no rules
no rules
a drawing of a person wearing a balaclava and holding a gun with the text "all my homies hate tankies" :3
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I love my anarchist comrades and I love my communist comrades. I hate seeing memes like this. May we all be lucky enough to argue in the midst of a real revolution. Until then, focus on the fucking fascists.
Unity above all else. Absolutely. However Tankie rhetoric in good faith or from an agent provocateur is something that needs to be addressed directly. Any power structure without egalitarian praxis is antithetical to the movement. Communism and Anarchism are very similar to the point where there are anarcho communists.
I want to make sure that there is space for us to figure out self governance immediately after the revolution. I don't want to rely on a nascent "interim" government to hand it down to me.
Anarcho communism just makes sense. If communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society, is it not by default anarchist as well?
And I’m not referring to any of the so called “communist” countries because they’re all variations of socialist and not communist. They all have a state.
I'm someone with a leg in both tendencies, as it were. I purposely avoid getting too into the theory weeds, in favor of interacting with actual people. I see the word "tankie" used veeerrryyy liberally lately, and it feels like it doesn't signify very much. Respectfully, thinking about "immediately after the revolution" is getting way ahead of yourself, at least in relation to who you work with today.
we dont need power to the people after some magical revolution somewhere in the future. we need to prefigure non-hierarchical structures in the here and now, and while even building the capacity for violent insurrection.
i dont trust a revolutionairy army, that is build on authoritairian principles, to give power away to a newly forming anarchist society, once in power. if all that people know is hierarchy, thats the structures they will tend to recreate.
looking at real revolutionairy movements, it appears to me that they either turn anarchist during the prolonged struggle or forever stay authoritairian despite their best efforts.
Hear you on this. Most people just want to be on the top of the hierarchy which is at least partly why none of the so called “communist” countries ever actually achieved it.
Most people can’t fathom a lack of hierarchy. Even in interpersonal relationships.
The parent above the child. The boss above the worker. The principal above the teacher. The husband above the wife. Etc etc. that’s why queer people are so attacked, besides the “we’re not normal” part, we upend hierarchical beliefs. I’m a lesbian, and when I’m dating someone, there’s always a hetero (who is queer friendly, just stupid!) asking who’s the “man” in the relationship. None! That’s the point!
We have to get over a lifetime of conditioning. I’ve always been anarchist since I was young - when I was 4, I became vegetarian. My reasoning, at four: why is a dog more valuable than a cow? If I wouldn’t eat my dog why would I eat a cow? And you know what, 32 years later I still abide by that logic.
The thing is historically leftists ally with anarchists until they get power and then they execute the anarchists. They want unity as long as it's convenient for their agenda, but that's true of any philosophy that encourages power structures of any kind.
Historically yes. Any transition of power is a dangerous time. There's a history of communists factions and bad faith actors working with fascists in Italy to murder anarchists who were planning to kill Mussolini. However that's not a conversation that's necessary this very second. Stratification of power and the way in which it's weilded is not lost on me. The problem with people that make bombs is sometimes the only cause they have is the one that necessitates bombings.
"However that's not a conversation that's necessary this very second"
"Trust me bro we won't kill you immediately afterwards, just do what helps us and you'll be fine, trust me bro"
Kinda feels like what the DNC told Bernie supporters the past 10 years.
This.
Also, tankies are that not because they're communists (they're not, no matter how hard they insist) but because they support an oppressor on the same scale as the one they demand we unite with them to oppose, simply because said oppressor calls themselves communist (again, they're not), seemingly without understanding how that might make those of us opposed to all oppression mistrust them, and be unwilling to simply overlook their values and actions.
On the other hand, I always see people who use the term tankies calling everyone who the US propaganda says is an oppressor an oppressor. It's so weird how that works out that way, that the colonized countries trying to get self-determination are the oppressors, and the western colonial and imperialist countries are the only ones with "freedom". They eat the propaganda right up.