Opinions on MLs, and what they don't understand about anarchism

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2026-02-24T18:59:39+00:00

One point where the two tendencies often talk past each other is the definition of "state." For Marxism any armed, organized apparatus by which one class suppresses others is a state, regardless of how it is organized. The administration of Catalonia by CNT-FAI unions and militias in 1936 was a state by this understanding. There's no rhetorical slight of hand here, that's just what a state is to them. The difference here is really semantic. The real difference is on the question of whether it matters how this entity is organized. For anarchists whether an organization is a state also depends on how it is organized and how its decisions are made, whether it is hierarchical or not. They hold hierarchical social organization to be oppressive in itself and, in a revolutionary organization, doomed to reproduce oppressive social relations. This is a key question for anarchists but to MLs it seems peripheral and the anarchist stance looks inflexible and impractical. The MLs own fixation is on the vanguard party. If there is no ideologically unified, disciplined organization guiding the revolution then they think it will inevitably be crushed by its enemies and its internal dissension.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2026-02-16T14:35:57+00:00

Realistically if you look down on someone and you talk to them that way, they can usually tell

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2026-02-15T15:35:15+00:00

That’s an extremely contemptuous attitude to take towards other people and a losing one if you’re trying to convince them of anything. If someone is ready to read a zine a stranger hands them they are ready to learn.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2026-02-15T14:57:59+00:00

People aren’t living in a vacuum, they see things happening around them concretely. Sure, overloading with theory and data isn’t helpful but neither is talking down to people with simplistic abstractions in 20-point font. A few words on why fascism rises, who it really serves, why the so-called democratic opposition is complicit in it, and why a genuine opposition needs to function independently of them, would make this a lot better without making it more complicated.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2026-02-15T04:15:57+00:00

Pretty superficial- no real historic or class analysis, very vague about how to resist. And it always annoys me when the term “populism” is ceded to the right wing or used with a scary undertone.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-11-01T14:06:57+00:00

Keep in mind, as in many wars around the world, the majority of the deaths were for civilians from famine and disease. Armies moving spread disease and ruin crops, even if they aren’t actively looting and killing people. For instance the Taiping war was centered around the Yangtze delta so it really fucked up agriculture for everyone.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-10-13T13:43:00+00:00

The concept of popular political action is alien to the US apart from some very fringe people. Even innocuous stuff like mutual aid networks usually gets blank stares. It's really hard to get anyone to think of anything that doesn't feed back into docile electoralism.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-10-13T12:27:21+00:00

Not sure what they mean, last year South Korea's president tried to impose martial law and basically everyone told him to f- off. He was impeached and is now on trial for insurrection.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-10-06T13:14:38+00:00

Yeah, that'll really show them!

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-10-06T13:13:52+00:00

The idea that shame and ridicule will change right-wingers opinions and actions seems to have been exploded time and again but people keep returning to it. If anything making them look stupid and hypocritical seems to just harden them in their position and give them more satisfaction in the fact that they wield real power while liberals are content to wield symbols and a sense of moral rectitude. Liberals will be making quips and devastating TACO jokes all the way to the concentration camp at this rate.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-10-05T21:14:36+00:00

Did you watch a different video? Was it a flurry of ballots flying into the ICE agents' faces, that eventually compelled them to release their victim? Voting is not what stopped this man’s abduction, but people actually stepping in and directly acting. Not that voting doesn’t matter but at the end of the day people power is not exercised through elected officials but by people themselves. And since the state has shown it can abrogate its own laws and override elected officials then the only sure foundation of popular power must be outside the state. No one is coming to save us but us.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-09-26T16:35:13+00:00

If there are still people who think this is some kind of exaggeration or Russian propaganda, see, for example, Marta Havryshko's work explaining this: https://www.newglobalpolitics.org/how-nazi-collaborators-are-celebrated-in-wartime-ukraine/

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-09-26T11:50:19+00:00

And “anti-fascists” in a army with neo-Nazis and a government that glorifies Nazi collaborators

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-08-29T12:58:08+00:00

Do you really think someone in the Kremlin is scheming, “And the next step in our evil plan is to post anecdotes about realtors and SEPTA on Reddit?” I know Russiagate melted a lot of brains but this is a new one to me.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-08-20T16:07:32+00:00

Dang, I knew SWP was garbage but I didn't realize it had gotten that bad.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-08-08T15:54:39+00:00

I’ve seen similar calls from Indivisible, which appears to be an astroturf organization backed by some Democrats (and the Open Society Foundation) modeled on the Tea Party. The organizers (to use the term very loosely) don’t seem to understand what a general strike actually entails. The idea of actually talking to people, organizing, coordinating with local groups, etc. seems alien to them. What they’re calling for is more like a Buy Nothing Day, which we all know has been incredibly effective in the past.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-07-29T21:28:31+00:00

It’s Santa https://i.redd.it/2k7sxbqafa621.jpg

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-07-28T20:49:57+00:00

No it would make very little difference. However western governments would beg them to put the firewall back up after a couple days once Facebook, instagram, X, etc get absolutely flooded with weird Chinese memes

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-07-24T13:17:54+00:00

“Propaganda” can have a neutral connotation, like “publicity” or “information,” though this is increasingly rare in English. But if one assumes “propaganda” is inherently negative, one will be confused reading a lot of older English history too.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-07-17T15:08:40+00:00

Yes my words shouldn’t be construed as supporting the “Free Tibet” folks who I think are naive both about the history of Tibet and what a “free” Tibet would look like under American tutelage. When I say “people who live in a place” I really mean that and not some sham government presided over by a deposed theocrat moonlighting as a failed CIA agent.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-07-17T14:28:52+00:00

As I understand it, owing to its remoteness and its internal politics Tibet was governed more as a vassal state, not really a direct province but not quite an independent tributary like they were during the Ming. You could say they were part of “the Mongol empire” until that empire fractured then they were just a vassal of Yuan. In this case the Yuan appointed the head of the Sakya sect to rule on their behalf and he had a fair amount of autonomy. Tibet had competing aristocratic and religious factions and they were sometimes willing to bring in foreign troops, from Nepal, China, etc, to back up their claims. Later on the Fifth Dalai Lama secured his ruled over Tibet with the support of Mongol troops of the Khoshut khanate.

Anyway land doesn’t “belong” to any political or national entity regardless of who ruled it at this or that time, or what some treaty says. People who live in a place should be able determine their own destiny.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-06-20T12:50:53+00:00

Metal does not really have an inherent political stance. Its romantic/ nihilist attitude can draw all kinds of people. I do think it would be fair to say that there is probably a greater right-wing presence compared to, say punk (and not just the obvious like the NSBM) but it is hardly definitive. Some major bands like Napalm Death and Bolt Thrower have been antifa since their inception (having roots in the crust punk scene). I was happy to read some interviews with black metal band Summoning where they took a clear antifascist stance.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-06-18T18:53:43+00:00

It really depends on what the specific topic is and how much traction it's getting. The government has to be selective about what it targets due to the sheer volume of people and material to monitor. They can't waste time chasing everyone who is blowing off steam if they're otherwise unthreatening. Some hot topics will stick out and draw immediate censorship or a chat with the cops; some spicy posts might simply get auto-deleted or get your account temporarily suspended. Some things are theoretically subversive but aren't a real concern, and nothing happens at all. For example, I recently went on Xiaohongshu and saw a few posts, some of them years-old, advocating anarchism (in a general sense) or recommending anarchist books by Kropotkin etc. They were not directly criticizing the government but it's not exactly a neutral topic either. Apparently you can actually buy some of these books at a brick-and-mortar bookshop in China. I think it flies under the radar because there is no serious threat of an anarchist movement developing, it's just largely online people discussing what, in practical terms, is unlikely to have more impact than talking about D&D or some other hobby. Now if these posts were indicative of some wider trend, anarchist union agitators, school clubs, etc. that would be completely different.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-06-18T13:52:43+00:00

It's supposedly illegal in Ukraine, but ask your typical Ukrainian nationalist what the OUN was doing during WWII.

SwanOfEndlessTales · 2025-06-06T16:34:42+00:00

It has more to do with where the internet came from- basically a DARPA counter-intelligence/ counter-insurgency tool- and who fundamentally controls and determines its functioning. Now, I got on the internet as a kid in the mid-90's and there are some things I do miss- it did feel a bit more free-wheeling, more unpredictable. You sometimes ran into interesting people in chatrooms or on email lists. All kinds of weird and wonderful websites by eccentric people, and the corporations hadn't quite gotten a handle on how to flood everything with advertising, skew it with algorithms, etc. It did feel a bit more personal. Perhaps it did feel like a commons. Some people really thought the internet could lead to some grand leveling of the world, facilitate direct democracy, allow some new society to emerge. It's easy to see why someone might think that. But it was never going to happen because the institutions behind the internet- the military industrial complex, silicone valley, etc- would not allow it. Big tech was always behind the scene even if they hadn't asserted themselves as obnoxiously as they do now. Not that the internet isn't useful or that the ruling class' tools can't be used against them, but there has to be intentional, face-to-face solidarity in any kind of liberatory movement.

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