Anarchism

I wouldn't describe myself as a tankie, but I do think I am more sympathetic towards the various communist projects that have been tried in one way or another. The difficulty talking about this is that there is all sorts of misinformation, so it can be hard to have a complete, coherent discussion on these issues. (and of course I know it can be coming from both sides, so it really makes things confusing) What's more important to me though are the interpretations people have of these issues and how that informs their politics in the context of the real world that we live in.

What do I mean by this? While of course it's important to critique past and current governments, it should be so that we can learn from their mistakes and do better in the future. I don't really want to be defending some atrocity or failure of a state. I want to have an honest and productive talk about it. But in the context of living in the west, and especially the US, the propaganda line is to treat these governments as a complete and unique evil in order to justify both imperialism abroad and suppression of the left at home. They make it sound like their actions are just a continuation of our role in WWII fighting against fascism for freedom and democracy. But clearly that's not the case. The US does absolutely awful shit all around the world and is buddy buddy with various oppressive/undemocratic governments. And this isn't whataboutism. I'm not saying "well we did awful shit so it's ok when they do it too." What I'm saying is that by overly focusing your ire on these left wing governments, you reinforce the idea that the US is the good guy for fighting against them, that even if you have problems with the US, the other guys are way worse and it's worth supporting US military interventions because of that. With that mentality, the military budget keeps growing, we keep bombing people who didn't deserve it, we continue to justify our own authoritarian measures as being necessary for fighting against these existential threats. etc.

I'm sure for most on the left, especially anarchists, who participate in this, that isn't their intention. They just want a better, fairer world and want to recognize injustice regardless of who does it. But the effect is still unfortunately to feed into the more right wing position on this. You're working in an environment where the average uninformed person you talk to will at best not care about any atrocities the US has committed and at worst will view you as a crazy conspiracy theorist for telling them about publicly available information. Meanwhile they'll gladly join in on getting angry about anything you say about a place they've been told is evil, even if it is a conspiracy theory. You have to consider that when you decide what to spend your limited time and political capital on.

That said, I don't really know what to do with all that. I don't think it's right to go out of your way to lie about or defend actual atrocities, but how do you manage to do that without contributing to the oversimplified narrative of these places being cartoon villains? How do you get people to not fall for the manufactured consent for war time and time again while still acknowledging the things people treat like original sins that can never be atoned for?