It wasn’t a hostile discussion or anything, i didn’t even go full “the kulaks deserved it” (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full “the kulaks did not deserve it”). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said “the revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary” and that there’s one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: “If the October Revolution hadn’t succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussolini’s March on Rome”. Basically the whole “Jakarta Method” train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.
Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went “disengage” on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, that’s apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no “sis, you’re talking to me as a mod here”, not even a notification that i got banned.
The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, she’s now completely going off about “authoritarians”. The nerve some people have.
Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.
In addition to what everyone else already said, being against something isn’t the same as supporting something.
Anarchists are pro-anarchy, communists are pro-communism, but anti-authoritarians aren’t necessarily either of those two. They’re anti-authority, which is often a word they themselves can’t even define. And because it’s impossible to exercise in reality, they have to pick and choose which powers they consider “authoritarian” and which aren’t. Since these people don’t read, this just ends up looking like another flavor of liberalism.
American actions abroad since WW2 are definitely not authoritarian!
and then the counter-argument is always just “I don’t know anything about American actions abroad since WW2”
The nifty thing about never claiming to support anything is that you never have to defend anything either. Anti-authoritarians can just say that they oppose the US along with China, the USSR, Cuba, their teachers, and their parents.
Great point. That’s exactly what they do to.