this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Sankara is a tankie by everyone's definition here. He came to power via a coup, held military tribunals trying people for corruption, formed armed groups to defend the revolution, and was vehemently against NATO, the IMF, and other western powers.
What does anti-authoritarian mean to you if Sankara is anti-authoritarian
Also arrested trade union leaders and got into it with a teacher's union. I obviously support Sankara, and like you say he's really not different from any other communist leaders except that he was assassinated and his work undone.
You think trying people for corruption make you authoritarian?
Are you a liberal?
I think that authoritarian is a basically meaningless term when applied to a states.
All states are in the business of using lethal violence, or the threat of it at least, to enforce their rule within their borders.
Thats why i am an anarchist......
Okay so if being "authoritarian" is bad and means you shouldn't be supported, and Sankara ran a state, making him authoritarian, by a definition you're now agreeing with (again, anyone who runs a state) why are you pretending you don't think he's an authoritarian and trying to use him as a cudgel against people who actually share an ideology with him?
oh god oh fuck
i dont think. so sankara did some really cool things.
The USSR did some cool things too , AT FIRST: then they started murdering anarchist and consolidating power and becoming a police state. As an anarchist I oppose this.
Maybe Sankara would have done the same if he lived. But he didn't. He was murdered in a US back coup. He was murdered for being an anti imperialist.
The USSR is not anti imperialst. Neither is the CPC. These communists experiments became police states. Sankara didnt.
Sankara fought for nitrution, literacy anticorruption anti imperialism. He put more women in government snd fought against female genital mutilation. Anarchist support all of these things.
What we dont support is police states. Among other things.
I believe there is a difference in being ML and having police state aspirations/trending authoritarian. Which is when I use the term tankie.
Maybe I'm wrong tho you tell me. I liked what sankara did and I dont want to negate the cool things he did simply becuase he got murdered and we dont know what he was going to become.
There is nuance in his life that I can accept. But what I cannot accept is modern day MLs who look fondly on the actions of the USSR, russian federation and the modern day CPC. they are large authoritarian states that I cannot support as an anarchist.
Everytime I bring this up tho. I get called a lib.
Sankara was murdered 31 years after the revolt in Hungary was put down. He supported the USSR. He was, by definition, a tankie.
A number of those anarchists were counterrevolutionaries. Some, I'm sure, were good people.