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?
This was a loooooooong time ago, and I was reading or listening to basically anything I could get my hands on, but i was already definitely an anarchist and vaguely a communist, had been the former since single digit years and the latter since at least age 16 or so. Uh, I think the ‘revolutions’ podcast had a non-objectionable thing on the Russian revolution, but idr if it covers this much.
I’ve come across podcasts that cover bits of it more recently, if you want me to DM links. No I didn’t have mentors. Not political anyway. I had some punk friends but they weren’t into history or theory. Mostly got radicalized by experience being varying degrees of alone; was lonely and alienating as fuck. I’d rather not get more personal publicly on this account.
If youre genuinely curious, I can dig some stuff up for you, but I’m not sure it will be what I read 10+ years ago. I have some interesting theory that explains what I specifically think, but I was already firmly in the ‘authority is not okay’ and ‘private property is just feudalism with extra gaslighting’ camps.
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the offer but I don’t need links just now. I will think about what you said though, you’ve given me some touch off points to, idk, rework the question i guess? It’d be so much easier to figure stuff out if it wasn’t so hard to figure out what question you want to ask! : )
And how/where to ask it, now that web search is dead. Good luck figuring shit out!