Your book, like Elizabeth Hinton’s “America on Fire,” delves into a decades-long cycle that’s played out in many US cities: Police violence, followed by uprisings, followed by promises for reform and blue ribbon commissions that ultimately produce only “modest change and a photo op.” Did you come out of your reporting with a solid idea of what a better process would look like?
Ellis: I don’t know how you can look at Minneapolis today and say they are better for choosing reform over revolution. The mayor reorganized the public safety department, then there was turnover in the leadership there. The chief who was supposed to lead the transformation of the police force recently resigned in disgrace. Like most police departments in the country, the budget continues to balloon thanks to overtime costs. And at the moment the city is failing to even meet the basics of its court-mandated reforms. By definition this is insanity, right?
I think like anything in local government, having a process for the community to guide designs and offer feedback is important. But I think the starting point has to be a total tear down, not a rebuild. That sounds simplistic, but look at where making changes on the edges has gotten us? Revised training standards and use of force policies have amounted to departments that are effectively the same. The aim needs to be so much higher.
I’m sorry, but to suggest that the most egalitarian way to fight fascists was the cause for Anarchists leaving is… A bit absurd. What source informed you this was common?
Again, this is showing a severe lack of knowledge of what Anarchism is. Where did you come across those ideas?
Anarchists embraced socialism/communism from the very beginning. That has been their goal for over a hundred years. I’d advise reading about Mikhail Bakunin and the First International.
Could you provide the sources for that? I have not come across any source that says the Anarchist militias were slow to respond or ineffective with the meager supplies they had, where did you learn this?
In Ukraine, they were crushed not due to a power vacuum, but because their allies the Bolsheviks betrayed them completely and utterly after the White Army was on the run. This was an unprecedented event in history, it was not generally expected at that time that the Communists would become violent toward people who shared supposedly similar goals. It was not due to a power vacuum, there was no threat that emerged from the already Anarchist controlled areas.
The same in Spain, they were not destroyed from within, but from ML’s betraying them sooner than expected, and ultimately by overwhelming logistical firepower from Fascists.
If we were to follow your own logic; the reason France, Poland, and all the other nations that fell to the Nazi’s in WWII must’ve mainly been due to them being capitalist liberal democracies (when in reality, it was mainly due to modern military strategies by Germany combined with their logistical ability).
Look I learned this in school I don’t run around collecting sources for what is essentially a blip in human history. I understand what you’re saying but in general this is the huge flaw in not just anarchist movements but liberal movements entirely, purity tests.
I think my favorite description heard of it is the concept of a circular firing squad. Once an individual or faction starts making moves others don’t consider anarchist/libertarian/liberal enough they begin infighting and fracturing. And once that cooperation stutters even a little the machine starts to struggle.
Yes to a degree. It’s long been argued that fascism’s greatest strength is the speed at which decisions can be made, they will rip through everything to put their man in charge. The Nazis military structure literally leans into this and relied heavily on Nazi high command to orchestra its movements. They had an over-centralization, which directly led to them losing some fights. On the flip side of that anarchist movements have a lack of centralization that can often paralyze decision making in a crisis. Democracies tend to be in between with decentralized representation in the form of elections and some degree of centralization with their military structures. But democracies also had the unfortunate benefit of being well-established. Obviously this is a super watered down version but you want a like 60 page essay on an analysis of centralized vs decentralized command structures I’m sure people have already written about this.
It did take me a bit to find but I think “the CNT in the Spanish revolution” by Jose Peirats was one I’ve seen countlessly cited. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jose-peirats-the-cnt-in-the-spanish-revolution-volume-1#toc14
It’s pretty fucking exhausting to read but it basically just outlines the consistent battle between how local groups fought against larger regional influence and often at times just neglected calls for higher degrees of organization in favor of their own autonomy. If I had to sum it up it’s just showing repeatedly how often they had to form an assembly that resulted in representatives asking for people to come together time and time again, often without a degree of success that was needed for victory. And sometimes lending itself to further infighting cause once they start doing or saying things people didn’t agree with, their hype and motivation wanes which kills collectivism.
I’m also pretty sure Orwell has written about this detailing the lack of supplies that are tied directly to a failure of logistics although I’m not sure he touches upon that exactly, I think he just talks about their lack of supplies and the situation they found themselves in.
It’s very easy to try and paint it that they were simply overpowered which is true but part of them being overpowered was their own weakness to establish a central command necessary for wartime decision making. They also refused outside help in fear it would kneecap their revolution. Logistics wins wars that’s history 101, anarchism does not lend well to large scale logistics.
Your teacher was not an infallible source of knowledge, and clearly was not as well versed as they should’ve been when teaching this subject.
As you mentioned, Nazi Germany was defeated much quicker due to its centralized, all powerful leadership making incredibly bad military decisions repeatedly over the course of WWII. No one could say no to Hitler or his staff, even if people lower in chain actually fighting near the front lines had a clearer view of the situation.
They did have military centralization, in the form of the voluntary bottom-up command structure that you previously declared wasn’t Anarchist.
Individual platoons and squads having autonomy results in the exact opposite of what you describe, as they can make decisions on the fly based on what is actually happening in real-time in front of them (while still coordinating with the larger bottom-up militia).
This is proven out even today in the Ukraine war, where Russia continues to suffer incredible losses due to their extremely strict top-down command structure, where lower level units can’t do virtually anything without approval or orders from much farther up in the chain, which takes forever and doesn’t allow them to respond adequately to emerging threats. Ukraine on the other hand has been willing to update their command structure from the outdated Soviet style, instead adopting the modern squad level independent decision making that the US adopted decades ago, which has made them far more effective in their ability to defend against the invasion.
They didn’t want to join the Republican army for good reasons. Being under their command with no option to refuse bad orders or to recall bad commanders, especially in an Army that was quickly taken over by tankie Stalinist leaders who would likely try to use the Anarchists as shock troops to cull their numbers and leave the Stalinists more poised to betray them (which they ended up doing anyway, even as the Fascists were winning).
They repeatedly asked the Republican for supplies and help, but only ever received meager supplies and worn out old weapons, the scraps, essentially. The Anarchists put in a call for the Republican government to purchase more weapons for them, and suspected they never would and even seriously considered robbing the Republican bank to finally buy their own supplies, but decided to simply wait for the Republican government to do something so as not to disrupt their alliance, which ended up being the wrong decision, as the government later just gave virtually all of their gold reserves to the USSR in exchange for low quality weapons at extortionist prices, and once again the Anarchists got fuck all from it.
Yes, that’s true, but the Anarchists lack of logistics and supplies had nothing to do with Anarchism itself, but purely due to literally no outside force being willing to help supply them. The Allies and USSR in WWII would’ve been fucked if the US hadn’t have been constantly supplying them with its massive, unbombable factories churning out supplies to keep the Allies supplied, regardless of their political system.