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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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.