I’d call BE an eclectic Marxist tbh.

He definitely holds his fair share of ultra positions but he’s not actually an ultra; he mentioned that he considered Stalin to be 50/50 good/bad and Mao to be 70/30. An ultra wouldn’t say anything like that (despite my objections that those names at the least need to be swapped around; not to start a struggle session but Stalin made a lot of choices that were either under duress or the best of a bad set of options while Mao made some major fuckups all by himself, although I think both figures need higher ratings tbh.)

One thing that wasn’t mentioned in that post is that BE denied the fact that BA415 faced any credible threat because he wasn’t at risk of being killed after being doxed.

For one thing, I believe it was France that had its demographic data used to aid in identifying the people who were put into concentration camps and/or exterminated; just because your personal information is safe today under the current regime is no assurance that your personal information won’t be used against you tomorrow under different circumstances.

Another thing is that this is just completely false. It’s not a stretch to imagine that he might have been swatted and that during the swatting he could have gotten killed, either through typical Yankee cop negligence or by something more malicious and planned.

Last of all, being doxed can pose a significant threat to your safety and wellbeing without credible threats to your life. Just because nobody is coming around to your address to put a bullet in your head doesn’t mean that they aren’t ordering a barrage of pizzas at all times of the night, that people can’t threaten, intimidate, or harass you, that they can’t interfere with your job, that they can’t get you fired, evicted, or brought up on false charges etc.

I’d love to get BE to respond on stream to a question about why he keeps his identity and residence away from public knowledge because he’d immediately give half a dozen reasons why this is the case without needing a moment to think about it. It would really undermine this shitty hot take of his.

Add “no bosses” to that list too.

Y’all think that any sort of construction or manufacturing is going to run in a self-organised fashion without foremen? Lol, good luck.

If you’ve never worked in a factory before, that’s cool but there are much better ways of announcing this fact and I think that it’s important to remember the old “No investigation, no right to speak” or, in their terms “In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker”.

I try not to focus too much on these types because I’m convinced that a couple of years of touching grass, working for a living, and spending time doing on the ground organising will bring these infantile urges in people to a conclusion in all but the most stubborn-minded. Although you can cut through these naive ideological positions by tracing out how there was (vulgar) vanguardism in their favourite historical socialist projects and how leadership was crucial to their functioning. That being said I have more important things to do with my time than engaging people with discussions on that stuff tbh.

When your ideology is primarily individualist and largely aesthetic, you end up with a ton of people who treat their political orientation as a fashion statement.

Speaking as an ex-anarchist, there’s a massive trend in anarchism to not be focused on the ideological distinctions between the plethora of anarchist subtypes but instead to align oneself to a flavour of anarchism which is most appealing.

In communist thought you have very clear distinctions which are based on theoretical and practical disagreements (practical in the sense of socialism being put into practice); you have leftcoms and Trotskyists and council communists and MLs and MLMs etc. All of whom you can trace out their positions and their ideological stances from.

In anarchism it’s much more about what the individual is most attracted to as a cause than this. Sure there are platformists, DeLeonists, and egoists, for example, which fit what I’ve mentioned above about disagreements on theory and practice but you’re more likely to find an anarcha-feminist or an eco-anarchist than you will a DeLeonist or a platformist imo.

With that in mind it should come as no surprise that so much of anarchism is focused on fashion.

Thank you, robot.

There are a few things to consider:

Mao’s paper tiger

The average lifespan of an empire is 250 years

That the situation has always been desperate and hopeless, perhaps moreso in periods of history than it is today. We can look to the battle of Stalingrad or the Long March or the period around the October Revolution as examples of just how desperate things have been and how we have been able to prevail against all odds. Heck, Lenin didn’t expect to see the revolution in his lifetime and then in a few short years he ended up leading it.

I’m not going to go into depth on this because I don’t have the focus rn but ultimately this is a question of having a world to win and daring to invent the future. We have two propositions:

• We are in a hopeless situation with no potential for achieving revolution
• We are in a situation which has potential for achieving a revolution

The importance of revolutionary optimism cannot be overstated. (There are some good video essays out there on this topic.)

Ultimately, the choice is between an attitude of defeatism or revolutionary optimism. If we choose defeatism then we foreclose on the potential for revolution because, if an opportunity for revolution exists, we will not be in a position to seize it.

If we choose revolutionary optimism, on the other hand, we have the ability to seize the opportunity.

We cannot allow ourselves to foreclose on the opportunity for revolution because we will only ever know if something is possible by striving for it and, in achieving it, proving that it is in fact possible retrospectively.

As someone who does deep dives into finding historical sources to confirm what is claimed in secondary sources, believe me that it’s actually really hard work to turn up primary sources from the era prior to digitisation of media (as before the period where stuff like newspapers were regularly added into online archives as searchable text — say around the 70s or 80s.)

No shade on India here but because it was colonised for such a long time, it never had a chance to industrialise and develop its archiving and its historical record comprehensively while under the boot of colonialism in the same way that countries like the US or Britain have been able to, not until recently anyways, so it’s probably a later era that you’re looking at when it comes to newspapers being digitised.

What you’d likely need to do would be to go digging through a the major newspapers of the time in that year, likely in national archives or in the archives of major newspaper companies, in order to find the quote in question because it was likely published in the print news first and later quoted in this flyer. And I’m talking stuff which is likely scanned but never indexed or converted to searchable text. Which would be a ton of legwork to do and there’s no guarantee that you’d be able to find the exact newspaper article or that the newspaper article itself has been preserved in archives. It might even require searching in hard copy archives.

I appreciate your skepticism and it’s definitely an open question as to the historicity of this quote but at the same time, when you’re digging this far back into history for a particular source (especially when it’s across languages), it quickly become an especially arduous task to find primary sources. It’s the sort of thing that you’d likely need to get in contact with a historian who specialises in the famine from the perspective of India to ask for their assistance with tbh.

It’s extremely likely, to the point that it would be inconceivable that it wouldn’t be the case, that the Indian Embassy had multiple diplomats assigned to it and that P. Ratnam was Charge d’affaires or another embassy staffer with a lower rank than ambassador.

Go on then, tell me which leftist leaders you think should be upheld.

It’s like I’d color my face blue and someone calls me a racist, discriminating penguins.

It’s strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.

If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?

Probably not.

Would you say that the swastika isn’t a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?

Maybe. I can’t speak for you.

The origin of something doesn’t determine its usage.

I challenged this notion with a lib the other day.

The watermelon originated in Africa. That doesn’t mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.

You can also look to the origin and continuing usage of the swastika, especially in Asian cultures, as another example here - you aren’t going to tell me that the right-angled unicode swastika being used by westerners on the internet isn’t done in service of fascism 99% of the time.

And on that matter, don’t let erm-ackshually dorks tell you that the 90 degree swastika wasn’t used by Nazis and isn’t representative of them. One of the most famous depictions of the Nazi swastika is a right angled one:

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1214749781387436032/pu/vid/450x360/o0Nxlts0lffM8lUv.mp4

a tactic they would repeat with catalonia btw

Fine, you’re going to go there. What’s your source for the USSR attempting to strong-arm the CNT-FAI into not being anarchist?

Whataboutism (and a bunch of propaganda).

You’re literally engaging in genocide denialism right now.

Pointing out the rank hypocrisy of expecting peaceful coexistence from the Bolsheviks towards the Makhnovists when the Makhnovists neither extended this to the Bolsheviks nor to the Mennonites is whataboutism? I’m asking you to account for why your concern for this only ever goes one way. I never said “but the Makhnovists attacked other people!!” in defense of the actions of the Bolsheviks. That’s what whataboutism is. Asking you to reconcile the inconsistencies in your own position is not whataboutism, unless that’s an implicit admission on your behalf of the fact that you think that this is somehow irrelevant.

This is exactly where these discussions with anarchists always go to. Now it’s a pity that you didn’t go all-in and accuse me of spreading Bolshevik propaganda but that’s just how it is.

So I take it that eyewitness testimony from Volin counts as “propaganda” in your eyes?

The only one trying to push a narrative here is you. By your own admission that was the aim of your entire post.

The genocide denier who is justifying the extrajudicial execution of Black Army officers for holding Bolshevik sympathies and who is handwaving genocide as “propaganda” is claiming that they aren’t pushing a narrative. Right. Sure thing.

This really isn’t painting yourself in the light that you think it is.

What exactly is hypocritical about not arguing with someone who… agrees with me? You spare me the propaganda too, please.

You’re really doubling down on these whole propaganda accusations, aren’t you?

By “someone who agrees with me” I take it that you agree with people who supports Makhno’s penchant for gang rape and what is at the least his turning a blind eye towards genocide?

I’ve yet to meet a Lenin PFP that treats me with basic respect, you being no exception

I’m responding to you in the tone that you’re taking with me. I get that you think that you’ve got the moral high ground and that you’re justified in what you do but to call foul on me when you go sticking words in my mouth and I don’t respond to that with a charitable attitude that you clearly couldn’t manage to extend to me.

You completely ignored the points that I made in my post and went straight ahead reasserting a claim without directly addressing why I refuted that point. You’re not going to get a patient response out of me if you don’t bother reading the post you respond to.

What the fuck are you talking about? Are you just trying to carve in as many “owns” as possible into your post?

No. It’s not an “own”. You’re putting words in my mouth and you’re speaking from a place of ignorance.

If you want to explain to me how your low-key gaslighting and your attempts to speak for my opinions is somehow in line with your principles then go right ahead.

This hostility that you’re bringing to bear and this readiness to abandon your own principles because you’re speaking with someone who you’ve decided is your enemy is one of the reasons that I don’t bring up when I tell people what made me stop being an anarchist but believe me when I say that it’s very familiar to me.

You can’t have a basic conversation with another person, you must always be disrespectful, mocking, smug, belittling and angry.

Look at exactly where the conversation took a turn. You decided to bring the heat and then I responded in kind and now you’re calling foul.

Are you really going to make the that anarchists are aware of what Makhno wrote in The Road to Freedom?

Are you seriously going to disregard Volin’s work as propaganda?

Don’t piss on my boots and tell me that it’s raining.

I know this dance. The next reply is going to be you demanding sources for every little point I’ve made, which is fine—I have them all and I’m going to provide them for you if you ask—but you are going to ignore where I’ve called you to account for your own sources.

Then I’m going to ignore your next reply and state that you haven’t provided me with any sources which I have sparingly requested (it’s one direct and about two indirect requests) where I have asked for them and that if you’re going to make me go to the effort of quoting a series of sources and you want a reply from me then you can start with providing me with the sources I requested from you multiple comments ago.

Then the conversation takes on its end phase.

This is where people bail from the exchange because they can’t be bothered to find a bare couple of sources, they provide some tertiary source blogpost or opinion piece that would make a first year uni student blush, or they skim something to come up with a refutation for a couple of sources that I’ve provided to try and debunk my sources (at which point I bring my knowledge to bear and lay it down really hard because it’s easy to tell when someone is cherry-picking from a source they aren’t familiar with and I have no patience for that sort of point-scoring nonsense.)

I could be wrong though. Who knows? The world is full of surprises.

That’s so much more important to you than an actual argument, that you always end up showing a complete and utter lack of understanding of even the most basic principles of what anarchism even stands for or wants, while claiming you know it better than us. I don’t know if this mentality just stuck to you after reading so much Lenin or if it’s a genuine tactic, but every single one of you I’ve met has always done the exact same thing, no matter if I approach respectfully or not.

You’re speaking for me again. This is a consistent pattern in your replies and it’s wearing very thin.

This is an absolutely pitiful strawman.

You’re denouncing me for a lack of familiarity with anarchism, you claim that I’m speaking about anarchism from a place of ignorance, and all in order to win an argument.

What seems to be lost on you is the bitter irony that you are assuming my level of knowledge of anarchism, you are speaking from a place of ignorance about my knowledge thereof, and you doing this all to win an argument yourself.

If you had done a little research on me, you would have realised that I have recently commented stating that I was a long-term anarchist and that my politics only changed recently. You would have noticed that I was an anarchist long enough to have outlived at least one anarchist comrade, that I was embedded enough in the Reddit anarchist scene that I recognised this user by their distinctive writing style across multiple accounts, that I noticed this user stopped posting around the same time that word got around through my networks of an anarchist in Portland dying a violent death.

You would be able to quickly find that this comrades’ account was active at least ten years ago, often in slapfights with Denny_Craine, although that account has been deleted. If you do some quick math, assuming that they went through multiple accounts and that I had been a part of the anarchist community long enough to build up a familiarity with their posting style and to build up networks to receive news through, that this would put me somewhere in the vicinity of being an anarchist for longer than some anarchists have been on this earth for.

If you want more receipts, instead of obfuscating some of the details like I tend to for the sake of plausible deniability, another of Kealiher’s more recent accounts was u/AllThePostLeftists. There’s a post out there on reddit stating that the user of this account was sentenced to 15 days in prison. There are details that can be found at Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland where Sean Kealiher was also in custody for 15 days. (Sean was still a kid back then so there’s very few details about this however.)

So tell me, have you been an anarchist long enough to be embedded in the anarchist community? Long enough to recognise users by their writing style that if their account was deleted and they sprang up with a new one and didn’t announce their name or reach out to you to identify themselves you’d still be able to recognise them? Have you been an anarchist long enough that you’ve had comrades pass away?

On what basis do you dare to speak for my knowledge of anarchism if you haven’t even bothered to familiarise yourself with some recent comments of mine?

There’s a little quote from Mao that MLs take seriously and that anarchists would benefit from doing the same:

No investigation, no right to speak

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least.

When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense.

Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

It won’ t do!
It won’t do!

You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!

I have literally never disputed this. I’ve never met an anarchist that did. You keep bringing it up as if its a super own that changes everything, it really doesn’t.

I made a clear statement in response to yours and you asked why I would even bring it up. I explained exactly why I brought it up and how it’s relevant to the discussion and now you’re saying that you never disputed this.

I’m not saying “you disputed this”, I’m simply answering a question you asked. And I brought the fact up that the USSR resupplied the Black Army once so far so I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that I keep on bringing it up but whatever.

It seems to me like you made up an angry baby anarchist in your head to be mad about instead of going against anything real people believe.

It seems to me that you yourself were claiming that it was an alliance just a comment ago, that you haven’t spent nearly as much time in discussions with anarchists about Makhnovia than I have, and that you’re once again assuming a position of authority over my own experiences. That’s more than a little condescending.

To just pretend that the anarchists persecuted and purged the poor little innocent bolsheviks out of nowhere and for no reason other than ideology is just as idiotic and ignorant of what was really happening. Once again, we are all supposed to excuse and understand and give the benefit of the doubt to and even support bolsheivk attrocities no matter how repressive, bloody and absurd, but anything bad an anarchist does is “those evil anarkiddies!!!” with no other context or reason.

This is just concern-trolling. You haven’t actually given a direct response to what I am missing from this particular event, you’re just handwaving and making vague allusions and implying that what they did was just without actually stating as much. And it’s pretty damning that you’d use a term like “purge” to minimise the extrajudicial executions that happened by Makhno’s command. People get purged out of parties not out of existence.

So then enlighten me as to what Makhno’s motivations were exactly.

Do you even know of the event that I’m referring to? Or are you just running defence reflexively because you’re treating this like it’s some sort of team sport?

There was a very serious distrust that the bolsheviks were just taking advantage of them and treating them like useful idiots, giving basically scraps as “aid” with increasingly pressuring terms and conditions that they would not even get that if they didn’t immediately stop being anarchists (a tactic they would repeat with catalonia btw). It is completely understandable that they thought the very openly anti-anarchist bolsheviks that were helping out were going to backstab them when they had the chance to. What would you have done in that situation, smartass?

What exactly do you refer to when you say that there was increasing pressure on them to stop being anarchists from the Bolsheviks by way of forcing conditions and terms?

And what would you have done with a military force that was suppressing your political movement domestically on part of your territory which was openly hostile towards you and would go so far as to establish terror cells within your own country?

It seems like your political beliefs have blinded you to the reality of the situation. The Makhnovists were openly hostile to the Bolsheviks and they attacked them, which totally is fine and completely justified, but the Bolsheviks attacking the Makhnovists is not okay because they should have simply extended a sort of grace to the Makhnovists which was entirely unreciprocated out of a sense of goodwill to those who consider themselves the mortal enemies of the Bolsheviks.

Seriously, what’s the point of insisting on this?

You made the point that the Black Army was critical to the war effort. I made the point that the USSR was also critical to the Black Army’s war effort.

The relevance to the discussion should be apparent. I’m not sure how much clearer I need to be.

what they did in the end is still deplorable.

If we’re helping each other survive, and once you can survive on your own (in a big part thanks to me), you shoot me in the back of the head, it doesn’t stop being something shitty to do just because I expected it, or because you had helped me too before you decided to shoot me.

Right. So you’re obviously operating under this notion that the Makhnovists were intending on a path of peaceful coexistence with the Bolsheviks.

This doesn’t square with historical facts.

Makhno ordered some of his most effective military leaders who were Bolshevik sympathisers to be summarily executed by his secret police, the Kontrrazvedka, which was in violation of what ostensibly was the democratic structure of Makhnovia by ignoring the authority of the Military Revolutionary Council.

So talking about “shooting someone in the back of the head” is especially pertinent to this discussion.

The Kontrrazvedka set up terror cells within the USSR. That doesn’t bode well for an idyllic notion of peaceful coexistence imo.

Makhno also ordered the execution of journalists and the destruction of their printing houses because they were disseminating material which was too sympathetic towards the bolsheviks. It was only the fact that cooler heads in his leadership prevailed over this and convinced him against getting these orders carried out.

There’s a very clear pattern of outright antagonism towards the Bolsheviks across Makhno’s reign. This “UwU I’m just a smol anarchist bean who wants to be free to do my own thing, why not just leave me be?” routine doesn’t hold water.

Makhno knew that certain cities that the Black Army had gained control over were more sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks and I fail to see that he would extend this demand for peaceful coexistence to that cohort of the population.

In fact, while we’re talking about it, it’s funny that you’d demand such a thing for a group which did not extend the same idea to the Mennonites and the German settlers. Strange how you’d demand this for one group and yet apparently have no concern about extending it to others - is it that you simply feel that Makhnovia had a special entitlement to being left alone to practise their society because they align with your own political beliefs?

Can’t wait for another Lenin PFP to say the sabotage didn’t happen, and if it did it was minor, and if it wasn’t it was their fault, and if it wasn’t they should have expected it, and if they did they deserved it anyway, and if they didn’t anarchists were sabotaging too, and if they weren’t well they still couldn’t endure it so clearly anarchism doesn’t work.

Can’t wait for another reply from you which relies on vibes and convenient narratives to summarily dismiss historical facts which go against your beliefs.

Can’t wait for more handwringing over a *gasp!* Lenin pfp. (I bet you don’t do this for the gang-raping and ethnociding Makhno when you see his pfp, do you? Spare me your feigned outrage and your hypocrisy.)

Can’t wait for an anarchist to assume a position of unjust hierarchy over my own opinions on the matter.

Also… why do you stick to anarchism? What I’m talking about happened with statists too. Hungary, Yugoslavia? The fucking Sino-Soviet split?

…I’ve made one effortpost. I’ve written it on some factors in Makhnovia.

Are you planning to sign up to my Patreon or something? If not, by what right do you demand that I write on topics that you feel are the most important for me to research and write about?

This topic has been an area of interest for me for longer than I’ve been an ML. I write from a place of knowledge on the topic. I don’t know enough and I haven’t researched enough to provide a developed, in-depth opinion on the Sino-Soviet Split, for example. And there is precious little that is written about Makhnovia/the war in the Ukraine in the interwar period and the Spanish Civil War that isn’t from a liberal or someone that views anarchism with rose-tinted glasses. That would be my other reason.

You are more than welcome to make your own posts on such matters if this sense of importance that you place on them is something that you sincerely hold rather than being little more than cheap concern-trolling.

You state it was an alliance. Clearly you don’t know much about this historical event and you didn’t manage to read four sentences into what I wrote.

and I’ve never met any anarchist who thought the alliance was not temporary or even that it could last.

I’ve come across plenty.

The facts still are that anarchists helped the USSR survive

And the USSR provided critical materiel to the Makhnovists at a time when they had dwindling supplies so, in turn, the USSR helped the Makhnovists survive but yet again, historical facts escape the convenient narrative it seems.

Especially because they had that same behaviour throughout their entire lifespan - of crushing or abandoning any socialist movement that weren’t 100% aligned with theirs.

Stick around for my effort posts on Revolutionary Catalonia and, eventually, the Kronstadt Rebellion I guess. There’s plenty more to learn from history.

Kwame Ture was such a good speaker

>mrw

(That’s Jin Xing btw)

Did you notice how, time and again, the narrative emerges that the anarchists were too disorganised and that they kept on stepping on their own dicks to disastrous outcomes?

Instead of organising, they set up a squat and started doing mutual aid in a warzone which, unsurprisingly, didn’t last.

And then, at the end of the article which was written in 2022, they finally state:

Anarchists are now trying to create horizontal grassroots ties in society, based on common interests, so that communities can address their own needs, including self-defense. This differs significantly from ordinary Ukrainian political practice, in which it is often proposed to unite around organizations, representatives, or the police. Organizations and representatives are often bribed and the people who have gathered around them remain deceived. The police may, for example, defend LGBT events but get mad if these activists join a riot against police brutality. Actually, this is why we see potential in our ideas—but if a war breaks out, the main thing will again be the ability to participate in armed conflict.

This article was released at the time of the Russian special military operation commencing.

The war was already at their doorstep in 2014 and it took them 8 years to pull themselves together and to decide that they should start laying foundations within the community to prepare for war, all the while fascist paramilitaries are crawling all over Eastern Ukraine.

Given that I’ve heard literally zero about any anarchist militias in the Ukraine since this article, I can only assume that the weeks of preparation they must have put into developing links into the broader community never ended up bearing fruit.

They were never allies. They had a pact together to fight the Whites which was well-known between both sides to be temporary.

Upon the signing of the pact, Makhno had this to say in The Road to Freedom, the publication that was the Makhnovist mouthpiece, on October 13, 1920:

"Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased.

Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?

What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists. We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, ‘fusion’ or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case."

Those are not the words of allies and, regardless, you don’t sign pacts with your allies.

This anarchist historical revisionist myth (along with the persecution fetish such arguments furnish) needs to die its long-overdue death but it won’t because anarchism is the highest stage of not doing the reading.