This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: Who was right?

In Guatemala, was it Arbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the d’etente between the Soviets and Washington.

Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.

That group was annihilated.

• Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method

Anarcho-libs / “Libertarian Leftists” love movements that maintained their moral purity by failing. As movements they’re relatively easy to defend. Because they never meaningfully took power, they’re never made to deal with the baggage of a real government that exists in a hostile capitalist world. Forever morally pristine and beautiful, in failure and death.

Some of these are absolutely ridiculous. “WATCH OUT FOR CHARISMATIC LEADERS!” Yes, if you want to make sure your organization is safe, make sure the leaders are unlikable morons who smell bad.

Gonna break down a few of these.

Heavy Emphasis on Recruitment: Vanguardist groups constantly need new members: to pay dues, volunteer their labor, recruit for the group, and replace burnt-out members. Lots of effort goes into social media and marketing, and actions are heavily influenced by how they can serve as a recruitment tool: the flashier the better. Waves of new people and energy help make the group feel active and relevant, and mask the steady trickle of people leaving.

Feds in a boardroom have discussed what kills orgs and determined the number one thing that kills orgs is retention, or lack of it. Membership falling below retention rate results in a shrinking org, which is a dying org as far as the feds are concerned.

Ambulance-Chasing and Coopting: Seeking energy and recruits, these groups will suddenly appear around “crisis of the moment” events. As we write this zine, their current target is Palestine solidarity efforts that have increased in response to Israel’s recent escalation of genocide in Gaza in 2023-2024. Watch for groups who appear at events uninvited and focus on distributing newspapers and collecting e-mail list signups. They’ll often bring things like mass-printed signs with their group’s name and website or a large banner advertising the group they can prominently display in photos of events to advertise. They may even hijack open mics and chants.

They are basically singling out PSL and FRSO here in the first part. But the second part is conflating those two groups with the tactics of RCA, formerly IMT, formerly Militant. They do show up to stuff, put up their branding and make it look like they’re supposed to be there as a means of piggybacking of other people’s organising. “Hijacking open mics” is funny af though, an open mic is… Open? It’s not hijacking is it. And a chant? It’s a fucking chant anyone can do it.

Front Groups and Front Coalitions: Creating a front group or coalition is another way vanguards try tapping into movement energy to redirect to their own ends. The front is dominated by members of the vanguard without clear connection to the vanguard group, to better allow the vanguard to hide their politics and intentions. Its purpose is to find recruits for the vanguard, and to be a vehicle for the vanguard’s activities that appears to be separate from them.

Liberals do this? Pussyhat Project? Half the liberal lgbt groups? They’re front groups created by liberals.

Deceptive and Dishonest Practices: The authoritarian politics of vanguards generally aren’t liked, so they’ll be kept below the surface. Vanguards publicly claim values that can attract people—like police abolition, supporting labor rights, and horizontal power—while hypocritically supporting police attacking workers in authoritarian nation-states they support, like Cuba, Iran, or China. How can you value someone’s consent and autonomy if you lie to them?

Nope. There’s no deception whatsoever in any vanguard group. I have literally not seen an ML org that doesn’t make you read Stalin. Bourgeoise police are not the same as proletarian police. Making this about Cuba in particular isn’t going to win anyone over, this “Zine” would’ve done better to leave that part out because the point will be instantly dismissed by every Cuba supporter. BUT, this isn’t actually designed to deradicalise anyone who gets into these orgs (more on that).

Party Lines in General: Vanguardist ideas of discipline and a “scientific” revolution that must be followed to a ‘T‘ require conformity, obedience, and strict binary thinking. The world is more nuanced than that, but this nuance isn’t allowed in vanguardist politics.

The revolutionary party is organised like a military hierarchy because it is fighting a class WAR and militaries are designed with that structure for a reason, they are the most resilient and effective organisational style that humans have come up with for war fighting.

Centralization: A vanguard needs a power structure they can exert control from. If it doesn’t exist, they may try creating it to place themselves or their close associates at the center.

Almost all political parties are centralised. Given my experience in liberal parties like UK Labour I would say they are LESS democratic and MORE centralised than ML orgs. Starmer practically annihilated any democracy that existed within that party, all of which was mostly created by Corbyn.

Redirecting Autonomous Efforts into Spaces They Control: Autonomous efforts and independent projects can be enticed into spaces a vanguard controls, often with promises of resources, a plea to not “duplicate efforts,” or “left unity.” The intent is to gain influence over the project. Like a mixture of Entryism and Cooptation.

I’ve always argued against doing this in my orgs. Maybe someone with a good media skillset could do a NEW project that is under the org’s name in addition to their existing project (such as a radio or youtube or whatever) but orgs that take control of existing projects of members don’t realise that they’re annihilating the motivation of the person running that project. Projects live and die by motivation of the key people running them and it’s very important that orgs get some awareness of that and allow members to simply have their projects and their recognition for them sometimes. If you give them that, they often become very loyal and are more willing to run the project in conjunction with the org.

Hyper-Focus on Bureaucracy: Getting the group stuck in loops of committee forming, decision-making, writing points of unity, establishing cadre leadership, etc. Most likely during power struggles and Entryist takeovers. Often causes non-vanguard members to leave in frustration.

Nah man this is what feds do to break orgs and waste time. Specifically they want more than 2-3 people making decisions on every single project because it slows everything to a fucking crawl. This is something orgs should largely avoid apart from major decisions.

Never-Ending Tasks: Revolutionary change will require lots of effort, but within vanguardist organizations the pressure to fulfill duties and demonstrate commitment and discipline often lead to members committing most of their time to the vanguard group. This can lead to relationships outside the group weakening from neglect, becoming socially dependent on the group, and eventually burning out without a support network to help them leave the group.

How dare orgs have work to do!?

Incidentally I’ve actually never met anyone that regretted the social relations they get from organising. Not even people that eventually left them. Maybe the drama and things but the actual social relations? No.

This is an attempt to make vanguard orgs sound similar to what people have seen of their racist conspiracy uncle who the whole family now doesn’t talk to. To conflate the left with the far-right. It’s not the same. People don’t feel sad and lonely and isolated socially from the rest of the world in leftist groups.

Charismatic Leader: Vanguard groups often center around a charismatic leader or founder who is elevated to a level of importance. This can be a leader/founder of the group itself, or an ideological figurehead.

yes hello, this is the ideological figurehead

Sheltering Abusers: Patriarchal violence is a serious recurring problem basically everywhere. But vanguardist groups often treat attempts at accountability as an attack on the group and their ideology, or a distraction from “the cause.” They become defensive, and in practice shield abusers while dismissing survivors of abuse.

There is no Epstein within the vanguard. Shut the fuck up, liberals have absolutely no leg to stand on in the face of the overwhelming evidence against them for pedophilia and sexual violence and literal presidential coverups. Patriarchal violence IS everywhere and the only reason this attack is used is because the left is BETTER about it which makes people more worried when hearing accusations. If we could compare communist orgs with liberal and fascist orgs on this issue I am 100% certain that communist orgs come out on top as having the least of it, the least covered up, and the most harshly dealt with when uncovered.

All large orgs will deal with it. And the larger they get the more they will.

Taking Credit for Others’ Work and Actions: Vanguards may take credit for events, actions, and work organized by other groups. This is particularly true for things that are flashy or popular, but other things may be claimed by the vanguard group if it seems like it will be useful for recruiting.

This is just repeating some of the above stuff I mentioned about motivation. It’s a careful balance and orgs should do it better. Incidentally, which is it? Are vanguards taking all credit or are they hiding behidn front orgs to hide their involvement?

Lack of Care for Members and Vulnerable People: The thirst for attention-grabbing actions can lead to vulnerable people and the group’s members being used as means to an end, resources to be exploited. Many “flashy” actions, such as an occupation, require extensive preparation, consideration, and care to manage various risks of harm (to the extent that we can). Nothing can be made perfectly safe, but a vanguard’s sloppy approach to actions can put people through unnecessary harm for what is ultimately a PR stunt.

Stop calling major issues “PR Stunts”. You are calling the Palestine protests against a genocide a PR stunt in the same breath as pretending you care about “vulnerable people”. The person that wrote this is a snake speaking double with a forked tongue.

The people that care THE MOST are in these orgs.

[cont in reply]

Authoritarian ideologies ignore that the methods you use for radical change influence the radical change that you wind up creating

So true bestie, it’s much better to fail miserably at engendering any societal change whatsoever, as is the “anarcho”-liberal tradition

: please stop the aggressive policies against my nation

: shut up dictator. You have done unspeakable crimes

: vote for my genocide cuck. My next target will be you.

: yes sir! Sieg heil sir! Please don’t be red while doing fascism

They really love to accuse PSL and ANSWER of co-opting the pro-Palestine movement because it’s trending. But these groups have been a central to that movement for at least 6-10 years. Where have the anarchist organizations been?

this is just an updated version of that old FBI handbook on sabotaging communist orgs

I swear the way these people talk about the PSL is like something from an alternate universe. I’ve been with the org for years now and it’s nothing like what they’re describing.

Boo!

I wish I loved anything as much as the writer loves quotation marks. So the “anti-imperialists” oppose the “Western world”, namely the “US”, due to “Marcyist” “Campism”. Wow, you really wouldn’t want to write this sentence without those scare quotes!

During uprisings, they’ll callously attack dissidents under a regime the vanguard supports, calling them CIA removed and calling their autonomous revolts “Color Revolutions”—if those same dissidents were in the US, ironically, the vanguard group would try to recruit them

I love completely ignoring the actual evidence of CIA meddling/color revolution constantly presented in these cases because even mentioning it must be a sinister propaganda ploy to undermine “autonomous revolts” against “authoritarian regimes”!! How do I know this? Um because there’s motive on the part of tankies to defend these “regimes” (which are praised as “anti-imperialist”) against criticism, whereas there is no motive to attack these “regimes” (which we thoroughly condemn as “authoritarian” and seek the collapse of) on our part!! And with this the “irony” is revealed that our position is correct and therefore the tankies are silly.

This shitty zine belongs in the dunk tank.

Piggybacking off of @Awoo@hexbear.nets effortpost to slap some quick dunks on the bulletpoints:

text

Heavy Emphasis on Recruitment: (…) Lots of effort goes into social media and marketing, and actions are heavily influenced by how they can serve as a recruitment tool: the flashier the better

Yeah, because that works when you’re recruiting via social media. “Nooo don’t be effective, don’t be appealing, don’t function, we need to advertise by posting the entirety of the communist manifesto in the ugliest font possibe otherwise our moral integrity is corrupted!”
Jfc fed shit.

Heavy Emphasis on Recruitment (cont’d): And mask the steady trickle of people leaving

Liberals making normal stuff sound villanous and scary, name a more iconic duo. It’s just what you do in any organisation. You recognize the reality that existing as a person means barely anyone will be able to dedicate themselves fully and forever to any single cause. You know what the accusation would have been, had that been the MO of leftists orgs? They’d call it a cult. “Nobody ever leaves! They’re exclusive about recruitment! They target specific individuals and sway them over long periods of time!”

Ambulance chasing and co-opting

On top of what you point out, the basic warning here is “beware of groups that go to events that align with their ideology. Especially if the event is a popular one. Beware of groups that go to large social gatherings in order to interact with people and interest them in joining up.”

Front Groups and Front Coalitions:

Beware of groups practicing good opsec in a country that is historically hostile to leftist orgs.

Deceptive and Dishonest Practices:

1. If your idea of recruiting people to your anarchist org is to yell at them about Kropotkin and not ask them if they’ll help you out with a soup kitchen, then I don’t know what to tell you.
2. Literally doing the “Well what if we said you said something you didn’t say instead of the thing you did say” argument that libs love so much. “Replace the word ‘richest people in the world’ with ‘jews’ and suddenly you sound a bit like a nazi, ever think of that?”

Party Lines in General

Anyone who talks of ‘nuance’ while advocating for supporting the status quo gets sent to the gulag. Libs love to use ‘nuance’ as a magical word allowing them any ideological position. It’s the “let people enjoy things” of political discourse. Actual ‘nuance’ is called “critical support”.

Centralization:

They are describing every org with any formal or informal hierarchy. I reiterate: Liberals making normal stuff sound villanous and scary, name a more iconic duo

Redirecting Autonomous Efforts into Spaces They Control:

Yeah that’s a bad practice in any political org, really almost any effort at all. I’ve worked a little bit in media and you know what almost always fucks things up? When you pull in a new hire due to their existing work, and then force them to put that work under your control, instead of supporting them in creating something new within your space, while allowing them to retain control of- and continue work with their previous stuff.
What does this have to do with tankies specifically? Are we just describing stupid shit to do when you’re a political organisation? How about expanding the list even more then? “Tankies will eat unhealthy food in large amounts, leading to increased risks of cardiac arrest.” OOOOOOH see even their nutrition is evil and bad!

Hyper-Focus on Bureaucracy:

As rightly pointed out that’s fed shit, but also Tankies are bad because there’s one dicatorial leader who decides everything and forces everyone to do everything without any formalised processes for decision making, but tankies are also bad for having formalised processes for decision making and they’re also bad because they have decentralised to such an extent that there’s a massive inefficient bureaucracy where everyone just constantly opens new comittees and insists on everyone being heard, which slows everything down.

Never-Ending Tasks

Remember when I said the alternative was accussing orgs of being cults? I guess we can have our cake and eat it too!
Also “OOOOH THE SCARY COMMIES WILL MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOU AND THEN YOU WILL MISS THEM WHEN YOU NO LONGER HANG OUT” and “OOOH THE SCARY COMMIES THAT ARE ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN POLITICAL ORGANISING HAVE STUFF TO DO AND IF YOU ARE INVOLVED THEN YOU WILL ALSO HAVE STUFF TO DO OOOOOH SCARY”

Charismatic Leader

https://hexbear.net/comment/5607156

Sheltering Abusers

Again are we just talking about bad things in general? This has nothing to do with tankies, and the fact they don’t have the numbers to back it up makes it clear. On top of that many political orgs have a nasty habit of reacting with scepticism at very harmful accusations (see: death of MeToo), but that habit, on the left, in part comes from the decades long work from feds, like this writer, who try to wreck any leftist movement any way they can, so they’ll cook up fucked up accusations in order to kneecap any movement.
That doesn’t mean these things shouldn’t be taken seriously or that it’s in any way good that it’s a pattern in many organisations, but not acknowledging the reasons for the symptom, means you’ll never get rid of the cause.

Lack of Care for Members and Vulnerable People

More “bad things are bad, but inherently a tankie thing somehow.” There’s nothing about this that’s in any way unique to leftist orgs. What is (somewhat) unique to leftist orgs is that they work with vulnerable people and make sure any involvement is alright, something you rarely see elsewhere.

Coercive “Self-Criticism”

Self-crit is good actually, but it’s bad when it’s done in a bad way. Great insight once again. Eating too much is also bad for you, that’s what too much means. “Can be deployed” yeah and my ass “can be” deployed as an emergency seaplane, but it’s not meant for it, so using it like that is gonna get a lot of people hurt.
Also more scary language to shape the thoughts to fit the narrative “obedience” OOOOOH WHEN YOU TALK TO PEOPLE AND YOU GET ALONG YOU’RE ACTUALLY BEING BRAINWASHED OOOH SOMEONE ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES AND ASKING YOU TO RECONSIDER WHY YOU DO CERTAIN THINGS IS ACTUALLY COMMIE BRAINWASHING OOOOH WHEN YOU LEARN THINGS THEN THAT’S MOLDING YOU INTO BEING A MINDLESS COMMIE DRONE OOOOOH

Defending and Glorifying Authoritarian Leaders and Governments:

I thought it was tankies that didn’t have any room for nuance, but now we’re in a black and white world where whatever the state department says about Xi Jinping is true? Okiedokie. Fantastic nuance. I’m gonna assume any critique of the hasbara propaganda information about hamas is likewise badevil?

Expecting Queer People and People of Color to Assimilate:

More “bad things are bad”. “Vanguards may” “this can.” I love liberal language! We just throw assertations out willy-nilly. The author of the zine might be a donkey fucker, this can mean that they are subconsciously trying to make you accepting of donkey fucking, which possibly will lead to you supporting animal suppression. Also incidentally this is an inherent trait of the authors political ideology.
Furthermore there is a shitty tendency in some shitty orgs to do these shitty things, but again, where does it stem from? Bigotry? Yes. But also COINTELPRO. There is a reason why LGBTQ demonstrations are used to foster colour revolutions around the world^[1]

Use of “Left Unity” Rhetoric to Demand Inclusion in Spaces

“When you point out how completely asinine my behaviour is, that makes me sad. Now I will split the party (our bookclub consisting of 5 people) because you have a slightly different view on how long Castro’s beard was. Well that and because you are pointing out how I, a supposed leftist, am spending all my time critiquing other leftists, especially focusing on those that do actual stuff.”
Also it’s bad to want to subsume civil rights’ movements like those advocating for queer rights’, but it’s also bad to include them and advocate their cause.

Local Organizers Controlled by a Central Committee

List of things bad orgs do: Are organized. Have lines of supply they dedicate to different causes. Ask order (spooky) local departments to get involved in specific work relevant to their local interests in exchange for getting some of these supplies.
Also you cannot have a big bureaucracy where all decisions are discussed by all members, and you cannot have leaders, and you cannot have dictators, and you cannot have hierarchies, and you cannot do work, and you cannot…

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Most obvious wrecker shit I’ve seen yet.

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1. To which the obvious solution is to stop oppressing LGBTQ peoples, fuck Iran for this. <- Wow is this nuance? No it’s called critical support you goddamned lib. ↩︎

zzz cointelpro

Beware any tankies you see trying to “organize” or follow a “strategy” or “work together”

Lumping traits of bad orgs like sheltering abusers with traits of orgs you disagree with like “defending authoritarian governments” into one definition is actually gross.

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Also these two traits are actually common among ML orgs in my experience and I wish they’d cut it out:

Redirecting Autonomous Efforts into Spaces They Control

This is a symptom of play-acting at being the One Important Group that will lead to the revolution. It reduces the total pool of active organizational talent by destroying something that’s probably already working, and removing a place where a group can learn to organize. It destroys the resiliency possible from a web of organization. Exchange contact info and get on each other’s mailing lists instead.

Hyper-Focus on Bureaucracy

I don’t know if this is more play-acting or just people’s minds being poisoned by capitalist bureaucracies. It wastes time and makes actual organization harder. Establish communication channels and interpersonal relationships instead.