The "burning cop cars and court houses" stuff is kind of the problem though. It's just mindless adventurism. It's not actually fighting the system, it's someone being the hero fighting the system. It's self-aggrandizing. It doesn't help any left wing causes really. It either hurts innocent civilians (and turns the public against your cause) or causes the state to crack down harder on your movement. Actual, organised action is what is needed, not adventurism. Though to their credit, I've seen plenty of anarchists in the west organise too though.

Interesting cuz I have

The folks I am talking about are mostly unhoused comrades retaliating when our free kitchens get shut down

I’d still categorize burning police stations as harm reduction.

it does matter if it hinders the police, etc.

with that said, adventurism without organization is just going to get you arrested

I think there's been some sort of mistake, I'd rather be assigned to work in the coal mines.

Gateway? Just because some people go from Anarchism to Marxism doesn't mean it's a natural pipeline or that most do. Some people go from being a Republican straight to being a Marxist, some people go straight from being a liberal to being a Marxist and some people go from being a left-anarchist to a fascist so anecdotes aren't really anything.

I'd say it exists and is maintained as a false path more than anything. The capitalists are smart, they know you can't just keep all the pressure in, some people are going to realize what a bunch of nonsense capitalism is, you have to have relief vales, as long as they flow in directions that can't threaten things all the better.

False paths such as anarchism are intentionally promoted and allowed more exposure (including positive) than principled Marxism-Leninism in media and elsewhere for a reason and that's because the ruling class would much rather someone upset with capitalism become an anarchist than a Marxist-Leninist. They'd also much rather they become an MLM Gonzaloist or Trot for that matter as sitting in arm-chairs screaming about theory and revisionism before organizing the 15th split isn't a threat either.

People are steered towards individualistic ideologies like anarchism to keep them away from Marxism. The leap from anarchism to Marxism is in many ways no greater than the leap from being a social democrat liberal. Both tendencies that emphasize the individual, that see "authoritarianism" as a scary thing and a snarl word to be uttered at states but mostly states the US State Dept and media tells them are the worst.

"When you are an idealist who thinks all hierarchy is bad, and everywhere you look has hierarchy, you start to flatten everything out. Everything is equally bad.

If everything is equally bad then you can just criticize whatever is in front of your face and never take a side.

This makes you extremely easy to manipulate by powerful forces that decide what the media topic of the day is. Anarchists are blown around in the wind, ungrounded by anything. The capitalist media simply needs to grab you and point you in a direction to make you their tool."

-Anonymous_Ascendent

In such a trap it's in some ways harder to get out and become a Marxist-Leninist who supports AES because you're continuing to accept the propaganda, you're continuing to deep down like the "free" west more for its emphasis on individual liberty even to the point of harm of the collective and individual over the more "controlling" AES states that emphasize responsibilities, have rules, and yes security against counter-revolution, etc.

You believe as an anarchist that China ran over thousands of people in tanks in 1989 because they're authoritarians and a government and those two things do bad things and would definitely do that in your mind. You believe as an anarchist that Stalin murdered a billion people because that's what happens when one person gets such incredible authority over others (and why you're against it, why you need it to be true to justify your thinking), always a bad thing and soon enough as an anarchist you're saying despite how much you hate the west, you like their checks and balances and accept they definitely work unlike .

Because the western states are good at appearing to be relatively weak domestically compared to other countries because they're working behind the scenes with capitalist media to control the populace (whereas China overtly regulates its media which is just another sign of its authoritarianism to these types), because they placate them with higher living conditions built off exploitation, because the current superstructure is theirs (a liberal, capitalist one), because there are no powerful external actors (who having long infiltrated, cultivated people, corrupt officials, ideology, even weapons, along with real time intelligence) who can or would turn a large protest movement or riot into a color revolution that brings down the American government unlike what socialist states face from the west. Or indeed not even bring it down, just do gladio type terrorism shit (as they did in East Germany after the partition). Unthinkable in the US because only the US government does that to its own populace.

To be an anarchist you get to keep believing the State Dept propaganda, you get to keep believing what the nightly news says about far-away countries. You get to keep your liberal friends because you unlike those dirty tankies don't deny atrocity propaganda. You get to be a liberal but more smug about it, because you're above other liberals, you want better more, but you get to be snide and join hand in hand with the liberals in attacking Marxists, in attacking the "authoritarians", attacking Assad, cheering CIA "friendly radicals" who do the west's work for them in dividing, conquering, and weakening regions, states, etc all with a veneer of anarchism. And on and on. In other words it doesn't require great sacrifice or change.

And all of that is part of a self-aggrandizing pathology that makes it so attractive in the west. Because you get to be above it all, better than it all, pure, holy, unstained, much as MLM's who support every revolution but the ones which succeeded are towards their version of Marxism. Part of a larger pathology of the Christian influence and the fetish for humble defeat and martyrdom as being ideals to aspire to.

The hardest part is educating an anarchist out of liberal mentalities about property and "freedom"

Anarchism is a "safe" way to be a leftist, as they don't need to actually challenge their own liberal brainworms, which is why there are so many anarcho-liberal types who are just liberals wearing a punk jacket. (And I say safe mentally and socially of course. Anarchist comrades put themselves in the line of fire of the state just as much as any ML does.)

Being a principled ML in the USA also gets you on a watchlist and raided by cops if you're amassing enough power to do something. I don't think anarchist orgs have had the same level of state scrutiny, but I don't mean to say anarchists have had it easy. I work with a mostly anarchist org (Food not Bombs) and we get citations from cops nearly every week.

Like polish anarchists doing exactly one burning since 1989: they burned a Soviet consulate in 1991.