Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”
Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.
Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?
Makhno is a pretty sordid example from a modern perspective (with the abuse he facilitated). It doesn’t seem like the most intelligent shake for anarchism considering the “arming people with little oversight” produced pogroms. Idk, it’s like one of us holding up Gonzalo or one of those. Can I suggest KPAM or something? You still get a stabbed-in-the-back-by-commies narrative.
On the other hand I also wouldn’t hold up Sankara as a shining example because he definitely did some cool things and had some cool ideas, but ultimately he was installed by a non-communist in a military coup and then deposed by the same non-communist in another military coup a few years later.
Makhno is a pretty sordid example from a modern perspective (with the abuse he facilitated)
This is literally Zenz style gossip if you look at any modern studies of the period.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230610081318/http://www.ditext.com/voline/687.html
Offhand example. ctrl f “The second fault of Makhno” for the part I’m thinking of. It’s a highly sympathetic source and still contains things like that. Is this testimony debunked?
Haha I actually have to hand this one to you, because I was sure you were talking about the mythology of Makhno the Jew Killer given the progroms bit. The Pogroms bit is the one that’s Zenz style gossip given modern appraisals. Voline was correct.
From a modern perspective most of this period is quite literally horror. The Reds were not much better on this front, in fact quite worse given the way the Red Army sourced soldiers and what those soldiers did in turn. The Whites and Ukrainian Nationalists were the absolute worst.
