Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.
In Paris we fought and were massacred.
In Korea/Manchuria we fought and were massacred.
In Ukraine we fought and were massacred.
And as you say in Spain we fought, but then we were massacred.
There’s more of course, but you get the idea.
Something probably should be done differently in the future.
So? How many slave revolutions did we have before it was “technically” abolished (it’s still ongoing, but at least illegal in principle)? We had legal slavery for like ~6K years until it was abolished. Capitalism only exists for ~400 years and there were hundreds of failed democratic revolutions. Anarchism as a movement is barely over 150yo and no anarchist revolution happened before 100 years. Just because things don’t happen overnight, or even in our lifetime, doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
So, yeah, looking at those examples I’d say we should try to prevent our opponets from going fascist.
If there’s anything fascists are good at it’s murdering lots and lots of people, so Id say we should stop them from gaining a following or try to remove their following if they already got one.
Easier said then done, but, to steal your words, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.
Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.
Yeah , but …
In Paris we fought and were massacred.
In Korea/Manchuria we fought and were massacred.
In Ukraine we fought and were massacred.
And as you say in Spain we fought, but then we were massacred.
There’s more of course, but you get the idea.
Something probably should be done differently in the future.
So? How many slave revolutions did we have before it was “technically” abolished (it’s still ongoing, but at least illegal in principle)? We had legal slavery for like ~6K years until it was abolished. Capitalism only exists for ~400 years and there were hundreds of failed democratic revolutions. Anarchism as a movement is barely over 150yo and no anarchist revolution happened before 100 years. Just because things don’t happen overnight, or even in our lifetime, doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
So, yeah, looking at those examples I’d say we should try to prevent our opponets from going fascist.
If there’s anything fascists are good at it’s murdering lots and lots of people, so Id say we should stop them from gaining a following or try to remove their following if they already got one.
Easier said then done, but, to steal your words, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.