Should Hexbear MLs tone down their admiration for AES so we’re not scaring potential leftists away?
Should Hexbear MLs tone down their admiration for AES so we’re not scaring potential leftists away?
Inspired by recent discussions, I think Hexbear has a lot of good information about socialism but I wonder if the relentless defense of AES on Hexbear means shooting ourselves in the foot, since many potential leftists have been thoroughly primed to react negatively to AES states?
We’re not getting our messages out when progressive instances have already pre-emptively blocked us and calling us “tankies”.
People are being turned away without even taking the opportunity to read some of the stuff here, because they already have a pre-conceived notion about Hexbear being filled with “crazy tankies who defend totalitarianism”.
I know there have been a lot of propaganda and fabrication being perpetuated about socialist countries, and it feels “right” to defend them against these false accusations, but I wonder if this is doing more harm than good for the present day nascent socialist movement, at least in the Western countries?
We can remain on the current course and feel indignant about the tankie accusations, but will forever remain as a niche “tankie” community.
Or, we can open ourselves up, by toning down the admiration for the socialist states so we are not being treated as hostile by the other instances, and thus opening up the opportunities to have productive interactions with users (and potential leftists) from other instances?
(I do have my own position, you probably know which one it is, but I’m willing to hear from others and reevaluate my own opinions if needed).
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who responded. All points are well taken. Thank you.
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As I said before, it's possible that it was terrible
I mean they were summary executions; those are prima facie terrible absent some pretty some massively compelling evidence (member of the Waffen-SS), right? Isn't that what the whole "abolish the police" thing is about? Isn't that what the whole George Floyd protests were predicated on?
Like if were going to come out and say "It's fine to summarily execute thousands of people, many of whom are civilians, purely on the basis of logistic and political convenience", then it doesn't matter what actual historical crimes any AES regime committed; we're openly giving ourselves permission to carry out repression like that in the future, and these potential future crimes are the only ones anyone we're talking to actually cares about. That's my point.
All I'm saying is, if our political platform has a massive undercurrent of "were are going to shoot a whole lot of you once we get power", we don't get to act surprised when we have absolutely 0 political success, electoral or otherwise. Like it's funny that Chris Matthews has brainworms that Bernie is going to be running death camps in central park. On the flip side it's absolutely soul-crushing that 70% of the population shares those brainworms. And that's for Bernie Sanders, much less an actual socialist candidate.
And to your last point, if you actually find yourself in some do or die position as part of some revolution, having to make some incredibly difficult choice, you still can. Having a platform of peace land and bread doesn't preclude you from doing anything in the future as necessary.
I mean they were summary executions; those are prima facie terrible absent some pretty some massively compelling evidence (member of the Waffen-SS), right?
Did you miss the part where Polish fascists under Nazi occupation were already rounding up and slaughtering Jews and other minorities? What makes a Nazi collaborator better than SS?
Isn't that what the whole "abolish the police" thing is about?
The principle element of "abolish the police" from the standpoint of an anti-imperialist looking at America is that the police function as a sort of colonial occupation apparatus within minority communities that does virtually nothing else in those communities but maintain a brutal oppression for the purpose of economic extraction and the maintainance of a white supremacist ideology. The fact that cops effectively engage in the summary execution of, at minimum, over a thousand people a year in this country is principally bad because it is to support that project.
In a hypothetical American Social Revolution, a portion of the people who are now cops probably would need to be killed for simple logistical and threat-mitigation reasons, though of course rehabilitation is the goal and detaining most of them safely would probably be possible in most cases. Cops [and deputies], more than military or any other group that isn't a private gang (like the Klan) are the group that this is true for than any other, since they do in some places operate as rightwing death squads and are a self-selection for the most malignant personalities that can maintain an organized group and do violence themselves.
Isn't that what the whole George Floyd protests were predicated on?
If you think killing a Polish mayor who rallied his town to immolate Jews (or killing a soldier who did the immolating) is similar to the killing of George Floyd, I have nothing to say to you.
Did you miss the part where Polish fascists under Nazi occupation were already rounding up and slaughtering Jews and other minorities? What makes a Nazi collaborator better than SS?
So shoot those Polish fascists. Don't shoot the Polish liberal college professor you've got in your custody as a proxy.
engage in the summary execution of, at minimum, over a thousand people a year in this country is principally bad because it is to support that project.
So if it were random, unaligned summary executions, that would be okay? Cause from my point of view summary executions of innocent people is intrinsically bad, regardless of what theoretical framework we decide to explain them with.
If you think killing a Polish mayor who rallied his town to immolate Jews (or killing a soldier who did the immolating) is similar to the killing of George Floyd, I have nothing to say to you.
Is there a particular Polish mayor the Soviets killed in Katyn that you had in mind, or are you constructing a contra-factual counter-example out of whole cloth?
In a hypothetical American Social Revolution, a portion of the people who are now cops probably would need to be killed for simple logistical and threat-mitigation reasons,
Maybe, maybe not! Like you said it's not certain. Just a probability. It'll depend on the material conditions on the ground at the time.
So don't put it on your fuckin platform like it's something you hope to do.
So shoot those Polish fascists. Don't shoot the Polish liberal college professor you've got in your custody as a proxy.
Is that what happened? I've been asking questions towards that end that you ignored.
So if it were random, unaligned summary executions, that would be okay? Cause from my point of view summary executions of innocent people is intrinsically bad, regardless of what theoretical framework we decide to explain them with.
You say "innocent" but we haven't established that they were innocent or even that that was more probable than them siding with fascists.
Is there a particular Polish mayor the Soviets killed in Katyn that you had in mind, or are you constructing a contra-factual counter-example out of whole cloth?
There was an infamous case of a Polish mayor that I was alluding to (actually I think there were a couple), but they were on the German side of the border because the point is that there were natively Polish pogroms and we know that even after the war, sections of the Polish population were taking any excuse to commit genocide on any minority (e.g. Germans during the postwar relocations). I know some claims about demographic information, but I know of only like one or two individual identities of people killed in Katyn.
Maybe, maybe not! Like you said it's not certain. Just a probability. It'll depend on the material conditions on the ground at the time.
So don't put it on your fuckin platform like it's something you hope to do.
I've only seen that put on an ML platform in anarcho-bidenist memes and that one tasteless and self-deprecating joke about communists in Disco Elysium. No one is saying "Let us aspire to kill as many people without trial as possible", you are battling a phantom in your brain that I can do little to help you overcome, unless you are just finding a way to concern troll about atrocity propaganda
Is that what happened? I've been asking questions towards that end that you ignored.
Isn't it?
As far as I can tell, none of these people were executed for any particular crimes; they were executed for being members of counter-revolutionary parties and things like that. And shooting some doctor solely because he's a liberal shithead is a bad thing.
Like if we're so eager to strip the smallest modicum of value to human life, what's the fucking point of fighting for a better future? I'm a communist because capitalism as an ideology attaches absolutely 0 value to human life and has absolutely no compunctions of squeezing out life for 'value' across the globe. And so when we go to people and tell them a better future is possible, I don't know why we're so quick to add "yes that better future does feature a whole lot of firing squads, and we're not altogether too picky about who ends up in front of one".
I'm not even saying you need to condemn the Katyn massacre or the like. I'm just saying you don't need to defend it. We're not Lavrenty Beria, so the Katyn massacre isn't our problem unless we decide to make it our problem. And what possibly benefit could we gain from taking on it's defense?
Are the horrors of capitalism orders of magnitude worse? Sure, but for a lot of people they're baked into the cake, and they don't even see them, and when they do they're nearly always portrayed as regrettable, accidental, or unavoidable. The fact that we're letting capitalism seem more humane than communism to the general populous because we can't muster anything beyond a "idk, they probably would have sided with the fascists or something, too bad and git gud" is an absolute travesty.
You say "innocent" but we haven't established that they were innocent or even that that was more probable than them siding with fascists.
Well given they were in Soviet custody as prisoners of war, I'd say the probability of them siding with the fascists was approaching 0%. No one is saying release them all immediately. But liquidating 20,000 people based on vibes about what they might do is a bad thing.
No one is saying "Let us aspire to kill as many people without trial as possible"
Well, here's a hexbear search for "excuses terror"! There's only about 20 pages of results, but luckily about half of those are some variation of "we might having to start making excuses".
For your efforts in concern trolling, you're so incredibly lazy. Do you think I'm a complete moron? Like, I don't expect you to respect me, but come the fuck on. Fine, let's use fucking NATOpedia in one of its worst capacities:
As far as I can tell, none of these people were executed for any particular crimes; they were executed for being members of counter-revolutionary parties and things like that.
As far as you can tell, really? Let's look at the very second paragraph of your link:
Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials"
Maybe it's true, maybe it is not, but the charge was more severe than "member of a liberal party," though the shitty article doesn't even begin to delve into why it was done beyond that expression of the charge and then these paragraphs:
Once at the camps, from October 1939 to February 1940, the Poles were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political pressure by NKVD officers, such as Vasily Zarubin. The prisoners assumed they would be released soon, but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die. According to NKVD reports, if a prisoner could not be induced to adopt a pro-Soviet attitude, he was declared a "hardened and uncompromising enemy of Soviet authority".
On 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note to Joseph Stalin from Beria, six members of the Soviet Politburo – Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Mikhail Kalinin – signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. The reason for the massacre, according to the historian Gerhard Weinberg, was that Stalin wanted to deprive a potential future Polish military of a large portion of its talent. The Soviet leadership, and Stalin in particular, viewed the Polish prisoners as a "problem" as they might resist being under Soviet rule. Therefore, they decided the prisoners inside the "special camps" were to be shot as "avowed enemies of Soviet authority".
Remembering what a "hostile source" is (I think you might struggle with that), this is actually kind of interesting. It sure would be nice if the assholes at the CIA could have hosted a source with a full translation of the order, rather than just a sentence fragment.
In any case, I am beginning to understand it better and in the context of the imminent (though still underestimated) Nazi invasion, I see the value in killing cops and military [which seem to be what almost all of them were, the so-called "intelligentsia" were also mainly in the military, though as conscripts and seem to be best understood as militarily-trained masses] who the extensive interview process deemed a threat in the case of Nazis breaking them out of jail. Considering that the Nazis would sweep through Poland like a whirlwind not long after, there seems to me to be objects of legitimate consideration here.
Well, here's a hexbear search for "excuses terror"! There's only about 20 pages of results, but luckily about half of those are some variation of "we might having to start making excuses".
And again, you must think I'm a moron. It's a quote from Marx, and it does not refer to indiscriminate killing. In fact, it has as much to do with the destruction of state machinery and private property, and the destruction of liberal society as anything else:
Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext?
We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.
The Prussian official piece of paper goes even to the absurd length of speaking about the "right of hospitality which was disgracefully abused" by Karl Marx, the Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
I don't know very much about the killing in Katyn and you have done little to educate me, so I must ask questions. When it comes to actions of my own, or actions that I actually do know about -- you mentioned the "Holodomor" earlier like the miserable concern troll you are; the kulaks who were shot had it fucking coming and then some, while the peasants who starved were a tragedy the Soviets failed to avert -- making excuses and absurd appeals to things like "hospitality" have no place. If we understand what happened, we should offer the most direct and straightforward justification or we should condemn it (breaking the event down to constituent elements if we need to delineate). As Mao said, a revolution is not a dinner party, and love is not enough to defeat fascism, even if it is a good thing to hold as well. "Hospitality," on the other hand, can be thrown out altogether when it comes to dealing with the state or free reactionaries.
Maybe it's true, maybe it is not, but the charge was more severe than "member of a liberal party," though the shitty article doesn't even begin to delve into why it was done beyond that expression of the charge and then these paragraphs:
You're right, factory owner is a much more severe charge. But hey, why trust NATOpedia, why not trust Beria's own claims.
TOP SECRET From the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to comrade STALIN In the NKVD POW camps and in the prisons of the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia there is currently a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former Polish police officers and employees of intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist c-r (counterrevolutionary) parties participants in underground c-r rebel organizations, defectors and so on.
In any case, I am beginning to understand it better and in the context of the imminent (though still underestimated) Nazi invasion, I see the value in killing cops and military [which seem to be what almost all of them were, the so-called "intelligentsia" were also mainly in the military, though as conscripts and seem to be best understood as militarily-trained masses] who the extensive interview process deemed a threat in the case of Nazis breaking them out of jail. Considering that the Nazis would sweep through Poland like a whirlwind not long after, there seems to me to be objects of legitimate consideration here.
Yeah, but because we have clearly established, it's justified ipso facto for you. You trotted out one defense immediately to justify it, not knowing anything about it, and when it was pointed out to you how ahistorical that defense was, you've now got to concoct a justification based on their potential future actions. If I point out that none of the 400 odd prisoners that were spared execution and sent to the Russian interior ended up as a military threat in future, and so that your current justification also doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny, it's not suddenly going to stop being justified for you; The conclusion precedes the facts in this case.
In reality, all you have to say is "Look, I wasn't there, and don't know what happened, but as a communist I actually place value on human life, as opposed to capitalism, and oppose the use deadly violence except in cases of absolute necessity".
It's a quote from Marx, and it does not refer to indiscriminate killing. In fact, it has as much to do with the destruction of state machinery and private property, and the destruction of liberal society as anything else:
I know it's a quote from Marx, and I know you know it's a quote from Marx. But your characterization of it is a nice sterile abstraction from the boatloads of shooting and starving, some of which is bound to be indiscriminate, you know it to entail.
It really seems to fetishize the means of achieving communism, not the actual good bits of communism. "The Revolution is not a dinner party" is a fun bit of comedic understatement about how the revolution sucks. The hardships of the Long March sucked. We should wish to avoid those if at all possible!
One major advantage that NJR and idealists like him have over us lot is how much they seem to be looking forward to living in a communist society, as opposed to how much they look forward to serving in firing squads.
If we understand what happened
We don't. We can construct a narrative, but unless we share a huge overlap in worldview with who we're talking to, that narrative will carry precious little weight.
making excuses and absurd appeals to things like "hospitality" have no place.
I'm specifically saying we don't have to make excuses. You're the one who feels the need to make excuses about all the future-crimes the Polish doctors were going to commit.
My tendency towards avoidance is getting to me, but luckily the degree to which you lean on personal accusations gives me better reason to ignore it.
Between the quote from Beria and the section I quoted before, screening for "Will each of these people immediately take up arms against us in the likely event of Germans kicking in the door and enabling slaughter like German occupied Poland is already seeing?" makes sense. I clearly had a defective understanding of the issue and I still don't really understand it, but your pathetic sneering may as well be about "the people's stick" for how compelling I find it.
Yeah, but because we have clearly established, it's justified ipso facto for you.
No, you established that I have a weird reaction to the subject of Katyn, but I criticize the Soviets all the time and in fact probably have harsher criticisms of Lenin than most of the MLs on this board (and at least a slightly more articulated criticism of Stalin), and indeed I talk about these subjects every now and then, but it only gets so far and I only have so much patience for repeating myself just to fucking virtue signal that I'm not part of Stalin's personality cult or whatever. I have no interest in making such appeasements to a shithead concern troll like you.
the boatloads of shooting and starving
"Starving" is a weird verb to pick here. Sure wonder why the guy that Definitely Doesn't Have Ahistorical Criticisms of Stalin would use that
Also:
But your characterization of it is a nice sterile abstraction
Absolutely go fuck yourself. In the very same section I said "the kulaks who were shot had it coming and then some". Marx was speaking abstractly and I spoke in part in terms of his quote, but I also applied it, and your attempts at a manipulative framing of what I said to directly accuse me of the contrary are pathetic.
shithead concern troll like you.
Because I've got you here and because this always comes up and because you're less annoying than 90% of the other ML's on here, I'm going to ask: What makes me a concern troll? What makes this concern trolling? They're quite clearly sincerely my views so I don't see how the typical definition of concern troll regarding disingenuous applies.
So what does this mean? Honestly, no gotcha.
Or to put it differently, is there any possible way for anyone having the positions on this I do an advocating for it not to be concern trolling?
"Starving" is a weird verb to pick here. Sure wonder why the guy that Definitely Doesn't Have Ahistorical Criticisms of Stalin would use that
You're the one that brought it up as "regrettable". The subject didn't even cross my mind until you acknowledged it as an actual bad outcome.
"Will each of these people immediately take up arms against us in the likely event of Germans kicking in the door and enabling slaughter like German occupied Poland is already seeing?"
Of the 400 who were to be shot by this metric who were eventually spared, how many of them actually did take up arms against the Soviets? They serve as a nice, though albeit imperfect control group over how valid this methodology actually was.
Pure liberal historiography
Read Lukács
You gonna read Rorty for me?
Motherfucker I sat through reading TR Fehrenbach