Collaborating with authoritarian leftists isn't a bad idea because they are dangerous right now. It is a bad idea because it gives them more power and legitimacy which they will use, at a later date, to claim they engineered the movement and try to co-opt it to their needs.
The main praxis of authoritarian leftism is co-option. Their vanguards are often small and ineffectual, but highly opportunist, infiltrating the real movement of the masses so they can jump in and seize the steering wheel at a crucial moment in the revolutionary rupture.
When you collaborate with authortarian leftists, you are helping them in their praxis of co-option. You are allowing a representative of the enemy system into the spaces where we are attempting to dismantle and replace that system, just because they have the right aesthetics.
I understand that you probably have friends or adjacent organizers who are authoritarian leftists and they don't seem like cynical co-opters to you. But this isn't about the individuals. This is about what an authoritarian seizure of power necessarily requires.
Choosing civility and collaboration with authoritarian leftists is just not practical. If you want a successful revolutionary juncture, your main orientation toward authoritarian leftists should be deconversion if possible and organizational denial of power/influence if not.
As several have noted: this is written to libsocs and anarchists in places where authleftists have not already taken state power. But where they have, it is even MORE important not to collaborate with them, as they are very likely to betray you to the state suppression apparatus.

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More from @AnarkYouTube

15 Apr
I think, for many leftists, the left is a place where they go to belong; an escape from alienated society where they can cultivate an identity of radicalism with friends and dream of a better future. They want to be liked, to have no opponents, and harbor only peaceful engagement
But this peace and unity mindset is a placating delusion. The left is not a social club. Revolution is not a game or a fun aesthetic; though it necessarily involves times of extreme catharsis and solidarity. We are part of a struggle for the emancipation of humans from domination
And I don't want to diminish the intense bonds that are formed within revolutionary spaces. I would even say that they are crucial components to our success. But if we prioritize the desire to belong above necessary conflict, we choose our own comfort over human liberation.
Read 6 tweets
4 Jul 20
So I went to Seattle just before CHAZ/CHOP was dismantled to speak with organizers there and to see the project with my own two eyes. I have said before that I do not criticize tactics publicly, but now that the zone has been dismantled, I feel we can have a discussion about it.
Because I came to CHOP late, it was on its last legs. The bustling crowds and the multitude of mutual aid tents seen in early videos had died down by the time I arrived. A crowd remained and mutual aid was still available; but these were a shadow of their former selves.
One of the first things I was struck by, was how effective the police barricades were in containing and controlling the area. The barricades were not just at the borders, they were inside the borders as well, funneling foot traffic into formations similar to a street fair.
Read 21 tweets
6 May 20
I do not see anarchism as an ideology rooting to Europe, nor even to the first people to call themselves anarchist. Anarchism is a lens of analysis and the usage of that lens is found in a variety of cultures and thinkers throughout history, far predating the usage of the name.
If you want to understand what I mean, I recommend this video:
They have also written about the influence of the indigenous American Kandiaronk on the Enlightenment and how a lot what was valuable therein was a shallow understanding of indigenous thought, encountered when Europe was first colonizing the continent. journaldumauss.net/?La-sagesse-de…
Read 10 tweets
29 Oct 19
Socialism is when the workers own and manage the means of production. This is what it had always meant, until the modern era where the world's dominant propaganda systems contorted its meaning into "the state holding a market monopoly."
Authoritarian notions of socialism rely upon your willingness to buy in to a sort of ideological alchemy: the state is a representation of "the workers," therefore when the state does something, the "workers" do that thing. Are you going to fight a revolution for that?
The state will never magically become a proxy for the workers. Ever. Mark my words. It has been roughly a century since that observation was first made and a century of validation has followed. Power structures only seek monopoly for themselves, no matter their aesthetics.
Read 11 tweets
23 Oct 19
Whew. People are really playing into this position HARD the last couple days.
For all of you who have anarchist sympathies, you should probably know that if you wait to express your criticisms of Leninism until after we have agitated the people, we will just repeat the same cycle as last time. Leninism is predicated upon ruthless concentration of power.
I, for one, have been more vocal about my partisan stances recently, because I have realized that Leninists use dog-piling to replace the coercive power they once had. They are hoping to intimidate you into silence.
Read 11 tweets
22 Jun 19
It's very bizarre to me how people want to organize and improve society, yet think they can skip the ideological education of the masses. This does not have a good track record throughout history and usually leads to fascist/authoritarian co-option of leftist efforts.
As much as it may seem like an exhausting process to deprogram capitalistic ideology and to spend so much time quibbling over terms, it is crucial we do so. Not only because the distinctions matter and have material effects, but because failure to do so separates us from history.
The political words we use in society and the ideological space that they occupy form the horizon of possible ideas and serve to distinguish between different tendencies. These differences are real and root to deep philosophical facts about their foundations.
Read 5 tweets

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