Anark does (in my view) a well-cited and very polite refutation of Socialism4All’s response to one of his off-the-cuff videos, and a vastly more polite response to BadEmpanada than he deserves.
Anark does (in my view) a well-cited and very polite refutation of Socialism4All’s response to one of his off-the-cuff videos, and a vastly more polite response to BadEmpanada than he deserves.
Anyone can quote mine, doesn’t mean they’ve actually read the source material. In fact, Anark has been know to cherry pick Communist writers to try and imply they are saying the opposite of what they actually said, here’s an example: https://hexbear.net/post/9113230
I don’t think he can be a trustworthy source if he is willing to stoop to that level of deception.
That quote is absolutely cherry picked and he should have done his due diligence in looking it up before sharing it like that, but I do not think he was trying to deceive anyone. (If anyone is deceiving people, it’s the person he got it from.) And there is a difference between some off-the-cuff Shitter post and a serious work like this video. And yes I’m aware people can quote-mine. I’m asserting, independently, that he’s read some of your books.
Deliberately misrepresenting their opponent’s position in order to make their position look as bad as possible is textbook deception though. If he wasn’t trying to fool others then he was fooled himself, and still clearly not a good source of information if he is so easily fooled by obviously cherry picked quotes.
And him sharing this shows that he is either being deceptive or hasn’t read anything by Lenin, if he had actually read Lenin he wouldn’t be sharing a quote like this, since he would know that it sounds like the exact opposite of anything Lenin actually said and was clearly missing context.
I understand you’re getting dogpiled here, and it is difficult to remain calm in a situation like that, I would recommend coming back to what people are saying in a week or two and really trying to analyse why people are saying things with a clearer head (not saying you’re crashing out right now or anything, you’re actually responding quite calmly and reasonably considering the circumstances, but even then, it’s hard to fully analyse a conversation while you’re in the middle of it, especially when so many people are all talking at you at once).
It’s easy to feel attacked in the moment and have it all feel very personal, but our goal is understanding and sharing knowledge, in particular that “your books” line you gave is a bit worrying to me. Knowledge is knowledge, it has no team. An anarchist should be willing to use ideas that work from MLs just as MLs should be willing to use ideas that work from Anarchists, we both want to abolish capitalism, and declaring an idea to be the domain of the other rather than it just being knowledge or information makes it sound more like a team sport than actual political theory and discussion. Again, I’m assuming that this is more of a point of frustration because you’re feeling attacked due to the dogpile, rather than anything deeply personal. I am not attacking you personally, I just don’t think Anark is a reliable source that you should look to, any alleged “leftist” who insists on more leftist infighting, not less, who thrives on petty internet drama is a waste of time to talk about (and I would absolutely throw Socialism4All and BadEmpanada in that bucket as well, they’re all just social media obsessed losers who care more about getting attention and views than actually trying to properly inform and educate)
The level of errors he makes means he either makes no effort to understand or intentionally misleads and honestly those are equivalent if you’re making a whole video about it and lecturing communists about their projects.