@richpuchalsky

I've been thinking about this. Mamdani took power and instantly became a cop lover. The weird ammosexuals took power and instantly stopped hating the idea of federal cops. Progressives are losing power and so are becoming less pro-cop. Communists love cops when they're in charge and hate them otherwise. Poor gay people chant "bottoms, tops, we all hate cops" but rich gay people support them.

I'm beginning to think that one's relationship to the police is not a matter of ideology, but a matter of specifically whether you have power or not. I think anyone who gains power (or who becomes part of the ingroup) is going to be corrupted into a cop-lover.

The implications of this, as an anarchist, are something I've been thinking through.

@passenger

It's not so such an implication of anarchism as it *is* anarchism. You can not be in power in a hierarchical system without loving cops (or whoever the equivalent enforcers are in your society). The hierarchy doesn't maintain itself and always requires physical force.

@richpuchalsky

I mean, if loving cops is something that comes and goes from ideologies depending upon their power in society, what does that mean for us when we win? Are we going to become bootlickers, and if so, how can we avoid that?

I'm not an anarchist because I like the idea. My anarchism is based on it being the most pragmatic and realistic way forward, and I think we have a real chance of winning in my lifetime (I think we came closer than people realise to a successful revolution in 2020.)

As anarchists, however, we have a tradition of thinking things through carefully before we do them. We don't rush in heedless of the consequences like communists or liberals do. We understand that no system outgrows the circumstances of its birth, so we need to be careful about those circumstances. If there's a chance of us becoming cop-lovers, then I think we need to take that seriously.

@passenger @richpuchalsky

As an outsider who is very anarchy-curious, and who tries to educate myself when I have the spoons, one thing I've noticed about the anarchist community on Masto is that a lot of (English-speaking) anarchists still carry significant cultural baggage from their Western upbringing, specifically the more pernicious parts of individualism and the Hobbesian idea that men are intrinsically evil, covetous, and unfaithful.

Add to that conflating power and authority, and...

@johnzajac

I don't know about this, because the least totalitarian and autocratic states in the world are largely the western ones.

@passenger @richpuchalsky

@alessandro @passenger @richpuchalsky

That's debatable.

After all, the US has *by many multiples* the largest prison population in the world. It's in the bottom 10% for prison conditions.

We also just convicted 8 people of terrorism for "wearing black while at a protest" and "zines".

In 2020 it was Democrats leading the way on prosecutions of peaceful protesters demanding police accountability

None of this sounds "least totalitarian", tbh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg