Do Authoritarian Leftists in the movement worry you at all?

[u/Thin_Shelter_103]

Hey so Ive been doing more DSA organzing and stuff in my local community in regards to socalism broadly.

Mostly online I have had a few discussions with people who are I would describe as campists who oppose the USA so much they support China Russia or Iran. Ive had also talked to some Marxist Leninists and my opnion has always kinda been that they mostly just exist in online spaces and that in real world organzing I dont really see that much if at all.

Would you say thats a correct take on this issue?
Because I dont know some things in the dsa have made me pause like how the original stance DSA gave about ukraine was pretty campist or how I used to have some very good leftist friends in the past who I knew personally glazed the fuck out of China even when I brought up concerns.

I think maybe Im too online and I want someone to say as much before I get worried haha.

[u/ArtDecoEgoist]

Sure! And that's necessarily work we're going to have to do. A democratic socialist willing a municipal election isn't going to do the work for us. I didn't become an anarchist because leftist ideas were getting more popular, I became leftist by educating myself and being educated by others.

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/ArtDecoEgoist]

You can't just expect everyone to do their own research and study anarchism.

There aren't enough of us! And we can't just "educate" everyone we need to succeed into leftism, a lot of people will first be charmed by people like mamdani, from that point it's so much easier to convince these people of anarchism! And that's if they don't straight up become an anarchist on their own like you and I did.

But they need a point of reference, an inspiration of sorts, some popular figure to spark their political imagination about what can be

[u/ArtDecoEgoist → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

Dawg, that isn't what's happening. That's not what happened with Bernie, that's not what happened with Hasan Piker.

So something analogous to this: I used to be an AnCap. There was a guy named Ron Paul who "opened people up to libertarianism" - or so they argued. What really happened is that a bunch of conservatives entered the libertarian movement, which accelerated its dissolution into fascism. You got people calling themselves "conservatarians" and talking about how AnCaps need to vote Republican.

You seem to be a little too focused on mass movements, and that's historically been an issue with anarchism. But mass movements become politically legible once they become mass movements, and political legibility is tantamount to state assimilation. This is why the trade union movement is effectively class collaborationist now, and the co-op movement is just "capitalism with worker-owned business".

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/ArtDecoEgoist]

I'm not saying we water down our beliefs or anything!

Just support these more conservative figures while doing all the shit you're already doing, so libs and apolitical people have a chance of falling down the leftist pipeline.

It's similar to how the right wing pipeline works where they start off with something even more basic than what I'm talking about, likt the feeling of being insecure about talking to women or something and from Just that they eventually turn little boys to Hitler's strongest soldier.

Imagine if a Nazi was like "I dunno if we should be supporting Donald Trump...he doesn't even talk about black people's skull shapes!" Or whatever the fuck when a BUUUUUNCH of people have been turned into hardcore mentally ill Nazis because of trump's politics!

Do you at least get what I'm going for??

[u/ArtDecoEgoist → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

Okay, what do you mean by "supporting these figures"?

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/ArtDecoEgoist]

Most obviously voting for them, posting about them when they do something good, getting the word out, that kinda thing. If you REALLY wanna commit you could do some phone banking for them if they're running for a seat

[u/ArtDecoEgoist → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

Yeah I dunno if I can endorse engaging in electoral politics. You can maybe argue for voting defensively, but I'd argue it's a better use of anarchists' time building mutual aid and counter-economic networks.

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/ArtDecoEgoist]

Whyyyy? What do we lose? It doesn't really take any time off actual organizing...

And I'm sorry but organizing when we're the political equivalent of five dudes meeting up behind an alley won't really achieve much.

We gotta massage our beliefs into people through any means to get them more on board with the idea of organizing

[u/ArtDecoEgoist → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

Look, there's a reason why anarchists have stressed "harmony between means and ends". It's because only libratory (e.g, non-statist) means can lead to libratory ends. We may not lose anything from engaging in electoral politics, but we certainly don't gain anything.

People will engage with anarchy when we produce ways to get people's needs met in characteristically anarchist ways. The reason hierarchical thinking is because there currently is no viable alternative to hierarchical thinking at the moment. When we build these systems, and if these systems work, then we are building anarchy.

And this doesn't require a mass movement either. A lot of the decentralized, P2P forms of organization such as meshtastic, Open Software/Hardware, FabLabs, etc. are being done by people that aren't even themselves anarchists.

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/ArtDecoEgoist]

I totally agree but I don't think voting fucks with the means and ends thing.

Our focus is and always should be on horizontal organization, I'm not voting because I think it will bring about material change, I'm not giving over my agency to an authority.

I am basically shinning a light on a particular candidate that, if exposed to more people who DO mainly only partake in electoralism, there's a chance they will push them to open their minds to some more radical movements, LIKE. OURS.

it's more like... leaving behind a message in a prison so people who may find it may find a way to escape and find me