Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”
Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.
Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?
Sure, but how do people learn about those things, and how do they learn to assign importance and significance to these historical events? What’s the process by which people become part of the culture and learn that these events are an extremely important part of who they and their comrades are, something that defines their relationship to the world?
Like, you don’t come in to Hexbear knowing Maoist Standard English. You pick it up a bit at a time. You work out what it means from the context of the jokes. People recommend books or articles and you see the origin of the Maoist Standard English jokes in some of those works. You riff with friends to come up with new ways to use MSE or develop new terms.
It’s all a process of culture, where you learn about the culture through immersion, direct teaching, observation, personal study and research, and play.
She is basically standard anarchist reading, one of the first you encounter as Marx and Lenin is to Communism. Any anarchist reading list worth its salt has her commentary on it. She and her allies created the modern anarchist movement.
Ps, if you want to know about anarchist archaeologies and anthropologies:
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.13940
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-trowel-collective-foundations-of-an-anarchist-archaeology
Ooh thank you!
I write with these guys… I can point to more. Look through the individual authors works.