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this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I guess this is the thread where hexbear learns that the student occupations are overwhelmingly organized by anarchist groups who don't like the PSL. I don't know of any exceptions but would be happy to hear them. Certainly communists participated in the organization but it was predominantly an anarchist show.
It sucks these people are being overtly sectarian but you didn't hear much blowback here before this statement came out. Now it's adventurist this, fed that. Come on!
not what I have seen at all. it isn't just being "overly sectarian" it is anticommunism-- literally fed shit. they risk a whole lot to pull this off and then use their statement to shit on communists
Take it from someone who sat in at encampment planning meetings where the specific question "should we involve the PSL" was asked and answered. The perception among organizers was that PSL is using events like this to drive membership instead of organizing to accomplish a specific goal like divestment. I don't agree with that assessment and think of myself as a communist and like the PSL but that is what I saw.
Anarchists when Communists want to support their project
Anarchists when Communists have a project they weren't invited to
idk, that's one example, and even if I disagree I can see why someone might say that. that is something anarchists say about every organization because anarchists don't "recruit" really. but I have more than a few direct counterexamples I have personally witnessed, so I would not say that encampments are primarily organized by anarchist groups. that is probably just something that varies from city to city
And in my encampment PSL was very specifically invited because we are leaders and experienced organizers. If you look at most encampments you'll see plenty of PSL collab on the relevant SJP social media post, which requires mutual approval.
this just isn't true, there are clearly a lot of communists involved with them as well. what is true is that all the sectarian parties that try to organise in a communist way have failed to play a significant role in them but some of the occupations were very clearly led by Marxists/Maoists lol
basically what this tells us is that none of the strictly communist organisations we have right now are capable of rising to the moment and many of them actually have a bad reputation amongst the advanced sections of the masses bc of a pattern of opportunism, tailism, commandism, etc... other organisations such as PYM and WOL are showing us the way, we have to learn from them.
PYM and PSL are attached at the hip
Probably cuz this specific action was adventurist.
Nah, it's cool af
Actions can be both cool and adventurist at the same time. For example, was the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd, the apartheid president of South Africa, cool? Yes it was. It was incredibly brave and the morally correct thing to do. Was it also adventurist? Unfortunately also yes, as the assassination of Verwoerd did not lead to the collapse of apartheid, it continued for decades afterwards. There was no solid plan for what came after, Verwoerd's assassin (Tsafendas) planned to flee the country and seek refuge in Cuba or Greece. While the actions Tsafendas took were commendable, deserve praise, and came at a great personal sacrifice (of being tortured for the rest of his life in prison), unfortunately they did not lead to his desired goal. Adventuristic violence is a very risky strategy that rarely leads to the desired outcomes. This is why many communists throughout history have spoken and written about the dangers of adventurism. I think the only recent example of successful adventurism was the assassination of Shinzo Abe.
If we're gonna condemn every piece of action that destroys tools of oppression as adventurist nothing will be left but book clubs. There's a genocide going on. Shit like this is long long overdue.
Accurately labeling an action as adventurist is not a moral condemnation, but a tactical one
Doing nothing that actually harms the oppressors is the only good tactics.
You know what really harms the oppressors, mass organizing.
You don't see the Czars around anymore do you?
Good thing the two aren't mutually exclusive.
There's literally someone in this thread involved in Portland area organizing saying this kinda shit has been counterproductive to larger organizing efforts. There's a reason Lenin criticized Adventurism.
I would point out you yourself are just posting rn, if you think this shit is so rad why not go out and [redacted]?
No, they said that anarchists showed up uninvited and started smashing up shit. And that absolutely is counterproductive. But diversity of tactics isn't, quite the opposite.
I would pont out that you have zero idea about what i am doing irl and you will continue to have zero idea about it.
This applies to me equally
People need to follow Palestine Action as an example. Palestine Action actually goes after the factories making drone and other military parts as well as various financial and legal offices supporting those weapons manufacturers. Some dude sneaking into a factory to smash F-35 engine parts is awesome. Palestine Action smashing the windows of banks and vandalizing law offices to the point where the law office send a letter to Palestine Action capitulating to their demands and dropping the weapons manufacturer as a client is awesome. But smashing the windows of frat houses? How the hell does that help Palestinians in any way? A more cynical reading would say that they just want to fuck shit up and are using the Palestinian cause as a cover to boost leftist street cred. Yes, setting pigmobiles on fire is awesome, but it doesn't directly help the Palestinian cause in the same way smashing drone parts that are being directly shipped to the Zionist entity is.
I agree with the frathouse and palestine action part, but i don't agree that harming the genocidal US state - even with something as "simple" as lighting some cars on fire - isn't helping.
Good thing nobody is doing that. What people are saying is that combating these tools of oppression requires actual mass organizing, not dispersed acts of terror by isolated individuals or small cells. Hence why everyone here supports the direct action of the marches and encampments and occupations since those can facilitate broader organizing but are skeptical of some random anarchist kid burning some cop cars that will be replaced in a week.
Well then they will be burned next week as well. And the week after. And after.
Not if they throw your ass in jail, which they probably will eventually if you keep doing the exact same action over and over again.
Something can be morally good and strategically ineffective at the same time.
It's really not complicated. The burning of police cars is not the problem. Burning police cars is a show of power. If an organized communist party is showing power then it is good. If anti-communist individualists are doing a show of power, then it is bad.
You're really showing your true colors by making a dozen salty posts about why you can't see that anticommunists showing power is a bad thing.
Burning police cars is a show of power to you, since you are not thinking apart from ML panels. To me and most anarchists burning police cars is a way to make it way more expensive to the state to participate in genocide in any way we can.
In another "salty post" i already clarified that if they are not coordinating their stuff with communists, fuck them. But if burning cop cars is indeed not the problem why do i have to make a dozen salty posts explaining that burning cop cars isn't a problem? Why can't y'all chalk this up as a broken clock being accidentally right?
the insurance payments on these burned old junker training vehicles may actually give PPB a bigger budget to purchase new and fancy weapons and vehicles to replace these old junkers.
this action may end up increasing the power of PPB to project force on the community fighting for divestment from genocide in the long run. the budget office of the PPB and the police chief are probably secretly happy this happened.
just FYI.
K
Direct action is adventurist, internet posting is praxis. K.
Yes that's really a good summation of the analysis people here are presenting, thank you for engaging in good faith discourse.
“Direct action” can absolutely be adventurist, what?
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No, in my experience, despite anarchists still being the vast majority of the irl left (including sectarian jokers who, in my experience, will limit their work to admittedly awesome adventurist bullshit like this), in my area they completely dropped the ball and haven't sufficiently worked with SJP, whereas PSL has.
To be fair, I've also seen a ton of work being done with these encampments by SDS and FRSO, not as much PSL, but they're definitely there too.
if an anarchist isn't a communist they're not a real fucking anarchist lol
This is remarkably common in 21st-century social movements in America.
western anarchists seem to spew a lot of red scare propaganda online. dunno about irl because i'm not in the us, but this can be a factor.
In the US I've seen anarchists and MLs working together no problem, during any action I haven't seen much disagreement, it seems more theoretical IMO.
As @infuziSporg@hexbear.net said, there are a lot less differences between us than feds and wreckers would have us believe. Food Not Bombs is one of my go-to examples of a space where anarchists MLs and Maoists collaborate and cooperate with far more ideological overlap than conflict.
I made a whole twitter thread about this but my account got banned.
Assuming that the same old hundred year past ideological beefs will or must play out exactly the same as they did in the early 20th century is defeatist, anti-materialist, and smacks of book worship and dogmatism. Mao would be ashamed of these people. After all, he was an anarchist himself in college.
I used to be one of those anarchists, until I started to get a better sense of the history of revolutionary movements and of the completeness of Western propaganda. Eventually I came to see anarchism and Marxism less as delineations and more as foundations.
The world is a lot friendlier without dogmatic grudges against leftists.
I dunno, but the way some of this statement is worded leads me to believe that it was written by someone that likely wasn't involved in any of the protests to begin with.
The "blowback" isn't against the actual protestors.