I wanted to share a few thoughts on a comment I saw earlier about drama occurring on a leftist site outside of Lemmygrad.
man why are leftist spaces online like this? feels like they’re too busy shooting themselves on the foot constantly to get their shit together while fascism and reich-wingers are taking over everything.
First, every human space is bound to conflict and contradictions, this is expected. But the characterization of that existing only on leftist spaces is misleading.
If you subject yourself to torture and visit extreme right-wing communities, you'll notice they are extremely toxic and very violent to each other, and usually there is a big turnover of users. The violent and abusive language is part of their socialization, and those who endure the longest become normalized to this type of language, so much so, it transpires outside the right-wing communities themselves.
The idea that right-wingers are in unity I think is also incorrect, what happens is that the right-wing worldview is being more and more normalized by "social" media, "Christian" churches, and even formal education. So, the right-wingers appear in unity because they parrot the same talking points and ideas, but it's just a reflection of bourgeois ideology among the people.
What is particular to leftist spaces is the struggle for a coherent political philosophy. Since right-wing thinking is the "standard" thinking in a bourgeois dictatorship, a right-wing space wouldn't bring anything new, just a reaction against leftist discourse, worldview and philosophy.
Besides, leftists are much more sensitive towards the reproduction of social issues, like male chauvinism, racism, transphobia, and since these are the building blocks of Western political thinking, it's expected that even leftists will eventually present those views, but they are more keen to be criticized and to generate a bigger polemic.
When a right-wing leadership presents a racist view, most of their supporters will simply be silent about it to "protect" the image of their leader. Some of them openly agree to the racist views, but understand this is not to be exposed. One example is the Trump rape and sexual assault cases, his trips to the pedophile island of Epstein, this is all overlooked, even if the right-wingers are most vocal about "the children" and pedophiles.
When it happens that a leftist leader presents a troubling view, they tend to be criticized to the bone (depending on how "radical" is that leftist). A leftist or communist leader has to be sinless and incapable of mistakes in the eyes of leftists, otherwise they are not a good representative. Left-wingers tend to be more critical of certain expressions of authority, whereas sometimes this in excess can be destructive.
Leftists have to constantly fight against bourgeois ideology in all fronts, our work is much more extensive and difficult, while right-wing communities simply allow bourgeois ideology to flow to its maximum extent. They have to fight the influence of those who care about facts and reason, but it's not as tiring as having to fight against bourgeois ideology, which is hegemonic.
In reflecting on the points made in it, I think I understand better where western anarchists can derive from (western ultras as well, but I will focus on anarchists for the moment). I think I've read parts of it before, but maybe not the whole thing. Anyway, something that stands out to me is the martyrdom david/goliath dynamic and how it ties into both AES and just anti-imperialist states in general. China is big, it is more like a goliath in size and scope than a david, it would be hard to call it an underdog next to many other countries, so by the christian-mindset influence of things, "China is a 'dangerous' country and countries it interacts with are more and likely to be victims." This I think is part of where you get the "anti-authority" mindset that is associated with western anarchists. "They are big and we are small, which means we are the underdog, the david, the morally pure striving for better against terrible odds." For a person or organization stuck in this mindset, it seems likely they will unwittingly (or perhaps in some cases even will full awareness) sabotage their own efforts to gain power. And if they do gain power, they will refuse to take it seriously as a position of power, instead trying to act still as if they are an outsider who has had power thrust upon them. For them to exercise that power seriously means they can make mistakes the way others in power do and then they join the ranks of the goliaths and lose their sense of self as a member of the underdog, which eats away at them.
Then there is the point of size and scope alone. To expand on what I touched on with regards to a state like China's, they now have a lot of global influence, but they exercise this largely in a cooperative and mutually beneficial way. They are making themselves interdependent, rather than making others dependent on them; a sharp contrast to the modes of imperialist exploitation. This itself may be a point that is hard for some of us with a christian or catholic upbringing to fully understand. Using myself as an example, even though I'm now atheist, I can tell I still have strains of catholic thinking internalized in me. And it is hard sometimes to understand the notion of large scale interdependence and collective organization as something more than a fantasy. Some part of my thought leads in the individualist morality direction that steers things toward the importance of individual behavior and individual salvation and so on, which is viewed as wholly separate from everything else. What I'm trying to get at here is, for example, if I were to go do something that most people view as a morally reprehensible thing to do, the instinct would not be to ask how society failed, the instinct would be to ask how I failed to hold back the inner demons in me (whether one views that as more literal or figurative). Just as the christian mindset creates martyrs, it also creates demons; figures in a holy battle between the morally strong and the morally weak. In the christian mindset, these are not figures who are portrayed a certain way for morale, or strategy, or increasing odds of victory, but as a true believer in the idea that the battle is an individual one for souls and not a battle that can be won on a large scale to the collective benefit of all peoples.