this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
Please shut up and read more.
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.
Sankara supported the USSR and DPRK, just like all actual communists do
Im not a communist, i am an anarchist.
Then why are you telling communist to read about Sankara, a figure we already know and love
Becuase he is am example of a communist I support.
People keep calling me a liberal. Im an anarchist.
Sankara was ML like all the people you're calling tankies. I respect him too. What makes him good and and the rest of us evil "authoritarians"?
Exactly. They won't answer the question though.
Sankara was a tankie
What do you think about Bakunin?
idk sounds pretty authoritarian to me.
His country had corruption!
Im sure there is a better way but your acting like having tribunals makes you authoritarian.
It doesn't.
I wonder if any other countries had to deal with corruption after the revolution...
Statists using tribunals to try other statists is the use of state authority and the use of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force. If "Authoritarian" means anything at all then using the power of the state to prosecute people who are doing state stuff in ways you don't like is authoritarian.