Graeber is dead wrong on this. It wasn’t the antiwar movement in the US that caused “Vietnam Syndrome” - being militarily defeated by a nation the US viewed as “inferior” did.
And it also wasn’t 9/11 that overcame “Vietnam Syndrome” - the invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War did that.
If the antiwar movement in the US achieved anything, it was to provide the US military with a pretext - ie, somebody to blame - for extracting themselves from a war they had decisively lost.
A personal philosophy is a fine and dandy thing to have - but it’s not much of a security measure to protect against the very thing OP says they are concerned about, is it now?
Imagine encouraging members of activist groups to unilaterally POLICE the behavior of their fellow members - in an anarchist community.
Imagine being unable to bring up very real security concerns within an activist group so that the group can solve the problem in an appropriately DEMOCRATIC manner - again, in an anarchist community.
Are you TRYING to cultivate a culture of suspicion in your orgs?
Imagine turning “here, read this book”
Oh, look, it’s the standard “read my fave Beardy McDeadguy’s book” answer edgelords that are completely out of touch with the people they (purportedly) wish to liberate offers to those they assume to be too ideologically “impure” for their glorified counter-culture club they mistake for a political movement.
Do you seriously think the CNT-FAI was built this way? Or the movements in Chiappas, or Rojava?
bell hooks wrote her books to inform - not to be used as a way to purity test people because you don’t know how to democratically normalize common-sense security measures in organizations.
Lmfao, new to leftist spaces are you?
Unfortunately, no. I’m not.
It is not the fascists that have rendered the left so ineffective and weak in the Anglophone world, Clyde - it’s the liberals that did. And all your edginess doesn’t hide the fact that the left still virtually have no answer to liberal co-optation - unless you want to inform me of some brilliant plan that the left has managed to hide for the last seven decades?
Ask them to read some bell hooks
I don’t think putting people through a “re-education” process is going to have the results you think it will.
However, this is an important point - having certain people monopolize the security function IS a pretty dangerous security risk in itself, and it would be a far better strategy to make this a perfectly understood and non-negotiable paradigm within the group than trying to subtly psyop certain individuals who may simply be too enthusiastic for their own good.
MLK and Malcolm X tried to warn us about liberalism a long, long time ago… and I don’t think the left, even now, has realized what liberalism truly is - the “political arm” of the capitalist order. The carrot to the fascist stick.
That term refers to the extremes of the political spectrum I was referring to
If your “political spectrum” classifies the literally LEAST extremist political ideology as “extremist” it probably means you need something better than the “political spectrum,” no?
Nothing new about this - the Viet Cong used this tactic. They’d memorise the names of US/ARVN collaborators in their own towns and villages in case they were ever captured and were forced to give up names under torture.
This way, the CIA death squads would end up murdering their own informant network.
There’s no point in merely making political points any longer - you have to use their own systems to hurt them.
The liberals are in the process of stealing the word “radical” from us as well.
Anarchy will always be the extreme left into the political pendulum.
There is absolutely nothing “extreme left” about anarchism - you are literally engaging in the same false framing liberals and fascists are engaging in.
Anarchism is radical - not extreme. Understand the difference. It is not “further left” than basic socialism is. It never has been.
That’s not going to work. To make it work, you need to be reporting people who aren’t well-known - ie, like the overt white supremacists in your own town.
but their ideological descendents still managed to fester
That’s because the US and their liberal European collaborators went out of their way to preserve fascism in Europe. The US tried to destroy the Taliban - and now the Taliban is essentially untouchable (which they most definitely weren’t before). You get a lot of political credibility on your home turf for defeating the US - just ask Vietnam.
I’m having trouble parsing it.
The whole reason there is a fascist resurgence is because liberalism has been exposed as a pack of lies. That started even before the 2008 recession, and now one of liberalism’s holiest cows - Zionism - is collapsing right before everyone’s eyes.
No more carrot for the US - now there will only be the stick. “Hearts & Minds” had absolutely nothing to do with the brown people they were dropping napalm and willy pete on - the target of “Hearts & Minds” was always the people doing the dropping.
Both the Taliban
You didn’t get the memo? The US ran from Afghanistan with it’s tail between it’s legs, while the Taliban rules there and is now literally untouchable. The US’s “steamrolling” isn’t as impressive as you believe it to be.
“winning hearts and minds”
The US can’t even win “hearts & minds” in Bumfucksville, Arizona any more.
Is Canada supposed to be afraid of a country that couldn’t defeat Vietnamese rice farmers and Afghan goatherders?
I just discovered today that the Soviet army’s boots were made by prison labor throughout the Cold War, and that never changed afterward. Just like the US army’s kevlar helmets!
I’d rather not. Talking to liberals is migraine-inducing.
If you don’t know what the term “radical” means, at least have the courtesy to not use it in sentences.
Blamed by WHOM?
"The Weimar Republic, Germany’s 12-year experiment with democracy liberalism, came to an end after the Nazis came to power
FTFY. Liberalism is anti-democratic and inevitably leads to fascism when it fails to protect the capitalists’ precious status quo.
You need to make those eye-holes bigger.