Title. Is it because looser adventurism gets more headlines? is it an image thing? Dunno how to articulate reliably what I’m thinking, just seems like all I hear about are “anarchists squat building”, or about food not bombs (admirable work so I hear), or is it just down to difficulty in organising in other groups?
In my view, in the US it comes down to obstacles to organizing ML movements. Anarchists don’t get as strong pushback from the state because they’re less of a credible threat to state power if things “get out of hand.” CHAZ, for example, didn’t last long and didn’t overthrow state power. Because of the instability of large-scale anarchist organizations and the tendency of their movements to fizzle out, the US government doesn’t need to put as much effort into Cointelpro, infiltration, and wrecking efforts. The need to protect against police infiltration and the extensive false consciousness, chauvinism, and anti-intellectualism of American settlers and labor aristocracy means that you need to spend a lot of time and effort vetting and training new members, of whom there are not that many candidates in the first place. Then, suppose you successfully organize a vanguard party, which currently doesn’t exist even in a nascent form. In that case, you need to get broad support among the people heavily affected by false consciousness, which requires extensive and expensive propaganda campaigns. Adopting a cell-based organizing system like al-Qaeda is necessary for the long-term success of underground or illegal Marxist-Leninist organizing in the United States, as such organizations are harder to infiltrate. It becomes difficult to organize a vanguard party under such circumstances.
I think you are overlooking some key things here. Anarchists definitely suffer similar forms of state repression. In fact the free kitchen I work for on occasion has been targeted by 3 sweeps in 2 years.
If you read my post carefully, you’ll see I said anarchists don’t get as strong pushback from the state. I stand by that statement 100%. It doesn’t mean that I think anarchist movements don’t face repression from the state. Getting targeted by sweeps is not in the same ballpark as Mccarthyism, Cointelpro, and assassinations of leadership. As MLs we seek to build enough power to credibly challenge the power of the state, and that naturally provokes a proportional response from the state and requires an adequate defense from the state. That’s not to say that anarchist movements don’t have value especially given how thoroughly ML movements are coopted and repressed. It makes sense to provide mutual aid in the short term especially given how oppressed people can be in this country, and you’re doing good work. But it’s not a movement that needs to be defended in the same way as it’s more compatible with the existing state than what we’re trying to do.
I am saying that we often face more direct immediate repression and I can provide evidence. This isn’t a contest or anything though just saying we get just as much flak.