I was listening to this series on audio book in the shower when this occurred to me. ‘Gadara’ is a fantasy species of wolfpeople’s word for enemies that are respected and even trusted. A worthy foe sort of thing.

The idea is that the predatory wolf people believe friends can betray you, but an enemy can be trusted to act in their own self interest if they show themselves to be an honorable sort. Each party to the relationship maintains their status as enemies and expects the other to kill them if given the opportunity, but also can work together against threats to both. Being a gadara to someone also confers a bit of protection with your gadara’s allies. A gadara can vouch for each other, and have laid claim to the honor of killing the other. So vouching for a gadara is saying “I want to be the one to kill this one, please respect that and leave them to me.”

So to bring this around, an understanding between individual tankies and anarchists where both parties understand their ideals are incompatible, but the other can be trusted to work against fash would be a pretty useful arrangement. If we don’t look past each other to the greater threat of fascism we won’t be around long enough to get to have our fight in the end.

  • Štěpán@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    I’m not sure if you use the term tankie correctly. Tankies are the people justifying genocides, massacres and oppression if their perpetrators claim to be communist.

    I can agree with statist communist that we share values but disagree on how should they be achieved. But I can never agree with a tankie claiming to share those values while supporting regimes that would make even marx and lenin vomit (or I hope so, even though I’m not their fan and don’t know that much about them).

    • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zipOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      I’m not sure if you use the term tankie correctly.

      Quite right. I was using it this way because it is used often incorrectly on Lemmy and I figured it would get the point I was making across.

      But I can never agree with a tankie claiming to share those values while supporting regimes that would make even marx and lenin vomit (or I hope so, even though I’m not their fan and don’t know that much about them).

      Very easy to end up sharing those values and supporting regimes that don’t agree simply with the prevalence of misinformation, or sometimes when a difference in priorities is masquerading as a difference in values. As someone who is not a fan of nation states in general, I just try to sus out if people are unironically on board with atrocities or just disagree about the history but would be horrified if they believed.