this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Anarchism
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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.
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 did correct what you said. The whole past 100 years have showed us lessons. Not just these dates. This is not hard to understand.
The instances are anarchist because anarchists run them. They are not full of anarchists. An instance that is run by anarchists but open to others doesn't always have to always require a voting by non-anarchists. There can be an internal affinity group handling this. There can be plenty of approaches to this, depending on the time and effort one can afford. Sure in a perfect world, everything would be done much more perfectly, but we do what we can with the time we have. If only you would request the same level of purity from the authoritarian regimes you support...
How is that a naturalistic fallacy? Did I prescribe something as "good" or whatever because of we're doing it already? No, I said that the current practice is consistent with anarchist principles. To argue the opposite you have to argue 2 things. 1 that setting some rules as soon as the instance opens (including defederated instances) is anti-anarchistic. And that 2. Anarchist running an instance deciding that some instances are too toxic to federate with is a "major decision" that always requires voting.
That's exactly what we're talking about! Just because we don't do it in your approved manner doesn't mean this isn't exactly what we did.
"And not everything is a major decision", just ignore half of what I said, whydontcha.
What I said initially: "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"
I am of course not saying "the only things are from the 1920s", but that this is a primary focus. And when asked about the time periods you think of as primary, they popped up. Full circle, lol.
Right so they are anarchist instances. And they make important decisions about federation by fiat of a couple admins. And that is very funny for anarchists to do. Inventing scenarios that didn't happen to say how they are reasonable is... not relevant. In many ways you implicitly acknowledge how silly it is, because none of your examples are, "a couple admins just decide it", instead you talk about affinity group subsets. Or is that meant to be euphemistic cover for "a couple admins"?
Personally, I don't think "two people make the important decisions" is complaining about imperfection when it comes to an anarchist instance. It's really just unexamined centralization that is otherwise an implicit part of the process of hosting software. And it's very funny.
The "purity" is "basic correspondence to the core principals of what you claim to be". I'm not a big stickler, really. But please do tell me about the regimes I support and how I am inconsistent on this. I expect you to be able to explain this without my input, as you are so certain, right?
A short version of the naturalistic fallacy is, "what is, is what should be". That you justify what should be simply because it is how things are done. That is the logic you presented! "You don’t vote on each ban your> admins and mods take either."
You did not say the latter, actually. But you did say that you don't vote on each ban, as if this justifies the practice. It sounds kind of like these instances should!
No I don't and I already responded to that. This situation is not one of what people joined, it was a censorship decision, it required a change. Gotta flip that 'block' button and all that.
Yes of course it is, at least if you want to say you are anarchist. That's a major decision and it is something that even "authoritarian" instances can accomplish. I know that anarchists could do it even better!
No, it is not what we are talking about.
It's funny because while I didn't ignore that, because I've already directly said in no uncertain terms that I disagree 3-4 times, you ignored my response to what you said: it's a silly straw man.
And I said there's plenty of other decades with "misunderstandings"?
And of fucking course the 20s and 30s are the primary focus because that's the period with the last revolutionary potential which MLs squandered to build Capitalism again.
No, an affinity group is an affinity group a bunch of admins is something else, but can also be valid.
There's plenty of scenarios where anarchists take decisions without voting. Again, you don't get to declare by fiat what is a "major decision". But I'm glad you're self-amused at least.
Nonense.
I'm pretty certain you're a Marxist-Leninist, so you (critically?) support the usual suspects of USSR and PRC. Probably also Cuba and if you're extreme enough North Korea. Am I wrong?
That's not a naturalistic fallacy. That's me pointing out that this way of acting is obvious when you don't decide by fiat why something is "major decision" for others. I'm also pointing out potential hypocrisy.
No, I didn't say that doing this justifies it. That's bad uncharitable reading on your part to claim a fallacy. I've actually done "voting on every ban" so I'm familiar with how well it works. Have you?
Just for the record, do tell, what experience do you have running an instance or a comm?
Do you know that for sure? Did you check when slrpnk defederated hexbear?
Again, why do you think you can declare by fiat what is a major decision?
It certainly is. Again, do you know when such instances were blocked comparative to the life of the acting instance?
Just because you disagree what is a "major decision" for other groups of people you don't belong to, doesn't mean you are right. The impact of the decision and who gets to vote on it is determined by the people most affected by it. That's the core anarchist principle you don't seem to understand.
If you skip over what I say, you will end up making us go in circles. The next thing I wrote: "I am of course not saying “the only things are from the 1920s”, but that this is a primary focus. And when asked about the time periods you think of as primary, they popped up. Full circle, lol."
Then acknowledge what I said before this and that you skipped over: "Right so they are anarchist instances. And they make important decisions about federation by fiat of a couple admins. And that is very funny for anarchists to do. Inventing scenarios that didn’t happen to say how they are reasonable is… not relevant. In many ways you implicitly acknowledge how silly it is, because none of your examples are, “a couple admins just decide it”, instead you talk about affinity group subsets."
Yes of course there are. This is not a real response to anything I have said. We have already long established that this is about making site-wide censorship decisions re: federation, not literally everything. That is just another implicit straw man.
I think, of course, that is it obvious that a site-wide censorship decision is an important one that it is very funny for an anarchist instance to decide via a couple admins.
I do get to say, by fiat, what I think is a major decision. And I think it's actually pretty obviously a major decision, which is why despite being 3-4 comments deep we still have to talk about things like "There’s plenty of scenarios where anarchists take decisions without voting".
Yesnsense.
"I expect you to be able to explain this without my input, as you are so certain, right?"
I do get to decide my opinions by "fiat", lol. Got the thought police in here. Why are you copying my terminology to use it inappropriately for other situations?
But okay, I will accept that what you meant was that it was obvious. I will simply disagree (for the 5th time), because I think it is obvious that site-wide censorship is obviously a significant decision.
My point, which I will say was not obvious, when it comes to voting on every ban, was that it would be better to overcorrect in the opposite decision.
I have experience with both. It's thankless, isn't it?
slrpnk did not defederate from hexbear. It blocked hexbear without announcement, by fiat of its main admin. It confirmed this blocking/"defedereation" in August last year. This was not something discussed nor presented, lol. It's just one admin doing what they would like.
lmao there it is again.
A censorship decision is of course major, it is about who your instance's users can interact with via your website. If your federated social media website is anything at all, it is about users and how they interact, what they post, etc.
And again, non-anarchist instances have done this. It's very very very funny that anarchists ones don't.
It is painfully obviously not. An admin quietly implementing a decision to block after the instance existed and then letting people know this is how it was last year is not in any way an anarchist collective where everyone's just agreeing to those pre-existing bylaws by joining. It is just a website with an admin making the decision on their own.
Uh yeah?
I think this straw manning thing might be a habit.
Of course that is literally not the case here, is it? Or did slrpnk vote to block/defederate?
The core anarchist principle that nobody gets to judge who is anarchist unless they are a member of that particular anarchist group? I would love to see that core principle justified. Please show me your sources!
This discussion is getting tiring and fragmented and going nowhere. I will again reiterate that anarchist instances doesn't mean that the admins always have the time to take the effort to sort them out in the most anarchistic way possible. Therefore some decisions will be taken as obvious and done directly to protect the instance members. Many anarchists will consider a tankie-haven like hexbear as valid an instance to block without further discussion as much as exploding-heads. This is obviously accepted given the lack of outcry by their members. There's plenty of ways to handle these decisions and your inability to consider them in favour of trying to goad me with it being "funny" just betrays either immaturity and complete inexperience modding large communities, or that you're just trolling and I'm inclined to think of the latter.
The arguments you make in this thread and your insistence about the 20s betrays you as a Marxist-Leninist, but feel free to tell me I'm actually wrong and I would be surprised. Stranger things have happened. However as an ML, you have scant understanding of how anarchists work and therefore it's impossible to take seriously your moderation suggestions as coming from an anarchist perpective.
Given that I think you seem to just be trolling to amuse yourself, you are a waste of time to engage with as there's nothing constructive to be gained by reading you try to goad and gotcha me endlessly.
Because it is mostly a series of straw men coming from you at this point and an aversion to replying to what I say instead.
And there's another! "The most anarchistic way possible". If only someone here had said that.
You are now telling stories instead of acknowledging it was one admin making a decision with no discussion or feedback, lmao. Just be direct and to the point if you don't like things to meander or become tiring.
That is certainly true! But it does not make it less funny and absurd.
Goad you? I said it right off the bat as a one-off observation and it has snowballed because you are not being direct.
Or maybe I just think it is funny and at odds with anarchistic thought.
“I expect you to be able to explain this without my input, as you are so certain, right?”
This is a topic that is entirely your deviation by the way.
I agree that this is a silly conversation, but this is because you leave a pile of inconsistencies and illogic and guesswork and evasion at my feet and say, "here is my counterargument", and I have to say, "wow look at all this nonsense" and then say exactly what is wrong with it. It is the opposite of trolling, I am trying to take you seriously. You aren't making it easy.
Yawn. More of the same. MLs claiming they understand anarchism better than anarchists and proceeding to lecture. Your argumentation method is built to be exhausting instead of constructive and I have no mood for it. Goodbye.
I'll let you have the last worse I guess
Curious what that misunderstanding is. Do you feel the betrayal of the Anarchist Kronstadt sailors, Nestor Makhno's black army, CNT of Spain, or the lengthy list of offenses against the IWW were just an oopsie?
It would take a huge amount of space to do those 4+ things justice. I'll share in some of them but I think it would pretty quickly be something deserving its own thread or maybe just some reading recommendations.
Re: Kronstadt, calling that a betrayal is just incorrect. First, they launched a mutiny directed at the Bolsheviks ("no Bolsheviks in the Soviets", so the lines went), of course the Bolsheviks would act in opposition. It was a direct, oppositional fight, not getting stabbed in the back. In addition, part of the "betrayal" narrative depends on characterizing the Kronstadt mutiny as emerging from those who had fought at Kronstadt for the October Revolution, as in, it was the people who fought and died alongside Bolsheviks for freedom who were later jailed and killed by them. But this is also largely inaccurate. The Kronstadt sailors mutinying drew heavily from new recruits from the south that had never been part of Kronstadt during the revolution, they were building their own structures (many of them questionable) using the principles they learned from the diverse ancom traditions in the south. I recommend reading contemporary accounts and items as close to the Soviet archives as possible.
Re: Makhnovschina, this one really requires reading heavily, to get a sense of the oppositional forces. It is, of course, much easier to justify a betrayal narrative here given the repeated alliances and breaking of alliances, the Red Terror, etc. These were people who fought side by side against the Whites, there is no doubt, and the Bolsheviks went to war against the Blacks and heavily oppressed them. My gut inclination was initially to say it was simply a mistake, a wrong. But if you delve more deeply into the specifics of operations, what the realities meant on the ground, it becomes clearer that this was not simply a revanchist attitude by the Bolsheviks, but a direct, material opposition due to the need to feed the workers in cities. This is why the Red Army faced no resistance in the cities and why the Black Army's entire operation was deeply interlinked with the peasantry, namely a petty bourgeois peasantry premised on isolation and, oddly, frequent entitlement to the products of the city, which the Black Army often stole in order to support the peasant communes run by their mayors. Rather than bridge this divide, the Black Army greatly exacerbated it, worsening starvation conditions. And this was not limited in impact just to the region of Machnovschina, as it had long been an exporter of grain to the north. This did develop into a sectarian fight, though it was also not simply The Reds breaking alliances to attack The Blacks. As autonomous groups, subsets of The Blacks often declared agreements to be over sporadically and took up arms and killed of their own volition. So if we call it betrayal, I would say a qualified one.
Re: Spain I would ask you to be more specific.
Re: IWW that publication is a lengthy polemic about every perceived grievance they could muster, and mostly not about the IWW at all, including the inaccuracies about Kronstadt that were belabored without merit until the opening of the archives. I don't know what you would want me to do with it except to suggest reading extensively and not relying on pamphlets. Every polemical claim requires investigation and specifics.
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.
No I didn't "repeatedly throw abuse". I don't care about being banned. But I do care about the disinfo you're spreading. I called them PoS once after being constantly goaded by them and their communities and banned based on a hypocritical reason which is one of my triggers, and them simply replied to the insults and goading thrown at me further in PMs.
A casual skimming of that thread shows 5 abusive DMs in screenshots alone.
Now that's just straight up lying. But anyone can check out that thread or the one I posted myself about it instead.
It's not lying and I agree folks can check out the link I posted.
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...
It's true, you should go ask on their anarchism comm. You will find delightful and well-read people.
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 ⚠️ 🚨
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
i'm guessing they're young and being an anarchist is a fundamental piece of their identity. 🤷