This is just a short intrusion into the “discussion” here that was incited by Kos’ latest tweets. Excuse me for interrupting this conventional, typically misinformed argument among followers of Kos, about Kos’ latest little swat against the left in a series. In the tweet, he despicably used the term “alt-left”, a term borrowed from the epithet “alt-right”, a euphemism for white supremacist ethno-nationalists, which some politically centrist writers enjoy using to taunt people to their political left, but some historical accuracy is called for in response. In his tweet, he indicates he thinks members of the left end of the political spectrum wanted Trump and white supremacy to prevail.
I’m a member of the Daily Kos group, Libertarian Socialist, founded by my anarchist partner, ZhenRen, who was recently purged from the site, so it’s apparently now left up to me to comment, something I wish I could bypass or ignore.
I’m reluctantly responding to this staggeringly misinformed comment:
I believe that alt left is not a good term at all and I would never use it, but there are some extreme anarchists out there who want to burn everything down and start new. They voted for Trump so that would happen quick.
There are several other similar comments strewn all over the site in commentary on the same topic du jour.
Anarchists not only did not vote for Trump, but have been far more anti-fascist than most other groups in history, and certainly more so than the Democratic Party. They fought and died resisting Franco and the fascist-backed nationalists in Spain while FDR allowed thousands of American trucks and vast amounts of oil to go to the fascists on credit from Ford Corporation and Texaco (said by the fascists themselves to have made the difference that helped Franco to win). The anarchists were tortured, mass executed, imprisoned. Anarchists do not believe fascism should be ignored, and tend to oppose it especially when it is still in a weaker, disorganized form, because of the (historically evident) potential for fascism to grow if left unchecked.
Anti-fascist groups (antifa), most with significant anarchist membership and support and often founded by anarchists, have protested Trump from the very beginning of his campaign.
Anarchists do not generally engage in the particular form of “accelerationism”1 to which the comment alludes, that is, the desire to see a fascistic movement under Trump’s presidency grow and thrive, ostensibly to cause a regime or state, in the cycle of its existence, to quicker reach its eventual end. Anarchists, having experienced the horrible result of fascism in Spain in the Spanish Civil War, will not suffer gladly the presence of fascism, white supremacy, or ethno-nationalism.
Chomsky, one of the world’s most well-known contemporary anarchists, warned about the rise of Trump and urged people to vote against him in swing states. Many anarchists protested Trump from the outset. My partner and I joined them in Portland.
You all should be already aware of this act of Chomsky’s because in the case of Chomsky many here on this site repeatedly used his stance to promote Hillary Clinton. I guess anarchists are okay when their words are employable in campaigns. Not surprisingly the finer point of Chomsky’s, where he qualified his remarks to suggest only voting against Trump in swing states, was ignored.
Cornel West notes in the role of anarchists here, on today’s Democracy Now, mentioned in a Daily Kos Diary:
The antifascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that. Meaning what? Meaning that you had the police holding back, on the one hand, so we couldn’t even get arrested. We were there to get arrested. We couldn’t get arrested, because the police had pulled back, and just allowing fellow citizens to go at each other, you see, and with all of the consequences that would follow there from.
I will repeat that “antifa” is greatly influenced by the anarchist movement and many anarchists are members. Many are very young, and highly idealistic, to be sure, but one thing they are not is pro-Trump. Denigrate them if you must, but don’t lie about them just so you have use of some group to vilify. The basic point is most anarchists loath Trump, and would never endorse a fascist, and oppose Trump far more than would any capitalist because Trump is uber-capitalist on steroids, and, if you don’t know this, understand that anarchists are completely anti-capitalist. Any capitalist is closer to Trump in views than an anarchist.
It seems to me the very tiny minority of folks on the so-called “left” who may have toyed around with voting for Trump in an act of defiance have been decidedly of the more mainstream moderate left of the populist variety, not really “hard left”, for the most part, but even these few very likely ended up voting against the horrid gasbag, I would venture. I base this on observations made on some of the Reddit groups.
Although the concept of accelerationism is, if anything, somewhat related to classical Marxism (not exclusively), it is not an anarchist concept (anarchists and Marxists parted ways during the First International 1864 — 1873). But having said this, it seems clear that like anarchists, most Marxists, that I have seen, have not called for anyone to vote for Trump. Marxists on Daily Kos are on record for strongly opposing Trump from the outset.
So just who is Kos and his followers referring to? A figment of their overactive imaginations, that is, no large movement or body of activists, but rather a small tiny group who aren’t representative of the so-called “far left.”
I’m of course speaking only for myself, and for no other anarchists or members of Daily Kos group Libertarian Socialism (I haven’t even checked to see if the Daily Kos group still exists).
1) Marx and Engels had the view that each successive mode of production (feudalism, capitalism, etc.) must reach its maximum potential before the next can replace it, leading to socialism only when the “time is ripe”, thus some Marxists have tended to actually encourage modes in each era to reach a zenith so the next can enter the scene. Anarchists tend to disagree with this, viewing it as far too fixed and doctrinaire, and don’t generally subscribe in a dogmatic absolutist sense, the Marxist idea of dialectical materialism. Now, I’m not stating that all Marxists hold this view. It was clearly a view held by Marx and Engels, but not necessarily that of all modern Marxists.