Juice

Oh mb you are talking about Ukraine.

https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/nestor-makhno-the-failure-of-anarchism/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-arshinov-history-of-the-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921

Makhno and his generals were tyrants. Perhaps no worse than the Bolsheviks during the civil war, but certainly no better. War forces the point, and idealism gives way to necessity.

ML

Trotsky

You know Trotskyists and MLs are completely different right? 300k is almost 10x the number cited in Averich's history. At this point you aren't even trusting other anarchists.

I think you're being sectarian, because you are misrepresenting facts to fit a one-sided narrative. None of this changes the fact that your meme is extremely confusing. Using a term (Blacks) no one but your own sect uses that way, which conflicts with most people's understanding, is one sure sign of sectarianism.

Defend your meme all you want but you're actually carrying water for Stalinist MLs, despite what you may think. A disconnect between one's political imperative and what is actually happening is it's own kind of authoritarianism. You're depending on people accepting your authority, negating the authority of fact. The idea that Russia could muster 300k troops in (what appeared to the Bolsheviks to be) the middle of a civil war, is Victims of Communism levels of historical revisionism. But I'd also compare your sources to my own, sources if you would care to provide them.

Go ahead and make me out to be your enemy because of what Trotsky did over a hundred years ago. This bears no relevance to our present day struggles, yet another sign of toxic sectarianism. Another sign is that you would accept me if I identified as an anarchist, but instead you frame me as an enemy for identifying as a trotskyist, even though we fundamentally agree that Kronstadt was unforgivable. So the surest sign of our political difference is that I care more about learning and teaching the unvarnished truth, whereas you're invested in campism. It seems like you're saying facts don't matter, only ideology matters, which is authoritarian and sectarian. The anarchists I work with never had a problem with my beliefs. They trust me and I trust them. Ideological puritanism is a bigger threat than Trotskyism. So you might want to take a look at that.

Are "the Blacks" anarchists? It really seems like this is saying that Trotsky betrayed black people, which makes no sense. Incidentally, not even Paul Averich, the anarchist historian who wrote perhaps the best history of the Kronstadt tragedy, blames Trotsky and Lenin for it.

Personally, I think Trotsky's handling of Kronstadt was an absolute disaster. But if Kronstadt had been taken by western invaders the revolution would have been defeated. The sailors would have likely been killed by invaders anyway. But after 1921, the revolution was defeated. Lenin banned factions and instituted the NEP. Russia never recovered from the civil war. I think it's fair to criticize, I'm a Trotskyist and I'm sharply critical of this period, many Trotskyists are! Paul Leblanc says in Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, that Kronstadt was where the Bolsheviks broke from socialist revolution, and I tend to agree.

But Trotsky is the only person in history to lead two successful socialist revolutions. When Lenin and the bolsheviks were backing a bourgeois revolution, Trotsky convinced them that only a worker-led socialist revolution would defeat the Tzar. Trotskyists who reject sectarianism are defenders of democracy and authentic progressive socialists. My group works with the decentralized anarchists in our city pretty closely. On the other hand it wasn't that long ago that a clique of anarchists all but destroyed our city's DSA chapter. Painting any tendency with a broad brush is mindless propaganda. I could just as easily cite examples showing Makhno was little more than a petty tyrant, just to smear anarchism as a tendency. But I wouldn't because what matters is what we do now, and IMO our tendencies need to work together, rather than litigate 100 year old catastrophes that were actually caused by tsarists and capitalists.

I have nothing but love for anarchists generally, and I understand this attitude given the history. The sailors at Kronstadt were heroes of the revolution. But online, this meme does nothing to advance anarchist or libsoc perspectives, it only helps online Stalinists gleefully defend the mass murder of revolutionaries from both of our tendencies.

They literally don't know why they hate Trotsky.

Sounds like a dictatorship that needs McLiberated™

It's not like his daughter isn't the VP , and the president is BongBong Marcos, the son of the previous dictator.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." --Samuel Johnson

I guess it depends which side of the float you are standing on, like is the writing only on one side, or both? But digging into the comparison is interesting because both leaders are Hitler/Stalin in their own ways.

no comparison of current events with past events can be fully accurate

Right, but I criticize on the basis that its not clear what abstraction is even being used to make the comparison. A common method of propaganda that confuses is comparing two things but not establishing a basis for the comparison. It is an empty signifier, to be filled with whatever political meaning one chooses.

I see it all the time, among political allies and opponents. I've never seen it deliver a greater degree of understanding or engagement. I think we use abstraction unconsciously so much, so seamlessly in our conception of meaning, that we can't tell if an abstraction is faulty or valid. Our brains just go "sure seems right" and we go along with it, but dont consider in what ways the abstraction is faulty or valid. Art has a way of revealing hidden connections or meanings, propaganda has a way of obscuring.

I appreciate other posters helping me to recognize the connection between Poland in Molotov-Ribbentrop and Ukraine in our current day. But I still dont see the connection being made here and I dont like obscurative or vibe-based political messaging.

Any artist knows that you can't just depict a feminine form and call it art. There is like 10000 years of history in that depiction, and it is taken very seriously, referenced very carefully. Why can't a similar level of care be taken when considering a political subject? I think I might be a little obstinate on this point, but I'm really just trying to engage with the subject from my own perspective

I honestly hadn't first considered the Ukraine similarity when I wrote the first comment. That tracks tbh. I'm probably reacting to how much confusion there is generally about the Nazis and the USSR, where most people don't have their own developed views but have appropriated some posture through hegemony, which has its own biases and incentives to confuse understanding. I also didn't see i was posting in a Euro comm or i would have probably stopped myself.

Tbh the Ukraine similarities track, but the issues around that war are very confused as well. In general, I'd say people dont understand how western forces destabilized and used Ukraine to agitate Putin into invasion and war, likely to draw them into a protracted , draining, no-win conflict like Viet Nam. Then people who are aware of that tend to think of Ukraine as US imperialist puppets, and end up buying much of the Russian framing of the issues. Germany was more than happy to keep burning Russian natural gas before the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, although I think its probably disingenuous to flatten this artist's protest message into the geopolitical maneuvering of German establishment.

I guess I would prefer something more explicit toward acknowledging the incredible hardship this war has created in a country that has known nothing but hardship and exploitation, if that is the intention of the work. By my account, taking all of that and framing it as Trump+Putin=Stalin+Hitler (seriously who is Hitler and who is Stalin in this formula) misses the mark, but I appreciate the challenge and engagement.

Okay, i have adhd and often miss things. You got me. Now can you answer my question? I dont mean to be defensive and I want to be educated.

What is the modern "pakt" between Trump and Putin that this refers to? In what ways does this supposed pact differ from the historic one? How are they similar?