@LiberalLibrarian It's funny. When I was on the right, I was an extremist in how I thought things should have been dealt with, when I shifted to the left, I was still holding a lot of that destructive mentaility with it. "This is how they want to do things, so we have to respond in kind" sort of thought process.
I'm still farther left than most, but not the anarcho/tankie mentality. I honestly think there's very little difference between the extreme right and left, they both want destruction
@LiberalLibrarian They just choose to go about it in different ways. But the end goal is to destroy things that the other has built.
People need to be helped, we're a social animal. Even the people who I don't like should still benefit from the progress we make. Even if they fight against it.
I actually like giving a shit about people, and that's what neither extreme seems to do.
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The majority of (non-tankie) anarchists (such as myself) are what I call "pragmatic" where they know that a truly free society can't exist in the confines of how society itself is built now to exist. Straight removal of any functioning structure of current society would create a vacuum with people not knowing how to fill it.
The anarchist purpose should then be educating, affecting, and convincing society as a whole to pursue a goal... (1/2)
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The goal being a society that is no longer built to need police, military, government (or as little as truly necessary, if any)... But as it sits, society it's structured specifically to make those things necessary. The biggest problem facing people of my belief is the broad acceptance that all those things being necessary are just "good enough" without any desire to build a better, truly free society. Complacent and comfortable in an abusive relationship.
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The reason you don't hear much from the pragmatic anarchists (despite being the majority) outside of places like r/anarchism, is because we're not the ones being loud and demanding everything get burnt to the ground...
If you burn it to the ground, you have the risk of authoritarianism filling the power vacuum that you've just created. It's just not practical to be that extreme.
@theunabeefer Yes. This is like the German Communists not making common cause with the Socialists to stop Hitler because they thought he would be passing and then it would be their turn. @sentientdessert
@LiberalLibrarian @sentientdessert Someone in an anarchist email mailing list I was in (decades ago, when those were a thing) said something to the effect of "Sometimes, voting IS a form of antifascist action." and that was something that really opened my eyes in terms of reason and practicality in my beliefs.
And what that person said has never rung as true in my lifetime than it does lately.
The act of voting simply to keep fascism and fascists from power is antifascist action.