Both the EZLN and Cuba
like eachother so this is just a fake rivalry made up by people in the west
the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Yeah, but the EZLN aren't really anarchists. Neozapatismo is a fusion of anarchism, marxism, and a few other things.
regardless of what real parties with actual impact on the world think of each other this is just pablum for terminally online weirdos larping
It really brings my piss to a boil when my identity as a trans and queer person is used in this manner. Almost implying that I can't be queer because I'm ML. It reminds me of how shitlibs love doing the same sort of thing by basically telling queer that they should support them over the state department's enemy of the month.
What is it with western leftists and “anti-authoritarianism”?
It smells like just more libertarian fantasy.
Freaking Star Fleet has a central authority and chain of command and that’s about as pie in the sky as we can imagine.
There are loads of reasons, among them western propaganda, but also how so many of the more structured western communist groups either became fed central or just had the leadership taken out. Anarchism is harder to root out not just because the feds are light on it, but also because who are you supposed to assassinate to take them down?
A significant amount of it is also because the big authorities they directly experience and oppose suck. If you oppose the US for it's authoritarianism, why would you not oppose other places for authoritarianism?
But who opposes the US for its authoritarianism?
Of the multitude of reasons, that’s one of the least in my book. It’s not about authority, it’s about how it’s wielded and against whom.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with authority. It’s about what systems and people it’s protecting. In the case of the US: it’s property and the robber baron class.
People grow to assume that authority where they live is authority everywhere. You grow up your whole life suspicious of American cops, you aren't likely to think cops are super cool, even if they're revolutionary and Cuban.
With respect to our anarchist comrades, beyond liberal propaganda about "freedom" (that question-begs a set of assumptions about what freedom is that is basically purpose-built to benefit the bourgeois state), I think Gramsci has useful writing about crasser sorts of anarchists: https://redsails.org/discorso-agli-anarchici/
the marginalized still tremble
oh sorry can't hear you over colonized people getting autonomy and cultural dignity never experienced under the imperial systems they emerged from
It doesn't count as liberation unless white people do it for them.
they have it both ways in all cases. russians and jews supporting regional autonomy & "affirmative action" in the USSR? that's a colonial patriarchal mindset toward the indigenous
the indigenous people do it themselves but choose to associate with the former colonizers? that's evidence that they are still under the thumb of the Russian Empire.
it doesn't actually matter to them, it's just a fucking line. if indigenous rights meant anything to the west [gestures at everything] this wouldn't fucking be here
like actually where do these fucking people get off the reason i'm a communist is because i studied and examined the way the socialist states have treated women and cultural minorities, it's fucking absurd
We need to ban discussion of this shit, it’s just using bad takes by random internet anarchists as excuses to do digs at other anarchists. I’m not an anarchist at all but it makes me really angry
peace deal, we're allowed to make fun of the weirdo "abolish time" anarchists and they're allowed to make fun of the weirdo "i pledge allegience to chairman gonzalo" communists, and we will build anticapitalist unity on this basis. as a show of good faith we won't make any more jabs about Makhno and they won't make any more about the Bolsheviks
I'm an ML and I believe in abolishing time
The kkklocks are kkkulakkks
“Why yes, I do reject a transitionary state due to its contradictions with my ‘anti-authoritarian’ principles, why do you ask?”
AES more like AESthetic
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution" is an absolutely good take which most anarchists have.
Me when a member of the ruling class trembles
Imma tread delicately here but using the CNT/FAI as an example of a classless, moneyless, stateless, anti-authoritarian society doesn't fit with a historically-grounded view of Revolutionary Catalonia and the larger Spanish Republic. At all.
You might take issue with this and say that it's unfair to expect a revolutionary movement under the conditions of open civil war against the forces of fascism to achieve their vision of statelessness and an anti-authoritarian society and I'd agree but... that's why I see seizing the state as an absolute necessity and not as optional.
I don't believe that any revolution is above criticism and I also hold the position that there are going to be excesses. I don't want to see them, I don't like to see them, but they are going to happen and if we don't have a ruthless criticism of all that exists then we will inevitably end up liable to repeat these excesses the next time around but we are also inclined to atrocity denialism etc. etc.
I'm going to avoid discussing the broader implications for the Spanish Republic and my ideological position on this stuff because I don't want to instigate any slapfights.
In the Spanish Republic, it's an undeniable fact that the Catholic church was targeted and subjected to a campaign of persecution. At certain points clergy were burnt alive inside their churches. Clergy were also simply executed. Skirting around the editorial commentary, this constitutes genocide in the formal definition.
A sorely overlooked facet of the history of the Republic is when a Moroccan delegation from the Spanish colonial holdings in Morocco sued the Republican government for independence, on favourable terms for the Republic. This was rejected. Even if the terms for independence were accepted with the exact terms given the Moroccan delegation, there would still have existed a very clear colonial hierarchy.
I will largely skip over military and government structures because that's all pretty obvious and most of it can be inferred.
The Republic operated forced labour camps.
The government took measures to nationalise infrastructure and struggled to do so especially with their electricity grid. To be clear, I think that a modern state especially under conditions of war must have national control over critical infrastructure like electricity. But doing so is an inherently authoritarian measure.
Likewise there were efforts at forced collectivisation of farms.
The CNT/FAI operated "Control Patrols"'; a sort of de facto police force which had a repressive character and was infamous for arbitrary arrests and summary executions by firing squad, as well as for refusing to be accountable to the government structures of the Republic.
In CNT controlled Puigcerdá, there was significant corruption and its mayor enforced collectivisation but continued to farm his own livestock privately. Puigcerdá was a hotbed of espionage and falsified passports due to its location and issues within its government.
The CNT-UGT collectivised telephone infrastructure and controlled the Catalonian telephone exchange. When military command sought to coordinate with the government via telephone, one particular call was interrupted by an exchange worker saying that there is no government but only a Defence Committee. When the President of the Government of Catalonia was speaking to the President of the Spanish Republic via phonecall, the call was interrupted midway by a phone operator who said that the phone lines should be used for more important purposes than talk between presidents. It was a widely-held view that this telephone exchange closely surveilled calls made through it and it's pretty obvious why that is.
On the ground level, the government took a very dim view of what they considered to be vice and took steps to discourage and curb it.
In factories, the Spanish Republic struggled desperately to balance the needs of war production against the demands of workers and their ideological positions. Ultimately this led to establishing far better terms for labour which often saw a precipitous drop in productivity and in response a course-correction of stripping workers' rights and a program of enforcing labour discipline as an attempt to meet production requirements. The most obvious example of enforcement of labour discipline was the establishment of the role of Distributor of Tasks. This was a government official who answered only to the highest levels of government and who had vast discretionary powers over workers. Workers who were not sufficiently productive, who were deemed absent without just cause, who were late to work too often, and who showed a defeatist attitude or a lack of revolutionary zeal could be sanctioned by the Distributor of Tasks and even imprisoned.
All workers were required to maintain a sort of journal of their employment history where their employers would record critical information about the worker's work and their general character. This record was necessary for finding work. It can be inferred that being fired by a Distributor of Tasks or being sanctioned would make finding future employment extremely difficult.
In CNT/FAI administered regions, workers were paid in labour vouchers redeemable in their local village. To travel outside of your village required exchanging your labour vouchers for currency, which could only occur with the express permission of the council. You were required to provide an explanation for what you were going to spend your money on. This effectively meant that free movement of people was strictly controlled and monitored.
Ultimately it was the anti-communist coup would spell the end of the Spanish Republic.
To sum up with the purpose of this comment, there's a major problem in taking a team-sports mentality and projecting it onto history because you end up in what amounts to campism.
It irks me that the kind of person who posts this kind of image is the same kind of person who will level unprincipled criticisms of communists as being campists and of having a political orientation that amounts to being on the side that is anti-USA, that communists support the same repressive structures as long as it comes with different aesthetics, that they worship the state uncritically, and that they are apologists for atrocities, and that their only defence when faced with the excesses of the movements they uphold in history is whataboutism. (I believe that these people do exist btw, it's just not as common as it's made out to be.) The reason why this irks me is that all of these criticisms apply equally to unprincipled anarchists who engage in this sort of sectarian bickering.
I could create similar lists of criticisms of the actions of governments like the USSR, Cuba, and the communist faction of the Spanish Republic, for example, and I would be able to make these criticisms principled through a political analysis which I've largely avoided above because I wanted to illustrate a point about how some people engage with history through a primarily ideological lens and what implications that has for the consistency of how they apply their politics.
I wonder if the people who post these kinds of memes would be able to provide any principled criticism of the CNT/FAI, the YPG, or the EZLN?
Marxist-Leninist in the streets, an anarchist in the sheets
What even is an "anti authoritarian society"?
I always thought the point of anarchism was to have a stateless society with the removal of unjust hierarchies, not a society with zero authority... Revolution is an exercise of authority in itself, in that the proletariat forces their class interests over that of the bourgeoisie. An anarchist revolution would also do this. As seen by the syndicalists in 1930s Spain.
i'm unironically both of these
The trick is communists still believe the end goal is anarchism, lol. I just think we need a little authoritarian proletariat army and organization first, as a treat. Whereas if i was a pure anarchist i would reject that. I'd actually be good with either way of getting out of capitalism, uncritical support to defeating the Great Satan that is amerikkka
The zapatistas are kinda both too
Anyone who is still trying to do Bakuninite zingers with no further substantiation can be disregarded out of hand.
"No take only throw"
we can only achieve said society via revolution and revolutions are inherently authoritarian
what does the purple and black flags stand for? I always thought that purple was an alternative to white in terms of signifying monarchist/imperial as political colors.
Joke answer: Anarcho-monarchism, AKA Lord of the Rings-ism
Actual answer: Anarcha-feminism
Ah, thanks.
Ok but what will their life expectancy, healthcare, housing, employment and education prospects be?