Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.

I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”

Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.

Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?

  • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    112·
    5 hours ago

    As an anarchist, how it went for me:

    Read history. Have intimate relationships with at least two tankies (all my relationships end badly, so its a sure way to build a grudge).

    Marx was cool though (sometimes), and I’ve got some ml comrades who are doing pretty much the right thing, and most importantly: I’d rather be murdered by my hot problematic ex in a few years than some shitty nazi tomorrow. So if there are firing squads for the anarchists, my last wish is that one of my exes do mine, please.

    If I get my way, you guys can run the trains.

    If none of this makes sense, read some less myopic history. The USSR was unquestionably better than the czarist regime, by a lot, and it was the worst most reactionary group of communists kind of giving communism a bad name by being generally shitty about being bare minimum decent¹. Also the bolsheviks killing all the other communists, not just the anarchists. Yes they moved Russia, technologically, farther in their short life than basically any civilization in history, but they did it by shitting on the core ideas of communism for some peripheral crap Marx said was ‘probably a thing you need sometjing like to get there, I think’. There’s an opportunity cost thing, and I’ll give them more understanding, but they do not get a full pass for bad behavior just because they were communist. What’s the incident where the term ‘tankie’ was born? Remember that one?

    Yes they were better than the other world powers, but by as little as they could get away with while still calling themselves communist, like they relished the misery, fetishized the sacrifices, and frequently missed the god damn point. They ruled for a people they weren’t willing to trust or like, a lesson robespierre had already fucking taught us, and that poisoned the idea of communism, or at least the word, for a lot of people. Thats why I still have to call myself an anarchist instead of an anarcho-communist if I want to turn libs.

    ¹which, yes, set the entire rest of the world against them. They had a few teeeensy difficulties. They still used it as a license to be otherwise just as awful as everyone else, and handled their problems in utterly deplorable ways.

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      15·
      4 hours ago

      and it was the worst most reactionary group of communists kind of giving communism a bad name by being generally shitty about being bare minimum decent¹

      I think you are extremely not aware of their achievements, or are undervaluing things such as guaranteed housing (I want to reiterate this point - it means that the state does not just up and torture and kill people by forcing them onto the streets - this is something that nobody seems to pay much attention to, including anarchists, for whatever reason), guaranteed healthcare (meaning that people are not tortured by being declined a basic need in this regard, either), the sort of women’s rights that we take for granted today (including criminalisation of marital SA - first in the world).
      I am sorry, but in what world is that ‘the most reactionary group of communists’, and how is this ‘the bare minimum’? This is massive.

      Also the bolsheviks killing all the other communists, not just the anarchists

      I’m not sure what groups are you referring to.

      Yes they were better than the other world powers, but by as little as they could get away with

      This is just straight up false. Their internal achievements were massive. Internationally, they supported basically every anti-colonial liberation movement in the world (which, for example, is a huge contrast between them and the PRC). They were not under any obligation to do the good that they did in that regard.

      like they relished the misery, fetishized the sacrifices, and frequently missed the god damn point

      I’m sorry, but this is just obvious unsubstantiated fantasy. I am saying this as a person who both has put effort into investigating the USSR, and who has easy access to people who lived and worked in the USSR and who knows what those people think on the matter.

      • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        You’re completely missing the point of what I said for the sake of defensiveness, and its too late in the day for me to rewrite it better. Your points are all broadly addressed in whar youre replying to. Re-read what I already wrote or dont; youre not getting better out of me right now.

        • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          2 hours ago

          You’re completely missing the point of what I said for the sake of defensiveness

          Firstly, what points am I missing?
          Secondly, you mistake an honest attempt to educate as ‘defensiveness’. If you want to try to escalate, I assure you that I can bite back and that I have studied the topic. I would like to ask you to keep things civil, however.

          Your points are all broadly addressed in whar youre replying to

          Except, they are evidently not.

          You do not address the fact that the Bolsheviks were progressive even by today’s standards (the guaranteed housing alone is a very significant development that is possible due to planned economy and you may notice that planned economies at least usually - if not always - provide guaranteed housing).

          You do not address the fact that the USSR did quite a bit more than ‘the bare minimum’ internationally, either. The claim in your original comment is outright false.

          You do not address the fact that your claim that ‘they relished the misery, fetishized the sacrifices, and frequently missed the god damn point’ is just fantasy that doesn’t mean anything and is just meant to very vaguely paint communists in a bad light.

          I am going to note that you refused to elaborate on any of that.

    • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      4 hours ago

      What’s the incident where the term ‘tankie’ was born? Remember that one?

      Yes, we remember the incidents in which the USSR prevented Hungary and Czechoslovakia from becoming what eastern Europe has become now (after passing through a crisis that killed millions)

      I can’t imagine how after the liberalisation of eastern Europe in the 90s, anarchists will look at it and say “yeah, thank god the USSR didn’t roll in the tanks this time”.

      • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        42·
        4 hours ago

        They were fucking socialists. They came in with paratroopers and tanks to kill socialists. It was not a lib revolution, I dont have a problem with dead CIA puppet libs, this was socialists who wanted autonomy. This is why a lot of anarchists can’t stand tankies.

        Edit: List the things the USSR did wrong. It existed for seventy years and covered eleven time zones, so there’s no way, even if they were the best ever, that its gonna be a short list. If it is a short list, consider that you might be rationalizing and covering up and lying to cover the fuckups of an empire thats been dead probably longer than you’ve been alive, and most of the pieces have been to war with other pieces since. Why? Its dead and gone, you sound like how libs sound after throwing an election. Let’s do a post mortem so we can do better next time, let’s dig deep into the fuckups and fucking learn from fucking history. There were cool parts too! And let’s learn from those too! But you can’t take either in isolation, that’s not honest, and its not useful.

        • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          10 minutes ago

          The Soviet invasion of Hungary was good and based and one of the few correct things Khrushchev did. It’s worth bearing in mind the uprising in Hungary coincided with Israel, France and UK’s attack on Egypt.

          It was a mix of a popular uprising against Khrushchevs faked “secret” speech about Stalin which enabled the fascist elements (paid, armed and trained by US and UK) of Hungarian society to gamble their chance on getting rid of socialist rule.

          Fascists marked Communists homes with a white cross and those of jews with a black cross for extermination squads:

          The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of these days, said that! the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

          Andre Stil, editor-in-chief of the French Communist newspaper, LHumanite, arrived in Budapest on November 12. He toured the city and conferred with many Communist and other survivors of the days of White Terror. His account is substantially the same as the reports sent in by Times and Tribune and Commonweal and Commentary and U.S. News and Life and Politika eyewitnesses, fascistic mass murder reminding one of the Berlin days of 1933—and the Budapest days of 1919. Thus:

          After the tortures, those who were still breathing were hanged Even dead people were hanged. The corpses of those hanged were in such a state that many could not be recognized. The trees in Republic Square still bear the traces. These corpses, in all parts of their bodies, were bored through with bayonet thrusts, assailed by kicks, tom by nails, covered with expectoration…

          (Herbert Apheker, The Truth About Hungary, p.220)

          CIA sent terrorists to Hungary under the RED SOX program (Horthy here was the leader of the Hungarian fascists under 23 years of fascist rule in Hungary until Soviet liberation).

          “The CIA sent RED SOX/RED CAP groups in Budapest into action to join the Freedom Fighters and to help organise them… Radio Free Europe, and the RED SOX/RED CAP groups encouraged the rebels.” Often since denied, this was something known at the time to those in the know. For example, on November 10 1956, the FBI tapped a conversation between Pagie Morris and Jay Lovestone. Morris said “I know the whole thing… Do you remember when I said to you that it was criminal to incite a revolution and a rebellion, and not to follow it through? … Well, the Wisner crowd incited it… And the Horthy crowd has been in it… That Radio Free Europe is the crowd that’s behind it.”

          (James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence, by Michael Howard Holzman, pp. 150-160)

          The CIA chief in Vienna recalled that these “were very sad days” – we sat powerless on the sidelines watching the Soviets preparing to crush the revolution.

          (ibid)

          Weapons were British and American

          Some of the weapons used were American, and others almost certainly British. Mr Smith says MI6 and the CIA had buried arms caches in the woods around Prague and Budapest for use by “stay-behind” parties or fifth columnists in case of war.

          (MI6 trained rebels to fight Soviets in Hungarian revolt, The Independent)

          Hungary, in 1954, was considered a “weak spot” of the Soviet Union according to US committee ’

          Again on New Years day, 1954, the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate released a study, through its chairman, Senator Alexander Wiley which spoke of “accumulating tensions” and mounting “sabotage and underground activities” in Eastern Europe and referred in particular to Hungary as being the most tender spot - the "weakest link

          (Truth About Hungary p.112)

          The mid-1950s were regarded by the British and the United States as the last chance to challenge Soviet dominion over eastern Europe. The Eisenhower administration had been elected on a platform of “liberating” the Soviet satellite states, but in the 10 years since the Allied victory in Europe, the Soviet Union had strengthened its hold over the central and eastern part of the continent.

          USA was planning on WW3 with Soviet Union in 1943 (2 years before WW2 ended) whilst the British - at war with Hungary at this time “looked on at favour of Horthy” (Horthyism was the brand of fascism in Hungary in power for 23 years prior to Soviet liberation which was only more and more influenced by Nazism as the alliance with Austria and Germany deepened during that period and was to be the main fighting force in 1956)

          By April 3, 1943, the editors of The Nation, in discussing “Russia After the War,” warned that many of the rich insisted on the inevitability of World War III—a “thought entertained by powerful forces in the United States which fear any modification of property relationships and are made uneasy by the possible existence of a powerful and successful collectivist state in the world.”

          Specifically, in terms of Eastern Europe, as Doreen Warriner writes: “In 1944 all the anti-Soviet elements in the Balkan capitals believed that America and Britain would invade the Balkans after the defeat of Germany,” (cited work, p. 21n.).
          Leigh White, an American correspondent in the Balkans, writing in 1944, commented upon “the disreputable dynasties (there) of which our Metternichs of the State Department and Foreign Office are apparently so enamored” (cited work, p. 459). The distinguished English historian, Professor A. J. P. Taylor, in his introduction to the Memoirs of Michael Karolyi, declares that: “Even in the Second World War, when Hungary was an enemy state, and democratic Hungarians, one might have thought, our only friends, the British Foreign Office looked with favour on Horthy, Kallay and the rest, while Michael Karolyi was held at arm’s length.”

          (Herbert Apheker, The Truth About Hungary, p.71)

          Americans gravitated toward the fascist elements in Hungary at the end of WWII

          When I left Italy in the Summer of 1945 (writes Mr. Riegel), talk of an inevitable war with Russia was fashionable with the Catholic Right and the small cynics who know the answer to everything. Arriving in Hungary, I found this same inevitability of war an article of general faith, intensified by a heritage of Nazi propaganda and wishful thinking.

          He found, in agreement with all other observers—the testimony of some of whom has been offered on earlier pages—that … fascism and para-fascism, with their off-shoots of anti-Semitism and clerical reaction, are still strong forces in the country.”

          These forces gained encouragement from the American officials, for in Mr. Riegel’s words: “The Americans gravitate toward the most dubious elements remaining in Hungary, the remnants of the gentry, industrialists, the higher clergy, and the motley assortment of fascists and opportunists.”

          (ibid p. 73)

          NATO furnished support to the fascistic elements of the Horthy fascists with:

          The Mutual Security Act (of 1951) has as its stated aim, “to maintain the security and promote the foreign policy and provide for the general welfare of the U. S. by furnishing assistance to friendly nations in the interest of international peace and security.” To this was added an amendment, introduced by Representative Charles Kersten (R., Wis.) and approved by the House (and the Senate and signed by President Truman in October) in the following form, appended to the above:

          and for any selected persons who are residing in or escapees from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, or the Communist- dominated areas of Germany and Austria, or any other countries absorbed by the Soviet Union, either to form such persons into national elements of the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or for other purposes, when it is similarly determined by the President that such assistance is important in the defense of the North Atlantic area and of the security of the United States (Congressional Record, August 17, 1951, vol. 97, p. 10261).

          (ibid p.95)

          credit to /u/JoeysStainlessSteel

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          13·
          4 hours ago

          They were fucking socialists

          So was the USSR in 1986 applying Perestroika and Glasnost, and look where that led them. Many more socialists died as a consequence of the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc than as a consequence of USSR actions.

          I dont have a problem with dead CIA puppet libs, this was socialists who wanted autonomy

          Yes, that’s the US State Department version. Seeing how almost literally all countries that have taken these liberalisation policies have ended in Capitalism as a consequence (except possibly China depending on who you ask, and Cuba possibly might be on the way to that), I find it hard to believe that it would have brought the result of happier socialism for everyone.

          Feel free to answer if you really mean that you want me to make a list of USSR L’s, but I think it’s not a stretch to say that Marxist-Leninists usually know as much of the repressions and bad stuffs in the USSR as any other flavour of socialists

          • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            I’m saying if you can’t see their fuckups, if you buy all the cope, you aren’t really learning much from their successes either, and this is just masturbating to an idealized past.

            There are socialist regimes, even centralized ones close to your ideology, that have not failed, that still exist, that have a better record of being on the right side of history. I dont have a ton of interest arguing the minutiae of a shitty dead empire that could have been really really fucking cool. Why the fuck do any of you never talk about them?

            • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              2·
              1 hour ago

              Please excuse me, which socialist country has a better record of being on the right side of history than the Soviet Union?!

              if you can’t see their fuckups

              I’ll try and make you a list of the bigger ones IMO later or tomorrow. Again, I don’t expect many people to know more about such issues than Marxist-Leninists, who are famously obsessed with the USSR.

              • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                1·
                1 hour ago

                I don’t actually care, its just an exercise to see if youre delusional by checking roughly how many. Do it, but for yourself. Remember the people you love might be great, but they also suck. Remembering one without the other is not respecting their memory.

                Cuba in particular, as far as nation States, tends to be on the right side of things earlier than most. I’m not interested in discussing it at present.

                • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  1·
                  46 minutes ago

                  I’m going to note that you are very reluctant to actually elaborate on many of your points, including which socialist projects have a better record of being on the right side of history. Seriously, how many can you name other than Cuba and East Germany?

        • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          4 hours ago

          Ah, famous socialist cardinal József Mindszenty.

          With Czechoslovakia it’s a bit more muddled, but looking at Gorbachev who was at first “we’ll do socialism a bit better” and then “we are ceding power to capitalists now”, I’m sceptical it wouldn’t do something similar.

          • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            31·
            4 hours ago

            Did you just use the failure if the USSR via self-rat-fucking to justify the imperialism of the USSR? I get the names mixed up sometimes, so genuine question.

            • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              10·
              3 hours ago

              the imperialism of the USSR?

              Incorrect term. Call it hegemonism if you want, or geopolitical interventionism, but not imperialism. The USSR did not engage in economic imperialism in any stretch of the word, not within itself, not with neighbouring countries, not with third parties. It was a source of raw materials for the Eastern Bloc which it traded within COMECON on exchange for industrial goods at approximately international market prices* (i.e. applying unequal exchange to itself in favour of COMECON countries), it supplied aid in the form of industrial development to poor third countries on exchange for local goods, many times those produced by the newly formed industries (instead of supplying aid in the form of loans for raw material extraction and expecting a return in hard currency with interest rates)… It’s really impossible by any stretch of the word “imperialism” to apply it to the USSR.

              *after the mid-50s

    • CutieBootieTootie [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      4 hours ago

      which, yes, set the entire rest of the world against them. They had a few teeeensy difficulties. They still used it as a license to be otherwise just as awful as everyone else, and handled their problems in utterly deplorable ways.

      To be absolutely clear, the poor and lackluster decisions and retreats from “pure” Marxism and Leninism were by far the result of material conditions over a personal desire for power. The USSR was the world’s first socialist experiment and thus went on to make mistakes which would be corrected by later socialist experiments which would survive the 90s, but many of those things were forced by the invasion of 14 imperialist powers and the genocidal war campaign of the Nazis shortly after.

      The history of Marxism (from the Marxist perspective) can be seen as legitimately taking the most successful form of liberatory thought and action in the modern day and trying to make it continually work in the cruel world we’re born into. It’s not perfect, but it’s been shown to work on a scale larger than any other strain of thought, and socialist revolutions have fed more children who’d gone hungry before than anything else prior or after.

      For more context in this worldview, I highly recommend Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti and Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      14·
      5 hours ago

      So like what books were you reading? Did you have like a mentor who recommended literature or a reading list? Did any stand out as particular favorites?

      • urmums401k [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        101·
        4 hours ago

        This was a loooooooong time ago, and I was reading or listening to basically anything I could get my hands on, but i was already definitely an anarchist and vaguely a communist, had been the former since single digit years and the latter since at least age 16 or so. Uh, I think the ‘revolutions’ podcast had a non-objectionable thing on the Russian revolution, but idr if it covers this much.

        I’ve come across podcasts that cover bits of it more recently, if you want me to DM links. No I didn’t have mentors. Not political anyway. I had some punk friends but they weren’t into history or theory. Mostly got radicalized by experience being varying degrees of alone; was lonely and alienating as fuck. I’d rather not get more personal publicly on this account.

        If youre genuinely curious, I can dig some stuff up for you, but I’m not sure it will be what I read 10+ years ago. I have some interesting theory that explains what I specifically think, but I was already firmly in the ‘authority is not okay’ and ‘private property is just feudalism with extra gaslighting’ camps.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          13·
          4 hours ago

          Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the offer but I don’t need links just now. I will think about what you said though, you’ve given me some touch off points to, idk, rework the question i guess? It’d be so much easier to figure stuff out if it wasn’t so hard to figure out what question you want to ask! : )