this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I remember once building a nice charity program that would make meals for homeless people. I had deluded myself into thinking I was building some kind of revolution or whatever.
I had a book club where we all read theory, and it basically was just a tacked on addition to the food charity.
It was really stupid, but it also broke my heart when a guy deliberately sabotaged it because I was a tankie. It was set up in a very level way where we all basically took turns being the coordinator. He intentionally did nothing and told everyone that each role for that week (driver, cook, etc) was filled. Then when the day for distribution came he laughed about how it wasn't going to happen.
I had to buy like 10 pizzas that day, and I remember not having internet because those pizzas were my bill money. The group kept functioning for a while until it fizzled out, but not because of him.
Most people of all political leanings were willing to help me with my stupid idea, but not that guy. I think about that a lot.
Mutual aide is not really the issue with tankies, the problem is the authoritarianism. Mutual aide can be very effective when done properly. For example, anarchists tend to answer the question of "leeches" by giving them the resources to self-actualize, and if the "leech" does not care to do that, they can be kicked out of an anarchist community.
Maybe those are problems with the ideology, but its not with the people who believe it. I've met a lot of people who have very incoherent beliefs. Nobody bullied them and so they absorbed the sane beliefs of the group.
I really just don't think exclusion or hostility are useful unless people are dangerous. A Nazi makes Jewish and gay members of a group scared. A tankie really doesn't because 90% of the time they're gay or trans.
Then I haven't even gotten to how a lot of people join extremist ideologies because they are lonely and need friends. So when you combine that with how small scale local activism is, kicking safe useful people out of a group is just abusing the socially inept.
citation needed
Join the stupid phone meetings any American Communist party has. You will see that a strongly disproportionate amount are gay or trans. I'm gay and nonbinary. My husband is gay. Half my local Communists are lgbt. Leftists in general are often lgbt.
Tankies tend to be social outcasts and so do lgbt people. That might be part of the connection.