cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8181688
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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Anarchism
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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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If your action is to punch left, your output is to move the current situation rightwards.
This goes for both anarchists and lemmygrad types, who equally harm the collective movement by punching left at one another.
If the marxist brigades, (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine(DFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC)) in Palestine can prioritise the need for cooperation even with hamas in order to put up a resistance against oppression, we can all do the same when we have fewer reasons to fight.
https://youtu.be/90AAcSvJAl0
Sure, but there's a reason the anarchist presence on Hexbear haa dramatically waned over the years. Like how much is anyone actually valuing left unity while federating with an instance that memes about killing anarchists? A lot of the early drama came out of specifically ML's harassing people associated with anarchists, like that John Kerry shit, including accusations of an "anarchist cabal" (which to be fair remains extremely funny to this day).
And this exists alongside an attitude that left unity in fact is a waste of time, that communists and anarchists want fundamentally different things. And when you combine that with memes about anarchists being reactionaries and feds (oh, but not our anarchists!) and glorification of figures that killed a lot of anarchists and the occasional "anarchists get the wall" memes, like you can't be comrades with people who fundamentally see you as a problem to one day violently remove. There cannot be useful criticism without mutual trust, and I don't think there has been that trust in quite a while.
Good thing that State Capitalism isn't "left"
I honestly find this behaviour incredibly disrespectful to the people that are currently dying as they do real resistance. Are you opposed to the Palestinians too then? The leftist brigades of Palestine are all "tankies" and Hamas are considerably worse (but resistance is more important than broaching the issues with them). Do you wage sectarian bullshit against them too from your comfortable room while they fight and die for the cause? Serious question.
You think posting on online forums make a lick of a difference for those who "do real resistance"? You're in the left shitposter heaven and you come here to judge me? Seriously?
The vast majority of the people here found their way into the left through learning in the online posting grounds before eventually joining orgs. Anyone that thinks what we do online doesn't matter is not really thinking straight.
You didn't really answer the question though and it concerns me. Are you opposed to the Palestinian resistance currently fighting for freedom?
Oh come off of it. There's a pretty big difference between such struggles and the impact of arguing online.
I also don't answer because I don't like to be interrogated like this.
No. There fundamentally is not.
This space is not "pretend" while the offline world is "real". The people here are real people (I hope lmao) and the emotions people have here are real.
One day we will all be thrown into our own very real resistance. Are you willing to die for it? I am. I've said many times that I will die in bed an old lady in a currently non-existent socialist state or I will die in the fighting to bring it about.
We post here and have some fun and argue and do all sorts of shit in our off time. But in our on time? A lot of us are genuinely active in political orgs. Here in the UK it might be resisting landlord evictions through Acorn, performing party work or shutting down weapons factories through Palestine Action. Do you think sectarianism would benefit orgs like Palestine Action shutting down zionist weapons factories? Whose principle need is BODIES willing to get on rooftops and smash up these buildings and get arrested? Does reducing the pool of people that would join that org benefit them in any way by being sectarians? Does it matter whether someone on the roof of an israeli weapons factory waves a black flag or a red flag? Of course it doesn't. And the people who try to flare up sectarian bullshit anywhere are rightfully shouted down or expelled because all they are functionally doing by punching left is weakening those orgs and their ability to do praxis.
That doesn't change online. The number of people who actually transfer from the online space to offline organising is directly tied to the sectarian bullshit that occurs. There are dumbass marxists that refuse to take part at certain orgs because of some anarchist sectarian bullshit and there are dumbass anarchists that refuse to take part in some socialist led things because of sectarian bullshit.
If I saw anyone at the march in London this weekend say a single fucking word about sectarian shit I would have punched them in the face.
This shit hurts the left. There is no case for it benefiting the left in any way.
One day we will all be in an existential armed struggle ourselves. Really consider the priorities. There is no benefit to any of this shit, and in fact it risks harming support for Palestine. I assume you're not anti-Palestine, even though you won't state it. If you can support Palestinian resistance despite Hamas, you can support marxist-leninists despite sectarian disagreement, and you already are doing just that by supporting Palestine. Not to mention that almost every single fucking pro Palestine march currently happening is being organised by the "tankies" you're currently railing against.
Oh and just in case - anyone that doesn't support Palestine deserves a brick to the back of the head.
We've spoken about this before, you and me, iirc. So long as y'all keep doing anarchist direct action for mutual aid, we can be allies. Once you start trying to seize hierarchical control like some illuminated vanguard, is where it gets difficult.
This meme is about exactly this difficulty.
Let's be serious for a moment, y'all descended on me shit-posting about well known problems anarchists had with MLs. Y'all don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You had the counter-arguments ready to post. But I'm not here to debate with you and we won't solve these disagreements here. You know what you know, I know what I know. We can agree to disagree.
But then y'all got mad that I didn't debate 12 people at a time, as if I have nothing better to do with my life on the comments of a shitpost. You can't handle one single anarchist making one single meme in an obscure anarchist sub.
This all has nothing about us being able to collaborate on things that matter. When we do those actions, nobody is going to say "Aha, I remember what you wrote in lemmy.dbzer0.com that one time about leftist unity". This is all about 1) the ego of those hexbear tankies who couldn't handle not being debated and 2) The shitposters of hexbear who just came here to have flamewars because the mods of hexbear apparently don't control anything anymore and your "left unity" only goes so much as someone disagreeing with your takes and then they're a "liberal" and therefore fair game.
I am honestly not upset. I'm am however just disappointed at the greater hexbear behaviour..
I think the problem here is that this "shitposting" comes off as... Completely anti collaboration?
That's why it's a problem. Maybe you're in favour of collaboration. But do younger anarchists realise that? Does the general bulk of the numbers realise that? Or is this kind of posting actually working entirely against the left overall because it splits us? Because a significant portion of people genuinely take it to heart and believe it. How many spaces actively purge marxists now because of "aaaaaa tankies"? That's occurring because of this kind of propaganda. Is it helping anyone? Fuck no it's not. Look at every single lemmy community where we've been purged, are they better? They're far right shit holes even if there's a handful of people trying to change that, they're utterly dominated by the worst people.
If the right split like the left does we'd be in power in half of europe.
The right does split like the left. Hell, sometimes they're straight up shooting each other.
Look, everyone has their own experiences. I know plenty of anarchists who won't even go near MLs because of how extremely traitorous they are right now. You don't come where I come from. You don't know my experiences. Some anarchists mistrusts MLs with very good reasons and that's fine. And it's also fine to shitpost about it in an anarchist forum without having half of hexbear come in like a rampage of sealions.
And given how quickly hexbears were to close ranks and piledive me from orbit, and then gaslight me on top, well, let's just say my impression has not improved.
Extremely rarely, although that is what is occurring in Spain right now.
The people for left-unity are going to feel attacked by anti-left-unity posting. This is just a fact.
When people feel attacked the result of that shouldn't really be that surprising, should it? Especially when the spread of that rhetoric would actively harm hexbear. People are going to be protective of something they see as integral to the only space on the internet that they feel safe.
Hexbears going over to an anarchist space, and showing their asses to the world as either sealions or toxic trolls is fairly counter-productive.
Or do you think this has been a good showing has had a positive result for hexbear in any sense?
I think everyone looks fucking ridiculous. You, me, everyone. There is never and there has never been a single sectarian argument where everyone involved did not look like a clown.
Which is precisely why people should not even start that shit.
(Some) Anarchist, will continue not believing in Left Unity. Sorry, but I don't ascribe to this ML position on "anti-sectarianism". People are going to continue starting this shit. It's up to hexbear to not make it end up...well, like this.
It's not just an "ML position", in fact it's not an ML position at all and there is no ML party with that position. Your attempts to frame it as one are sus.
You. You're the "people". You are saying "I'm going to do this more".
Really don't be surprised when this completely derails into hostility and destroys any kind of positive relationship you attempted to build. Anyway I'm disengaging now. Please don't call me back in here.
"Anti-sectariansim" is an ML keyword. Anarchists don't talk like that. you may think this is a generic thing, but it's not.
They sure talk about it a lot though.
Ah I see we started poisoning that well already...
You realize I just crossposted this meme, yes?
And if you think the Anarchist distrust for MLs is not a common phenomenon, then you've been in that hexbear echo chamber way too long.
I don't know if you noticed, I haven't tried to build any relationship with MLs. I don't trust them. Even less so since today. Even less since y'all started implying fedjacketing shit. You do your thing, I do mine. I've merely left my door open because I think you peeps have sometimes valid criticisms against libs and it's good to be kept on edge from the left. Don't mistake this with me trying to make alliances with tankies who would put me against the wall first chance they got.