Heavy Emphasis on Recruitment: Vanguardist groups constantly need new members: to pay dues, volunteer their labor, recruit for the group, and replace burnt-out members. Lots of effort goes into social media and marketing, and actions are heavily influenced by how they can serve as a recruitment tool: the flashier the better. Waves of new people and energy help make the group feel active and relevant, and mask the steady trickle of people leaving.

Feds in a boardroom have discussed what kills orgs and determined the number one thing that kills orgs is retention, or lack of it. Membership falling below retention rate results in a shrinking org, which is a dying org as far as the feds are concerned.

Ambulance-Chasing and Coopting: Seeking energy and recruits, these groups will suddenly appear around “crisis of the moment” events. As we write this zine, their current target is Palestine solidarity efforts that have increased in response to Israel’s recent escalation of genocide in Gaza in 2023-2024. Watch for groups who appear at events uninvited and focus on distributing newspapers and collecting e-mail list signups. They’ll often bring things like mass-printed signs with their group’s name and website or a large banner advertising the group they can prominently display in photos of events to advertise. They may even hijack open mics and chants.

They are basically singling out PSL and FRSO here in the first part. But the second part is conflating those two groups with the tactics of RCA, formerly IMT, formerly Militant. They do show up to stuff, put up their branding and make it look like they're supposed to be there as a means of piggybacking of other people's organising. "Hijacking open mics" is funny af though, an open mic is.... Open? It's not hijacking is it. And a chant? It's a fucking chant anyone can do it.

Front Groups and Front Coalitions: Creating a front group or coalition is another way vanguards try tapping into movement energy to redirect to their own ends. The front is dominated by members of the vanguard without clear connection to the vanguard group, to better allow the vanguard to hide their politics and intentions. Its purpose is to find recruits for the vanguard, and to be a vehicle for the vanguard’s activities that appears to be separate from them.

Liberals do this? Pussyhat Project? Half the liberal lgbt groups? They're front groups created by liberals.

Deceptive and Dishonest Practices: The authoritarian politics of vanguards generally aren’t liked, so they’ll be kept below the surface. Vanguards publicly claim values that can attract people—like police abolition, supporting labor rights, and horizontal power—while hypocritically supporting police attacking workers in authoritarian nation-states they support, like Cuba, Iran, or China. How can you value someone’s consent and autonomy if you lie to them?

Nope. There's no deception whatsoever in any vanguard group. I have literally not seen an ML org that doesn't make you read Stalin. Bourgeoise police are not the same as proletarian police. Making this about Cuba in particular isn't going to win anyone over, this "Zine" would've done better to leave that part out because the point will be instantly dismissed by every Cuba supporter. BUT, this isn't actually designed to deradicalise anyone who gets into these orgs (more on that).

Party Lines in General: Vanguardist ideas of discipline and a “scientific” revolution that must be followed to a ‘T‘ require conformity, obedience, and strict binary thinking. The world is more nuanced than that, but this nuance isn’t allowed in vanguardist politics.

The revolutionary party is organised like a military hierarchy because it is fighting a class WAR and militaries are designed with that structure for a reason, they are the most resilient and effective organisational style that humans have come up with for war fighting.

Centralization: A vanguard needs a power structure they can exert control from. If it doesn’t exist, they may try creating it to place themselves or their close associates at the center.

Almost all political parties are centralised. Given my experience in liberal parties like UK Labour I would say they are LESS democratic and MORE centralised than ML orgs. Starmer practically annihilated any democracy that existed within that party, all of which was mostly created by Corbyn.

Redirecting Autonomous Efforts into Spaces They Control: Autonomous efforts and independent projects can be enticed into spaces a vanguard controls, often with promises of resources, a plea to not “duplicate efforts,” or “left unity.” The intent is to gain influence over the project. Like a mixture of Entryism and Cooptation.

I've always argued against doing this in my orgs. Maybe someone with a good media skillset could do a NEW project that is under the org's name in addition to their existing project (such as a radio or youtube or whatever) but orgs that take control of existing projects of members don't realise that they're annihilating the motivation of the person running that project. Projects live and die by motivation of the key people running them and it's very important that orgs get some awareness of that and allow members to simply have their projects and their recognition for them sometimes. If you give them that, they often become very loyal and are more willing to run the project in conjunction with the org.

Hyper-Focus on Bureaucracy: Getting the group stuck in loops of committee forming, decision-making, writing points of unity, establishing cadre leadership, etc. Most likely during power struggles and Entryist takeovers. Often causes non-vanguard members to leave in frustration.

Nah man this is what feds do to break orgs and waste time. Specifically they want more than 2-3 people making decisions on every single project because it slows everything to a fucking crawl. This is something orgs should largely avoid apart from major decisions.

Never-Ending Tasks: Revolutionary change will require lots of effort, but within vanguardist organizations the pressure to fulfill duties and demonstrate commitment and discipline often lead to members committing most of their time to the vanguard group. This can lead to relationships outside the group weakening from neglect, becoming socially dependent on the group, and eventually burning out without a support network to help them leave the group.

How dare orgs have work to do!?

Incidentally I've actually never met anyone that regretted the social relations they get from organising. Not even people that eventually left them. Maybe the drama and things but the actual social relations? No.

This is an attempt to make vanguard orgs sound similar to what people have seen of their racist conspiracy uncle who the whole family now doesn't talk to. To conflate the left with the far-right. It's not the same. People don't feel sad and lonely and isolated socially from the rest of the world in leftist groups.

Charismatic Leader: Vanguard groups often center around a charismatic leader or founder who is elevated to a level of importance. This can be a leader/founder of the group itself, or an ideological figurehead.

lenin-laugh yes hello, this is the ideological figurehead

Sheltering Abusers: Patriarchal violence is a serious recurring problem basically everywhere. But vanguardist groups often treat attempts at accountability as an attack on the group and their ideology, or a distraction from “the cause.” They become defensive, and in practice shield abusers while dismissing survivors of abuse.

There is no Epstein within the vanguard. Shut the fuck up, liberals have absolutely no leg to stand on in the face of the overwhelming evidence against them for pedophilia and sexual violence and literal presidential coverups. Patriarchal violence IS everywhere and the only reason this attack is used is because the left is BETTER about it which makes people more worried when hearing accusations. If we could compare communist orgs with liberal and fascist orgs on this issue I am 100% certain that communist orgs come out on top as having the least of it, the least covered up, and the most harshly dealt with when uncovered.

All large orgs will deal with it. And the larger they get the more they will.

Taking Credit for Others’ Work and Actions: Vanguards may take credit for events, actions, and work organized by other groups. This is particularly true for things that are flashy or popular, but other things may be claimed by the vanguard group if it seems like it will be useful for recruiting.

This is just repeating some of the above stuff I mentioned about motivation. It's a careful balance and orgs should do it better. Incidentally, which is it? Are vanguards taking all credit or are they hiding behidn front orgs to hide their involvement?

Lack of Care for Members and Vulnerable People: The thirst for attention-grabbing actions can lead to vulnerable people and the group’s members being used as means to an end, resources to be exploited. Many “flashy” actions, such as an occupation, require extensive preparation, consideration, and care to manage various risks of harm (to the extent that we can). Nothing can be made perfectly safe, but a vanguard’s sloppy approach to actions can put people through unnecessary harm for what is ultimately a PR stunt.

Stop calling major issues "PR Stunts". You are calling the Palestine protests against a genocide a PR stunt in the same breath as pretending you care about "vulnerable people". The person that wrote this is a snake speaking double with a forked tongue.

The people that care THE MOST are in these orgs.

[cont in reply]

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

[cont]

Coercive “Self-Criticism”: Space for intentional reflection and evaluation is necessary for anyone trying to have an impact on the world. However “self-criticism,” (sometimes called “crit and self-crit” or “struggle sessions”) can be deployed to coerce group members to dedicate more time and resources to the group, shut down dissent, and re-mold members into more obedient followers. Puritanical efforts to root out “bourgeois” sentiments/mentality/social influences are a serious indicator of manipulation.

This one is just a mess. Self-crit in order to understand why something is flawed is not a bad thing. Conflating it with a bunch of unrelated stuff is silly, a "struggle session" is just a debate. People exchange ideas and change their views. Not sure what "obedience" even has to do with this other than the feds trying to suggest "if you ever think critically about the world and change your views instead of being an ASSHOLE then you're just being a bootlicker maaaaaan, you're not an independent thinker maaaaaan"... This is fashy shit.

Defending and Glorifying Authoritarian Leaders and Governments: For ideological reasons, vanguards in the “Western world” (our experience is from the “US”) often uncritically support authoritarian governments and leaders in the name of “anti-imperialism.” In extreme cases, this ends up being a sort of conservative patriotism. The actual practices and values of the nation-states they defend don’t matter, only their geopolitical relation with the US. This comes from the history of authoritarianism in leftwing politics, and specifically the influence of a tendency called “Marcyist” or “Campist,” which encourages uncritically supporting governments the “US” opposes. The result can be ugly. During uprisings, they’ll callously attack dissidents under a regime the vanguard supports, calling them CIA removed and calling their autonomous revolts “Color Revolutions”—if those same dissidents were in the US, ironically, the vanguard group would try to recruit them.

Nobody gives a fuck what this person thinks is authoritarian or not because they included Cuba and undermined their entire argument.

Expecting Queer People and People of Color to Assimilate: Vanguards may try to make themselves more acceptable to “the masses” by sidelining the concerns of marginalized people, or pushing those people to be less visibly “different.” This can sometimes go as far as the vanguard adopting conservative stances like transphobia. This can also be ideologically driven, with vanguards claiming problems like racism and sexism are actually just created by capitalism, and fighting them is a distraction from the more important “class struggle.”

Some of the shit ones yeah. Not the ones that I think this person is scared of the most.

Use of “Left Unity” Rhetoric to Demand Inclusion in Spaces: Some imagine “Left Unity” as creating a friendly and powerful movement, but in practice it suppresses diverse opinions and approaches in favor of a false “unity,” frequently giving authoritarians power within movements they otherwise wouldn’t have. You don’t have to sacrifice all your values and autonomy to work with others on tangible, shared goals.

There is nothing that makes you stand out as OPPOSED to the left more to me than making the argument that the left is better off divided.

Local Organizers Controlled by a Central Committee: For example, a vanguard’s central committee may order organizers to get involved in a particular struggle like Palestine solidarity work. At worst this launches a destructive wave of front groups and entryist takeovers. At best these organizers honestly aid in an effort, only to vanish when the organization’s whims change to a different hot new movement.

Literally every large liberal org is structured with a national executive committee or variant of such that functionally steers local orgs. If the local doesn't want to do what the national wants then their funding can be cut off, which in most cases would mean death of the group, that funding will go to whoever is willing to do it. I really don't see the difference, ML orgs are just more disciplined.

Going back to my earlier point: "BUT, this isn't actually designed to deradicalise anyone who gets into these orgs (more on that)."

This isn't really for people joining ML orgs, this is for people who are already anti-ML. This is written the same way the google docs and wikis are written. The "fact sheets" of talking points.

The purpose of this is to spread it as "educational content", to arm people online with talking points. The goal is to create thousands of people with this information in their heads so that everywhere an org name comes up (PSL for example) immediately gets dozens of comments dropping these talking points. This is how they crowdsource narratives in social media. Nobody joining a vanguard party is going to read this and change their mind. But the online discourse about vanguard parties? Well that's what this exists to do. They aim to educate everyone on the internet who is currently anti-tankie into being able to drop these mountains of talking points.

Shit like this will spread. Anticommunist discourse will change. Watch it happen.

If I were going to put my money on a new scareword for the future, tankie will fall away as its now being deemed less useful because of how polluted its use is, anticommunists will instead be pushed to switch to "vanguard".

[–] Dimmer06@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The purpose of this is to spread it as "educational content", to arm people online with talking points. The goal is to create thousands of people with this information in their heads so that everywhere an org name comes up (PSL for example) immediately gets dozens of comments dropping these talking points.

There was a small workers group in my area that had existed for years and hadn't really done anything until myself and my partner joined and got regular meetings going and set up a plan to do some public facing work. Suddenly one of the prominent members pulled out and shared a post detailing these exact points on Instagram the next day and the group quickly fell apart shortly after. My partner and I were the only two in the group that would even identify ourselves as Marxists and while I like PSL and Workers World neither of us are members of it or any other "vanguardist" organization.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago

Incredibly sus behaviour.

I know it was a small group and I keep saying this and sound like a stuck record but in the UK we have court submitted evidence showing that orgs have been infiltrated by the government when they're just a 5 person marxist reading group for Capital. They can and do infiltrate very very small groups early.

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