cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/iasip@sh.itjust.works/p/426876/the-downsides-of-running-a-fediverse-platform
S17E3 "Mac and Dennis Become EMTs"
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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The reality is that our movements may only succeed through expanding participation and improving unity.
Messaging plays a vital role in our movements developing along such a successful course, messaging that is accessible and straightforward even at the cost of completeness.
I doubt you will find a historical example to contrary, but it seems that on the particular matter we are simply in disagreement.
I don’t disagree that expanding participation and unity matters. I don't see that specific type of messaging as constructive to that end.
Most mass movements that achieved real gains did so by forcing confrontation with material conditions, not by first correcting public misconceptions. Simplified messaging tends to follow success rather than generate it.
Also that simplification isn't exactly neutral, it shapes how people understand power, struggle, and possibility. Messaging that gains accessibility by adopting liberal moral frames around 'authoritarianism' may broaden appeal in the short term, but it does so by narrowing the horizon of what opposition to capitalism can look like.
That tradeoff isn’t just about completeness, it’s about whether unity is built around confronting material structures of domination or around reassuring people that nothing too disruptive is required. I think we’re simply at different conclusions.
I appreciate the conversation, even if we don’t agree.
I stand by my assertion that accessible and straightforward messaging is essential, even while not sufffient, for movements to succeed, and that some simplification becomes inevitable.
I understand you disagree.
Regardless, criticism of authority is fundamental and unique to leftism. It is not "liberal moral frames".
I don’t deny the need for accessibility or simplification. I’m questioning whether centering 'authoritarianism' is a neutral simplification, rather than one that imports liberal assumptions about power and legitimacy.
Critiquing authority is central to anarchism precisely because liberalism already critiques some authorities while normalizing others. That distinction tends to get blurred when domination is understood more in moral terms than in structural ones.
Criticism of authority is central to anarchism because anarchism entails opposition to authority. Liberalism is incidental.
The anarchist criticism of authority is that it cannot occur except by coercion and deceit, and always produces exploitation and oppression.
All along I have been using the language "authoritarian leftism". I am at a loss to imagine how anyone would think I am referring to other than leftism. We clearly have authoritarian leftism, anti-authoritarian leftism, and liberalism, as three distinct orientations.
My argument was that the framing reproduces liberal ways of evaluating power, even when applied internally to the left.
My point isn’t that anarchism borrows its opposition to authority from liberalism, but rather that liberalism is relevant because it shapes the dominant criteria by which authority is judged, even within left and anarchist discourse.
You seem very certain that there's three distinct orientations. I’m not convinced those are discrete or stable categories in practice, rather than overlapping tendencies that emerge differently under specific material conditions.
What does this three-part distinction explain that a structural analysis of power doesn’t?
There may be overlap, but each of the three has features distinct from the others'.
The terms allow us to identify the features of someone's position without an exhaustive elucidation, even if the terms function as tools that are imperfect.
Tankies in particular are in the extreme of authoritarianism within leftism. The criticisms of authoritarian leftists by anti-authoritarian leftists represent a quite expansive corpus of writing.
Your objection is very abstract. With each passing comment, I feel less hopeful of understanding your concerns.
I don't think I've been particularly abstract. Treating 'authoritarianism' as the primary lens encourages moral sorting over structural analysis, which in practice narrows what kinds of resistance people see as possible or legitimate.
I’m questioning what this taxonomy explains about how power operates and reproduces itself, while you keep restating its usefulness for labeling positions. That’s not the argument I’m making, and I've expressed my concerns several times now without you addressing them.
Taking revolutionary failures as proof that the whole framework was wrong or should be ignored reduces complex material conditions to a moral judgment after the fact.