This is the first of several episodes that we will do on the Moscow Trials. For fuller context we decided to start our investigation with the beginnings of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Hope you enjoy!

Full playlist:

https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PLylERqfCJuXgQa9m-0rxykESsmA-urQtS

...because I'll never be him

"...nah bro, it's still anarchist because they adhere to anarchist principles!!"

"...nah bro, the EZLN is actually anarchist even though they openly reject anarchism as their identity!!"

"...nah bro, it's not an expression of a colonialist attitude to appropriate the EZLN struggle as being part of my political beliefs!!"

It's astounding to me that western anarchists will defend to the death the right of trans people to self-identify but when a political struggle in the third world asserts its right to self-identify they'll steamroll it without a second thought.

Imagine claiming to reject unjust hierarchies and then placing yourself above the people of a movement to paternalistically appropriate their cause as being part of your own political ideology.

Here are the EZLN in their own words on the matter:

The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be.

Over the past 500 years, we have been subjected to a brutal system of exploitation and degradation few in North America have ever experienced.

It is apparent from your condescending language and arrogant short-sightedness that you understand very little about Mexican History or Mexicans in general.

Our struggle was raging before anarchism was even a word, much less an ideology with newspapers and disciples. Our struggle is older than Bakunin or Kropotkin. We are not willing to lower our history to meet some narrow ideology exported from the same countries we fought against in our Wars for independence. The struggle in Mexico, Zapatista and otherwise, is a product of our histories and our cultures and cannot be bent and manipulated to fit someone else’s formula, much less a formula not at all informed about our people, our country or our histories. We as a movement are not anarchist.

We see narrow-minded ideologies like anarchism... as tools to pull apart Mexicans into more easily exploitable groups.

But what really enraged [us is] the familiar old face of colonialism shining through your good intentions. Once again we Mexicans [find ourselves put into a position where we] are not as good as the all knowing North American Imperialist who thinks himself more aware, more intelligent and more sophisticated politically than the dumb Mexican. This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from some other culture thinks they know what is best for us more than we do ourselves.

Once again, the anarchists in North America know better than us about how to wage a struggle we have been engaged in since 300 years before their country was founded and can therefore, even think about using us as a means to “advance their project.” That is the same exact attitude Capitalists and Empires have been using to exploit and degrade Mexico and the rest of the third world for the past five hundred years.

Even though [you talk] a lot about revolution, the attitudes and ideas held by [you] are no different than those held by Cortes, Monroe or any other corporate imperialist bastard you can think of. Your intervention is not wanted nor are we a “project” for some high-minded North Americans to profit off.

So long as North American anarchists hold and espouse colonialist belief systems they will forever find themselves without allies in the third world. The peasants in Bolivia and Ecuador, no matter how closely in conformity with your rigid ideology, will not appreciate your condescending colonial attitudes anymore than would the freedom fighters in Papua New Guinea or anywhere else in the world.

Colonialism is one of the many enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans reinforce colonial thought patterns in their “revolutionary” struggles, they will never be on the side of any anti-colonial struggle anywhere. We in the Zapatista struggle have... asked the world to... respect the historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull ourselves from under the boots of oppression.

Source

(Excuse the minimisation that the editor feels compelled to engage in with their mention of "the subtle colonialist tendencies" and in saying "it is unclear whose voice is this Zapatista response, which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes. We [My note: Who is 'we'? It is unclear whose voice in this editorial note which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes...] fully agree that arrogance toward the struggles in Mexico should have no part in any commentary. Perhaps it is also worth asking whether centralization and representation can be anti-authoritarian?" — does the editor have no shame and no capacity for insight? Did they even listen to the author before typing this out? It's remarkable that this editor's royal "we" applies a standard of demanding proof of consensus from the EZLN in their communications which is entirely absent from their concern when other movements write or when Subcommandante Marcos writes but is not directly criticising western anarchists, not to mention in their own editorial note itself. They are setting their own personal standards for how they define the terms centralisation and anti-authoritarian then they're projecting this onto the EZLN and concern-trolling over what they assume to be the EZLN falling short of the editor's standards. Way to miss the point, guys!)

Anti-Outside Aktion on blast

Makes you wonder why the most committed anarchists would go to the Ukraine to fight if they weren't really anarchists in the first place.

If the anarchists were really as disorganised as this article paints them to be, any adventurist would have had much better luck finding their way to the front through virtually any other route than as an anarchist.

Notice the unfalsifiable orthodoxy that kicks in in the editorial note, immediately dismissing any anarchist who joined the Azov Battalion or the OUN as being a false anarchist since joining with fascists disqualifies your from being an anarchist. That's very convenient and all but the lack of self-crit shown in this article is astounding.

This is a persistent myth that is shared amongst anarchists and RadLibs alike that the Soviets betrayed the Makhnovists by reneging on their so-called alliance with the Black Army, turning on them immediately after the defeat of the White Army.

This furnishes the anarchist persecution fetish and common narratives about how communists will always betray "the true revolution" and how Lenin was a tyrant.

The historical facts, however, paint a significantly different picture.

For one, you do not sign pacts with your allies. There was a military pact that was signed but, like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, this is something that occurred between two parties that were constantly at odds with each other and the pact was signed out of conditions where the interests of both parties were temporarily aligned. This simple fact escapes the historical revisionists constantly but, unsurprisingly, only when it serves their arguments.

Secondly, Makhno himself knew that this pact was only temporary. Upon the signing of the pact he had this to say in The Road to Freedom, the Makhnovists' mouthpiece, in October 13, 1920:

"Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased. Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?

What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists.

We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, 'fusion' or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case."
[Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, pp. 200-201]

Clearly these are not the words that allies speak about one another.

At the successful Seige of Perekop, whereby the Red and Black Armies successfully broke the back of Wrangel's White Army forces and brought the Southern front to a conclusion, Makhno's aide-de-camp Grigori Vassilevsky, pronounced the end of the pact, proclaiming:

"That's the end for the agreement! Take my word for it, within one week the Bolsheviks are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks!"
[Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, p.238]

The fact is that USSR furnished the Black Army with much-needed military supplies without which they would have been unable to continue fighting and Makhno was no pluralistic leader who was open to Bolsheviks; in fact, his army incorporated Bolshevik forces which defected to the Black Army and Makhno set his military secret police force, the Kontrrazvedka, to at first surveil the former Bolshevik military leaders along with the rising Bolshevik influence that had developed particularly around Yekaterinoslav, and then later summarily executed the Bolshevik leaders when they posed too much of a threat to his power due to commanding some of the strongest units in his army.

But that's a topic which deserves its own post...

I'm astonished at how sensitive the mods must be over there.

Apparently you're allowed to say whatever baseless slander you like about the eeeeevil tankies but the minute someone says "Hold up a sec, you claim to be anti-authoritarian and yet you support authoritarianism either explicitly or implicitly?" and they have to shut it down immediately.

Regardless, I think I made a pretty solid counterargument to the typical complaint about communism being authoritarian.

Mfers skim read the Wikipedia entry on Hannah Arendt and start thinking they're justified in slinging accusations about "muh authoritarianism" smh.