As I said I have actually worked a lot in environments with a diverse leftist spectrum.
And in my experience backstabbing usually goes both ways and is a result of the previous hate (and a lot of the time because personal non political issues) not the other way around.
And yes. The only wins I’ve seen is when there have been total cooperation. Division is always the prelude of defeat.
And be ensure that I would be saying exactly the same words to any tankie who talks about “purging any leftist” no matter what their ridiculous arguments are for such a premise. I’ve heard it all and it is often just as untrue.
I’m friends with everyone leftist, even if they hate each other. I can feel comfortable among anarchist, tankies, socdems, new age leftists, reformist, etc. Because I know what our common objective is and I just can’t care about the subtle differences. So I know the anarchist side of the story as well as I know the tankie side.
Being myself an active member of the social movement in my country and actually having watched modern day anarchist working with modern day communists I can say without any doubts that no version is true. Probably both starting arguing about stupid shit, and actual personal problems disguised as political problems, when they should had focused on the real enemy. But anyway I’m thankful for ALL who fought against fascism in Spain, anarchist, communist, republicans… I thank the international brigades, I thank orwell and I thank the soviets and stalinist. They all put their lives on line to stop fascism.
I just despise such an unproductive and harmful division of the left for shit that just does not matter when the true enemy is so big. And sometimes I just see a lust for internal division and eternal losing in such behavior. I don’t know how some leftists have energy left to hate each other after they should had used that energy to fight the true enemy, capitalism and fascism. And I say this for any anarchist who hates tankies and any tankie who hates anarchists. You are not enemies, the enemy is in other direction.
Soviets were the only ones who truly supported the Spanish democracy against the fascist. Every other country, including Poland, turned their back to us while the Luffwaffle was bombing our citizens.
And nothing was done in the way of ending capitalism. Asking “pretty please stop using oil we will paint things” to a capitalist government is ridiculous. The only way to end emissions is being us the ones who control the industry.
So, from my point of view was a useless, possibly counter productive, action.
I live in Europe. It’s not as beauty as it sounds. I’m glad of what we have, but is not perfect, sometimes is not even better than the USE.
We have welfare, but more and more people are forced to private medical companies because waiting lists are becoming ridiculously long.
Violence and support for fascism is on the rise. Terrorism is on the rise. War is at our doorsteps. Many countries are talking about bringing back mandatory military training for all our citizens.
We may have better minimum wage, but median wages are lower and taxes and prices tend to be much higher. On average we can afford tu buy less with out money.
At least in my country we all live in small dehumanizing small and packed apartments. Living space is much smaller. Everything is human made, we barely have natural reserves or parks.
Employment is getting better but sometimes unemployment hits really hard, myself was years without being able to get a job during last decade.
Political tensions and population conflict is on the rise. Many countries are also on the verge or civil war, secession, or some big problem of the sort.
US is not perfect, and I wouldn’t want privatized healthcare, or guns in my country by any means, but I would still would love some things they have in the US. And in other things we are just as bad.