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?
Anarchist here. You don’t get taught to hate MLs, you just get exposed to a lot of MLs making aggressive and ill-informed arguments against anarchism and it gets on your nerves.
I don’t hate Lenin either, even though his writing is full of the same sort of thing, and I don’t particularly disagree with him about much. I think tankie vs anarchist is mostly a disagreement about definitions tbh.
You’re taught to hate communism by society, this is undeniable. I’d bet very few anarchists’ first impressions of communists is from arguments
Yeah, but anarchism is a type of communism. It’s not like society teaches you to hate Marxism-Leninism but not anarcho-syndicalism. You aren’t going to become an anarcho-communist but still hate other branches of communism because society told you to communism is bad.