I know these federated communities exist as well as raddle, but it still seems like most people will stay on toxic and corporate-run platforms like reddit or Twitter. I’m far from perfect myself and I still use reddit sometimes, especially for more niche communities, but when it comes to ideologically strong communities like the anarchist ones, it just feels wrong that the majority still hang out on reddit. Or you know, moving to something like Bsky when Twitter became too toxic but which is still run by a large, for-profit corporation (if they moved in the first place). What are your thoughts? Is there any justification for this?
Most online anarchists aren’t anarchists at all. They neither read anarchist theory, do anything IRL, nor adhere to basic anarchist principals - because they don’t know what they are, they just know memes and a skimming of Kropotkin. They also define themselves through a liberal-filtered understanding if what they are not, rather than who they are and what they are working towards.
If you do organizing work IRL you will meet actual anarchists and they are much cooler as they are not just LARPing liberals that happened upon an aesthetic that lets them pretend to be radical while acting virtually perfectly in line with the status quo.
Funny enough, the highest concentration of actual anarchists I’ve seen is on hexbear, a place another commenter said would be offputting to anarchists. Perhaps they are thinking of the “anarchists” that just watch YouTube videos to get angry at “the tankies” based on a misunderstanding of history in the 1920s and never saw a NATO putsch they couldn’t defend.
I don’t really engage that much in anarchist debates on the net but I feel that it’s nice to have an internet community surrounded by like-minded as well. There are spaces near me, but there aren’t really that many anarchists around. Most are state socialists in one form or another. I don’t mind hanging out with them, but at the same time I’m not a big believer in “left unity”. If it matters I’m not based in the US where the scene might be a lot different.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a group of more like-minded people to have as a home base. Well I said nothing wrong, but I think it is actually very good to have such a space. While we have more power in unity, it is important to develop identity and improve positions through comparison to what we are not, or at least through critique, and that is easier to do if you get together with your closest-minded comrades. This begins to define who you are vs. who everyone else is and you can begin to experiment through the improved capacity for unity in action via consensus, whereas you may be pretty limited in action in coalitions or similar spaces.
Left unity is very important, though. It does not need to be complete, but we are much stronger together. Coalition building is essential to achieving anything when the left is as small as it is in most places. To disregard it is to massively limit the scale at which an action can be realized, sometimes the difference between mobilizing hundreds of people vs. 5 and the difference between having full cover for a very legal direct action wink wink and being completely exposed to police surveillance.
I’m sure where you are is both different and similar to the US in various ways. Capitalism is global and the police state with it.
“Left unity” has all my alarms blaring ⚠️ 🚨
Hexbear can indeed be very offputting to anarchists, especially those who learned from history that “left unity” isn’t. It’s why slrpnk.net has outright blocked hexbear and they also managed to alienate all the admins of dbzer0. Likewise they get very little respect from anarchists in places like kolektiva.social.
In fact, the only people I’ve seen who keep insisting there’s totally a lot of anarchists in hexbear is MLs in lemmy.ml and hexbear.
You should ask the anarchists on the hexbear anarchism comm. I’m sure they will share some reasonable criticisms but also explain something similar to my general sentiment.
Which decades or so?
slrpnk.net preemptively blocked hexbear by fiat of admins and without any kind of vote. A very, very funny thing for an “anarchist” instance to do, don’t you think?
So you mean yourself when you were acting like this? https://hexbear.net/post/2489084/4892908
They’re free to venture out and tell us. Or do you also claim they don’t come out of hexbear because the rest of us don’t accept “AES” and haven’t read enough Lenin?
Plenty of learning experiences throughout the last century.
Sure if you don’t understand anarchism and think one always have to make an affinity group instance. It’s also a very hypocritical argument when coming from MLs who routinely talk about giving “critical support”. I.e. they understand not everything can be perfect all the time, but when anarchists are not perfect, it’s a gotcha.
Like what? Use your own words, don’t just link to a thread full of bad faith takes. Cmon, you didn’t even link to the first de-federation thread.
I made that recommendation before I realized you had been banned for harassing people. So I would recommend that anyone else follow my advice.
So the whole last 100 years? Or are there certain decades?
Voting on site-wide decisions does not require modeling an affinity group, it is not unique to an affinity group. Anarchists create collectives with participatory decision making of many kinds. What they rarely do is have a couple people make the major decisions on everyone’s behalf without others having a say.
It’s a complete absurdity, not imperfection.
You want me to repost screenshots of you harassing people? I’d rather not.
The whole but of course a ton of hard lessons learned in the 20s and 30s
Surprising concept I know but did it ever occur to you that slkpnk and dbzer0 is not just for anarchists? Maybe mull on that concept and what it means for instance-wide voting.
there’s plenty of decisions that don’t need voting, even between anarchists. You don’t vote on each ban your> admins and mods take either. This is all just hypocritical gotchas again
So the period I initially noted.
Describing those instances as anarchist was your doing from two of your comments ago: “Hexbear can indeed be very offputting to anarchists, especially those who learned from history that “left unity” isn’t. It’s why slrpnk.net has outright blocked hexbear and they also managed to alienate all the admins of dbzer0. Likewise they get very little respect from anarchists in places like kolektiva.social.”
Now you’re just being inconsistent.
You probably should, given the above examples. Naturalistic fallacies don’t justify top-down fiats on major decisions.
Did you miss me saying “the whole” just before that?
OMG you are really deliberately obtuse. There’s anarchists on these instances but it’s not just anarchists. Cheezus crust!
Sorry I’m too dumb, can please explain where I did a naturalistic fallacy?
Anyway, it’s not a major decision to define what kind of instance one federates on init. I did as well when I defed lemmygrad and exploding heads. If done on start, people know what they’re joining. Again, a vote is not needed on everything and not everything is a “major decision” just because you claim it is.
No, I am just pointing out that I had already correctly described this initially and we have now come full circle. You entered this conversation with a sense of correcting what I had said.
I am not being obtuse, you are being inconsistent. When it suits your criticism of what I said, you call those instances anarchist. When I say it is funny an anarchist instance has such an undemocratic process, suddenly you say it is wrong to call them anarchist.
By arguing that existing practice justifies it as not going against basic anarchist principles. It is all very confused given the apparent superposition status of these instances as anarchist and not anarchist, of course.
It is, of course, a major decision. It is censorship.
Yes, that is true. If you establish bylaws of a collective first and then people join they consent to them, initially. But of course we aren’t talking about that at all.
Of course nobody said everything needs a vote. This is just very silly straw manning.
I Didn’t harass anyone, but I know that’s what hexbears love to claim. Do feel free to post any evidence of me “harassing people”. We’ve been over this before. Calling a power tripping mod a pos isn’t “harassment” and y’all are cheapening the word to win internet arguments.
As I mentioned, I would rather not. But if you request or demand it, I will.
I don’t demand or request. I am just stating, as I’ve done many times before, that I didn’t harass anyone and there’s no “evidence” out there proving otherwise. All there is, as usual, is hexbears diluting the meaning of the word “harassment” to character assassinate those they collectively dislike.
You did, of course, repeatedly throw abuse, and it was entirely in line with the instance rules to then ban you.
the kolektiva.social that gave all its user and direct message info to the fbi? I’m sure hexbear anarchists are really missing a honeypot mastodon instance
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/fbi-seizure-mastodon-server-wakeup-call-fediverse-users-and-hosts-protect-their
A kolektiva.social admin is raided and their hardware and data seized at which point they immediately announce that to everyone
Always bad faith with these sockpuppets…
Good joke, comrade.
It’s true, you should go ask on their anarchism comm. You will find delightful and well-read people.
what year are you in? Are people still offline irl when you are?
“Most online anarchists aren’t anarchists at all” 🤣
I think it’s absolutely hilarious this person is excommunicating people from his Church of Real Anarchy, like, get the fuck outta here with your bullshit
The self-described anarchists who engage in actual work tend to be better informed and know what anarchism is and organize accordingly. Most people who self-label as anarchkst on the internet do nothing at all outside of comment and post. They also don’t read, not even about anarchism. They are not anarchists, they are left liberals that confuse each other and the wider public online.
Occasionally they do pop up in organizing spaces, usually as new members. They are the ones wasting time trying to make an anarchist org “more horizontal” by which they mean “I get to be on every committee and speak for 20 minutes at every meeting”. I cannot tell you how many times my anarchist comrades have had to explain the difference between (situationally) just and unjust hierarchy to such folks.
that’s some really dedicated gatekeeping for anarchism…
Apparently we need Leninists to tell us how to be anarchists. It’s a good thing TheOubliette is here to show us the light and encourage us to enlighten ourselves by reading theory that Marx, Lenin, and other comrades have so generously blessed us with. /s
The gatekeeping of knowing the basics of anarchism and doing real-life organizing work? Is that not the bare minimum?
yes. and no, it’s not the bare minimum. You perceive a very specific definition of anarchism, and act like anything that’s not exactly what you know/do is just not anarchism anymore and is just wannabe edgy liberals.
How can you even fence so hard a term such as anarchism? just let people be and believe what they want.
you’re now just this conservative guy screaming in fear because the world is not what is used to be when you were at your 20s.
cool down. It’s okay to be an anarchist just online, and it’s okay to take “irl actions”, as you call it, and not see yourself above everyone else.
I don’t, actually. I accept a wide variety of how people approach what it means to be anarchist. But a person does need to actually know what it is in order to self-label as such. Otherwise you will find yourself surrounded by status quo-reinforcing liberals, even capitalists, using the term and confusing everybody.
If there is no threshold then the term means nothing. Trump could not call himself an anarchist and be correct.
I don’t think I’m being a very big stickler to say that to call yourself of an anticapitalist political tradition you need to know the basics of what it is. Of course anyone can believe and say what they want, and anyone can be wrong, and anyone can be counterproductive. It is better to become a critical participant that understands their claimed political tradition, at least at a basic level. And it can be harmful to claim to be of a political tradition and then act in full opposition to it, which is easy to do when you don’t know what it is.
I’m screaming in fear?
It is cool to be an anarchist just online, but you will find it very difficult to become one unless you know the basics of anarchism and have done practice.
This is why online “anarchists” are often counterproductive. Getting hyped for NATO. Saying that someone is a cop because they asked another person to not pick a fight with someone right this second. Going all-in on capitalist electoralism for the greatest empire on the planet. Being a billionaire grifter that sells electric cars.
Rather than assign those reactionary things to anarchist, it is more correct to understand them as not anarchist at all.
lol what a mood
I’m an anarchist and I don’t do much organizing and reading theory is not for me. I have a life to live and IDGAF what you think. Anarchists telling people what to do lol
Living your life is one of the most anarchist things you can do in my opinion.
Live as if you were already free
Another common trait of the “anarchist as an aesthetic” liberal is that they call everyone cops for criticizing them.
To be an anarchist you do need to actually know what one is, what the principles are, and subsequently do work. If you don’t know what one is, you could never identify as one correctly. If you don’t know the principles, well I’m just being redundant, that’s essential to knowing what one is. If you don’t do work, you are anarchism sympathizer, but have nothing to show for your beliefs. Praxis is essential to anarchism.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man
Well it’s definitely just not mine.
i’m guessing that you’re in U.S.
Yes