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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18887 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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I am a bit more sympathetic to the idea of 'wreckerism' as a distinct phenomenon. As I've seen it used thus far, it tends to refer to those personalities who cannot surrender their own ideological purity for the benefit of the group's overall mission. It has existed since at least the 1970s, if not since the dawn of time. Spend enough time in group spaces of any persuasion and this dynamic is obvious. There will always be people who join for more self-serving reasons than mission-serving reasons, and vice versa. It's very hard to screen for this.

Now, I do think hyper-leftist spaces have a unique challenge in that their ideas attract more of these personalities in part because of the general ressentiment of their politics and in part because leftists tend to be averse to commonsense social policing for fear of being 'exclusionary.' In this sense, 'wreckerism' is a sort of absurd escalation of leftist epistemology and ethics. However, there are plenty of leftists and leftish people (I've met them and perhaps you could consider me one) who are able to hold the fundamental tenets of the worldview without devolving into endless internecine conflict. There are discussions to be had about what distinguishes these types of people. I just don't think it's accurate to call it a problem of the entire camp. This is a distinct, vocal faction that everyone happens to kowtow to at the first sign of instigation. It's this kowtowing that needs to stop.

I also can't help but reiterate that they stopped enforcing their cover fee, which is the idiocy that kicked off this whole chain of events.

"Wrecking" is when someone sabotages the Soviet Union. At first they thought they would be a very productive utopia. By implementing socialism it would automatically transform into prosperity and advancement in every way. Then that didn't happen. By the 1930s it was clear they were getting stuck somehow. So Stalin determined there must be "wreckers" purposefully harming society and particularly sabotaging industry. Such people were identified, tortured into confessing and executed. Then their torturers were tortured and executed. Then the torturer-torturers were tortured and executed. And so on. One indeed wonders why this enlightened society failed to progress into a sci-fi eutopia.

Anyways it's commie talk for "saboteur". As invented or at least popularized by Stalin himself.

Then their torturers were tortured and executed. Then the torturer-torturers were tortured and executed.

Is this factual?

The campaigns of collectivization and industrialization were initiated in 1929. Both of these essentially entailed show trials, local purges and waves of terror directed at 'wreckers', 'saboteurs', 'hoarders', 'terrorists' and other so-called anti-revolutionaries. The leaders of the state security service (GPU, formerly Cheka) who carried these out were so-called Old Bolsheviks, that is, participants of the revolution and civil war, not appointed by Stalin and generally lacking a sense of personal loyalty to him which he found suspicious. The short story is that these officials and their subordinates were purged during the great terror wave of 1937-38. The state security commissar who carried this out was himself purged in 1940 by his successor who was then himself purged after Stalin’s death.

I'm aware that there were great purges of leading figures, generals and officers, etc. But I wonder if these cycles of killing were separate from the butchery of commoners, or not. The sadists who were employed in the gulags and tortured millions to death - were they met with a similar, deserved end during these cycles, too?

I'm not sure it makes sense to ponder this subject. It can surely be stated that the executors of the wholesale repression of kulaks, Cossacks and 'treasonous' ethnic minorities etc. were themselves repressed afterwards but not for the reason that they committed atrocities. It was due to the peculiar logic of Stalinism and the overall nature of totalitarian systems which operate by the rule that nobody is beyond reproach or suspicion regardless of position or rank and everyone is to live in a constant state of dread.

Everyone except Stalin himself? Was he ever investigated? He seems to have been the chiefest source of the terror, regardless of rank, for everyone else.

you really ought to watch Death of Stalin. It's probably the best black comedy of the last decade, maybe longer.

Second this, fantastic movie. Obviously not what really happened, but close enough to get you curious.

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