#vanguardism

[pumpacti0n]

COMMON TACTICS, PATTERNS, AND TENDENCIES TO WATCH OUT FOR

Here are some red flags to watch out for. You’ll probably also see some of these in non-profits, advocacy groups, or other top-down organizations that operate like a business. However, it’s the ideological motivation that sets the vanguard apart and leads to some of their worst harms. We use “vanguard” to mean a person or group who deems themselves the necessary leader of the masses toward “revolution.” If you’re noticing these red flags, it’s best to stay away and ask others about their experiences with the group.

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.

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.

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.

Entryism

Taking over groups or coalitions that are independent of the vanguard. This is most easily done to groups that are new, that haven’t settled on goals and values, or who haven’t witnessed these tactics before. Frequently, this is done by abusing and manipulating internal decision-making processes, like seizing positions of authority or having vanguard members join in large numbers. Instead of creating a brand new front group, an existing group is hijacked.

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?

Shutting Down Dissent

Member obedience is necessary if a vanguard’s orders are to be obeyed. This sometimes appears as “Democratic Centralism,” often with some kind of central or executive committee making decisions for the group. This can also appear in group social dynamics, where members self-censor or modify behavior when they dissent from the group’s “party line.” Historically, this has led to a cascade of purges within notable Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, and Maoist organizations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Taking Credit for Others’ Work and Action

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.

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.

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.

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 spooks and calling their autonomous revolts “Color Revolutions”—if those same dissidents were in the US, ironically, the vanguard group would try to recruit them.

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.”

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. 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.

[source]

[root-cosmo]

Vanguard party organizations suck at starting up movements or being decent, and its primarily because the demand for membership to conform to ideological dogma absolutely destroys any chance at compromise or unity within a party. Its why they fragment into a billion different organizations as party members and sympathetic organizations realize that the party is not an expression of their political will.

[demigoddessqueens]

Official Ludinus and Liliana art!!! 🔥

[telestoapologist]

saint and failsafe having pet playdates together will be the death of me 😭😭😭 i love them SO much

[yodaprod]

1983

Source: Youtube

[autumnmobile12]

My Hero Academia AU: Sleeping Habits

A short comic for Ambush Simulation.

Summer Camp with UA and the Wild, Wild Pussycats.

This one’s a parody since this is a scene from Durarara x2!! and therefore this part will not be appearing in the Ambush Simulation fic.  It’s still funny to think about, so here's a little bonus while I work on the next chapter.

I don’t know if there’s a market in the simping community for post-shower hair Spinner, but if there is…you’re welcome?

I have no explanation for why Compress would wear the mask while asleep. (The original was a dude wearing a gas mask because he was worried about polluted air.)  Maybe he knows Dabi sleeps like a maniac and, on realizing he got the futon next to his, opted to wear some facial protection to avoid getting slapped in the face by the oblivious little shit.

Also, the headcanon that Dabi talks in his sleep...sure, why not?

...

Dabi:  Why are you wearing that mask?

Compress:  Nothing to be concerned about.

[revvethasmythh]

I think it's inevitable that a certain group of people will take Orym's statement about not being able to put down the lens he see the world through as further proof that his perspective is subjective and therefore untrustworthy as it applies to the Vanguard, but imo it serves as a stronger indictment toward those who are able to view the Vanguard as anything other than awful and predatory and murderous. Other people have the luxury of being able to see this through another lens if they so want to--Orym cannot. Because once a group like this has murdered your family, for the sake of a practice run no less, a test, it is impossible to view the situation in any other way. He is walking proof of the harm that the Vanguard does. His loved ones have been deemed "necessary collateral damage." His lens is not one that can or should be set aside in the assessment of the Vanguard, because if they are willing to commit such heinous crimes and excuse them as necessary collateral for ends that are so uncertain, then they are fundamentally not an organization that can be reasoned with or even should be sympathized with

[bread-wizards]

I actually think Dorian and Orym should fight more.

Remember when their slowly building tension over and entire episode (full of passive aggressive remarks and blame throwing) led to threats? And how after, Orym thanked Dorian for handing over the crown sadly because he knew Dorian would be mad at him? And Dorian couldn't even look at him because he was legitimately hurt, thinking Orym was disappointed in him for doing what he thought was right? That was peak.

The fact they went from that to their current closeness and trust is the best part of their entire dynamic. Their relationship was hard fought and still will be. They will fight for it because they respect and care for one another deeply, and their disagreements don't change that, only improve it.

[ltwilliammowett]

Two ship lanterns with Fresnel lenses, 19th century

[kaiserouo]

i can't survive in crucible for more than 3 seconds without healing and dash

[lodium]

Oryx statues

[pumpacti0n]

"In the Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train driver. The idea of a future society being constructed democratically from below by the workers themselves rather than through periodically elected leaders seems to have passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless an outside force gave them direction (instructions).

. . . Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union consciousness" independently of the party, the clear implication is that the party could in no way be bound by the predominant views of the working class. As the party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises outside the working class and its struggles) then opposition of the working class to the party signifies a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As Lenin put it:

"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence, to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology . . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

The implications of this argument became clear once the Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any better. If the working class revolts against the ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology. As the party represents socialist consciousness, any deviation in working class support for it simply meant that the working class was being "subordinated" to the bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle" the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers spontaneously went on strike or protested against the party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology," the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the "the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers"!) has to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."

. . . (N)one of the leading Bolsheviks were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed, they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" and (...) integrated this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing the proletariat is to be expected."

Anarchist FAQ Section H.5 | What is vanguardism and why do anarchists reject it?

This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it and it alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the resolution of the Communist International on the role of the party. It stated that "the working class without an independent political party is a body without a head." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological analogies says more about Bolshevism that its authors intended. After all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable. Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course not. Yet again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute force.

[fourfoldfires]

guy with a postgrad degree in ancient allag, seeing literally anything: "getting a lot of ancient allag vibes from this..."

[jennydolfen]

Demons run when a good man goes to war

[ariadne-mouse]

Ludinus has an ASMR channel on ScryTube where he taps things with the gold caps on his wizened fingers

[stoshasaurus]

chad saint 14 for your timeline

here are some oiled up versions

SA SA SAINT 14!! THE VANGUARD'S GREATEST LOVE MACHINE!!!