That's fair. We end up in line struggle with anarchists a lot for obvious reasons so I think it's useful to be ready to rebut their arguments on those occasions when they do try to suggest they could lead a revolution instead of just tailing behind it sniping at the people actually leading the struggle.

I thought the article was a pretty good critique of Makhno, what did you think of their critique?

I thought it was interesting how some of them seem to think the idea is to just throw all of the bourgeoisie into gulags just to get back at them. It's like, are they actually that ignorant? Are they just spreading lies?

I found it funny but it is definitely not a good use of time

Obviously, there needs to be class struggle against the wealthy, but so long as rich people are on top it doesn't make sense to frame this as "oppression." And once rich people are no longer on top and the structures that give them power (private property and the state) have been done away with, the very concept of a "rich" person should ideally no longer be a thing; there will no longer be rich people to oppress, only former rich people. And oppressing former rich people just seems like mean-spirited revenge.

TIL if you make a revolution and take active measures to prevent the formation of a counter revolutionary fifth column literally composed of expropriated capitalists so they don't undo the revolution and drown you in your own blood it's "mean spirited revenge."

For all the good that will do them.

All I'm seeing is that you admit they fumbled at creating a narrative people would listen to multiple times because they do a horrible job and are always caught (I agree with this!) and you still think they're these puppetmasters of American democracy because Russiagate "did damage" (that you can't quantify) to Trump.

You want to know who else has friends in the CIA? The guy who appointed the current head of the CIA. That man? Donald Trump.

What did Russiagate amount to, again? I seem to recall the entire narrative about Russia culminated in a report which was filed away and never acted on. Oh I guess they impeached him, to no effect since the Senate is a GOP property.

This is precisely what I am referring to re: "calling the cops on him a few times to no effect."

If you think creating a narrative about Russiagate is the same as organizing a coup, I just don't know what to tell you.

Your last paragraph is utterly laughable. Democrats will never coup anything. Their concept of "resistance" so far has been to call the cops on Trump a few times, to literally no effect. Their current threat regarding the SCOTUS appointment is that they will slow it down.

Democrats organizing a coup? I'm gonna be laughing over that one for a few days.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about. The Carnegie Mellon people used a Javascript exploit to do what they did. To quote a random vpn website:

Cite your source. Some random VPN website? Which? How reliable is this VPN website? Who owns it? What even is a VPN website? A website about VPN's? A website run by a VPN provider? Who said this?

Even though you're douchey as fuck and also sloppy as hell, I went ahead and checked the tag on the story, because it's quite possible that I might have misremembered.

Here is what the actual TOR project said about the attack. Since they have a vested interest in downplaying any threats to their software, we should expect them to mention something something about users using it wrong but they didn't. https://blog.torproject.org/tor-security-advisory-relay-early-traffic-confirmation-attack

Based on what the TOR project said, which you can verify at the link because unlike you I have at least one actual source it was a combined traffic confirmation attack and sybil attack based on poisoning the network with malicious nodes and was directly based on weaknesses in TOR. Both attacks happened below the browser level. I'm searching and searching and the best I can piece together is that your "random VPN website" is run by confused dipshits who are confusing several different attacks, but literally nobody can verify because you're your own source as far as anyone can tell.

The reader should ponder to themselves why this user wants to make it appear we’re talking about two different incidences.

"The reader" should wonder why this arrogant, pompous asshole who is too good to provide verifiable sources about their claims is trying to insinuate I'm lying when, to all appearances after I followed up in good faith on their claims, it appears that some_random_commie is actually the one who is spreading confusion about the Carnegie Mellon attack.

My theory is that they are embarrassed to have been called out for being wrong and are now trying to save face.

If you have better suggestions for anonymously communicating with a violent mass audience, I’m all ears.

I haven't examined it in detail so I can't vouch for its security but I2P is architected for better anonymity (was designed partially in response to TOR) and I've never heard of any attacks on it. To be clear, I'm not specifically recommending I2P, but my point is that TOR's not special. There are multiple anonymizing networks with different implementations.

What I would say is that instead of spitballing on a public forum based on shit you read on "random VPN sites" a revolutionary party should recruit some computer security experts to help them examine these problems in a rigorous and well informed fashion.

And you’re doling out fear and paranoia to keep people from taking up arms, based on the idiotic idea the “American” government is omniscient (it isn’t).

You're constructing a straw person argument. I never said either of these. TOR not being perfect is not a claim that the US federal government is omniscient. Criticizing your bad security advice is actually not the same as what you're hysterically claiming I'm saying.

And I'm not saying don't trust TOR for anything at all, but if you're actually gonna try to drill down into the specifics of revolutionary tactics.... if a revolutionary party, like one actually participating in some popular unrest uses TOR to host a website "anonymously" they will be deanonymized. The security requirements for what you are suggesting are through the goddamn roof and TOR is not up to spec.

If anarchists don't want to be coup'ed then they should simply write new forum software without any mods or admins that way there is no power to fight over. QED.

All those cases have been due to people misusing Tor, and being identified by Javascript.

I mean there was that time researchers at Carnegie Mellon poisoned the network with malicious nodes and managed to decloak traffic for six months, did so with DOD money, didn't responsibly disclose to TOR, then the FBI heard about their project and subpoenaed them and they forked over IP addresses to help throw a Silk Road 2.0 operator in prison, but sure. TOR has definitely never been successfully subverted.

Also, in terms of computer security, open source and auditability isn't a magic wand and it's actively dangerous to pretend that it is, especially when advocating what you're advocating.

The NSA has teams of security researchers actively finding vulnerabilities they keep a secret so they can exploit them. The longer they can keep a vulnerability secret, the longer they can keep using it without anyone necessarily noticing. This applies to open source software, too. Vulnerabilities can sit unnoticed in products for years and sometimes even decades before anyone finds them. Auditability just improves the chances of finding them.

Everybody involved in hacking -- nation states, cyber criminals, etc -- with the resources to do research hoards zero days. An unpublished zero is like gold for hackers. It's important to understand that any piece of software is more likely to be compromised by a nation state actor than is publicly known/knowable.

You are doling out bad and dangerous advice.