- Mod of !anarchism@slrpnk.net posts a great Greta Thunberg quote, but then tries to use it to justify not voting in the upcoming US election
- Multiple people point out that’s very clearly not what she meant
- Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
Anarchy is not equal to “no rules”. That’s anti-anarchy propaganda.
Lemmy in itself is anarchist because each community is allowed to have its own set of rules, and each instances as well.
The point of anarchy is that if you and a group of other people disagree with how someone is handling things, you can exclude them from your group. Of course, this is all in the context of leftist and communist ideologies.
The point of anarchy is that if you and a group of other people disagree with how someone is handling things, you can exclude them from your group.
I must have missed that part being key, when I was reading about Kropotkin and the mutualists. I thought it was some other things were mainly “the point.”
It is key. Anarchist theory is supposed to prove that hierarchy is not necessary. Proving that a group of people can manage themselves without one is the point.
I also added in the last sentence in order to include this. Multual aid is a leftist theory. Maybe the misunderstanding stems from this, as I didn’t intend it to mean “that’s the only point of anarchy”, so my bad. I still think it is important though.
It is key. Anarchist theory is supposed to prove that hierarchy is not necessary. Proving that a group of people can manage themselves without one is the point.
It’s so key that Kropotkin said you need to nominate a leader for each discussion, so that the leader can kick people out if they’re supporting the wrong ideologies. It’s one of the key tenets, and thank you for reinforcing it.
Also:
I’m not really talking about what Kropotkin said. I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic here.
Also literally the first line of your Wikipedia article:
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and anti-capitalist market socialist economic theory
I’m being extremely sarcastic.
I’m saying that proving that hierarchy is not necessary, and a group of people can manage themselves without one, by nominating one person to have ultimate authority over what actions can and can’t be taken within your anarchism group, so that person can make sure it stays anarchist, is a very silly thing to do.
But what I’m trying to point out is that this one person does not have authority over anyone due to the nature of the fediverse. If they did, your post right here would be gone.
If the users that are in the community of the moderator didn’t like how they managed things, they could make their own community. And if they didn’t like that the instance let the community exist for whatever reason, they can change for a better instance. Admittedly it’s hard to do so, but it’s a pretty good model.
They can’t stop users from making their own solar punk meme community.
Yeah, but I don’t think authority needs to be inescapable in order to be authority.
If I don’t like the laws of the state of Ohio, I can leave Ohio. That doesn’t mean the cops in Ohio have no authority.
In this case, it’s actually even a little bit sillier than that, because we’re just talking about words. There’s no way to even do any actions. All you can do is say stuff. If people come in and start talking about things, and that’s so destructive to your way of being that you have to wield your authority within that particular domain to eject them from it and stop them from saying those things, what’s that say about your ability to work things out without a hierarchy and get along? How are you going to deal with it in your anarchist community if someone’s playing music too late at night and keeping someone else awake, or saying things at meetings that you don’t think they should be allowed to say? Or even doing something even more destructive, letting their dog loose and it might hurt somebody, something like that? If someone has to default back to putting one person in charge and having them wield ultimate power to keep things in line this early in the process, it doesn’t sound to me like they’re very serious about anarchism.
I’m not trying to be negative or sarcastic about anarchism. I think, on the whole, it’s great. I talked more about it and learned some down in the deep forest of comments. I’m just saying that it sounds to me like !anarchism@slrpnk.net could use a lot more anarchism in its governance.
I’m really confused as an anarchist myself.
I know some anarchists who believe we should boycott the system and not vote, I know some anarchists who believe we should vote for Jill Stein because she is the most progressive candidate, and I know some anarchists (which include myself) who think along more utilitarian lines, that this election will can only end in two outcomes, and that one will cause a lot more suffering than the other, therefore I will vote for the one that causes the least suffering.
We anarchists believe more in direct action than voting, but that doesn’t mean we can’t vote.
I’m very concerned about this censorship of discourse on an anarchist community. And want to know what the moderator who made this decision’s rationale was. Would this comment be removed in !anarchism@slrpnk.net because I say not all anarchists vote for Jill Stein?
They made a long attempt to defend themself here:
https://slrpnk.net/comment/11904145
If you have some time, read the whole thing. There’s all kinds of interesting treasure in there.
So my comment would be removed because according to the mod I provide “ideological cover for evil”, by not supporting Jill Stein, even though my rationale conforms with anarchist ideals?
No, the argument is something like this: you can vote (or not vote) however you like and voting strategically or for the lesser evil is a compromise many Anarchists make, but you are lying to yourself and others if you claim that this is anything but a painful compromise. Jill Stein is irrelevant for that question.
I agree with what you said, via painful compromise and such, but that’s not the impression I got of the driving force behind the moderator’s decisions.
It seemed more like they were removing the comments because basically suggesting to vote for the lesser evil was in their view providing justification for evil and does not belong in the community.
If that’s the view of the moderators is that only idealistic (black or white) anarchism is welcome, and all forms of pragmaticism or utilitarianism or philosophicisim within anarchist ideals are unwelcome in the community, I will have to stop participating.
I can’t speak for the exact reasoning, but my impression is more like this:
The OP made a post explicitly about how voting is not enough and that direct action is needed (a very uncontroversial position for Anarchists) in an Anarchist community and because it is upvoted a lot and hits the all feed, some non-anarchist liberals show up in the comments and Reply-Bro their off-topic views about how it is absolutely crucial to vote for Harris and spout their various hypocritical justifications as of why. As a result the OP gets angry at those uninvited comments and deletes some of them and closes the thread and also gives a temp ban to some especially argumentative people that clearly didn’t get the message.
I find this pretty sensible over all, as this isn’t about not welcoming “all forms of pragmaticism or utilitarianism or philosophicisim within anarchist ideals” but rather about showing people the door who are clearly not anarchists nor seem to be interested in learning about it.
Here’s the mod log. IMO the OP already invited those comments (the post says in the first few lines that Trump is way more dangerous) and I don’t see how they were bludgeoning or hypocritical.
Yes they didn’t understand it either, but you have to keep in mind which community they commented in.
Thanks for engaging with me. I don’t have the energy to properly read or reply to your comment right now, I’ll come back to it tomorrow.
Your guess is as good as mine. My feeling is the same as yours. I don’t really have anything to add to this comment:
https://ponder.cat/comment/794343
I share your alarm about the censorship of discourse. It seems like there are at least three “anarchist instance” administrators in these comments who approve of it. I think they may either be jaded by a nonstop influx of trolls and noisemakers to the point that they are too tired to deal with anything disagreeable, or else they may just have not thought through enough what type of instance they want to have and what impacts this kind of policy is going to have.
If you want an answer to your question, in other words, I think you’ll have to ask the people making the decisions.
I don’t think mods should be moderating their own posts, generally.
This is a take that sounds good at first, but quickly shatters when it comes in contact with reality.
Mods are not some mythical aloof figure that hoovers over everything to make impartial decisions but are rather more often the primary posters and “content creators” (horrible term) in a community. This is something we encourage on our instance as we want to foster an organic community with original content and not just be a faceless link aggregator.
Add to this that it is really difficult to find additional volunteer mods for communities, and the person that starts a community is often the only and typically somewhat unwilling moderator of it as well. In thematic communities they are also often the person in the mod team with the most expert knowledge on a topic to decide if something is misinformation etc. or not.
Definitely
YDI: Going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints makes the use of mod powers to remove such viewpoints reasonable. It’s like going to a vegan place to argue about the benefits of meat, or going to a feminist place to argue “not all men”.
Some anarchist communities are setup for this sort of debate. Some are not. Both are OK to exist.
Yeah, no. Pointing out that a quote does not support the point of view that someone is trying to use it to support is tacitly not equivalent to “going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints.” Your other examples are insufficient analogies, and I hope you can see that.
If your hypothetical vegan space had a moderator who posted a quote of Lynda Carter saying “I try to avoid cheese, dairy, and a lot of meat, but I do like them,” and attempted to interpret that as “Wonder Woman advocates veganism,” it’s perfectly valid to call out the absence of that sentiment in the source quote. Removing such responses, especially on one’s own post, reeks of a petty reaction to criticism.
While I typically find value in your opinions, including the ones I don’t agree with, I’m having trouble mustering respect for this one.
From what I see, Greta was sufficiently vague on this either way. In that case, going to an anarchist space to argue for electoralism using this vagueness as a starting point seems to be sufficient reason for removal. The removed comment from the OP was not even correcting people misrepresenting Greta’s words, it was about starting an argument with someone suggesting 3rd parties (a support which I think also doesn’t belong in an anarchist space, but whatever) with the usual 2-party electoralist talking points
You can read the text of my comments here, or in the modlog:
https://ponder.cat/comment/791878
There were two that were reinforcing Greta Thunberg’s words, which were in no way vague, and then one that could be interpreted as “electoralism.”
Not gonna argue with you, mate. I’m just clearing out that you did not go there to correct misinformation as the person I was replying to made an analogy with, but to argue against 3rd parties and for electoralism in general.
You’re welcome to your interpretation. In my opinion I went there to protect the space against someone who mainly wants to use it to talk about Kamala Harris and the Democrats, and is wearing a fairly unconvincing anarchist disguise and couching their message in terms of “not voting at all” without bothering to disguise it all that much.
Thank you @db0. I co-mod !anarchism@slrpnk.net and administer on SLRPNK. I also support @mambabasa’s moderation decisions.
Is this really what we are going to be? I don’t recall the community every banning people left and right for comments like these. I myself made similar arguments before, where is my ban and comment removal? OP here did not post anything in bad faith, they didn’t come to troll, nobody complained and there also wasn’t a flood of the community. There was a total of 17 comments, 7 were removed, and 5 are just the mod getting into fights with people, and the post was locked after that. This is something you support?
Speaking of the mod, they are aggressive and insulting in every comment they make, almost every post is “don’t vote for Harris”, and this has been flooding the local instance for some time now (11 posts “don’t vote for Harris” in 2 days last week). There is absolutely nothing constructive in this whole story, just one person making as much noise as possible without adding anything constructive and then banning people who make good faith counter-arguments. I thought this was one mod out of control, but if you support all of this, if this is what the slrpnk anarchist community is, I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed in this instance. I can only hope that the majority of slrpnk.net would condemn this whole story, they just aren’t aware.
You are mixing up different things here. I was also not so happy about the high number of low quality memes they posted in a short period of time inciting nothing but anger shortly before a very emotionally loaded election. I mentioned to the mod privately that I found this quite trollish at this exact point in time and they agreed to stop.
The specific post in question was maybe one of the less bad ones (Greta’s take is pretty sensible IMHO) and due to the high number of upvotes it had the usual drive-by comments by non-community members that were mostly off-topic, did nothing but stoke the flames and were also partially offensive*. Maybe the mod overacted somewhat with deleting most of them, but locking the thread was absolutely the right call after it derailed and handing out a temporary (!) community ban to a very argumentative drive-by poster is IMHO good practice to defuse the situation.
*I agree with the mod that you can vote for your lesser evil or strategically whatever, but there is no need to provide lengthy ideological justifications to convince yourself and others that it was something other than a lesser evil vote.
Repeated explicitly political memes spamming the community = “not so happy”
This election is hugely important and, however shit some Democratic policies are when compared against what we actually need, Trump is clearly dangerous as fuck on a whole other level. That applies to the Mideast just as firmly as it does on climate change. Personally I agree with 100% of what she has to say here, both the first and second parts.
= “nothing but stoke the flames and were also partially offensive” “no need to provide lengthy ideological justifications to convince yourself and others that is was something other than a lesser evil vote”, 10 day ban
What a crock of shit. You’re buying word for word the mod’s revisionist history about “ideological justifications” where I don’t think those ever existed in any of the messages they deleted. Definitely not in mine. See for yourself:
https://ponder.cat/comment/791878
I’m not a troll. I don’t make bad-faith arguments, create political spam, or inflame things to no purpose. This person does, and you’re giving them authority and booting me from the community.
I’m not trying to reopen the discussion by saying this. It’s been and gone, and I’ve moved on from !anarchism@slrpnk.net. I think this person has learned how to manipulate the Slrpnk admins to their liking for their own political ends. Have fun with them.
No one said you were intentionally trolling or making bad faith arguments. What you did was randomly enter a post you disagreed with and started an off-topic argument with the OP using emotionally loaded language to justify something that is in the end just a very mundane lesser evil decision. I am old enough to have seen this spiel out many times during every other election cycle and I find it quite offensive to be exposed to such arguments lacking even the slightest bit of self-reflection, especially in what is supposed to be an Anarchist community.
I find it quite offensive to be exposed to such arguments lacking even the slightest bit of self-reflection
Here. I’m just going to paste what I said elsewhere in these comments:
But please, tell me why anarchists should tolerate anti-anarchism, liberalism, and ideological cover for genocide in their space. I’m sure it’s enlightening.
Because talking with people who don’t agree with you is a valuable thing to do.
If I’m wrong, and you take some time to talk with me, maybe I’ll absorb what you are saying, and take it on as a good idea. Probably not the first time, but it does happen over time. It’s good to be able to talk with other humans. If as soon as I’m wrong, you ban me, then I’ll never have that opportunity, and I’ll just go on being wrong and getting banned from places, indefinitely.
If you’re wrong, or what you’re saying is applicable sometimes but it’s not a good idea in some other situations, letting me say what I’ve got to say might show you a new perspective. Or, even if you’re completely set in your way, it’s still valuable for the people watching the conversation to be able to see both sides expressed, and decide for themselves.
I think it’s universally agreed that the places on Reddit and Lemmy that aggressively remove “the wrong viewpoint” are laughingstocks. A lot of the time, they’re doing that because they don’t have a good answer for questions people are asking or points they’re making. You’ve chosen to make !anarchism@slrpnk.net into one of them, in this one particular instance. Well done.
You’ve asked over and over why I am supporting genocide. I explained over and over that what I’m saying is an attempt to prevent genocide, and calmly explained how. That pattern eventually starts to sink in, for people watching the conversation, even if it never does for you, and impacts what they take away from the conversation. I think it would be better for you to reassess your way of approaching conversation with people who don’t agree with you, but you do you.
See how good this is? We don’t agree on things, and we’re talking to each other. It’s normal, it’s healthy. Like I said, if you’re insistent on making “your” community into one where that can’t happen, that’s on you, but I think it’s a bad idea.
I think, if I’m being honest, that the lack of time and moderation resources is at the root of a lot of this. You made a separate comment about that under Blaze’s comment. I think that’s the real issue. I think if someone could wave a magic wand, and have moderation of !anarchism without giving god-power to any given person who’s also an active participant in an argument in the discussion, a lot of these issues would go away. I made a whole post somewhere talking about how mods being an underappreciated volunteer position I think leads inevitably to the “mods are power tripping” perception and pattern, whether or not it’s accurate in any given case.
You’re able to run your instance however you want to run it. Good luck.
There are certainly many things that could be improved about Lemmy’s moderation tools and general setup, I agree.
However the core argument is not about “talking with people who don’t agree with you is a valuable thing to do”. There was no real disagreement about any topic where an exchange of ideas would be beneficial to both sides. Unless you have infinite patience, there is no point in arguing with people that don’t even realize how hypocritical their position is, in fact usually doing so only results in them digging in their heels and arguing even stronger as you are likely challenging some of their deeply held believes. I believe this is what happened, and your reaction in the original post itself and even more so in making this new thread to complain about someone not having infinite patience with you pretty much proves that.
I think this person has learned how to manipulate the Slrpnk admins to their liking for their own political ends.
I dont know why you would need such conspiracy theories when there is a much simpler way to explain it, which was confirmed by most folks(mods and admins alike): We are fine with the moderation actions taken, we dont need to be manipulated for this.
Its quite something to make up a conspiracy after writing this just a few sentences earlier:
I’m not a troll. I don’t make bad-faith arguments, […] or inflame things to no purpose.
I haven’t seen evidence of a strong majority being fine with the decision.
Among slrpnk commenters on this post I believe the split was 3-3, or possibly 3-2-1.
Taking into account the comments from dbzer0 folks, it goes to 5-5 or 5-4-1.
Self-proclaimed anarchists from other instances represent, by my accounting, 1 more “for” and 4 more “against.”
The other comments from users who may or may not identify as anarchists appear to slant towards against by about the same margin.
It could be that one or both of us carries a bias in how we perceive support that aligns with what we already believe. I tried to be cognizant of that when I scrolled through to count, but I’m fallible. If I’ve misrepresented, it wasn’t on purpose. That said, I think at best there’s a somewhat even split. I don’t think you can claim that as “most folks” being fine with the actions taken.
Additionally, the way the mod conducted themselves in these comments doesn’t inspire much confidence that they moderated in good faith
Mambabasa’s posting history at the time I looked at it started with:
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = party of genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = genocide
- Greta Thunberg quote
- “Elect the Democrats” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
I don’t think it’s inflammatory or a conspiracy theory to say that there’s a visible pattern there which points to a very un-anti-electoral goal for their participation. If I was doing half the spamminess of participation that their history evinces, or done half as much inflammatory participation as they’ve done in these comments, I’d leave the platform on my own, feeling bad that I’d done that much to bring badness to the platform.
We are fine with the moderation actions taken
Clearly. Like I said, have fun with it.
SLRPNK is an intentionally both an international instance, as well as an ideologically diverse instance. We give a lot of autonomy to moderators. Despite being administered by anarchists and having a significant membership that identifies as anarchist, we expect our anti-fascist moderators to follow the politics of their conscience rather than toe a particular anarchist line. Solarpunk is an internationalist movement, and should not be dominated by any one country or culture.
These two goals sometimes create tension. A significant portion of our international audience is from the United States, and some SLRPNK moderators have filled their community feeds with Democratic Party propaganda. I guarantee @mambabasa does not want Trump to win, and criticizing the hypocrisy of liberal politicians and the losing proposition of elevating electoral politics above direct action is not an endorsement of fascism.
Mambabasa’s posting history at the time I looked at it started with:
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = party of genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = genocide
- Greta Thunberg quote
- “Elect the Democrats” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
His meme posts exist in the context of a local feed full of United States election centered news in what is supposed to be a haven for internationalists and anarchists. They’re a reminder that anarchists are not edgy Democrats, and if that idea is offensive, you can unsubscribe and block !anarchism and !notvoting@slrpnk.net. Other people existing who don’t share your politics and have their own spaces should not be so threatening to someone with confidence in their own ideology.
You are letting people into your space to use it for political propaganda, because they are making a pretty thin and implausible claim to being on your team. I don’t think this person is on your team. For about two weeks, they have been posting constantly about Kamala Harris and the Democrats. They can’t keep their story straight as to whether they know who Jill Stein is. They constantly accuse anyone who dissents from their viewpoint of various wild strawman horrible things, repeatedly, and even after repeated clarifications.
Regardless of whether you agree with me on that or how you feel about the original issue, they’re representing the anarchist community in an incredibly poor light. I think you should take some time to look over all the comments here. There’s a group of people who are perfectly open to anarchism, reading and learning about it, and talking about moderation, having differences of opinion but working them out like normal humans. Then there’s one person cursing at everyone and accusing them of all kinds of weird imaginary crimes, wanting to kill Palestinians on purpose with that as the only possible explanation for their statements, along with “evilism.”
Are you really wanting to give this person a position of authority, to represent your community? I think that some of these political bad actors have developed the skill of putting on the right tribal affiliation so they’ll get cover from genuine members of the community, even though when looked at in an objective light, they are clearly acting in toxic ways, and their motivation is pretty obviously related to the election, nothing to do with anything beyond the electoral.
You’re free to grant authority in your community to whoever you want, but I don’t think this person is showing any kind of good judgement or good faith, or showing your community in a positive light.
I don’t need to agree with someone on all points for them to be “on my team” - a diversity of politics, experience, and opinion is a strength, not a weakness. @mambabasa represents themselves, and in so doing elevates anarchism as an ideology that celebrates the lived experiences and politics of diverse sets of people.
@mambabasa and I differ in that he has often taken the line that !anarchism should focus on outreach while I have suggested more action be taken to prevent it from being dominated by non-anarchist voices. His gentle 10-day bans are a compromise between our divergent visions for the space, and a measured response to all of you as a group dog-piling on him in the now locked thread.
@mambabasa represents themselves, and in so doing elevates anarchism as an ideology that celebrates the lived experiences and politics of diverse sets of people
Your impression of the reception they’re getting within the wider community is not at all the same as mine. I think they’re doing anything but elevating anarchism as an ideology. More than a couple of anarchists have felt the need to chime in within the comments unprompted, to make clear that his actions don’t represent anarchism as they understand it.
His gentle 10-day bans
If you think the length of the ban is relevant at all to my continued participation in those spaces, you’ve misunderstood my reaction here significantly. I only learned I was banned when I went to unsubscribe. That was before I learned that the whole Slrpnk team seems to be in favor of this as a moderation philosophy.
You used to be mozz@mbin.grits.dev, right? Ponder.cat’s stylesheet looks nice. How does Lemmy compare to MBin from an admin perspective?
You used to be mozz@mbin.grits.dev, right?
Interesting, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that name
oh fuck. yeah. no way they should be in an anarchist community anyway.
they are not a safe person. their pattern of “investigating” other users is toxic as fuck.
not too mention their conspiratorial “everyone is a trump supporter in sheep’s clothing” accusations every time they find a principaled disagreement.
fuck them.
Doesn’t seem very anarchist
Anarchists: Trust me, bro, we don’t NEED guardrails on power or democratic systems. We can just say “just be a good broski” and it all works out, if everyone’s living’ right. It’s beautiful, man.
Also anarchists, whenever they get even a pretty infinitesimal amount of power:
Eh. I’m an anarchist and find that sort of mid behavior reprehensible and completely contrary to anarchic philosophy. Anarchism is about not having rulers or hierarchical structures. It’s not about not having rules because those are important for a collaborative society.
I’d also say that anti-electoralists are generally either ethically compromised or completely ignorant. I have found no sign of accelerationism, which anti-electoralism is mathematically indistinguishable from, ever having a positive effect. So, they want to sacrifice people (but not themselves) and increase suffering for a chance at a condition that they think will allow for their utopia, despite a lack of any evidence to suggest it would actually work.
Most often though, you have bad faith actors like that mod infiltrating and destroying spaces for anarchism, either intentionally or as acceptable collateral damage in their mission to sow discord.
It’s not a problem with anarchists in general, I think, but that the kind of anarchists who put themselves into positions of power are generally… not the ones you want in power. Regardless of ideology, power, even the smallest, pettiest kind, tends to attract a certain kind of person more often, on average.
I thought the point of anarchy was not having positions of power.
There are always positions of power. Anarchists are interested in minimizing the institutionalization of power and individual offices. And also, that even anarchists don’t live in a currently-anarchist society/structure, and have to work within that. Don’t believe Lemmy has implemented
Taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs…
Just to add on to your mention of there always being positions of power, I believe there is a difference between someone having power/authority in a specific moment or in a limited capacity versus a hierarchy.
A hierarchy enforces compliance from the top down, while individuals are capable of ceding to limited authority in specific situations; see every Anarchist military unit like the CNT, RIAU, BOAK, YPG and YPJ. Any individual member has the right to disobey, to leave. It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I think the difference between positions inherently having power and hierarchical power have been explained much better in other comments, but I just wanted to add that there are real world examples of Anarchists consenting to power/leadership, and it resulting in effective small unit combat effectiveness, outside of thought experiments or generalities.
It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I mean, I feel the need to point out that dissent, refusal of orders, and desertion were all punishable in CNT militias.
Any wartime unit is necessarily going to be stricter on such things, as coordination, timing, and accurate estimations are all vital in military operations.
The anarchist militias were very effective in the Spanish Civil War, though, you are correct about that.
Yeah, but if your system is anarchist, those are exactly the kind of people who are going to wind up running things.
There’s a lot of overlap between anarchism and good sense. I’m not trying to be snarky about it. But it does seem that it has a couple of fatal flaws, and that is one. You could say that the early anarchists and the American founding fathers both identified the same types of failure modes in government and societal hierarchy, and where the founding fathers came up with a flawed system that nonetheless made a sincere effort to design a society of free individuals who could each live their lives in a pretty anarchist-friendly fashion, while still taking account of the realities of power and how to mitigate the problems of it… the anarchists just decided, “If we don’t pay attention to these problems then they won’t exist, much easier.”
Just picking a random point in this giant thread to chime in. I am an anarchist who is sometimes capable of being serious. So if you want to pick my brain, as PugJesus suggested, feel free.
One thing that I feel I should point out in regards to this particular comment is that anarchists do not advocate for creating power vacuums. Generally speaking, we advocate for people to self-govern in a much more direct way than representative democracy allows for. We urge the creation of voluntary institutions for managing social coordination, shaped by the needs of their members. We want to get rid of positions of power in ways that don’t result in a power vacuum, because people have their needs met and are no longer looking for guidance from a strongman.
We also (usually) recognize that our ideal isn’t going to be perfectly achievable, but we instead seek to get closer to that ideal as we discover new ways to practically do so.
I see that you read a summary of Kropotkin’s ideas, which is cool. He was an anarcho-communist specifically, which is probably the most popular anarchist tendency. I tend to advocate for mutualism, in part because I think it’s easier to understand for people that are accustomed to how capitalist societies function. The short, very oversimplified version is: abolish absentee ownership, create an economy of cooperatives, and gradually replace government institutions with more co-ops.
There’s sometimes tension between the different strains of anarchism, but usually we recognize that we’re all working towards roughly the same thing. Any future anarchist society is likely to be a patchwork of various frameworks serving different groups of people who have different preferences.
It all sounds very good. I don’t, honestly, feel like I have any questions at this point, but it sounds really good, thank you for your message.
It’s… more complex than that. You should pick a more serious anarchist’s brain. They do consider these problems.
Personally, I think the term ‘anarchy’ works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations. I always mentally replace it with the synonym of libertarian socialism, and find it works wonders in reducing preconceptions.
Personally, I think the term ‘anarchy’ works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations.
It does, but there isn’t much we can do about it. Its literal meaning (an-archos, no rulers) is exactly what we want, so we have to die on that hill.
The “bad” meaning of anarchy comes from what most people think would happen without some kind of ruler in charge of society. So if we were to largely switch to some other term, people would start to view that more negatively the more it caught on. Even “libertarian socialism” is pretty awkward, given the connotations of “socialism” in the mainstream.
Is there someone I should read? I read some of the Wikipedia article to try to educate myself but I didn’t get all that far.
Edit: I think the fact that I made someone so salty they felt the need to downvote this comment means I’m doing something right.
Discussing the matter with actual anarchists is preferable. There are fewer central agreed-upon texts to anarchism (appropriately enough, lmao), and many of those that remain influential are… quite thick. Kropotkin is available if you are the patient sort.
I read the abridged version of the abridged version of Kropotkin just now. I like it quite a lot. I more or less stand by my assessment of the flaws in it, as compared with an approach like the founders of the US, but it sounds like good stuff. I think like a lot of things the devil is in the details.
I am mostly being snarky about the laughable brand of faux-anarchism that got me banned and deleted in this instance, not trying to throw too much shade at real anarchism.
This is almost the exact opposite of an anarchist understanding of power.
The point of anarchist critiques of the state is that the structure and systems themselves corrupt and constrain people into acting in ways that are authoritarian and harmful.
So, even if you put a good person, and yes, even an anarchist into an authoritarian system, it will inevitably result in an abuse of power and violence towards oppressed people.
This is exactly why anarchists generally don’t put forth candidates or actively campaign or support political parties in the existing system. Because embedding a different, even better person into a corrupt system will only lead to further corruption.
I actually think that, ironically, this is a perfect validation of anarchist theory. Lemmy is a platform that was built by and for authoritarians (initially capitalists as Reddit, then only slightly modified by authoritarian leftists on Lemmy). The structure of moderation with mods and admins able to unilaterally take action and the difficulty of organized resistance inevitably leads to abuses, which is what this community is about.
I’m still waiting for the social media platform that has better infrastructure for distributed power among users rather than the chosen few.
This is exactly why anarchists generally don’t put forth candidates or actively campaign or support political parties in the existing system. Because embedding a different, even better person into a corrupt system will only lead to further corruption.
I feel obligated to point out that the goal is not necessarily to make the system ‘good’, but to avert catastrophic consequences from the very-powerful-current-system taking an all-out position of “Crush the workers, kill the minorities” when such a thing is very much negative for anarchist initiatives and very much avoidable.
All politics is about power, whether its restraint, its redistribution, or its dismantling - and decisions from anyone who considers their political positions serious must, in that vein, be strategic, not merely spiritual.
I agree with you but I don’t think these two ideas are completely contradictory. My experience after participating in and studying liberal democracy for decades now is that the existing political structure is not going to meaningfully stop its worst harms no matter who is elected to lead it. As a result, organizations that build power outside of the constraints of electoral politics will be essential for any meaningful change, whether incremental or revolutionary.
But yes, if we can keep fascists out of power by voting, I support that. However, I feel strongly that voting is not even the bare minimum of political activity that we should be engaged in.
See, I think liberal democracy is perfectly capable of stopping its worst harms in the case of an educated and active citizenry (what a fucking endeavor that is to undertake… we’re nowhere close to that at the moment), but I also support organizations that build power outside of electoral politics, as alternative bases of power mandate negotiation, implicit or explicit, from the ruling power, and reduce the chance of abuse of power.
While the view of the government as a single unitary entity is foolish in my view, and thus even a society without strong non-government entities is not automatically doomed to tyranny because of the necessarily factional and disunited nature of government, a society with strong non-government entities providing alternatives is almost always better poised for liberty (and the preservation of liberty) than one without. At least within the modern context of statehood. Pre-modern polities were often worse off regarding liberty with strong non-government entities.
It’s why I like anarchists, even though I don’t count myself as one. I view their methods and goals as conducive to liberty, even if I’m not sure as to the desirability or practicality of entirely abolishing the state as we would recognize it.
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As a result, organizations that build power outside of the constraints of electoral politics will be essential for any meaningful change, whether incremental or revolutionary.
There is a great article somewhere that makes a case that unions as the prime entities of political power and organization, as opposed to political parties staffed by a separate class of politicians who do politics and only politics full-time, is about a hundred times better.
It used to be that way in this country, and then it wasn’t and we got that second thing instead, and my god look at what happened.
There is a great article somewhere that makes a case that unions as the prime entities of political power and organization, as opposed to political parties staffed by a separate class of politicians who do politics and only politics full-time, is about a hundred times better.
You sound primed for syndicalism, honestly.
I completely agree with you here. That is more or less what I was saying.
I talked about it in another comment, about the US founding fathers. There are certain malfunctions that humans have when you put them in a position of power, and a good choice for your “ism” that you’re going to use when you’re developing traditions of interaction with each other is going to take that into account.
Lemmy is a platform that was built by and for authoritarians (initially capitalists as Reddit, then only slightly modified by authoritarian leftists on Lemmy). The structure of moderation with mods and admins able to unilaterally take action and the difficulty of organized resistance inevitably leads to abuses, which is what this community is about.
I’m still waiting for the social media platform that has better infrastructure for distributed power among users rather than the chosen few.
I completely agree with all of this. I may write up a big longer essay with some of my thoughts about what could be done about it. The ability to have a little peaceful-protest community like this one is quite a nice step forward, but the software is still not a completely comfortable fit, overall.
This may be my favorite comment on lemmy. I applaud the introspection and appreciate the irony you’ve brought to light.
Most anarchists I’ve spoken to, when pressed, just don’t want to follow other peoples rules. If they get to tel everyone else what to do suddenly anarchy loses its appeal.
I think there’s a difference between anarchists and “anarchists.” I read about Kropotkin and the first kind, and, if nothing else, his horror and opposition to the early Soviet state as a way of achieving economic justice, and how accurately he was able to diagnose how and why it would go wrong, puts him as pretty forward-thinking in my book.
I think OPP is neither of those things, and just wants Trump to get elected and is wearing a little plastic anarchist-mask to get it done. Somewhere deep in the forest you can find he and I talking about it.
wrong
Drag thinks Greta should have been clearer about her arguments, to prevent people co-opting them for the nonvoter movement. As it is, Greta’s actions could end up worsening a genocide as astroturfers con anarchists into interpreting her words as anti-voting. And not voting means supporting genocide.
Drag also thinks SLRPNK is very poorly administrated for its goal of being a leftist space. The admins consistently goof into trusting bad-faith mods spreading deceptive narratives. There needs to be some regulation against astroturfing on that site, and there isn’t.
Mainly BPR imo. I can sympathise with the mod not wanting the thread to be hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote, as though that will address any of the concerns raised by Greta. The clear message from Greta is that voting is not sufficent to move the dial on US policy in these areas. She didn’t recommend to vote or not to vote, she just pointed out (correctly IMO) that only voting won’t move the dial on many problematic US policies that both major parties are aligned on. That requires large-scale direct action.
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding by a lot of liberals who think anarchism means ‘no rules’ and ‘free speech’ no matter what. That’s more like libertarianism than anarchism though. Anarchism is more about directly opposing or subverting the existing external power structures (aka authority) of state and capitalism instead of working within them to effect meaningful change (e.g. by voting in a 2-party system where both parties share the majority of policies).
So advocating for not voting but instead engaging in direct action against problematic US policies is entirely consistent with an Anarchist view. But so is advocating for voting and engaging in direct action. So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases. But if all they are saying is vote, vote, vote, then it’s perfectly reasonable to remove those comments imo.
Here’s what I actually said. It’s three messages:
You realize that allowing Trump to come to power is more Palestinian death, right? It’s literally right there at the beginning of Greta’s statement: This election is hugely important and, however shit some Democratic policies are when compared against what we actually need, Trump is clearly dangerous as fuck on a whole other level. That applies to the Mideast just as firmly as it does on climate change. Personally I agree with 100% of what she has to say here, both the first and second parts.
You’ve mentioned this concept more than once. Can you explain? Are you under the impression that if any number of people don’t vote for Harris, the genocide will stop? Usually that’s how co-signing works, but that is not how this genocide works. That’s kind of the whole point. Running from a house fire outside into a dangerous blizzard isn’t “co-signing the blizzard.” It is reducing the harm that this awful thing can do, replacing a certainly deadly thing with one that is less dangerous.
Greta Thunberg would, I think, be disappointed and angry that anyone would take what she said as a justification for ways to help get Trump elected. Let me highlight the very clearly written part that you seem to have missed:
It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other.
If you want real positive change, listen to Greta and fight for change outside the system. If you want third parties, support RCV and proportional representation, to make them viable. If you want the end of the fucking world, then don’t vote, or vote for spoiler candidates within the current system that makes them unelectable.
The part of your statement where you say:
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said “maybe a bit of.”
The part of your statement where you say:
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said “maybe a bit of.”
Ok, fair enough from your perspective. From my perspective, it is still entirely consistent with anarchism to outright reject calls to participate in a 2-party democracy by voting though. While personally, I see no harm in doing both things (voting + direct action) and wouldn’t remove comments advocating for such, another anarchist might see one thing as taking away from the impetus for the other, which is why I qualified my remark.
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
But this comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism vs libertarianism/free speech and really isn’t a valid criticism.
I think if your “ism” involves telling me I’m not allowed to point out an urgent threat to both of our well-being and advocate for a partial solution, mechanically enforcing silence on me if I persist in talking about the threat, then your “ism” is a bunch of garbage.
There may be a way of applying anarchism which isn’t subject to that laughably obvious danger, in which case I have no problem with that alternative way. Like I said, I don’t think this person is an anarchist. Most of their posts seem to be about the election, with only a small minority being anarchist stuff.
Speaking as a moderator, moderating communities isn’t exclusively about ideology. I believe, ideologically, in freedom of speech - but I’m not going to let shitheads shit up my communities just because they have the legal or moral right to spout off. I have the right to keep a clean house - to not provide a platform to whoever wants it. Hell, this extends to the simply irrelevant - if someone, genuinely and innocently but insistently - started posting fantasy artifacts in !historyartifacts@lemmy.world, I would remove their posts in a heartbeat.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean giving everyone your platform to speak out - anarchism doesn’t mean communities cannot be curated. Though, I believe, in terms of praxis it would mandate a more democratic means of curating communities, but as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Lemmy’s not really got the tools for that.
Yes. Lemmy seems like it’s got this tempting authoritarianism-trigger built right in and readily accessible, which doesn’t seem like great design. I get the necessity of moderation so that things don’t become a cess, but in practice it seems like it tempts people into policing allowed points of view in a sizable minority of communities.
Nobody is “mechanically enforcing silence” on you. There’s plenty of other mainstream communities and instances to share your opinion. But you don’t have the right to present your opinions in an anarchist community any more than you have a “right” to come into my home and berate me about voting. That’s just a libertarian free-speech(ism) mentality.
I think this is a difference of opinion between two different views which both have some level of validity. I may expand my response into a whole essay not directly connected to this issue, but to cut it short, my personal view is that a forum about anarchism is not equivalent to the moderator’s “home.” I don’t think the comments sections and content from other users “belong” to the moderators, to curate viewpoints within as they choose.
I think being able to take it somewhere else and continue the discussion is a nice type of harm reduction when that does happen. But a quick look at Reddit, lemmy.ml, and so on will clearly tell you that having the idea that particular comments sections “belong” to the mods in question, like their home, such that they delete comments they officially don’t agree with as part of their duties, leads to a toxic result.
I like that we can continue the conversation elsewhere. That’s the reason you and I can have this conversation, and it’s great. What I’m saying is that making little safe spaces where you’re not allowed to disagree with certain viewpoints is not the type of network I want to be a part of, regardless of what the viewpoints are, or whether I agree with them. I think that’s probably the majority view among Lemmy users.
In an anarchist community, it’s anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldn’t be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess it’s open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job. The reason leftists don’t let Nazis post swastikas everywhere is the same reason anarchists don’t want liberals posting about their particular brand of politics all over anarchist communities. If you want to have a liberalism vs anarchism discussion, then maybe pick a community that is more geared towards those sorts of debates, instead of inviting yourself in to an anarchist community just to tell them about how your opinion is better than theirs, and insist that your voice is heard. Your attitude just reeks of entitlement tbh.
In an anarchist community, it’s anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
As far as I know, nobody complained about anything in the community, only the mod who decided to remove half of the comments, ban people making reasonable comments and locked the thread.
This wasn’t a case of someone going to an anarchist community and starting arguments about why strong central authority is necessary or whatever, when you make a post, you don’t use your mod powers to pick and choose which comments you like, which you don’t and then lock the tread with a grand total of 10 comments.
And if anyone was swamping lemmy, it was the mod who posted like 15 anti-Harris memes within one hour and made it half of the local slrpnk feed that day.
In an anarchist community, it’s anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldn’t be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
The weird thing is… if I squint my eyes up a certain way, I actually competely agree with you here.
I think that the anarchism communities on Lemmy should be free of a person coming in and posting faux-anarchism, whose post history is:
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = party of genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = genocide
- Greta Thunberg quote
- “Elect the Democrats” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
That’s the top of Mambabasa’s user page, going down as far as I really wanted to go down. Notice a pattern? There’s some general anarchism stuff, but the things they really put some energy and consistency of posting into, have often been electoral things in the recent past. They weren’t really that active until the election started coming to the fore.
They claim they’re not American, but they sure do care about the American election. They claim they’re posting about anarchism because they are an anarchist, but they sure do seem to care a whole lot about who gets to win this particular contest for US state power.
I think the anarchist community should be free of that. That’s the sense in which I agree with your statement here. I think someone who really wants to talk electoral politics, and comes into the anarchism community with a kind of “Boy that Kamala Harris, she sure is a stinker fellow anarchists, amirite” type of energy, at length and repeatedly, should maybe not be allowed to hijack the discussion away from the real anarchists.
I spent some time talking with this person this week, just discussion back and forth, which is fine, and I just now today really formed a firm opinion that they’re probably mainly trying to influence the election in favor of Trump, and not just an anarchist talking about anarchism things. Yes, I think protecting the anarchism forums against that is important.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess it’s open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job.
I mentioned before that I think there are multiple valid opinions about this. My opinion is that they shouldn’t be censoring things purely because of a viewpoint. I recognize that there are other opinions on it.
In my opinion, Mambabasa is dogpiling an anti-Democrat (not anti-politician, but very specifically anti-Democrat) viewpoint into a community where it doesn’t belong, and the structure of Lemmy allows them to do that, because they are for some reason a mod. I think that’s a problem. More so than people coming in and disagreeing with them. I would never go in and say “Democrats Democrats Democrats!” as you seem to be strawmanning that I did. If I see someone in the anarchism forum already talking about Democrats, I might also say my opinion on it. I think that’s a useful check, maybe the most realistic one that can exist in a system like Lemmy, against someone doing which it looks pretty clear to me that Mambabasa is doing.
Can you find a comments section in an anarchism post, where the OP didn’t first start talking about Democrats, and some Democrats came in and started talking anything about Democrats out of nowhere? That whole thing where people are coming from the wider community and just talking trash to the minority because they’re a minority, sounds like a strawman to me. Maybe it happens on !conservative@lemm.ee. I know it often happens in the other direction, where some outsider comes into a minority community and all the existing members of the community dogpile on them about how the existing community viewpoint is the right one. But even then, I don’t really think it’s a problem. It’s just people talking, which is the point.
Thanks. Blocked him, the guy saying to vote for Putin Shill Jill and the community.
I went to unsubscribe, but apparently I am banned already. 🤷
It’s up to Removed by mod x7 now, almost half the comments. The part of Thunberg’s quote that I highlighted in my deleted comment was:
It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other.
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She literally advocated for one of the two viable candidates…
She didn’t quite say that. She said, both are bad but one is unequivocally a catastrophic danger to the entire world, with probably permanent destructive consequences to an already-dire situation.
Then someone else turned that around into a really good reason not to vote, somehow.
Then when people said that makes no sense at all, people like your parent comment came in and tried to say talking about voting has suddenly become off-topic.
Right, but contextually, knowing what we publicly know about Greta Thunberg, by stating that it’s “probably impossible to overstate the consequences” of the election and further saying “Trump - is way more dangerous than the other,” she’s very clearly advocating for a certain candidate.
Regardless, I’m in agreement with you. She very clearly endorsed voting plus action.
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I don’t think you know what anarchism is
Wikipedia says it is “a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy.”
so you can see by pushing back on advocacy for the ruling hegemony, they are being anarchists
No they aren’t. Anarchists would be spending most of their time talking about direct action on behalf of Palestine, promoting individual freedoms and climate policies… you know, anarchist stuff.
Focusing all of your attention and energy on the 2024 US presidential election, but then saying that the most important thing to talk about is that election, and in particular not voting in it, is a suspicious thing for an anarchist to do. It sounds like this person is not an anarchist, and doesn’t especially care about the Palestinians who are almost guaranteed to suffer an increased calamity even above their present holocaust if Trump gets his hand on power. It sounds like this person’s “anarchism” begins and ends with how important it is not to vote for Kamala Harris.
That sounds pretty electoral to me. It doesn’t sound anarchist. Greta Thunberg’s actual statement sounded great to me. The only thing I ever objected to was taking the first few sentences of it, retelling only that part of her statement except flipped around 180 degrees backwards, and then going banhammer-happy when a bunch of people said that that’s clearly not what she meant.
when you are an anarchist, you will get to tell exactly one anarchist what their praxis should be
Anyone who unironically uses the word “praxis” should rethink their whole life.
oh no! you found a real anarchist! run!
I know one anarchist who used his authority to tell his software to coerce me into not being able to post anymore. I think your lecture should be more properly directed at him.
I personally feel that I’m allowed to object to people’s conduct when it impacts me, whether or not I am an anarchist or have “earned it” or whatever you are thinking should be a precondition before I can do that.
you can personally object, but all I hear is this
PTB, but wow, that quote made my blood pressure skyrocket.
The quote from Greta Thungerg? Why?
The core message is good - democracy is not a one-day affair, and we should be more involved. But glossing over “Well yes Trump is worse” in an election against literal fascism with a “BOTH SIDES BAD”, accusations of tokenism, an incredibly tone-deaf call to action to a pressed-upon American public, and a side of American diabolism for good measure? Eugh.
Speaking as someone who strongly disagrees with “both sides bad,” I think she has it pretty much right on both counts. The whole system is okay with driving us off the carbon emissions cliff and killing Palestinians by the hundreds of thousands. We have to kill the system before it kills us. And yet, at the same time, Trump would be a catastrophic setback we can in no way afford, so it’s also very important to defeat him.
I don’t agree that it glosses over it. She says almost immediately:
It’s probably impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
and
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other.
Pretty strong language. If anything I think she might actually be overstating its significance, though obviously this depends on our predictions of future events which are ultimately unknowable. So I won’t disagree with her assessment even though I don’t completely share it.
But that’s just not the main point of the post. Most people in liberal democracies consider it their civic duty to vote. But they do not consider it their civic duty to engage in direct actions that reduce the harms of violent state actions or build support for marginalized people in their communities. This is a very important and valid critique of our collective political consciousness.
Furthermore, pointing out that both candidates support extremely harmful policy positions, particularly on Palestinian issues but also in terms of fossil fuel extraction, while acknowledging that one is worse, is not the same as “BOTH SIDES BAD”. We need to be able to understand and confront the crimes of the system in order to change it. I am not going to pretend that actively supporting ethnic cleansing is OK because Trump is worse. I think that’s a dangerous way to engage with democracy. It’s exactly the type of thinking that keeps moderate Trump supporters in line.
Pretty strong language. If anything I think she might actually be overstating its significance, though obviously this depends on our predictions of future events which are ultimately unknowable. So I won’t disagree with her assessment even though I don’t completely share it.
All language is couched in context. “Election important” and “Trump bad” are mealy-mouthed condemnations that can be read without implication of support for the only practical anti-fascist candidate. If Trump wins, it’ll be a “q.q I warned you q.q”; if Harris wins, it’ll be “I never said to vote for her, she’s just Another Fascist Pig.” It’s intentionally ambiguous language that almost immediately departs to elaborate on all the reasons Harris in particular is guilty and how neither side will change anything.
Call me a cynic, but I fought with this kind of argument all the goddamn time in college.
But that’s just not the main point of the post. Most people in liberal democracies consider it their civic duty to vote. But they do not consider it their civic duty to engage in direct actions that reduce the harms of violent state actions or build support for marginalized people in their communities. This is a very important and valid critique of our collective political consciousness.
I agree.
Furthermore, pointing out that both candidates support extremely harmful policy positions, particularly on Palestinian issues but also in terms of fossil fuel extraction, while acknowledging that one is worse, is not the same as “BOTH SIDES BAD”. We need to be able to understand and confront the crimes of the system in order to change it. I am not going to pretend that actively supporting ethnic cleansing is OK because Trump is worse. I think that’s a dangerous way to engage with democracy. It’s exactly the type of thinking that keeps moderate Trump supporters in line.
There’s no need to pretend that ethnic cleansing is okay, or that supporting it is okay, or even that failing to oppose it is okay - but there is a need to be clear in opposition to literal fascism, and playing with cheap rhetoric for ambiguity to avoid responsibility for taking a serious position is not something that is in any way respectable. Something (ironically?) that Harris does on the issue of Palestinian genocide.
If anything, this liberal throwing the toys out of the pram makes me even less likely to vote. 🍉
Aren’t you British, anyway?
As a British person, I think living under Keir has made me even more apathetic to the US’s faux-democracy.
8 days ago
They said “pram,” of course they’re British
I’m going to make a bold prediction that the person you’re talking to is never going to address this in a coherent way.
Curiouser and curiouser.
thatsthejoke.jpg
It really doesn’t make sense for that to be the joke, given you couldn’t have reasonably expected anyone to know you are british.
I zoomed out and looked at these comments, and I noticed there is a common thread in the way certain people talk about the other participants:
this liberal throwing the toys out of the pram
hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote
Will you gladly and willfully walk over thousands of Palestinian corpses to cast your vote for the one who is killing them?
come into my home and berate me about voting
Nobody else in these comments is speaking this way. They can disagree about things, even important things, but they’re just talking about it. It’s not a hyper-emotional or aggressive thing that always has to hook into the other person being bad or pathetic in some way. It’s remarkable, now that I’m looking at it, how isolated the handful of accounts are that are all hooking into some kind of strongly emotionally negative way of looking at the other person in the conversation.
You’re getting the classic hexbear/.Ml brigade experience.
LOL no American knows WTF a pram is.
We also have elections between two identical candidates
Going on an anarchist community to spew anti-anarchism is a bannable offence. Pound sand asshole.And then going on an anarchist Lemmy instance to complain, classic.
Sir/Madam, you started a conversation quite−closely-linked to the election in an anarchist community in the first place. Saying “it’s much better to vote for this candidate instead” is not the same as supporting the election; I don’t see why lesser-evilism is bannable at all. I’m a beginner anarchist myself and there’s nothing I found about working on other things/lesser evils when certain things aren’t feasible.
Lesser evilism is bannable because it’s still supporting evil. If you support the lesser evil, you’re supposed to be ashamed at your choice, not provide ideological cover for evil. Choosing to provide ideological cover for evil is a bannable offence.
Lesser evilism is bannable because it’s still supporting evil.
I’m not going to weigh in on the original bans (contrary to the purpose of this community, I know). However, this is a pretty distinct third-partyist talking point. The “vote swapping programs” thing from your comment further downthread is also straight out of the third-party playbook.
Don’t you feel kind of weird to be pushing the third-party stuff as aggressively as you are, as an anarchist? Like, I’m not big on anarcho-purity tests, but you do understand that all our arguments against the effectiveness of electoralism apply just as much against supporting third parties, if not more so, right?
It seems like maybe Lemmy’s cadre of third party cranks and tankies may have warped your perspective a bit. Personally, I think we should be trying to avoid antagonizing the liberals unless it’s going to result in some sort of concrete benefit. They’re our largest pool of potential recruits, and even short of that they’re amenable to a number of our ideas. Catch more flies with honey etc etc.
This ^^^^
In my country’s present institution, you have to either support evil or be filthy rich to live. Revolutions don’t happen spontaneously; they build in the back corner while evil is prospering before a great ambush. As a non-white anarchist, Trump will quite possibly kill our movement if he wins. Thus, I unfortunately indulge in activities that will help us in the long run. In the dark, we help build strength. In the light, you’ll help arrest the momentum.
But do you have to justify evil? Do you have to defend evil? To justify and defend is a different choice than choosing to shitty option.
I’m confused. Do you now think choosing the shitty option is justifiable or not?
It’s an understandable choice. It’s a choice stemming from lack of agency and power. Choosing to defend the lesser evil and justify the evil is a different. It is a more powerful, wholly conscious choice. THAT is itself evil. You should be unhappy and outraged that you have both choice but to choose evil, to choose genocide. Yet these people, they are not. Rather, they want to wholly support the program of Harris, wilfully ignoring or downplaying that this program is evil and genocidal. That is providing ideological cover for genocide, and that is never justified.
I don’t think you really are willing to understand that most people are viewing that election as a hostage situation. I’m Canadian. It’s plain as day. Forced participation is not consent, and you should know that!
Isn’t “we lack agency” the exact argument you removed? Casting others in either black or white is unnecessarily flaming and often used by power-grabbers to divide the electorate and drum up perfervid support. Nobody’s wholly supporting Harris or supporting her stance on the war here. I saw the thread before it was removed.
I think it would be fun if this community had a rule that if the mod comes to the comments to double down, they are banned and their comment is deleted.
I don’t think such a rule is necessary. I think the whole conversation we had without you played out fine, and your opinion was already obvious without you needing to weigh in again and start cursing at me. But that rule would be fun.
Providing ideological cover for genocide and promoting anti-anarchism is worth more than what you got, which is just a slap on the wrist. But please, tell me why anarchists should tolerate anti-anarchism, liberalism, and ideological cover for genocide in their space. I’m sure it’s enlightening.
Providing ideological cover for genocide and promoting anti-anarchism is worth more than what you got, which is just a slap on the wrist.
Sorry, what did you say? Can you tell me about what type of punishment I should receive?
But please, tell me why anarchists should tolerate anti-anarchism, liberalism, and ideological cover for genocide in their space. I’m sure it’s enlightening.
Because talking with people who don’t agree with you is a valuable thing to do.
If I’m wrong, and you take some time to talk with me, maybe I’ll absorb what you are saying, and take it on as a good idea. Probably not the first time, but it does happen over time. It’s good to be able to talk with other humans. If as soon as I’m wrong, you ban me, then I’ll never have that opportunity, and I’ll just go on being wrong and getting banned from places, indefinitely.
If you’re wrong, or what you’re saying is applicable sometimes but it’s not a good idea in some other situations, letting me say what I’ve got to say might show you a new perspective. Or, even if you’re completely set in your way, it’s still valuable for the people watching the conversation to be able to see both sides expressed, and decide for themselves.
I think it’s universally agreed that the places on Reddit and Lemmy that aggressively remove “the wrong viewpoint” are laughingstocks. A lot of the time, they’re doing that because they don’t have a good answer for questions people are asking or points they’re making. You’ve chosen to make !anarchism@slrpnk.net into one of them, in this one particular instance. Well done.
You’ve asked over and over why I am supporting genocide. I explained over and over that what I’m saying is an attempt to prevent genocide, and calmly explained how. That pattern eventually starts to sink in, for people watching the conversation, even if it never does for you, and impacts what they take away from the conversation. I think it would be better for you to reassess your way of approaching conversation with people who don’t agree with you, but you do you.
See how good this is? We don’t agree on things, and we’re talking to each other. It’s normal, it’s healthy. Like I said, if you’re insistent on making “your” community into one where that can’t happen, that’s on you, but I think it’s a bad idea.
Anarchism doesn’t mean free speech for anti-anarchists. Simple as. We welcome debate and dissent in our ranks, but don’t lay down welcome mats for those who hate us and our program. Please tell me why you should feel entitled to soapbox in our space when literally almost every other Lemmy is devoted to the Harris cause? Soapbox somewhere else. I was just taking out the trash.
I am curious, still. What punishment should I have received beyond the slap on the wrist?
Power tripping modsism doesn’t mean free speech for power tripping mods. We welcome debate and dissent in our ranks, but don’t lay down welcome mats for those- You know what? My heart’s just not in it. I just don’t care.
I never defended Kamala Harris, I just agreed with Greta Thunberg that Trump is so bad that it’s an emergency. You were the one that brought the election and talking about the Democrats into an anarchist space, and then threw a fit when someone continued the conversation you started about the election, and quoted your Greta Thunberg post back at you. I clearly don’t hate anarchists, I read some of them after talking to people in this non-censored thread, and I had some thoughts but overall I think it’s gold. A good way of enabling an anarchist lifestyle sounds really good to me.
You are the one soapboxing in the anarchist space about the election. You are the one who’s been talking nonstop about Kamala Harris and the election for highly suspicious reasons.
I think I’ve said as much on this now as I want to say. I think all you’ve done by coming and doubling down so hard is to convince people a little more firmly of what the consensus already was before you stopped by.
Why are you so entitled to soapbox your anti-anarchism, liberalism, electoralism, and ideological cover for genocide in our space when you can shit the floor in literally almost every other Lemmy? Go to those other communities; they’ll welcome you. No, you’re not entitled to it. Go pound sand.
Hey, what punishment do you think I should have received instead of the slap on the wrist?
Did you ask Kropotkin about it? I feel like he might have had some kind of punishment schedule laid out for what to do when people do things that might harm the movement, but you seem better-educated on all this than I am, so you would know better. Tell me.
Removed by mod
Do you have any experience organizing? Because in my experience, booting out liberals from shitting in our physical spaces is a justified thing to do. Why not digital? Are they silenced? They still have literally almost every other Lemmy to spout their electoralist evilism. They are not censored or silenced from the public, just removed from anarchist spaces.
In my experience, organizing anything along with the type of person who starts accusing people of “evilism” and insists on removing them from the group, when they say something like “your plan might kill a lot of people, so I want to do this other plan instead,” is a ballache and a half and often doesn’t succeed.
I’m still waiting to hear what punishment you think I should have received instead of the slap on the wrist. I tried to quit the conversation, but you got me hooked back in again.
Knowing people like you exist? No.
I didn’t want to end up in jail or worse because things started turning out a little bad.
Also irony.
“I’m an anarchist, but I ‘remove not silence’ the voices of those I don’t like”
Oh cute, the Judas of anarchists wants to downvote because I’m calling them out.
Remember friends and fellow lone wolf anarchists, this person is an example of why working together can get you sold out and on death row. The summer anarchist will sell you out to save their own skin.
There’s no such thing as “lone wolf anarchists” anymore than there’s “anarcho”-capitalists. Anarchism is at it’s core a socialist movement. And there’s no “social” without other humans.
they are still free to speak, but that community is no longer going to give them a platform
