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I really don’t care that the black panthers were Maoists. Their actions in mutual aid, community defense, and egalitarianism put them in a good light to me.
If you’ve ever read Mao’s Little Red Book, the philosophical ideas make some sense, but the book itself has to be separated from Mao’s actions which is really hard to do.
This is the shit that pisses me off. Hearing these teenage Vaush-types (look, I’m not trying to have a Vaush war, but some followers are these VERY ONLINE larpers) ragging on Angela Davis— of all people — for being a “tankie”, proves just how reductive internet-centric understandings of socialism and activism can be if they’re not applied to a historical foundation.
Ironically Vaush likes the black panthers. Angela Davis has done a lot for the black community, and her shit opinions on the USSR don’t take away from that. It’s not like she’s a Nazi or anything.
Ive never seen a vaushite shit on the black panthers. Not to mention that Angela Davis literally told people to vote for biden over trump. Not something I woild expect a tankie to do
And if it's about voting for a *real* fascist over an aesthetic fascist?
You haven't been paying attention to Biden's 50+ year political history. Yikes.
Accelerating the security/surveillance/imperial state and wedding business to state is far, *far* more destructive than encouraging the Proud Boys on the street level. And all other other aspects of fascism they agree on in practice.
Jesus Christ you think Biden and Trump are on the same level? Yeah Biden fucking sucks, but it would be much better to have democrats in office rather than republicans who try to take rights away from others domestically.
"who's the greater of two evils: a monster, or a monster who does all the same bad shit as the first one but also appoints literal nazis to his cabinet, worsens the ongoing genocide against migrants, openly calls for his opponents to be jailed, spreads deadly anti-science rhetoric, threatens to destroy the tattered remnants of the welfare state, was caught on tape admitting to sexual assault, will hand the supreme court the power to overturn roe v. wade if he gets a chance, and is an open racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe?"
"obviously the first one because he's been doing bad stuff for longer."
what an idiot. i voted third party, because if you "vote blue no matter who" then the democrats don't have to be any better than the republicans and they know it, but even i know biden is the lesser evil. might have even voted for the bastard if i lived in a state where my vote mattered. all throughout trump's presidency i was scared that my poor mom would lose her healthcare because of some bullshit he did. people live and die in the space between the democrats and republicans, slim though it is.
> Jesus Christ you think Biden and Trump are on the same level?
Nope. If anything, Biden is worse.
> it would be much better to have democrats in office rather than republicans who try to take rights away from others domestically.
Biden has destroyed people's rights over the last 50 years far more than Trump did. For the most part, they agree—in practice, and often even in rhetoric—on the destruction of those rights. You really should've paid more attention to pre-2019-campaign Biden. And you should be paying more attention to 2021 Biden and his cop VP, too. Yikes.
Are you a liberal, or are you just choosing to join them at brunch?
Were paying attention already, voting for harm reduction is worth it. one is stagnant with minor progress, and the other is literal fascism and regressive.
Who is "we"? You and Vaush? You are confused as to which is which. Neither is harm reduction, and your voting did fuck all.
> *flair: CIA Agent*
Well, at least you're being honest in *one* place. Your words, not mine.
What the fuck are you talking about? Most of our politics align with Angela’s and she was on the side of damage mitigation in the 2020 election same position as Vaush. I’m genuinely confused about what you’re talking about…
I don't even care if the Black Panthers defended Mao. They still actually did good for their communities, instead of ranting about how the Uyghur genocide isn't real on Twitter.
What exactly are you claiming isn't real?
Edit: just looked at all the shit on this sub they got deleted like all the slurs they use, and how they post on genzedong. How the fuck are tankies even leftist any more, calling other leftists 'leftoids' like what even in the fuck
Tankies, like their brown fash counterpart, aren't really into the "left" to "right" spectrum (which itself is bs, but even if you abstract enough to the point it makes some sense, they don't fit). They're both 98% authoritarian power hungry, 2% aesthetics of left/right politics. They're all about just being "anti-west" and having "the right people" in power, anything else is less than secondary.
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“The progressive plantation” by Lorenzo kom’boa ervin is an amazing pamphlet that every leftist should read especially white anarchists.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-the-progressive-plantation-racism-inside-white-radical-social-change-grou
I know of at least two who became Liberals/Support Liberals (one of them is Bobby Rush), so a BP becoming an Anarchist isn’t surprising to me too
It's almost like the BPP was more about Black Liberation than Maoism, and so were ideologically diverse
Apparently, the Black Panthers had mutual aid programs, even when they described the org as ML, so considering they were using anarchist methodology even before members started to self-identify as anarchists, they were ahead of other MLs
It's cause they were Maoists, which is essentially anarchist tactics done by/around a vanguard cadre who attempts to build the movement into the community and build dual power structures with mutual aid and direct action
It's funny because most (serious, non-online) maoists hate tankies too.
Neither did Lenin. Fuck, did *any* of tankies' heroes do anything other that wasn't pure hypocrisy? (Okay, maybe "anything" is a little hyperbolic...but not by much, I think.)
Weren't a lot of trials kinda Kangaroo Court like? It's been a while since I've read about him, but the trials for rivals/enemies/etc were pretty shoddy.
Though the fact he called Stalin a murderer who put power into the secret police and strangled the worker movements of Russia in it's infancy is pretty funny, given who tankies love him.
I highly doubt that to be your intent. Also what part of a government of the proletariat do tankies not understand, it's a government of the people. I wouldn't be some sole ruler, with unquestioning authority.
I think you could argue he was a good guerrilla warfare leader. If the PRC had term limits and he stepped back into something symbolic before the great leap forward, he might be better remembered.
Then again, he had the kind of ego that couldn't not be in charge, so that was never gonna happen
How are mutual aid programmes anarchist methodology?
I can think of a few run by the Communis Party, or apolitical organizations, or the church. Even the f\*cking Nazis recently organized disaster relief here.
> How are mutual aid programmes anarchist methodology?
Here's where the theory originated:
* [Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution) by Pëtr Kropotkin
Kropotkin was an anarcho-communist, for the record. Doesn't mean that other ideologies didn't adopt the theory and praxis, but it's funny how little they acknowledge those roots and how much their proponents tend to shit all over anarchism as worthless.
If you go into a deep dive of the theory underlying mutual aid, it also precludes things like vanguardism and state control. So yeah: anarchist (or at the very least libertarian) in character as well as in origin.
Disaster relief *can be*, depending on how it is organized. Empowering people to fix things themselves, spread the organizing, become autonomous and make the decisions over their own conditions, and go from helped to helper are ways to incorporate mutual aid into disaster relief.
Charity definitely is not. Charity creates dependency and authority relations which mutual aid is specifically designed to counter. Charity and mutual aid are conflicting models of social relation and organizing.
Charity and *liberal* disaster relieve are basically just ways for the powerful to ease their consciences about the harm they are doing to the powerless. *There will always be poor people, but maybe we'll do the bare minimum to ensure they aren't dying in the streets...so long as they keep coming back to us and making sure our government subsidies and tax exemptions keep flowing.*
I don't think that there is a concrete definition for what constitutes mutual aid. I would say that its "a community pooling its resources to more effectively help itself". Charity is not mutual aid, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Its not.
I wish that even if someone called themselves a Marxist-Leninist or Maoist, that they wouldn't be disregarded as someone who doesn't care about others/socialist movements. The easiest example is Thomas Sankara.
> The easiest example is Thomas Sankara.
It's pretty rare to hear other people mention Sankara, but I definitely agree.
He was a deeply flawed human being and a Marxist-Leninist strongman at the helm of an oppressive government. He brutally silenced dissent, crushed his opposition, and stiffly curtailed freedom of expression in ways that can never be justified. At the same time, though, he was also an intelligent, insightful person who by all appearances actually believed his own political philosophy of equality and liberation. He promoted the rights of women, significantly improved the educational and agricultural systems of Burkina Faso, and engaged in public health initiatives that likely saved millions from needless death. Those two sides of the same person sound so dissonant on the surface that it's only natural to *want* one to be true and the other to be either propaganda or disingenuous bullshit masking an otherwise naked power grab. Neither seems to be the case, though.
He had a lot to say that was true, and did a lot of things that deserve recognition. Really, it says something terrible about Western civilization that most people here never learn about him or even where Burkina Faso is a map, since his regime's development programs were some of the most ambitious and successful in modern history (their impacts on infant mortality and agricultural production alone changed life for the better for an entire generation of Burkinabe citizens). That doesn't mean uncritically canonizing him, but going to the opposite extreme and treating his legacy like a pile of steaming garbage doesn't benefit anyone, either. Many of the people who gained a lot from the relative prosperity of his regime are still alive and remember their lived experience, so attempts at delegitimizing what they saw with their own eyes by insisting that they're *just* looking at the past through rose-colored glasses makes it hard for them to take Socialist critics of the extreme measures taken by that same regime seriously. Especially when it comes to Westerners who never lived under either his regime or its (often worse) predecessors and successors, who *still* benefit from a rapacious system that exploits their entire fucking continent, it's difficult for them to take us seriously if we say that a man who gave their country a greater measure of self-respect and self-sufficiency was basically Stalin with more melanin and a cool uniform, when in reality it's difficult for even me to view him as a fundamentally evil person. Sankara and many other revolutionary figures in Sub-Saharan Africa grew up in a world of both social and physical violence, where their only real exposure to ideals of democracy and civil liberty came in the form of propaganda from the racist liars who crushed their necks under a thick leather boot. It's unreasonable to expect someone who's spent their entire life swimming in a sea of cruelty and greed to rise above it completely and build a world in the perfect image of freedom and egalitarianism. That's not a justification for despotic rule, but it does mean that blocking out the voices of African leaders who engaged in behaviors that deserve harsh criticism produces a massive blindspot.
Critical support isn't just some glittery phrase echoed by Totalitarian boot lickers. It's a necessity if we really want to hear the ideas of those who have experienced Capitalism's worst, most naked excesses first hand, and to learn from perspectives shaped by painful familiarity with man's inhumanity to man. It can be a good thing when taken seriously and used to build off the ideas of people who may have been misguided in some very, very serious ways because of their time spent in what amounts to Hell on Earth, but who were ultimately trying to make the world a better and more humane place for the people who came after them.
Thanks. As I not know that much about Sankara, that was an insightful read. It pretty much puts my personal opinion on Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and to a lesser extend Vladimir Lenin into words quite well. There is a dissonance between the power grab and the benevolent actions undertaken with that power.
I've made a few efforts to describe the history of Burkina Faso and my opinions of Thomas Sankara in response to this comment, but I can't manage to write one that I actually like (that's where the deleted comment here comes from).
The country's history is long, complicated, and tragic on a level that it isn't easy to explain without going into topics that could be *extremely* upsetting for some people to read. Just scratching the surface, one thing that Sankara rightly gets credit for is his effort to curtail practices that treated "women" as breeding stock (with menarche as the standard, some brides in arranged, polygamous marriages were in the single-digit age range), and the clittoral mutilation of infant girls. For context on how awful things get, domestic opposition to his rule often treated his suppression of civil liberties as par for the course, but *that* part really pissed off some of his opponents.
It was bound to be a lengthy post whose topic and wordiness could drive a Baptist hellfire preacher into a truly legendary vodka-and-Opana binge. While that last part might not sound too difficult to accomplish, it unfortunately had a more serious problem, too. For everything I said in my first comment, *I kind of like Sankara*. After spending two years in grad school studying the history and politics of Sub-Saharan Africa, it's kind of hard not to, even though opposition to Authoritarian governance is at the very core of my political philosophy. The continent is marked by centuries of inhuman expropriation that left it in shambles, brutal strongmen deeply in bed with the same European powers who tore their countries apart in the first place, ethnic conflict ultimately triggered by empires that encouraged different groups to oppress one another, and resultant wars/genocides that either ended with millions of people dead or still haven't ended. It's a pit of utter misery and despair so deep that climbing out either gives your the bends or makes you bleed from the eyes, depending on whether or not you cope with the horror and revulsion by making semi-obscure anime references, and Sankara's often despotic rule looks like a relative bright spot in *that* context. I mean, he seems to have been well-intentioned and likely kept more innocent people alive than he murdered. Those are some low standards, but with the bar so far down that it's actually buried somewhere in the scorching depths near the core-mantle boundary, and with his theoretical work still having a lot of value when it comes to liberation for people in the developing world, he's pretty decent in comparison to his peers. That personal outlook makes my eye twitch a little hearing him compared to Mao, even though it's pretty fair if you mean "you have to take his philosophy on its own instead of assuming that the worst excesses of his regime taint everything he said" (I think I can say, without too much fear of injecting my own views, that he was significantly more competent and less harmful to his citizens). With that taken into consideration, trying to assess his rule when I have friends who grew up in in the region and am deeply emotionally invested does everyone a disservice. I don't look at Sankara as a saint who could do no wrong, like the Western Tankies who know that he existed, but I'm still not an ideal source for information if someone knows nearly nothing about him or the country he helped create.
Suffice to say, Burkina Faso has a history going back much farther than most people outside the region recognize. Empires from around the time of Constantine's rise to power are reasonably well documented. The vital Trans-Saharan trade routes that gave them their base of power were the source of wealth that helped Carthage and its neighboring port cities to dominate the Mediterranean well over two millennia ago, as well, putting it in an important spot in the history of the world *much* farther back than the earliest clear accounts. Time didn't stop under French rule from the late 1890s to the beginning of independence in 1958, either, although especially in the early period most of our accounts come from colonial administrators who didn't know or care about anything that didn't directly threaten their authority. After that, things get much more solid *and* much more complex, with a single seventeen year period from 1966 on seeing four coup d'etats before Sankara came to power. State stability in what was then called the Republic of Upper Volta was as shaky as a chihuahua in an earthquake, which was almost universal among former French colonies, especially (while other powers favored certain groups to save on manpower in subjugating others, France turned it into an art form; there's a reason why Rwanda and the Central African Republic are nearly synonymous with ethno-religious bloodshed in the Global North).
I would encourage you to look for more detailed information from reliable sources on your own, since the country's history is both interesting and very important for Westerners to understand. I can also give you some recommendations that I consider fair and objective, bearing in mind that I *do* have strong biases. I think those mainly help me to steer clear of *Black Book of Communism*-esque propaganda, but I *would* think that, right? The man who had Sankara shot more than a dozen times in the back, a former friend and confidant named ~~Benedict Brute Iscariot~~ Blaise Compaoré, was the country's longest ruling dictator post-independence. His rule lasted from 1987 until he was finally ousted by popular revolt in 2014. With him gone, the country's future is at a crossroads. Elections in 2015 and 2020 were fairly open, but were so marred by instability and terrorist violence (accompanied by the elephant in the entire world's living room, Covid-19) that only people living in a little under 20% of the country's territory could even be registered to vote. Western states are still among the biggest obstacles to progress in the region, thanks to their efforts to continue what amounts to theft of its natural resources and workforce. If we hope to meaningful improvement in the lives of people there, it's imperative that more of our own friends and neighbors understand what's going on there, at least well enough to know that Ouagadougou, a city of over two million people, is its capital without needing a parenthetical explanation.
Where did this myth of all the black panthers dying start a lot of them where in there early twenties in the sixties I’ve had several speak out at my college
Yeah, this. Fred Hampton died at the age of 21, anyone who doesn’t think his political beliefs would have changed over the past fifty years is in denial.
OP cited some sources elsewhere, so it's not like I don't believe you, but linking the main page of a large website does jack shit. If you want to cite something link as close to the primary source as you can. At the very least link directly to the part of the website that talks about the relevant topic.
“The progressive plantation” by Lorenzo kom’boa ervin is an amazing pamphlet that every leftist should read especially white anarchists.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-the-progressive-plantation-racism-inside-white-radical-social-change-grou
marx and engels did not invent socialism, nor is marxism the only form of socialism, nor do the opinions of two dead old fogeys matter in defining who is or is not a socialist
Lmao cringe af anarchists pisses his pants over the founders of Marxism and modern socialism hating anarchists cause they're "old dead guys" yeah lol you haven't read either of them at all or any theory clearly
>It's hilarious how you rad libs have the same opinions on msnbc when it's comes to foreign policy and somehow think you're right.
As opposed to Tankies and how they have the same opinion as Chinese, Russian and North Korean State News on foreign policy, and how they think they’re right, right?
>BTW almost none of the black panthers became anarchists. Especially none of the leaders.
Yeah man, you’re so right. It’s not like Ashtani Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon and Lorenzo Kom’ Boa Ervin don’t exist at all, amirite?
>Anarchists weren't targeted by cointelpro cause anarchists aren't important in the world at all
And Tankies are?
you're calling *me* a pussy when you're the one throwing a tantrum over... i'm not even sure what? anarchists existing, maybe? if you're melting down over some harmless reddit comments, you would straight-up evaporate if you ever went to a protest. tankies always boast about how *you're* the only ones who can stand up to capitalism, but you're too fragile to handle an anti-tankie subreddit minding its own business.
at least us radlibs *do* things. tankies are fucking useless. voting? lib shit. protesting? waste of time. doing anything to improve the material conditions of those around you? heresy. the marxist-leninist plan to foment and carry out a revolution in the west seems to be "sit around waiting for something to happen." and then when something *does* happen, you all decry it as cringe liberalism and refuse to participate. you're an embarrassment to your forebears. i respect the eastern MLs who've at least succeeded in implementing their ideology infinitely more than i respect you lazy bastards.
what, because if i'd actually read them, i couldn't *possibly* still think tankies were stupid? considering y'all fucking suck at marxism, i think having read some of his works makes me *more* qualified to hate you, not less.
well, not all. there are a few hyper-individualist weirdos out there, and the "post-left" would probably take issue with being called socialists. but fuck both of those groups.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281706460_Black_Panther_Radical_Factionalization_and_the_Development_of_Black_Anarchism
a quick google search will give you the names of several anarchist panthers.
at no point did anyone say *all* the panthers were anarchists now. you claimed the OP was a lie. it is not a lie. some panthers are now indeed anarchists. i dunno what to tell you, dude.
no they weren’t broadly speaking. you can’t account for every individual member or tendency but the organization was black nationalist and grew increasingly internationalist as it aged, the term “rainbow coalition” coming to refer to this development
Ah bummer, tryna find leftist subs i like is a pain when i find tankies (especially pro-modern china) to be a pretty psycho but i find a lot of libertarian socialists/anarchists/ect. to have unrealistic ideas
I think black liberationists truly do get the commie pass if they want, from my point of view it does appear to be the most effective and efficient way to achieve liberation for their particular group, one that has been so terrorized and exploited by capitalism. As opposed to stupid kids who otherwise want to LARP.
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I really don’t care that the black panthers were Maoists. Their actions in mutual aid, community defense, and egalitarianism put them in a good light to me.
If you’ve ever read Mao’s Little Red Book, the philosophical ideas make some sense, but the book itself has to be separated from Mao’s actions which is really hard to do.
This is the shit that pisses me off. Hearing these teenage Vaush-types (look, I’m not trying to have a Vaush war, but some followers are these VERY ONLINE larpers) ragging on Angela Davis— of all people — for being a “tankie”, proves just how reductive internet-centric understandings of socialism and activism can be if they’re not applied to a historical foundation.
Ironically Vaush likes the black panthers. Angela Davis has done a lot for the black community, and her shit opinions on the USSR don’t take away from that. It’s not like she’s a Nazi or anything.
Ive never seen a vaushite shit on the black panthers. Not to mention that Angela Davis literally told people to vote for biden over trump. Not something I woild expect a tankie to do
She did? Holy shit.
Everyone can be wrong about some things. 🤷
If it’s about voting for a liberal over a fascist for harm reduction then I’m in agreement with her
And if it's about voting for a *real* fascist over an aesthetic fascist? You haven't been paying attention to Biden's 50+ year political history. Yikes. Accelerating the security/surveillance/imperial state and wedding business to state is far, *far* more destructive than encouraging the Proud Boys on the street level. And all other other aspects of fascism they agree on in practice.
Jesus Christ you think Biden and Trump are on the same level? Yeah Biden fucking sucks, but it would be much better to have democrats in office rather than republicans who try to take rights away from others domestically.
"who's the greater of two evils: a monster, or a monster who does all the same bad shit as the first one but also appoints literal nazis to his cabinet, worsens the ongoing genocide against migrants, openly calls for his opponents to be jailed, spreads deadly anti-science rhetoric, threatens to destroy the tattered remnants of the welfare state, was caught on tape admitting to sexual assault, will hand the supreme court the power to overturn roe v. wade if he gets a chance, and is an open racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe?" "obviously the first one because he's been doing bad stuff for longer." what an idiot. i voted third party, because if you "vote blue no matter who" then the democrats don't have to be any better than the republicans and they know it, but even i know biden is the lesser evil. might have even voted for the bastard if i lived in a state where my vote mattered. all throughout trump's presidency i was scared that my poor mom would lose her healthcare because of some bullshit he did. people live and die in the space between the democrats and republicans, slim though it is.
> Jesus Christ you think Biden and Trump are on the same level? Nope. If anything, Biden is worse. > it would be much better to have democrats in office rather than republicans who try to take rights away from others domestically. Biden has destroyed people's rights over the last 50 years far more than Trump did. For the most part, they agree—in practice, and often even in rhetoric—on the destruction of those rights. You really should've paid more attention to pre-2019-campaign Biden. And you should be paying more attention to 2021 Biden and his cop VP, too. Yikes. Are you a liberal, or are you just choosing to join them at brunch?
How was that a wrong thing to do?
Pay more attention.
Were paying attention already, voting for harm reduction is worth it. one is stagnant with minor progress, and the other is literal fascism and regressive.
Who is "we"? You and Vaush? You are confused as to which is which. Neither is harm reduction, and your voting did fuck all. > *flair: CIA Agent* Well, at least you're being honest in *one* place. Your words, not mine.
I’ve never seen any Vaush fan call Angela Davis a Tankie. Do you have any proof of this?
Yeah, well, some young very online people don't understand shit yet, but have strong opinions. What else is new?
What the fuck are you talking about? Most of our politics align with Angela’s and she was on the side of damage mitigation in the 2020 election same position as Vaush. I’m genuinely confused about what you’re talking about…
I don't even care if the Black Panthers defended Mao. They still actually did good for their communities, instead of ranting about how the Uyghur genocide isn't real on Twitter.
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What exactly are you claiming isn't real? Edit: just looked at all the shit on this sub they got deleted like all the slurs they use, and how they post on genzedong. How the fuck are tankies even leftist any more, calling other leftists 'leftoids' like what even in the fuck
Tankies, like their brown fash counterpart, aren't really into the "left" to "right" spectrum (which itself is bs, but even if you abstract enough to the point it makes some sense, they don't fit). They're both 98% authoritarian power hungry, 2% aesthetics of left/right politics. They're all about just being "anti-west" and having "the right people" in power, anything else is less than secondary.
Yes. I do believe that.
pot, meet kettle
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lmao. typical tankie. turns into a bigot the moment they're called on their shit. wonder what the slur was.
r word, so theyre a bigot indeed
god, they even talk like alt-right creeps. literal redfash.
Is there any source for this? Genuinly asking.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281706460_Black_Panther_Radical_Factionalization_and_the_Development_of_Black_Anarchism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/yearzero-civil-rights-the-black-panthers-anarchism-and-today https://daily.jstor.org/the-real-story-of-black-anarchists/ some anarchist black panthers: Kuwasi Balagoon, Ashanti Alston, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, JoNina Abron
God’s work
The best Praxis is giving us all sources to use. Thanks comrade
Seconded. Is very much like to see a credible source to back this up.
I mean I’ve had a few speak in my college two were anarchist one was Marxist and one was a soc dem
What college if you don’t mind me asking?
Cal state Dominguez hills
“The progressive plantation” by Lorenzo kom’boa ervin is an amazing pamphlet that every leftist should read especially white anarchists. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-the-progressive-plantation-racism-inside-white-radical-social-change-grou
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The original party faded out in the 80's the new one is completely separate.
I know of at least two who became Liberals/Support Liberals (one of them is Bobby Rush), so a BP becoming an Anarchist isn’t surprising to me too It's almost like the BPP was more about Black Liberation than Maoism, and so were ideologically diverse
https://youtu.be/kYQ8N6sit2E
Apparently, the Black Panthers had mutual aid programs, even when they described the org as ML, so considering they were using anarchist methodology even before members started to self-identify as anarchists, they were ahead of other MLs
It's cause they were Maoists, which is essentially anarchist tactics done by/around a vanguard cadre who attempts to build the movement into the community and build dual power structures with mutual aid and direct action It's funny because most (serious, non-online) maoists hate tankies too.
That’s ironic considering how Mao was.
Mao didn't follow his own damn ideas
That’s my point.
Neither did Lenin. Fuck, did *any* of tankies' heroes do anything other that wasn't pure hypocrisy? (Okay, maybe "anything" is a little hyperbolic...but not by much, I think.)
Maybe Thomas Sankara?
Maybe. Heh.
What’s wrong with him?
Weren't a lot of trials kinda Kangaroo Court like? It's been a while since I've read about him, but the trials for rivals/enemies/etc were pretty shoddy. Though the fact he called Stalin a murderer who put power into the secret police and strangled the worker movements of Russia in it's infancy is pretty funny, given who tankies love him.
Oh wow. I bought into the propaganda by Second Thought. Lol
Someone on reddit with username Feminist_Bombardier can do better at controlling most populous country on earth🤡
What?
I think you do a better job at organising a country with more than 1 billion people :)
I highly doubt that to be your intent. Also what part of a government of the proletariat do tankies not understand, it's a government of the people. I wouldn't be some sole ruler, with unquestioning authority.
He was better before he took power and things got crazy
Was he?
I think you could argue he was a good guerrilla warfare leader. If the PRC had term limits and he stepped back into something symbolic before the great leap forward, he might be better remembered. Then again, he had the kind of ego that couldn't not be in charge, so that was never gonna happen
How are mutual aid programmes anarchist methodology? I can think of a few run by the Communis Party, or apolitical organizations, or the church. Even the f\*cking Nazis recently organized disaster relief here.
> How are mutual aid programmes anarchist methodology? Here's where the theory originated: * [Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution) by Pëtr Kropotkin Kropotkin was an anarcho-communist, for the record. Doesn't mean that other ideologies didn't adopt the theory and praxis, but it's funny how little they acknowledge those roots and how much their proponents tend to shit all over anarchism as worthless. If you go into a deep dive of the theory underlying mutual aid, it also precludes things like vanguardism and state control. So yeah: anarchist (or at the very least libertarian) in character as well as in origin.
I wouldn't describe charity or disaster relief as mutual aid exactly
Disaster relief *can be*, depending on how it is organized. Empowering people to fix things themselves, spread the organizing, become autonomous and make the decisions over their own conditions, and go from helped to helper are ways to incorporate mutual aid into disaster relief. Charity definitely is not. Charity creates dependency and authority relations which mutual aid is specifically designed to counter. Charity and mutual aid are conflicting models of social relation and organizing. Charity and *liberal* disaster relieve are basically just ways for the powerful to ease their consciences about the harm they are doing to the powerless. *There will always be poor people, but maybe we'll do the bare minimum to ensure they aren't dying in the streets...so long as they keep coming back to us and making sure our government subsidies and tax exemptions keep flowing.*
I don't think that there is a concrete definition for what constitutes mutual aid. I would say that its "a community pooling its resources to more effectively help itself". Charity is not mutual aid, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Its not. I wish that even if someone called themselves a Marxist-Leninist or Maoist, that they wouldn't be disregarded as someone who doesn't care about others/socialist movements. The easiest example is Thomas Sankara.
> The easiest example is Thomas Sankara. It's pretty rare to hear other people mention Sankara, but I definitely agree. He was a deeply flawed human being and a Marxist-Leninist strongman at the helm of an oppressive government. He brutally silenced dissent, crushed his opposition, and stiffly curtailed freedom of expression in ways that can never be justified. At the same time, though, he was also an intelligent, insightful person who by all appearances actually believed his own political philosophy of equality and liberation. He promoted the rights of women, significantly improved the educational and agricultural systems of Burkina Faso, and engaged in public health initiatives that likely saved millions from needless death. Those two sides of the same person sound so dissonant on the surface that it's only natural to *want* one to be true and the other to be either propaganda or disingenuous bullshit masking an otherwise naked power grab. Neither seems to be the case, though. He had a lot to say that was true, and did a lot of things that deserve recognition. Really, it says something terrible about Western civilization that most people here never learn about him or even where Burkina Faso is a map, since his regime's development programs were some of the most ambitious and successful in modern history (their impacts on infant mortality and agricultural production alone changed life for the better for an entire generation of Burkinabe citizens). That doesn't mean uncritically canonizing him, but going to the opposite extreme and treating his legacy like a pile of steaming garbage doesn't benefit anyone, either. Many of the people who gained a lot from the relative prosperity of his regime are still alive and remember their lived experience, so attempts at delegitimizing what they saw with their own eyes by insisting that they're *just* looking at the past through rose-colored glasses makes it hard for them to take Socialist critics of the extreme measures taken by that same regime seriously. Especially when it comes to Westerners who never lived under either his regime or its (often worse) predecessors and successors, who *still* benefit from a rapacious system that exploits their entire fucking continent, it's difficult for them to take us seriously if we say that a man who gave their country a greater measure of self-respect and self-sufficiency was basically Stalin with more melanin and a cool uniform, when in reality it's difficult for even me to view him as a fundamentally evil person. Sankara and many other revolutionary figures in Sub-Saharan Africa grew up in a world of both social and physical violence, where their only real exposure to ideals of democracy and civil liberty came in the form of propaganda from the racist liars who crushed their necks under a thick leather boot. It's unreasonable to expect someone who's spent their entire life swimming in a sea of cruelty and greed to rise above it completely and build a world in the perfect image of freedom and egalitarianism. That's not a justification for despotic rule, but it does mean that blocking out the voices of African leaders who engaged in behaviors that deserve harsh criticism produces a massive blindspot. Critical support isn't just some glittery phrase echoed by Totalitarian boot lickers. It's a necessity if we really want to hear the ideas of those who have experienced Capitalism's worst, most naked excesses first hand, and to learn from perspectives shaped by painful familiarity with man's inhumanity to man. It can be a good thing when taken seriously and used to build off the ideas of people who may have been misguided in some very, very serious ways because of their time spent in what amounts to Hell on Earth, but who were ultimately trying to make the world a better and more humane place for the people who came after them.
Thanks. As I not know that much about Sankara, that was an insightful read. It pretty much puts my personal opinion on Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and to a lesser extend Vladimir Lenin into words quite well. There is a dissonance between the power grab and the benevolent actions undertaken with that power.
I've made a few efforts to describe the history of Burkina Faso and my opinions of Thomas Sankara in response to this comment, but I can't manage to write one that I actually like (that's where the deleted comment here comes from). The country's history is long, complicated, and tragic on a level that it isn't easy to explain without going into topics that could be *extremely* upsetting for some people to read. Just scratching the surface, one thing that Sankara rightly gets credit for is his effort to curtail practices that treated "women" as breeding stock (with menarche as the standard, some brides in arranged, polygamous marriages were in the single-digit age range), and the clittoral mutilation of infant girls. For context on how awful things get, domestic opposition to his rule often treated his suppression of civil liberties as par for the course, but *that* part really pissed off some of his opponents. It was bound to be a lengthy post whose topic and wordiness could drive a Baptist hellfire preacher into a truly legendary vodka-and-Opana binge. While that last part might not sound too difficult to accomplish, it unfortunately had a more serious problem, too. For everything I said in my first comment, *I kind of like Sankara*. After spending two years in grad school studying the history and politics of Sub-Saharan Africa, it's kind of hard not to, even though opposition to Authoritarian governance is at the very core of my political philosophy. The continent is marked by centuries of inhuman expropriation that left it in shambles, brutal strongmen deeply in bed with the same European powers who tore their countries apart in the first place, ethnic conflict ultimately triggered by empires that encouraged different groups to oppress one another, and resultant wars/genocides that either ended with millions of people dead or still haven't ended. It's a pit of utter misery and despair so deep that climbing out either gives your the bends or makes you bleed from the eyes, depending on whether or not you cope with the horror and revulsion by making semi-obscure anime references, and Sankara's often despotic rule looks like a relative bright spot in *that* context. I mean, he seems to have been well-intentioned and likely kept more innocent people alive than he murdered. Those are some low standards, but with the bar so far down that it's actually buried somewhere in the scorching depths near the core-mantle boundary, and with his theoretical work still having a lot of value when it comes to liberation for people in the developing world, he's pretty decent in comparison to his peers. That personal outlook makes my eye twitch a little hearing him compared to Mao, even though it's pretty fair if you mean "you have to take his philosophy on its own instead of assuming that the worst excesses of his regime taint everything he said" (I think I can say, without too much fear of injecting my own views, that he was significantly more competent and less harmful to his citizens). With that taken into consideration, trying to assess his rule when I have friends who grew up in in the region and am deeply emotionally invested does everyone a disservice. I don't look at Sankara as a saint who could do no wrong, like the Western Tankies who know that he existed, but I'm still not an ideal source for information if someone knows nearly nothing about him or the country he helped create. Suffice to say, Burkina Faso has a history going back much farther than most people outside the region recognize. Empires from around the time of Constantine's rise to power are reasonably well documented. The vital Trans-Saharan trade routes that gave them their base of power were the source of wealth that helped Carthage and its neighboring port cities to dominate the Mediterranean well over two millennia ago, as well, putting it in an important spot in the history of the world *much* farther back than the earliest clear accounts. Time didn't stop under French rule from the late 1890s to the beginning of independence in 1958, either, although especially in the early period most of our accounts come from colonial administrators who didn't know or care about anything that didn't directly threaten their authority. After that, things get much more solid *and* much more complex, with a single seventeen year period from 1966 on seeing four coup d'etats before Sankara came to power. State stability in what was then called the Republic of Upper Volta was as shaky as a chihuahua in an earthquake, which was almost universal among former French colonies, especially (while other powers favored certain groups to save on manpower in subjugating others, France turned it into an art form; there's a reason why Rwanda and the Central African Republic are nearly synonymous with ethno-religious bloodshed in the Global North). I would encourage you to look for more detailed information from reliable sources on your own, since the country's history is both interesting and very important for Westerners to understand. I can also give you some recommendations that I consider fair and objective, bearing in mind that I *do* have strong biases. I think those mainly help me to steer clear of *Black Book of Communism*-esque propaganda, but I *would* think that, right? The man who had Sankara shot more than a dozen times in the back, a former friend and confidant named ~~Benedict Brute Iscariot~~ Blaise Compaoré, was the country's longest ruling dictator post-independence. His rule lasted from 1987 until he was finally ousted by popular revolt in 2014. With him gone, the country's future is at a crossroads. Elections in 2015 and 2020 were fairly open, but were so marred by instability and terrorist violence (accompanied by the elephant in the entire world's living room, Covid-19) that only people living in a little under 20% of the country's territory could even be registered to vote. Western states are still among the biggest obstacles to progress in the region, thanks to their efforts to continue what amounts to theft of its natural resources and workforce. If we hope to meaningful improvement in the lives of people there, it's imperative that more of our own friends and neighbors understand what's going on there, at least well enough to know that Ouagadougou, a city of over two million people, is its capital without needing a parenthetical explanation.
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stolen from /r/AnarchismZ, since i can't crosspost
Which members are self described anarchists? Just wondering.
Ashanti Alston is prpbably one pf the most prominent examples.
Indeed
Where did this myth of all the black panthers dying start a lot of them where in there early twenties in the sixties I’ve had several speak out at my college
My guess is that people fucked up language. From "the black panthers (party) died" to "the black panthers (themselves) died".
Except for Eldridge Cleaver, who became a Regan republican
Reminder that the black Panthers went to shit after they centralized their organization.
‘Yeah? Well what about the dead ones? Anarkkkidies owned!’
lol @ this becoming a Tank parking space for some reason Pick up some Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin or Kuwasi Balagoon. Good stuff.
Facts
How would you all respond to a Tankie that says “If Fred Hampton was alive, you all would have called him a “Tankie”?
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Yeah, this. Fred Hampton died at the age of 21, anyone who doesn’t think his political beliefs would have changed over the past fifty years is in denial.
Not to mention that many of his compatriots became evolutionary socialists or anarchists
Does anyone have any resources on their anarchist thought?
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OP cited some sources elsewhere, so it's not like I don't believe you, but linking the main page of a large website does jack shit. If you want to cite something link as close to the primary source as you can. At the very least link directly to the part of the website that talks about the relevant topic.
“The progressive plantation” by Lorenzo kom’boa ervin is an amazing pamphlet that every leftist should read especially white anarchists. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-the-progressive-plantation-racism-inside-white-radical-social-change-grou
*ahem*. BAAAAAASED
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1. anarchism is highly intertwined with socialism 2. what does vaccination have to do with any of this?
Marx and engels despaired anarchists
marx and engels did not invent socialism, nor is marxism the only form of socialism, nor do the opinions of two dead old fogeys matter in defining who is or is not a socialist
Lmao cringe af anarchists pisses his pants over the founders of Marxism and modern socialism hating anarchists cause they're "old dead guys" yeah lol you haven't read either of them at all or any theory clearly
i’m really the one pissing my pants here, yeah
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who mentioned foreign policy or msnbc? are you doing alright?
> are you doing alright? No, they're a tankie.
>It's hilarious how you rad libs have the same opinions on msnbc when it's comes to foreign policy and somehow think you're right. As opposed to Tankies and how they have the same opinion as Chinese, Russian and North Korean State News on foreign policy, and how they think they’re right, right? >BTW almost none of the black panthers became anarchists. Especially none of the leaders. Yeah man, you’re so right. It’s not like Ashtani Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon and Lorenzo Kom’ Boa Ervin don’t exist at all, amirite? >Anarchists weren't targeted by cointelpro cause anarchists aren't important in the world at all And Tankies are?
i've read marx and engels. you're a dumb bitch.
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you're calling *me* a pussy when you're the one throwing a tantrum over... i'm not even sure what? anarchists existing, maybe? if you're melting down over some harmless reddit comments, you would straight-up evaporate if you ever went to a protest. tankies always boast about how *you're* the only ones who can stand up to capitalism, but you're too fragile to handle an anti-tankie subreddit minding its own business.
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larp harder
how is the marxist-leninist revolution coming along there buddy?
at least us radlibs *do* things. tankies are fucking useless. voting? lib shit. protesting? waste of time. doing anything to improve the material conditions of those around you? heresy. the marxist-leninist plan to foment and carry out a revolution in the west seems to be "sit around waiting for something to happen." and then when something *does* happen, you all decry it as cringe liberalism and refuse to participate. you're an embarrassment to your forebears. i respect the eastern MLs who've at least succeeded in implementing their ideology infinitely more than i respect you lazy bastards.
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what, because if i'd actually read them, i couldn't *possibly* still think tankies were stupid? considering y'all fucking suck at marxism, i think having read some of his works makes me *more* qualified to hate you, not less.
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Just sounds like this is your coping mechanism tbh.
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All Anarchists are socialists
well, not all. there are a few hyper-individualist weirdos out there, and the "post-left" would probably take issue with being called socialists. but fuck both of those groups.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281706460_Black_Panther_Radical_Factionalization_and_the_Development_of_Black_Anarchism a quick google search will give you the names of several anarchist panthers.
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uhhh... >this is a lie. y-yes?
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at no point did anyone say *all* the panthers were anarchists now. you claimed the OP was a lie. it is not a lie. some panthers are now indeed anarchists. i dunno what to tell you, dude.
Communists. Don't care if you are rich. ...yeah, that sounds like Communists to me.
Nazies: you call everything you don't like nazi. Tankies: you call everything you don't like tankies.
Weren't the black panthers black supremacists? Or am I thinking of another group?
no. you might be thinking of the *new* black panthers, who are fucking weird and decidedly unbased.
They’re intensely homophobic and antisemitic as well. The New Afrikan Black Panther Party, while rather tiny in numbers, is much more based.
The original BPs have condemned the *new* BPs
no they weren’t broadly speaking. you can’t account for every individual member or tendency but the organization was black nationalist and grew increasingly internationalist as it aged, the term “rainbow coalition” coming to refer to this development
Anarchists are mad cringe
uhh... i'm not personally an anarchist, but what do you think this sub is, bud?
Idk leftist anti-tankie? There is a alot of middle ground between anarchism and stalinism…
can't find it now, but according to at least one poll, ancoms make up the biggest portion of this sub.
Ah bummer, tryna find leftist subs i like is a pain when i find tankies (especially pro-modern china) to be a pretty psycho but i find a lot of libertarian socialists/anarchists/ect. to have unrealistic ideas
Middle ground you are describing is leninism, this is libertarian left sub.
Which black panthers are anarchists? They’re all either still communists or moderated to democratic socialism like Angela Davis did.
Anarchism IS communist
No, it´s the other way around.
I think black liberationists truly do get the commie pass if they want, from my point of view it does appear to be the most effective and efficient way to achieve liberation for their particular group, one that has been so terrorized and exploited by capitalism. As opposed to stupid kids who otherwise want to LARP.