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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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.
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
“Why do anarchists live under capitalism if they hate it so much?”
Bro, sometimes you don’t have a choice. They might not know about Lemmy or other Reddit alternatives that aren’t corporate owned piles of dogshit. For a while, there weren’t any; that’s why I was there for so long.
It’s also hard to just up and leave a community. Even if it’s in a bad neighborhood. Your friends are there. Unless they come with you, you’re much more inclined to stay.
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?
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)
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.
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 :).
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.
CCP/Kremlin social media “guerilla influence campaigns” as they are referred to. Chiefly push, when they are targeted at the left, ML, Stalinist, and Maoist agendas.
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)
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.
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.
Because its easier
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.
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.
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
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.
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” 🤣
what year are you in? Are people still offline irl when you are?
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.
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
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.
So, we perceive, there are actual, material barriers blockading the way. These must be removed. If we could hope they would melt away, or be voted or prayed into nothingness, we would be content to wait and vote and pray. But they are like great frowning rocks towering between us and a land of freedom, while the dark chasms of a hard-fought past yawn behind us. Crumbling they may be with their own weight and the decay of time, but to quietly stand under until they fall is to be buried in the crash. There is something to be done in a case like this—the rocks must be removed. Passivity while slavery is stealing over us is a crime. For the moment we must forget that we are anarchists—when the work is accomplished we may forget that we were revolutionists—hence most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.
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.
yes. and no, it’s not the bare minimum. You perceive a very specific definition of anarchism
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.
and act like anything that’s not exactly what you know/do is just not anarchism anymore and is just wannabe edgy liberals.
If there is no threshold then the term means nothing. Trump could not call himself an anarchist and be correct.
How can you even fence so hard a term such as anarchism? just let people be and believe what they want.
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.
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.
I’m screaming in fear?
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.
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.
i’m guessing that you’re in U.S.
Yes
Funny enough, the highest concentration of actual anarchists I’ve seen is on hexbear
Good joke, comrade.
It’s true, you should go ask on their anarchism comm. You will find delightful and well-read people.
