty much all do it to some degree, and some are much more obvious than others).
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it. They put their livelihood on the line by licensure and risk to avoid malprat. Governments where only a select few are voted for and the rest of the representation is all because of Republic stances rather than democratic ones are not deserving of authority.
Also, it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
Hey, probably don’t blame it 99% on neurodivergence. I’m autistic, and why I do reject authority and struggle with social norms, I don’t see people and views in black and white.
it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
I can think of one in particular, a very arrogant and loud-mouthed, self-proclaimed anarchist, who if he had his way would force everyone to be vegan.
I understand animal rights, and I myself have been vegetarian for a few years. But if he’s truly an anarchist, then how does he expect to enforce veganism on everyone? Just seems cognitively dissonant…
For that matter, how do anarchists plan to stop racists and homophobes from doing racist and homophobic things? It just seems short-sighted, especially from people who profess to be vulnerable minorities. You’d think they would at least want a government that protects them and ensures their equal rights, no?
Just some inarticulate posturing and vague implications that I don’t know what I’m talking about, probably.
Like when someone else wore a PLA hat and I asked him how many civilians died in the great leap forward, clearly the reason he didn’t have an answer was because I was the ignorant one. “Oh, you wanna talk to me about the great leap forward?” Acting all insulted
Yeah as soon as the word “force” comes into play, he’s not an anarchist.
A lot of anarchy depends on the concept of equity.
If someone in particular is against the equity of his peers, then that individual would likely be kicked out of the collective for violating that tenet.
More than likely, the racist/homophobic individual was never allowed to join the group. If that racist/homophobe was a child raised in the anarchist society and held these views as an adult, then the real question becomes why did that individual form those beliefs if they were intolerable to the group. Action needs to be taken there.
I don’t think he ever said “force” explicitly, but he seemed to be in favor of bullying anyone who didn’t agree with him, so what’s the difference?
Also, what would anarchists do if there’s a whole group of racist homophobes? What if the racist homophobes outnumber the anarchist commune? How is ostracizing them going to address that?
We don’t need to imagine how a child raised in an anarchist society could grow up to be racist; we already live in a world where racists exist and there’s no practical way of bringing about an abrupt halt in that generational pattern. Describing a society that has already been anarchic for generations is merely an abstraction.
If the group of racist homophobic people outnumber us, how did we form our collective? They weren’t anarchist to begin with. They aren’t entitled to our resources.
Because the world is more complex than simply one community forming an anarchist collective and then suddenly all groups of people are involved some harmonious syndicalism where everyone agrees on a basic set of standard social norms and ethical behavior.
You might form an anarchist commune, and maybe a few miles away a remnant of the Hells Angels forms a white supremacist commune based on their own organizational structure. If they decide they want to attack and take your resources, you need a viable means of common defense. Which implies some form of social organization.
If there’s an overarching government, if it’s well-designed and effective, with the correct goals and priorities, then it should at a bare minimum protect against basic things like violence, theft, extortion, racketeering, abduction, and human trafficking.
And if your commune is powerful enough that it decides to be the one to enforce those norms, then it is a de facto government, no matter how decentralized you try to make it.
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it.
If I were to design a novel political system, there would be privileged places for PhD holders. Political philosophy, political science, history, sociology, etc. I’m not quite certain of the mechanism of selection, whether they’re elected or appointed or something else. Perhaps there would be a direct pipeline from university faculties to the upper-echelons of government. Enough to fill a cabinet with a representative from each department, at least. The departments and agencies would be run by people who spent their lives gaining expertise in their respective fields.
Maybe the public could still elect a head of state, but they would have a more ceremonial role as a figurehead (like the President of Ireland). And the chief of state would be a prime minister. The legislative branch would be parliamentary, with proportional representation.
I say this because, I recognize that the current system in the US is ass. It had some good ideas, for an early iteration of a democratic-republic, but it’s been a few centuries of learning and some things could certainly be done better.
But just because this system is ass, doesn’t mean all systems are inherently ass. There has to be some means of organizing society to keep the gears turning and preventing everything from breaking down into disorder and chaos.
For the record, I’m totally in favor of the workers seizing the means of production, but it doesn’t have to be done violently. If the ultimate outcome is worker’s unions taking over in place of boards of investors, and running former corporations as co-operative enterprises where workers keep most of the value of their labor, and the rest goes to public coffers to fund social programs and civic infrastructure that benefit everybody; if that’s the goal, then it can be done without shedding a drop of blood. Only, the right people need to be in power to make that happen.
Equating anarchists to fascists is genuinely in the top five most stupid fucking political takes I have ever heard in my life. What the fuck do you think anarchists want force on you?
“Fuck these anarchists, they want to get rid of hierarchy and government so I won’t have a boot to suck the polish off of.” Is what you fucking sound like. The comm is for shitting on tankies. Anarchists are not tankies. Tankie does not mean leftist, it means authoritarian communist.
Anarchists aren’t tankies, no. But a shocking amount of them, on Lemmy at least, cosy up with Tankies and even argue in favour of authoritarian states, or defend them. From my experience, the average anarchist hates the liberal more than the tankie, despite the latter being in direct opposition to their principles.
Yes, and I actively distance myself from them. Its why I moved from dbzer0 to quokk.au and from Lemmy to Piefed. Anarchists who cosy up to MLs are naive and fail to learn from a hundred years of history. Anarchism is just as incompatible with statism and authority as it is with capitalism. That is not to say I wont work with liberals and marxists, just that I would never trust them.
Its scary fighting back. You want allies, and many of them so the odds dont feel so impossible. Its hard not to fall into the thinking that capitalism is the bigger threat, so we should work together against the common enemy. “We’ll figure out which communism is best after the revolution” is what I often hear. Issue is, looking at history, we get backstabbed before we get to see the end of the revolution. In the end though, its hard not to end up trusting those you spend time working with.
Succinctly said. Personally, I think communists will have a better chance of achieving true communism™ by cosying with liberals and democracy, suggesting socialist and universal systems, pensions, healthcare, transport – Systems that most democratic nations already have implemented.
It’s telling that China, the de facto “communist” state, which isn’t exactly Marxist, lacks some of these universal systems, such as healthcare and worker rights and of course, the class disparity.
What I mean is that I don’t think an immediate, instantaneous uprising is absolutely necessary to achieve these concepts.
Way to not even read anything I said, but rather make a series of assumptions about me based on what you thought would be easiest to knock down. Tankies are the kings of strawmen.
I said tankies are covert fascists. I never called anarchists tankies. I said they’re bullies. And you’re only proving my point.
I don’t suck any boots, I don’t know what world you’re living in if you have to do that every day but it’s not the world I’m living in. Anarchists want to get rid of government because they want to be the bullies and get their boots sucked for a change, and they make that clear by their behavior. That’s not any better than the system we currently have.
Also, tankies generally consider themselves leftist. Which is the argument for not saying they’re overt fascists. But I didn’t call them overt fascists, I called them covert fascists; meaning they use a veneer of leftist ideology to cover the fact that they’re authoritarian and generally behave like fascists.
And before you put more words in my mouth, I never said all leftists are tankies. If you have an ounce of intelligence then you’ll know that all apples are fruits but not all fruits are apples.
I like the idea of anarchism, but it’ll only be possible if the state and all those who recall it were completely wiped out. Come on nuclear armageddon, come on nuclear armageddon!
There will never be a time where principled anarchists are not also called “tankies” by liberals. If you believe in the use of revolutionary violence and the defense of a revolution, you will be called a “tankie.”
To me it means liberals will side with fascists when push comes to shove. I wont fail to recognize that there are examples of liberals resisting fascism, but you also have many more instances where they enable, defend, or outright join fascists. Hitler drew a lot of inspiration from the US’s Jim Crow laws, and Hitler was chosen as New York Times Person of the year. The social democrats of Weimar Germany used proto-fascist to eradicate a communist revolution. The Weimar Republic is who put Hitler in power. The Kingdom of Italy as well allowed Mussolini into power. You also have situations like Pinochet and Franco. Pinochet being put into power by the US, and Franco’s fascist government being left untouched and allowed to exist.
That’s all true, but it’s also worth noting that fascism was new back then, or at least in name and during the early 1920s it wasn’t entirely in power. (Just need to make a disclaimer that fascism is awful, stupid and that fascists deserve what happened to them and what will happen to them. Punch a nazi, counting or not counting gang violence, etc)
But does today’s liberal stand with fascists when push comes to shove? It appears to me that liberals in the US, where fascism is almost out of its proto-stage, seem to oppose it. The rest of the democratic world also seems to have decided not to replicate the turmoil the US is pushing forth, with overwhelming victories for the comparatively progressive parties in each nation.
To me Russia is largely a fascist state, my Russian pals can’t talk about certain topics and often need to keep their queer identity secret. Yet it is the tankies who are largely supportive of Russia, particularly Putin.
So is the phrase still true despite this? Or is it perhaps authoritarian projection?
every commie/anarchist I know IRL, and I’ve known quite a few, are HUGE bullies/assholes, and they tend to only be friends with people they have control over or can intimidate into submission to them. They HATE people who are independent of their mentality and character assassinate them.
It’s the typical use of high minded ideals to justify their shitty and hypocritical personal behavior.
That’s really more of what I’ve seen in the communist communities rather than anarchists.
But they too have a tendency of being all or nothing.
The ones who demand “social order” truly aren’t anarchist anyway. The whole point of anarchy is to approach an egalitarian community that rejects the idea of unearned authority.
Genuinely curious. How do true anarchists propose to prevent crime syndicates from gaining power and becoming a de facto government, committing extortion, racketeering, and human trafficking?
Or are they just running on the assumption that after the collapse of society, people’s appetites for wealth, power, and influence will simply evaporate?
Anarchism is a philosophy, not a means of governing.
But any anarchist would tell you that all actions have consequences. In one scenario - where human trafficking is discovered, a group of anarchists might play Dredd to bring justice to the syndicate. That group would then face consequences and be subject to investigation by the community. It could even look like a trial.
What if the human traffickers are more powerful than them? Have more resources, firepower, etc.?
Also, that system sounds a lot like vigilantism. How is there any guarantee that every commune will use that power responsibly and not abuse it? What’s stopping the most powerful communes from taking over and punishing dissenters, or any smaller communes that won’t submit to them?
To me, it just seems to set the stage for a return to neofeudalism. The most powerful communes become the barons, and smaller communes become vassals. Over time, I don’t see it turning out any other way. The system isn’t stable.
Isn’t it better to have an institution that protects against that, a system governed by rule of law to prevent abuses of authority?
I’m aware that the current systems have done a bad job of that, but humans are capable of learning and improving. And civilization has come a long way since the time of kings and empires; it would be a shame to throw out all that progress just because we haven’t got it perfectly right quite yet.
No one said stability was a goal. The idea is to always approach better, which involves change. I disagree with rapid revolutionary change because those often result in authoritarians cropping up.
The trial part?
I said it would look like a trial. The community is self-governing so the community would have to be involved in agreeing with the consequences.
wishful thinking mostly. it’s a form of escapism/fantasizing about a better future, rather than actually dealing with the complex problems of ones current reality.
just like a lot of poor people gamble their disposable income in the hope they will become rich, because saving it and investing it is too abstract/difficult of a concept for them. and the momentary hope/high of the activity is provides immediate gratification.
where as richer people see gambling as a leisure activity, they don’t see it as a path to riches. they understand getting richer requires saving their income and investing it and waiting for the payout 10-20 years in the future when those investments double/triple in value.
I mean, I was super into communist/anarchistic when I was a teenager. Then I went to college and realized the world is way more complex/chaotic than anything those theories can cope with, and most theory is really. But generally I prefer theories that acknowledge the basic truths of reality and don’t pretend there is a ideal form of anything.
Wonderful graphs, thank you. But how can you ensure that the state, which now has unopposed power, didn’t simply lie about how much they have? Personally I find it telling that those in state power never walk the streets of the peasants or live in the same houses, no, they have their palaces and mansions, and you’re telling me there’s income equality there?
Oh, I’m sure all that income equality was so beneficial to all the victims who died in the holodomor and other atrocities committed by the soviet union.
Also, try using a color scheme that doesn’t burn the eyes. I’m not giving myself a migraine just so you can lick soviet boots.
By the way, I’m not against socialism; I’m against tankies. You would know the difference if you were well-versed in “theory,” wouldn’t you?
Well, you’re posting about a thread that went down on Hexbear where goat was engaging with us. I’m curious to know what facts and logic were actually provided that the “tankies” rejected.
And you’re posting in a thread that’s not. Your point? I’m not here to pick up goat’s debate. I’m not even talking about that thread. I’m talking about literally every argument that I’ve ever personally had with a tankie, and I’m not going to summarize them all for you.
Also, you can hardly blame him for engaging with you on a post that literally said “Gee, I wish someone who isn’t a tankie would engage with us.” And it looks like y’all didn’t even get to the debate part, because you just told him to fuck off as soon as he said he would.
We did get to the debate part, you can click the link and see how it went down. Goat was asked to provide a defense for points they made stating that Palestine ought to resist only by adopting Western liberal ideals, and that resistance by military means is illegitimate. They refused to actually elaborate on that point.
When prompted on forming revolutionary organizations in the United States, goat claimed that such an effort is useless because Americans will never amount to anything because they are too distracted.
I never argued for any of my points because I didn’t see why I should bother to argue them, it wouldn’t convince any tankie and hearing the same slogans from the same redsails sources and talking points won’t do much to convince me (perhaps if it was from something more reputable or argued in favour of individual freedoms, such as the workers) – I don’t really bother with any argument unless there’s a baseline we can fall back on, which I offered.
Rape is also not resistance, it’s predation, it’s poison. Do you think the civil rights movement succeeded with raping their oppressors? No. They primarily used non-violence – And if you’re going to argue that violence was what succeeded, know that racists make the same arguments.
And I stand by what I said on the US populace, they are too cowardly, and so are Tankies, as evidently displayed.
don’t rape, don’t carry out terrorism on innocent civilians
The right way was using the internet and global attention, which Palestine was doing, raising awareness of how they are suffering and gaining sympathy for it. They should’ve adopted more Western ideals, or maybe liberalism, encourage foreigners to come and stay. The West Bank and Gaza near Rafah were also doing decently well in terms of growth, labelling itself as a trendy tourist destination.
Unfortunately, Hamas decided that raping women and killing innocent civilians was a better method of resistance, even going so far as to film themselves carrying out the massacre and taking hostages – Which incurred the Israeli military and ended up with Gaza being turned to rubble. Sure, people are much more aware of Palestine now, but only the most radical of “progressives” think Israel can be defeated and that Palestine can do no wrong. These people are vocal minorities and hold no power.
The whole relationship between Israel and the US isn’t as buddy-buddy as people think it is. Israel previously attacked US forces and regularly threatens US personnel. No clue what goes on behind the scenes, but clearly Israel has something major on the US, or the US sees Israel as a base for Middle-East operations and considers the chaos that comes with it as a necessary sacrifice. Or maybe it’s both, or maybe it’s neither.
I’d say rather than Western ideals, they should support the human rights some Western ideals are based on. My biggest contentions with Islamist regimes are women’s and queer rights. Sure acceptance of queer people is a long road for such societies, but you can make sure that the government doesn’t persecute them and that the government even enforces non-discrimination regulations.
They’re just like maga, “Debate me bro.” And then they proceed to reject all the facts and logic that you provide, while getting upset when you dismiss the alternative “facts” that they make up.
Like, what is this? “Argues without insulting us” AND “Argues without tone policing”? So, what, tankies want to be the only ones who can tone police and insult their counterparts in an argument?
Like, pick one or the other and apply the same rules to both sides. Ideally neither side throws insults, and either side can tone police. But don’t say “we can do both, and you can do neither.” That’s the same “rules for thee, not for me” rhetoric that all authoritarians use, whether on the left or on the right.
Tankies are just covert fascists. Prove me wrong.
thats why i offered the baseline lol
There’s no rationally debating them. It’s like trying to rationally debate maga. They’ll ignore everything you say and make up scenarios that would make you the clear loser, and then bludgeon the strawman to death with insults and repeat themselves over and over no matter how many times you point out how irrational they’re being…
“What is not reasoned in, cannot be reasoned out.”
Something all too common with extremists. It’s fruitless to argue with facts and logic™ since they live in a different reality.
The only way to get through to them is playing therapist and figuring out their emotions and getting them to question themselves. Questions like, why does China have a stock exchange? Why can’t you be gay in Russia? Why did Lenin say don’t let Stalin take control? That’s why they band together so much and silence all opposition that ask questions, they can’t risk thinking inwards. They need to affirm each other, while non-extremists don’t need to, since reality is on their side.
I agree mostly with that but i also, personally, need to keep on top of adequately questioning my own reasoning.
Just because i think reality is on my side doesn’t make it automatically true, I’m not immune to propaganda or fallacious logic.
Even worse (for me personally) is the trap of assuming my subjective (and relatively well reasoned ) correctness in other conversations carries over in to whatever conversation I’m having right now.
A sense of conversational and intellectual superiority can be an insidious path to closed mind.
Yeah, all extremists do that. It’s such a shame.
Fortunately Tankies are extremely passive and weak, they’re not at all like MAGA, who are full-blown fascists.
Unfortunately tankies haven’t realized that yet. They still think they have a chance in hell of waging a successful revolution 🙄
I don’t think they’re quite fascist because of the economic difficreneces and social wellbeing policies.
But they are undoubtedly both authoritarian, and that’s pretty much the biggest problem because it practically makes the two identical.
Tankies are sometimes called red fash since they argue in support of fascism as opposed to actually caring for the people. I mentioned it before, Tankies don’t operate on the basis of parties or workers. They are authoritarians, so when they mean CCP, they mean Xi. When they mean Russia, they mean Putin. That’s why if you explore their spaces and engage with them, they will almost never actually argue for the workers or people
They love their “strong” leaders and deify them – I mean, really, who has photos of a dead dictator in their room? What is that?
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If you take their theory at face value, correct. If you observe their attitudes and actions, you see that they don’t really care about implementing those theories. They only discuss them to give themselves a veneer of moral superiority.
Stalin didn’t lift the proletariat out of poverty; he merely starved and murdered all the peasants who didn’t join his party. He didn’t liberate the masses, he implemented a highly oppressive surveillance/police state.
The average anarchist will be the first to try to bully someone into complying with their preferred systems of social order. They only want there to be no government so that nothing can stop them from forcing everyone else to conform to their will.
That’s what I mean by “covert” fascist. Nominally leftist, practically not.
I don’t like a lot of the self-proclaimed anarchists for that specific reason. They give the rest of us a really bad look. They miss the whole point of being anti-authoritarian, anti-heirchical, anti-coercisive, and anti-capitalist.
I understand why they are that way, I’m like 99% sure it’s a neurodivergent thing (black-and-white thinking, rejection of authority, failure to recognize social norms, we pretty much all do it to some degree, and some are much more obvious than others).
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it. They put their livelihood on the line by licensure and risk to avoid malprat. Governments where only a select few are voted for and the rest of the representation is all because of Republic stances rather than democratic ones are not deserving of authority.
Also, it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
Hey, probably don’t blame it 99% on neurodivergence. I’m autistic, and why I do reject authority and struggle with social norms, I don’t see people and views in black and white.
I can think of one in particular, a very arrogant and loud-mouthed, self-proclaimed anarchist, who if he had his way would force everyone to be vegan.
I understand animal rights, and I myself have been vegetarian for a few years. But if he’s truly an anarchist, then how does he expect to enforce veganism on everyone? Just seems cognitively dissonant…
For that matter, how do anarchists plan to stop racists and homophobes from doing racist and homophobic things? It just seems short-sighted, especially from people who profess to be vulnerable minorities. You’d think they would at least want a government that protects them and ensures their equal rights, no?
When you encounter this anarchist, I implore you to question them on how China treats animals. Very curious to see what will happen.
Just some inarticulate posturing and vague implications that I don’t know what I’m talking about, probably.
Like when someone else wore a PLA hat and I asked him how many civilians died in the great leap forward, clearly the reason he didn’t have an answer was because I was the ignorant one. “Oh, you wanna talk to me about the great leap forward?” Acting all insulted
That’s probably how it will go.
I think it’s telling that they can’t admit their ideology has faults or has made mistakes. It’ll never get anywhere.
They lack self-awareness for sure. I would never follow someone who can’t admit when they’ve been wrong about something.
Yeah as soon as the word “force” comes into play, he’s not an anarchist.
A lot of anarchy depends on the concept of equity. If someone in particular is against the equity of his peers, then that individual would likely be kicked out of the collective for violating that tenet.
More than likely, the racist/homophobic individual was never allowed to join the group. If that racist/homophobe was a child raised in the anarchist society and held these views as an adult, then the real question becomes why did that individual form those beliefs if they were intolerable to the group. Action needs to be taken there.
Isn’t that liberalism?
No, though some aspects are shared.
Liberalism has very different views in terms of economics.
that’s true, I don’t agree with liberal economics
I don’t think he ever said “force” explicitly, but he seemed to be in favor of bullying anyone who didn’t agree with him, so what’s the difference?
Also, what would anarchists do if there’s a whole group of racist homophobes? What if the racist homophobes outnumber the anarchist commune? How is ostracizing them going to address that?
We don’t need to imagine how a child raised in an anarchist society could grow up to be racist; we already live in a world where racists exist and there’s no practical way of bringing about an abrupt halt in that generational pattern. Describing a society that has already been anarchic for generations is merely an abstraction.
If the group of racist homophobic people outnumber us, how did we form our collective? They weren’t anarchist to begin with. They aren’t entitled to our resources.
Because the world is more complex than simply one community forming an anarchist collective and then suddenly all groups of people are involved some harmonious syndicalism where everyone agrees on a basic set of standard social norms and ethical behavior.
You might form an anarchist commune, and maybe a few miles away a remnant of the Hells Angels forms a white supremacist commune based on their own organizational structure. If they decide they want to attack and take your resources, you need a viable means of common defense. Which implies some form of social organization.
If there’s an overarching government, if it’s well-designed and effective, with the correct goals and priorities, then it should at a bare minimum protect against basic things like violence, theft, extortion, racketeering, abduction, and human trafficking.
And if your commune is powerful enough that it decides to be the one to enforce those norms, then it is a de facto government, no matter how decentralized you try to make it.
what if they just take the resources since they’re stronger and greater in number?
If I were to design a novel political system, there would be privileged places for PhD holders. Political philosophy, political science, history, sociology, etc. I’m not quite certain of the mechanism of selection, whether they’re elected or appointed or something else. Perhaps there would be a direct pipeline from university faculties to the upper-echelons of government. Enough to fill a cabinet with a representative from each department, at least. The departments and agencies would be run by people who spent their lives gaining expertise in their respective fields.
Maybe the public could still elect a head of state, but they would have a more ceremonial role as a figurehead (like the President of Ireland). And the chief of state would be a prime minister. The legislative branch would be parliamentary, with proportional representation.
I say this because, I recognize that the current system in the US is ass. It had some good ideas, for an early iteration of a democratic-republic, but it’s been a few centuries of learning and some things could certainly be done better.
But just because this system is ass, doesn’t mean all systems are inherently ass. There has to be some means of organizing society to keep the gears turning and preventing everything from breaking down into disorder and chaos.
For the record, I’m totally in favor of the workers seizing the means of production, but it doesn’t have to be done violently. If the ultimate outcome is worker’s unions taking over in place of boards of investors, and running former corporations as co-operative enterprises where workers keep most of the value of their labor, and the rest goes to public coffers to fund social programs and civic infrastructure that benefit everybody; if that’s the goal, then it can be done without shedding a drop of blood. Only, the right people need to be in power to make that happen.
Hence why I mention the communist thing.
Anarchy and communism have a LOT of overlap.
Most anarchists are anarcho-communists. I mean anarcho-capitalists exist but those are just oligarchs in favor of technofeudalism
Anarcho-capitalism isn’t remotely anarchy. It’s fuedalism full stop.
That’s what I said
Equating anarchists to fascists is genuinely in the top five most stupid fucking political takes I have ever heard in my life. What the fuck do you think anarchists want force on you?
“Fuck these anarchists, they want to get rid of hierarchy and government so I won’t have a boot to suck the polish off of.” Is what you fucking sound like. The comm is for shitting on tankies. Anarchists are not tankies. Tankie does not mean leftist, it means authoritarian communist.
Anarchists aren’t tankies, no. But a shocking amount of them, on Lemmy at least, cosy up with Tankies and even argue in favour of authoritarian states, or defend them. From my experience, the average anarchist hates the liberal more than the tankie, despite the latter being in direct opposition to their principles.
Yes, and I actively distance myself from them. Its why I moved from dbzer0 to quokk.au and from Lemmy to Piefed. Anarchists who cosy up to MLs are naive and fail to learn from a hundred years of history. Anarchism is just as incompatible with statism and authority as it is with capitalism. That is not to say I wont work with liberals and marxists, just that I would never trust them.
that’s actually really respectful to your ideals.
why do you think so many anarchists, like those from dbzer0, cosy up to tankies?
Its scary fighting back. You want allies, and many of them so the odds dont feel so impossible. Its hard not to fall into the thinking that capitalism is the bigger threat, so we should work together against the common enemy. “We’ll figure out which communism is best after the revolution” is what I often hear. Issue is, looking at history, we get backstabbed before we get to see the end of the revolution. In the end though, its hard not to end up trusting those you spend time working with.
Succinctly said. Personally, I think communists will have a better chance of achieving true communism™ by cosying with liberals and democracy, suggesting socialist and universal systems, pensions, healthcare, transport – Systems that most democratic nations already have implemented.
It’s telling that China, the de facto “communist” state, which isn’t exactly Marxist, lacks some of these universal systems, such as healthcare and worker rights and of course, the class disparity.
What I mean is that I don’t think an immediate, instantaneous uprising is absolutely necessary to achieve these concepts.
Way to not even read anything I said, but rather make a series of assumptions about me based on what you thought would be easiest to knock down. Tankies are the kings of strawmen.
I said tankies are covert fascists. I never called anarchists tankies. I said they’re bullies. And you’re only proving my point.
I don’t suck any boots, I don’t know what world you’re living in if you have to do that every day but it’s not the world I’m living in. Anarchists want to get rid of government because they want to be the bullies and get their boots sucked for a change, and they make that clear by their behavior. That’s not any better than the system we currently have.
Also, tankies generally consider themselves leftist. Which is the argument for not saying they’re overt fascists. But I didn’t call them overt fascists, I called them covert fascists; meaning they use a veneer of leftist ideology to cover the fact that they’re authoritarian and generally behave like fascists.
And before you put more words in my mouth, I never said all leftists are tankies. If you have an ounce of intelligence then you’ll know that all apples are fruits but not all fruits are apples.
I like the idea of anarchism, but it’ll only be possible if the state and all those who recall it were completely wiped out. Come on nuclear armageddon, come on nuclear armageddon!
There will never be a time where principled anarchists are not also called “tankies” by liberals. If you believe in the use of revolutionary violence and the defense of a revolution, you will be called a “tankie.”
But you guys can’t handle violence despite how much you larp on about it.
Genuinely would rather be called anarkiddie lmao. You know what they say, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds
If you’re going around making people bleed for being liberal, then you’re a fascist.
wonderfully said
I hear this phrase a lot, and I’m curious to hear what you think it means
To me it means liberals will side with fascists when push comes to shove. I wont fail to recognize that there are examples of liberals resisting fascism, but you also have many more instances where they enable, defend, or outright join fascists. Hitler drew a lot of inspiration from the US’s Jim Crow laws, and Hitler was chosen as New York Times Person of the year. The social democrats of Weimar Germany used proto-fascist to eradicate a communist revolution. The Weimar Republic is who put Hitler in power. The Kingdom of Italy as well allowed Mussolini into power. You also have situations like Pinochet and Franco. Pinochet being put into power by the US, and Franco’s fascist government being left untouched and allowed to exist.
That’s all true, but it’s also worth noting that fascism was new back then, or at least in name and during the early 1920s it wasn’t entirely in power. (Just need to make a disclaimer that fascism is awful, stupid and that fascists deserve what happened to them and what will happen to them. Punch a nazi, counting or not counting gang violence, etc)
But does today’s liberal stand with fascists when push comes to shove? It appears to me that liberals in the US, where fascism is almost out of its proto-stage, seem to oppose it. The rest of the democratic world also seems to have decided not to replicate the turmoil the US is pushing forth, with overwhelming victories for the comparatively progressive parties in each nation.
To me Russia is largely a fascist state, my Russian pals can’t talk about certain topics and often need to keep their queer identity secret. Yet it is the tankies who are largely supportive of Russia, particularly Putin.
So is the phrase still true despite this? Or is it perhaps authoritarian projection?
summed up beautifully.
every commie/anarchist I know IRL, and I’ve known quite a few, are HUGE bullies/assholes, and they tend to only be friends with people they have control over or can intimidate into submission to them. They HATE people who are independent of their mentality and character assassinate them.
It’s the typical use of high minded ideals to justify their shitty and hypocritical personal behavior.
Exactly! I’m sorry a tankie got butthurt and downvoted you.
That’s really more of what I’ve seen in the communist communities rather than anarchists.
But they too have a tendency of being all or nothing.
The ones who demand “social order” truly aren’t anarchist anyway. The whole point of anarchy is to approach an egalitarian community that rejects the idea of unearned authority.
Genuinely curious. How do true anarchists propose to prevent crime syndicates from gaining power and becoming a de facto government, committing extortion, racketeering, and human trafficking?
Or are they just running on the assumption that after the collapse of society, people’s appetites for wealth, power, and influence will simply evaporate?
Anarchism is a philosophy, not a means of governing.
But any anarchist would tell you that all actions have consequences. In one scenario - where human trafficking is discovered, a group of anarchists might play Dredd to bring justice to the syndicate. That group would then face consequences and be subject to investigation by the community. It could even look like a trial.
What if the human traffickers are more powerful than them? Have more resources, firepower, etc.?
Also, that system sounds a lot like vigilantism. How is there any guarantee that every commune will use that power responsibly and not abuse it? What’s stopping the most powerful communes from taking over and punishing dissenters, or any smaller communes that won’t submit to them?
To me, it just seems to set the stage for a return to neofeudalism. The most powerful communes become the barons, and smaller communes become vassals. Over time, I don’t see it turning out any other way. The system isn’t stable.
Isn’t it better to have an institution that protects against that, a system governed by rule of law to prevent abuses of authority?
I’m aware that the current systems have done a bad job of that, but humans are capable of learning and improving. And civilization has come a long way since the time of kings and empires; it would be a shame to throw out all that progress just because we haven’t got it perfectly right quite yet.
No one said stability was a goal. The idea is to always approach better, which involves change. I disagree with rapid revolutionary change because those often result in authoritarians cropping up.
So the group of dredd anarchists create a government?
What? Where did you get that?
The trial part? I said it would look like a trial. The community is self-governing so the community would have to be involved in agreeing with the consequences.
they don’t. they, like communists, tend to ignore human nature and think their ideal society will have no scarcity or struggle.
they basically ignore human psychology and social behavior
Why do you reckon that is? Naivety?
wishful thinking mostly. it’s a form of escapism/fantasizing about a better future, rather than actually dealing with the complex problems of ones current reality.
just like a lot of poor people gamble their disposable income in the hope they will become rich, because saving it and investing it is too abstract/difficult of a concept for them. and the momentary hope/high of the activity is provides immediate gratification.
where as richer people see gambling as a leisure activity, they don’t see it as a path to riches. they understand getting richer requires saving their income and investing it and waiting for the payout 10-20 years in the future when those investments double/triple in value.
I mean, I was super into communist/anarchistic when I was a teenager. Then I went to college and realized the world is way more complex/chaotic than anything those theories can cope with, and most theory is really. But generally I prefer theories that acknowledge the basic truths of reality and don’t pretend there is a ideal form of anything.
That’s concerning. And yet they call anyone a fascist who doesn’t support their cause. Tsk tsk. Projection at its finest.
Wonderful graphs, thank you. But how can you ensure that the state, which now has unopposed power, didn’t simply lie about how much they have? Personally I find it telling that those in state power never walk the streets of the peasants or live in the same houses, no, they have their palaces and mansions, and you’re telling me there’s income equality there?
Not convinced.
Oh, I’m sure all that income equality was so beneficial to all the victims who died in the holodomor and other atrocities committed by the soviet union.
Also, try using a color scheme that doesn’t burn the eyes. I’m not giving myself a migraine just so you can lick soviet boots.
By the way, I’m not against socialism; I’m against tankies. You would know the difference if you were well-versed in “theory,” wouldn’t you?
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Which facts and logic were provided?
In which context? I’m not gonna summarize every argument I’ve ever had with a tankie for you. Be reasonable.
Well, you’re posting about a thread that went down on Hexbear where goat was engaging with us. I’m curious to know what facts and logic were actually provided that the “tankies” rejected.
And you’re posting in a thread that’s not. Your point? I’m not here to pick up goat’s debate. I’m not even talking about that thread. I’m talking about literally every argument that I’ve ever personally had with a tankie, and I’m not going to summarize them all for you.
Also, you can hardly blame him for engaging with you on a post that literally said “Gee, I wish someone who isn’t a tankie would engage with us.” And it looks like y’all didn’t even get to the debate part, because you just told him to fuck off as soon as he said he would.
We did get to the debate part, you can click the link and see how it went down. Goat was asked to provide a defense for points they made stating that Palestine ought to resist only by adopting Western liberal ideals, and that resistance by military means is illegitimate. They refused to actually elaborate on that point.
When prompted on forming revolutionary organizations in the United States, goat claimed that such an effort is useless because Americans will never amount to anything because they are too distracted.
That wasn’t a debate at all lol
I never argued for any of my points because I didn’t see why I should bother to argue them, it wouldn’t convince any tankie and hearing the same slogans from the same redsails sources and talking points won’t do much to convince me (perhaps if it was from something more reputable or argued in favour of individual freedoms, such as the workers) – I don’t really bother with any argument unless there’s a baseline we can fall back on, which I offered.
Rape is also not resistance, it’s predation, it’s poison. Do you think the civil rights movement succeeded with raping their oppressors? No. They primarily used non-violence – And if you’re going to argue that violence was what succeeded, know that racists make the same arguments.
And I stand by what I said on the US populace, they are too cowardly, and so are Tankies, as evidently displayed.
When universal human rights are denounced as “Western liberal ideals”, we know that you have no interest in an actual debate.
Those were Goat’s words. Goat said the following:
I’d say rather than Western ideals, they should support the human rights some Western ideals are based on. My biggest contentions with Islamist regimes are women’s and queer rights. Sure acceptance of queer people is a long road for such societies, but you can make sure that the government doesn’t persecute them and that the government even enforces non-discrimination regulations.
(This was removed by automod, I’ve gone ahead and restored the comment)