Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
"Why do anarchists live under capitalism if they hate it so much?"
Bro, sometimes you don't have a choice. They might not know about Lemmy or other Reddit alternatives that aren't corporate owned piles of dogshit. For a while, there weren't any; that's why I was there for so long.
It's also hard to just up and leave a community. Even if it's in a bad neighborhood. Your friends are there. Unless they come with you, you're much more inclined to stay.
Most people don’t know about lemmy. And as an anachist, the fact this place is dominated by authoritarian MLs is quite off-putting.
Also a lot of anarchists aren’t as terminally online as a lot of us here :).
I think the web in general has a problem with authoritarian MLs domineering the discussions. To be fair it feels like a lot of them are chronically online, because I've never seen as many chaotic tankies IRL as I have seen on the web.
Some don't even seem to sleep, with the amount of time between comments.
If you want to be heard, wouldn't you go to the most crowded plaza instead of the mostly empty one with people who already agree with you?
The crowded plazas owner might restrict you tho. Various well known anarchist accounts such as crimethinc where banned by corporate social media. Also you have to follow many rules to not get banned.
(I still think its valid to be on corporate social media to spread propaganda, but its not as easy as an actual plaza where you can directly communicate with people)
life is messy: you always play by someone else’s rules (often even when you disagree with them) when you interact with other people… you rarely enjoy the freedom to truly do whatever you like. you either deal with that, or you don’t interact with people
Hi! Recovering Reddit anarchist here! Although if I’m honest it probably wasn’t until after leaving reddit I really started to understand what anarchism meant, and more openly align with it.
Look, yelling in the basement of your local bar late at night is all well and good but sometimes you gotta set up on the street corner and scream at the normies to get the message across.
Raddle is literally run by insane people who admit to using sockpuppets and have incoherent beliefs
Yeah it's really not great, I've seen a lot of bad stuff over there. Thankfully it's much more inactive now, and they can't reach anyone else since they're voluntarily not federated.
A bunch of anarchists who do end up leaving Reddit use Raddle, a different alternative to Reddit. This is probably why there's so few of us on Lemmy.
As for why so many do stay on corporate social media like Reddit, it's a similar reason a bunch of socialist orgs organise on Facebook: that's where the people are.
Why does anyone go to a community they don't necessarily agree with? Either to start shit or to convert. If your goal is to get other people to see the world your way, or even just to have an argument with someone who doesn't agree with you, first you have to be where people don't agree with you. I think this is probably a far sight better than people living in echo chambers, personally.
Alternatively, most people pick the least friction option, it's only us weird, passionate people who go through the added inconvenience to be on a platform that more aligns with our ideals.
Good question but I assume its becase thats where the people are and /or they are unaware of alter natives and/or theybdobt give a shit?
Same same with X and all things Meta for that matter
Sadly i think a lot of them are deluded into thinking they have to take care of the reddit community or "someone worse is going to take over". I don't quite get it myself but I know some of these mods were struggling a lot to get control of their subs (i.e be the top mod)
In all honesty there's probably some merit to trying to maintain a more public anarchist online space to try and make it anarchy more visible to non anarchists. I generally agree with not quite getting it though, it's not a project I'd want to invest energy in personally.
To do damage.
Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.
Lemmy doesn't have a large userbase. The few that moved I feel are dedicated here. Most people won't know what Lemmy is if you ask them or what federated social media is. Alternates aren't viable for most people.
Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.
"Town square"? More like shopping mall food court. What self-respecting anarchist wouldn't go for the abandoned lighthouse instead? It can only be that they're unaware that it exists and even has working plumbing sometimes.
I don’t think it’s an ideological choice for most people. Use of social media is largely habitual and people are just sticky with their platforms. We see influxes of users when other platforms are down for extended periods of time and when one of them does some kind of ideological purge.
True, we're creatures of habits...
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.
Funny enough, the highest concentration of actual anarchists I've seen is on hexbear
Good joke, comrade.
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.
Most online anarchists aren't anarchists at all.
what year are you in? Are people still offline irl when you are?
"Most online anarchists aren't anarchists at all" 🤣
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. 🤷