Yeah, probably. I’m thinking about how there are a couple of not-really-chill-with-MLs who have held on and I’m wondering if the sectarianism rules still end up creating an environment in favor of MLs, since anarchists only have so much to point to positively compared to MLs and most of the criticisms of anarchism go nearly without saying when the question of “how do we change this?” is discussed. I’m fine with that, of course, but it’s something where I always just sort of idly assumed the antithesis more than anything (and didn’t really care anyway).

It probably helps that when anarchists in other spaces do the “tankies murder us!” routine the main things they point to (e.g. Makhnovists) are flimsy as shit upon any inspection of the parties involved.

Here’s a fun one about Makhno’s exile in France:

June 1926, during a meal with Alexander Berkman and May Picqueray in a Russian restaurant, Makhno met with the Ukrainian Jewish anarchist Sholem Schwarzbard, who went pale upon seeing the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura walk into the room. Schwarzbard immediately informed the Batko of his intentions to assassinate Petliura, in revenge for the pogroms carried out in the Ukrainian People’s Republic, during which some of his family members had been killed. Makhno attempted to dissuade him but the deed was carried out anyway, with Schwarzbard’s subsequent trial bringing to light a trove of documentary evidence on the pogroms in Ukraine, exonerating the assassin.