this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Anarchism

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you want to be heard, wouldn't you go to the most crowded plaza instead of the mostly empty one with people who already agree with you?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The crowded plazas owner might restrict you tho. Various well known anarchist accounts such as crimethinc where banned by corporate social media. Also you have to follow many rules to not get banned.

(I still think its valid to be on corporate social media to spread propaganda, but its not as easy as an actual plaza where you can directly communicate with people)

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Most people don’t know about lemmy. And as an anachist, the fact this place is dominated by authoritarian MLs is quite off-putting.

Also a lot of anarchists aren’t as terminally online as a lot of us here :).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I think the web in general has a problem with authoritarian MLs domineering the discussions. To be fair it feels like a lot of them are chronically online, because I've never seen as many chaotic tankies IRL as I have seen on the web.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Some don't even seem to sleep, with the amount of time between comments.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sadly i think a lot of them are deluded into thinking they have to take care of the reddit community or "someone worse is going to take over". I don't quite get it myself but I know some of these mods were struggling a lot to get control of their subs (i.e be the top mod)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

In all honesty there's probably some merit to trying to maintain a more public anarchist online space to try and make it anarchy more visible to non anarchists. I generally agree with not quite getting it though, it's not a project I'd want to invest energy in personally.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Look, yelling in the basement of your local bar late at night is all well and good but sometimes you gotta set up on the street corner and scream at the normies to get the message across.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Hi! Recovering Reddit anarchist here! Although if I’m honest it probably wasn’t until after leaving reddit I really started to understand what anarchism meant, and more openly align with it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

A bunch of anarchists who do end up leaving Reddit use Raddle, a different alternative to Reddit. This is probably why there's so few of us on Lemmy.

As for why so many do stay on corporate social media like Reddit, it's a similar reason a bunch of socialist orgs organise on Facebook: that's where the people are.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.

Lemmy doesn't have a large userbase. The few that moved I feel are dedicated here. Most people won't know what Lemmy is if you ask them or what federated social media is. Alternates aren't viable for most people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.

"Town square"? More like shopping mall food court. What self-respecting anarchist wouldn't go for the abandoned lighthouse instead? It can only be that they're unaware that it exists and even has working plumbing sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Why does anyone go to a community they don't necessarily agree with? Either to start shit or to convert. If your goal is to get other people to see the world your way, or even just to have an argument with someone who doesn't agree with you, first you have to be where people don't agree with you. I think this is probably a far sight better than people living in echo chambers, personally.

Alternatively, most people pick the least friction option, it's only us weird, passionate people who go through the added inconvenience to be on a platform that more aligns with our ideals.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hexbear can indeed be very offputting to anarchists

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.

especially those who learned from history that “left unity” isn’t.

Which decades or so?

It’s why slrpnk.net has outright blocked hexbear

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?

and they also managed to alienate all the admins of dbzer0

So you mean yourself when you were acting like this? https://hexbear.net/post/2489084/4892908

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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?

Which decades or so?

Plenty of learning experiences throughout the last century.

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?

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.

So you mean yourself when you were acting like this? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19918886

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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?

I made that recommendation before I realized you had been banned for harassing people. So I would recommend that anyone else follow my advice.

Plenty of learning experiences throughout the last century.

So the whole last 100 years? Or are there certain decades?

Sure if you don't understand anarchism and think one always have to make an affinity group instance.

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 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 gotcall mere

It's a complete absurdity, not imperfection.

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.

You want me to repost screenshots of you harassing people? I'd rather not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (13 children)

So the whole last 100 years? Or are there certain decades?

The whole but of course a ton of hard lessons learned in the 20s and 30s

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.

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

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

"Left unity" has all my alarms blaring ⚠️ 🚨

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (15 children)

Most online anarchists aren't anarchists at all.

what year are you in? Are people still offline irl when you are?

"Most online anarchists aren't anarchists at all" 🤣

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

i'm guessing they're young and being an anarchist is a fundamental piece of their identity. 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Good question but I assume its becase thats where the people are and /or they are unaware of alter natives and/or theybdobt give a shit?

Same same with X and all things Meta for that matter

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Damn those anarchists, never doing what I think they should! Why can't they just follow the rules!?

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