The war and "the left" - what do "we" do?

[ska invita]

That's also true. I just don't think far right groups with guns can be defeated (or even contained) purely by fists and clever memes, lamentable though that is.

sorry forgot to come back
are you saying civil war is on the cards and american leftists should get training to shoot fascists dead - you mentioned the spanish civil war - presumable you see a parallel.
training to do so certainly makes it much more of an inevitability

 

[ska invita]

In Rojava the Kurdish/SDF armed groups were definitely able to over stretch their remit and 'natural area of control/influence' (for want of a better term) due to being well armed and supported by the anti-IS coalition air power. It was all as part of an entirely pragmatic and understandable plan, but ultimately one that ended up causing all sorts of on the ground problems for them and the people in the areas they took back from IS.

My understanding of the wider struggle in Syria was that the militarisation of the struggle was both unavoidable and also a sign that it was on a losing path due to the inevitable dynamics it would then take.

But I do think armed groups as a part of wider struggles can be useful, but they're far from being without hugely complicating issues even if they are 'on our side'.

I dont see the parallel between a war zone and the US. There is a historic right to bear arms in the US but hopefully one day that will be gone, and the left has a role in bringing that about - or do you support that right and want to see it continued? Would you like that right to be introduced in the UK?
I won't bang on about this, dont want to derail, am just curious...

 

[LDC]

I dont see the parallel between a war zone and the US. There is a historic right to bear arms in the US but hopefully one day that will be gone, and the left has a role in bringing that about - or do you support that right and want to see it continued? Would you like that right to be introduced in the UK?
I won't bang on about this, dont want to derail, am just curious...

I think the talk of 'rights to have weapons' (or similar) isn't one I'm interested in from either end of the spectrum. I wouldn't agitate or organise for that right to be introduced in the UK (obviously), but neither would I pressurise the State to take that right away in the US. I think it's a struggle loved equally by the right and liberal left, neither of which I'm in.

 

[nogojones]

Big article arguing the nwbcw case here:

British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever

A polemic against the wave of militarism seen across the anarchist movement in Britain since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

libcom.org

From a quick skim, it looks fairly thoughtful and well-argued, although I still couldn't help noticing, when they get on to the practical suggestions bit:

Since I'm fairly sure that BOAK and Solidarity Collectives both have the position that the author is arguing against, not sure what that means in terms of political differences?

The way I read it (having not read the full article) is that you can hold NWBTCW views and demonstrate them in practice by using tactics like sabotaging your own militaries capacity to wage war as BOAK are doing, or organising mutual aid for victims. Just because BOAK and Sol collectives don't subscribe to NWBTCW, doesn't mean their tactics are worthless.

Just because the Russian state is waging an imperialist war against it's neighbor, that I believe should be resisted doesn't distract, that for me my main enemy is still at home. If I lived in Ukraine, my practice would likely be different and the more pressing enemy would be the Russian states war of conquest, but I'd hope to be prepared for my owns states repression after the war.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

sorry forgot to come back
are you saying civil war is on the cards and american leftists should get training to shoot fascists dead - you mentioned the spanish civil war - presumable you see a parallel.
training to do so certainly makes it much more of an inevitability

Well no. What I’m saying is that there are a range of situations where it would be foolish not to be armed.

I don’t take any pleasure in saying this and I’d hope revolutionary groups would emphasise accountability and solidarity over and above the military side of things.

 

[LDC]

The way I read it (having not read the full article) is that you can hold NWBTCW views and demonstrate them in practice by using tactics like sabotaging your own militaries capacity to wage war as BOAK are doing, or organising mutual aid for victims. Just because BOAK and Sol collectives don't subscribe to NWBTCW, doesn't mean their tactics are worthless.

Just because the Russian state is waging an imperialist war against it's neighbor, that I believe should be resisted doesn't distract, that for me my main enemy is still at home. If I lived in Ukraine, my practice would likely be different and the more pressing enemy would be the Russian states war of conquest, but I'd hope to be prepared for my owns states repression after the war.

I had a disagreement with a strict NWBTCW/revolutionary defeatism adherent recently....

So, if people are against weapon supply to the Ukrainian State and military, why fetishise weapons when plenty of other resources (fuel, medical supplies, food etc.) will go to and/or support the Ukrainian war effort? And why draw the line there then, surely they should then support efforts to sabotage the Ukrainian military as much as the Russian one if all States and militaries as the same? And the person I was arguing against eventually took that position (they ended up saying no food should go to Ukraine ffs!) which at least a consistent and the logical outcome of the strict NWBTCW/RD position. It also ended up with them defending organisations like the Red Cross as being OK to support as they made sure their aid was '100% non-military' but not independent class initiatives that provided supplies that might end up helping the State or the military.

Fucking lunatic position, but inevitable if you take NWBTCW/RD as an ideological and fixed position rather than as Rob Ray suggested as a tendency or general ethic that can hold nuance and complexity and contradictions within it. It's no surprise that pretty much of its rigid advocates live outside Ukraine. I also think some element of personality comes into this as well, the ability to deal with complexities and uncertainty is something some people do struggle with.

 

[belboid]

Just to point out - revolutionary defeatism and NWBTCW are two quite different things.

 

[ska invita]

neither would I pressurise the State to take that right away in the US. I think it's a struggle loved equally by the right and liberal left, neither of which I'm in.

fair enough.. dont know about a struggle "loved" - the amount of indiscriminate killing on the US streets and people carrying would make me desperate to see the end of it if I lived there - sounds horrific

 

[LDC]

Just to point out - revolutionary defeatism and NWBTCW are two quite different things.

Yeah for sure, wasn't suggesting them to be the same, but more that both have similarities on this topic. The history of RD is interesting (well... 'interesting') anyway, a position of Lenin's that he changed numerous times and then dropped from what I understand.

Hal Draper: The Myth of Lenin's "Revolutionary Defeatism" (1953/54)

Hal Draper: The Myth of Lenin's 'Revolutionary Defeatism' (1953/1954)

www.marxists.org

 

[LDC]

The YPG and Asayish have also shot protesters dead a number of times and done arbitrary arrests and kidnappings. Minors have also been 'recruited'. Rojava also has consciption.

Weren't you writing about Rojava as some kind of anarchist utopia not so long ago? What happened, read a leftcom article and changed your position 180 degrees in about as many seconds?

Lol, just had a look, as I thought; Rojava's amazeballs / reads one article a few days later / Rojava's an oppressive State man!

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Weren't you writing about Rojava as some kind of anarchist utopia not so long ago? What happened, read a leftcom article and changed your position 180 degrees in about as many seconds?

Lol, just had a look, as I thought; Rojava's amazeballs / reads one article a few days later / Rojava's an oppressive State man!

Very judgemental and holier than thou of you as usual.

 

[LDC]

Self awareness score: 0/10.

 

[hitmouse]

sorry forgot to come back
are you saying civil war is on the cards and american leftists should get training to shoot fascists dead - you mentioned the spanish civil war - presumable you see a parallel.
training to do so certainly makes it much more of an inevitability

I suppose the thing is, at the moment you have a situation in the US where a) the police are heavily armed, and b) the general public, including and probably especially fascists, are armed. It'd be better if neither of those things were true, and things like lefty gun clubs do probably reinforce the existing situation a tiny bit, but still, gun control through the state would just leave the cops being heavily armed, plus a shitload of untraceable black market guns floating around, and lefties voluntarily disarming would just mean everyone except lefties being armed. I dunno what the solution is here, feels like there's just varying degrees of bad outcomes.

The way I read it (having not read the full article) is that you can hold NWBTCW views and demonstrate them in practice by using tactics like sabotaging your own militaries capacity to wage war as BOAK are doing, or organising mutual aid for victims. Just because BOAK and Sol collectives don't subscribe to NWBTCW, doesn't mean their tactics are worthless.

Yeah, I can see that, you don't have to agree with every aspect of someone's ideology to respect something that they're doing, but it still feels a bit contradictory to write an article slagging off people for going along with "war fever" and then have your main practical examples of good anti-war things be things that the people you're slagging off are doing.

Just because the Russian state is waging an imperialist war against it's neighbor, that I believe should be resisted doesn't distract, that for me my main enemy is still at home. If I lived in Ukraine, my practice would likely be different and the more pressing enemy would be the Russian states war of conquest, but I'd hope to be prepared for my owns states repression after the war.

Yeah, I think I'd pretty much agree with that?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

ska invita on militarisation, I think one of James Carr's criticisms of the Black Panthers was that when things intensified (COINTELPRO, assassinations etc) that the fetishisation of guns, masculinity and the military side of things became the primary focus and that this was an error. I'd agree with that, but it would have been very difficult for the Panthers to have been successful without any guns whatsoever.

It's been ages since I read it, so I might be putting words in his mouth, but that is basically my position.

Bad: The autobiography of James Carr

The life story of a black panther, prison activist and situationist influenced revolutionary.

libcom.org

 

[Pickman's model]

I think you're being pedantic and overly and unnecessarily critical and for me your criticisms are weak. I consider it a decent article and I don't think theres any real problem with the title. But I can definitely see why you wouldn't like it. Thats my own view.

Not that you're judgmental at all of course

 

[hitmouse]

ska invita on militarisation, I think one of James Carr's criticisms of the Black Panthers was that when things intensified (COINTELPRO, assassinations etc) that the fetishisation of guns, masculinity and the military side of things became the primary focus and that this was an error. I'd agree with that, but it would have been very difficult for the Panthers to have been successful without any guns whatsoever.

It's been ages since I read it, so I might be putting words in his mouth, but that is basically my position.

Bad: The autobiography of James Carr

The life story of a black panther, prison activist and situationist influenced revolutionary.

libcom.org

I'd add that also with the Panthers' decline you get the split between the social programme stuff without the militant edge and then Cleaver and the BLA just doing the gun stuff without the wider social connections, and both sides very rapidly declining after that. The ideal would definitely be to keep both tendencies in some kind of healthy relationship to each other, but that's obviously easier said than done (and a possible link back to Ukraine, where you do indeed have people doing both mutual aid work and armed defence stuff?)

 

[ska invita]

Ive heard one black panther speak in the UK - Aaron Dixon - my memory of what he said was the social programme stuff was what worked and as soon as they started waving guns it gave an excuse for the state to take them down - in his view was it was the biggest and most fatal of mistakes

I see zero need for the gun play, unless you are actually in a civil war I think its massively counterproductive.
This is the main argument of Gene Sharp, boils down to the armed struggle is the one struggle you are guaranteed to lose - although he was discussing it within a context of a dictatorship the parallels are broader than that
From Dictatorship to Democracy - Wikipedia

Anyhow will stop posting on this subject as its a derail

 

[Pickman's model]

Ive heard one black panther speak in the UK - Aaron Dixon - my memory of what he said was the social programme stuff was what worked and as soon as they started waving guns it gave an excuse for the state to take them down - in his view was it was the biggest and most fatal of mistakes

I see zero need for the gun play, unless you are actually in a civil war I think its massively counterproductive.
This is the main argument of Gene Sharp, boils down to the armed struggle is the one struggle you are guaranteed to lose - although he was discussing it within a context of a dictatorship the parallels are broader than that
From Dictatorship to Democracy - Wikipedia

Anyhow will stop posting on this subject as its a derail

By the time you're in a civil war it's too late to start getting with the guns. If you look at the old ira, they came out of the irish volunteers organised in response to the uvf of Carson, and got their first guns a couple of years before the easter rising. The anarchists in catalonia started preparing for civil war some years before 1936. Preparation is key.

But I'm a bit confused about your claim that the social stuff preceded the guns. Because you seem to have it arse over tit if Wikipedia is to be believed Black Panther Party - Wikipedia. They say the social programme started in 1969 but there's this from 1967 https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act

 

[Pickman's model]

Ive heard one black panther speak in the UK - Aaron Dixon - my memory of what he said was the social programme stuff was what worked and as soon as they started waving guns it gave an excuse for the state to take them down - in his view was it was the biggest and most fatal of mistakes

I see zero need for the gun play, unless you are actually in a civil war I think its massively counterproductive.
This is the main argument of Gene Sharp, boils down to the armed struggle is the one struggle you are guaranteed to lose - although he was discussing it within a context of a dictatorship the parallels are broader than that
From Dictatorship to Democracy - Wikipedia

Anyhow will stop posting on this subject as its a derail

Further to my previous post could I draw your attention to point 7 of the 1966 black panther 10 point programme?

Black Panther's Ten-Point Program

 

[ska invita]

By the time you're in a civil war it's too late to start getting with the guns. If you look at the old ira, they came out of the irish volunteers organised in response to the uvf of Carson, and got their first guns a couple of years before the easter rising. The anarchists in catalonia started preparing for civil war some years before 1936. Preparation is key.

But I'm a bit confused about your claim that the social stuff preceded the guns. Because you seem to have it arse over tit if Wikipedia is to be believed Black Panther Party - Wikipedia. They say the social programme started in 1969 but there's this from 1967 https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act

im just going by how it was told at the talk - im not knowledgeable on it enough, its before my time - as Fozzy alludes to it become dominant in a way that opened the door for oppression

as to being prepared for a civil war whatever side the US military are on is the one that will win and in next to no time. theres no fight there to be had

 

[Pickman's model]

im just going by how it was told at the talk - im not knowledgeable on it enough, its before my time - as Fozzy alludes to it become dominant in a way that opened the door for oppression

as to being prepared for a civil war whatever side the US military are on is the one that will win and in next to no time. theres no fight there to be had

You're surely having a laugh or you haven't given the matter a moment's thought. Or both. If you look at the US army's record in wars you'll see they don't actually have the record you proclaim. You have heard of Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam? In any civil war many of the existing institutions of a country fragment - if there is another civil war in America the army, navy, air force and marines will see their members split as some support one side, some another. It won't be the walk in the park you imagine, that's for sure

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Yeah the armed patrols were one of the first things the panthers did in Oakland iirc. But the central point that the community activity is what worked is good to hear. There’s probably also an argument that the guns got them attention and showed their constituency that they were serious.

Like ska, I think we’re maybe going round in circles with this, but I’m reluctant to contribute to a conversation about war really as the difference “the left” can make is pretty marginal.

So militant community struggles is more interesting to me. Cop out though that might be.

I’m not an expert on Northern Ireland / six counties issues but it seems to me like the emphasis on housing and other issues in working class republican communities has reaped dividends but the failure to do that as much in w/c unionist communities has stuffed them.

 

[LDC]

as to being prepared for a civil war whatever side the US military are on is the one that will win and in next to no time. theres no fight there to be had

You're assuming the idea is to take on the US military (or whatever) as it stands, rather than the possibilities being hugely variable including involving right wing militias, a breakdown of any order, etc. etc.

You're trying to shoehorn your dislikes and personal misgivings into the situation rather than thinking about the possible realities.

I'd definitely have arms if I lived in the US, and leftie friends I know there do, especially rural living ones.

 

[belboid]

They (the Panthers, that is) would have been highly unlikely to have the chance to implement many of their social programmes if they hadn't been able to keep the cops away with their guns in the first place.

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah the armed patrols were one of the first things the panthers did in Oakland iirc. But the central point that the community activity is what worked is good to hear. There’s probably also an argument that the guns got them attention and showed their constituency that they were serious.

Like ska, I think we’re maybe going round in circles with this, but I’m reluctant to contribute to a conversation about war really as the difference “the left” can make is pretty marginal.

So militant community struggles is more interesting to me. Cop out though that might be.

I’m not an expert on Northern Ireland / six counties issues but it seems to me like the emphasis on housing and other issues in working class republican communities has reaped dividends but the failure to do that as much in w/c unionist communities has stuffed them.

Yeah, NI probably also a relevant point of comparison in terms of being a situation that definitely wasn't peace, but also was nowhere near a conventional shooting war? I don't think the US would/will turn into a repeat of NI any more than any other historical situation, but it's probably a more relevant starting point than Spain.

 

[krtek a houby]

But with this place theres far too many lefties and 'anarchists' who support neoliberalism and the state so it shouldn't be surprising that theres also too many warmongers.

There's no warmongers here. Change the record.

 

[The39thStep]

There's no warmongers here. Change the record.

Its the lefties and 'anarchists' who support neoliberalism and the state that I'm more worried about

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Its the lefties and 'anarchists' who support neoliberalism and the state that I'm more worried about

There are those on here who will vote for Starmer and Biden and who give their support to the Ukrainian state and the millionaire Zelensky - they are therefore supporting neoliberalism, thats simply a fact.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Big article arguing the nwbcw case here:

British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever

A polemic against the wave of militarism seen across the anarchist movement in Britain since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

libcom.org

From a quick skim, it looks fairly thoughtful and well-argued, although I still couldn't help noticing, when they get on to the practical suggestions bit:

Since I'm fairly sure that BOAK and Solidarity Collectives both have the position that the author is arguing against, not sure what that means in terms of political differences?

A very good article that makes some bloody great points.

 

[Pickman's model]

There are those on here who will vote for Starmer and Biden and who give their support to the Ukrainian state and the millionaire Zelensky - they are therefore supporting neoliberalism, thats simply a fact.

not many on here can vote for shammer and sleepy joe