this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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I'm not angry at animal farm, I just think it's a satire of what was going on in the USSR at the time it was written and can't be applied uncritically to anything vaguely left wing.
i think it's a really good tool for framing the different opportunistic tools that derail progressive efforts, even to this day.
divide-and-conquer is sure as hell working really well lately. do you remember the atheism feminism war not too long ago? or the gender war? or more race-wars than you can shake a stick at?
there's a reason why right-wing authoritarians and their neoliberal counterparts are currently dominating. animal farm is a really good simplified example showing how and why such a thing can happen, even when there's a lot of support for progressive efforts.
you could show tools like the motte-and-bailey creeping of the overton window in both animal farm, and real life examples of leftist efforts being damaged or derailed.
authoritarianism is by definition counter to progressive efforts, and heterarchical systems need to recognize this to scale and survive with any success verses other exploitative systems. there's no reason to ignore this message, even if it comes from a satire of the USSR.
also modern science is a good resource on how to accomplish this stuff. like building a big-stick resistant social immune system that doesn't fuck us all to death. or we can just keep yelling and screaming at each other, especially the people framing the necessary science around progressive efforts.
you even see a lot of tools such a slander being used against people like hasan or other progressives right now. animal farm has a lot of good examples of character assassination. great resource for people with basic reading comprehension.
"Authoritarianism" is an abstraction that sees the state as outside and above class struggle. All states are tools for whatever the ruling class is, and the degree by which it is used depends on the sharpness of the class struggle in a given society. The USSR was run by the working classes, and has to work to combat bourgeois and fascist elements left over from the Tsarist era and through infiltration, black markets, etc.
Taking a scientific view is the very advantage of Marxism.
I was in the middle of typing out some kind of "couldn't have said it better myself" type joke, but honestly it's not even true. There are much better resources out there for people with only basic reading comprehension.
Animal farm made me a trot until I read a bit of actual history and political texts and by the end of the year I was a materialist kind of Marxist. Consider doing that.
Please tell me you're doing a bit
I want to point out I didn't reply to the person who mentioned animal farm, because they were arguing with a point I didn't make. I agreed with someone suggesting it's very limited in scope. Which it is. I understand it's considered a shallow analysis of the specific era it was satirizing, but I don't know enough to provide my opinion on that aspect. It's okay that it is satirizing a very limited thing, that was the intent!
Maybe what I needed to add is that very rarely is any distinction made between a shift further left and a shift towards authoritarianism. I expanded in this in another comment where I talked about what I really hate about the political spectrum. If you design a spectrum where you put the authoritarian group on the end, it's not some lightbulb moment to be like, hey these guys on the end have some similarities in how they execute their plans! It makes my engineer brain fucking crazy.
I'm also not screaming at anyone? I made a meme because I think it's funny that this near useless concept (the political spectrum) gets turned into gotcha moments. I'm poking fun at this absurd thing people are happy to say while maintaining the status quo. Any criticism of the status quo is met with accusations of wanting the fascists to win. It's always "the far left". What does that even mean?
I don't? Do you mean online discourse?
I didn't answer your question in your last reply so I will now: I'm an anarchist, so yes, I do think we can prevent authoritarianism in the shift left.
Or, this shit doesn't happen IRL in the leftist spaces I exist in, and if it does it's discussed and we get to the root of the issue. I don't think you can shift the US (or any country for that matter) away from capitalism by voting. So shit talking in electorial spaces has no impact on my interests.
never said you were screaming, i was suggesting that as the alternative form of communication people choose outside of scientifically figuring out how to communicate across different systems.
i agree that associating the left as specifically authoritarian is bad and wrong, and i heavily disagree with that interpretation of animal farm. again, the ending of the book is that they became capitalists, not leftists. but i do think authoritarianism is bad, and associating it with the left is bad, even when leftists (tankies) do it.
and the atheism/feminism war was online and general media. it bled into a bunch of things like 'gamergate,' but the SJW framing was really big in the media, amongst other things. there were a lot of groups that were organizing against groups like the heritage foundation, which got discouraged or derailed by the culture war crap. lots of weird stuff, but just one of the more recent examples. you can use similar tools for other recent things like the anti-hasan campaigns painting him as a dog-abusing terrorism lover, or media campaigns against BLM/ANTIFA a while back.
anywhere you try to find progressive efforts, you see weird shit on fire for no reasonable reason, other than progressive groups still haven't found a way to successfully communicate and cooperate, and probably a lot of intentional fire-starting from the assholes with money that the groups are generally aligned against, such as the heritage foundation, or their global counterparts.
also just a note, when i talk about 'heterarchical systems' i'm basically talking about anarchism.
we need to grow a whole new culture out of the corpse of a political system most of us or currently trapped inside of.
and you're lucky if you've found the one anarchist/progressive space that works for you, but try to grow that effort into one that can affect the existing systems, and you'll suddenly find your group is either a terrorist organization, or that the group hates women, and now you have to prove to a bunch of angry public reaction to any association with that woman hating group. it is constant for anyone actually being noticed as a danger to the status quo.
i'm usually trying to talk about anarchistic efforts that affect more than one small community, as individualized and isolated communities aren't gonna do much the moment the big imperial body notices the potential for actual social change happening.
thank you though for an honest response to my words. posting in online spaces has only gotten more stifling over the years. just wish local efforts could connect to larger efforts, since we need multiple groups cooperating in solidarity, not isolated individualism.
Here's the thing. It's not one space. And it's not all explicitly labeled as political or leftist. I'm rural, and there is a lot of mutual aid and community efforts that certainly fit with my ideals even if the people doing it wouldn't consider themselves left wing.
I also don't waste time arguing with the public. I'm not trying to convince people to believe in what I believe. I'm interested in building systems where we can support each other outside of the formal economy and police state. I don't think it makes sense to expand these projects to huge geographical areas. Needs are different in different places. We can learn from each other and adopt things that are useful, but it shouldn't be one org.
There is an anarchist collective in a nearby city who's only public activity is boosting the efforts of various progressive initiatives. Hopefully that gives you some idea of how little interest there is putting one label on someting.
They build community security to reduce deoendance on the state, which free people to resist in meaningful ways.