Anarchism

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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.

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Why do anarchists stay on reddit or other corporate-run platforms? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know these federated communities exist as well as raddle, but it still seems like most people will stay on toxic and corporate-run platforms like reddit or Twitter. I'm far from perfect myself and I still use reddit sometimes, especially for more niche communities, but when it comes to ideologically strong communities like the anarchist ones, it just feels wrong that the majority still hang out on reddit. Or you know, moving to something like Bsky when Twitter became too toxic but which is still run by a large, for-profit corporation (if they moved in the first place). What are your thoughts? Is there any justification for this?

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 weeks ago (50 children)

Most online anarchists aren't anarchists at all. They neither read anarchist theory, do anything IRL, nor adhere to basic anarchist principals - because they don't know what they are, they just know memes and a skimming of Kropotkin. They also define themselves through a liberal-filtered understanding if what they are not, rather than who they are and what they are working towards.

If you do organizing work IRL you will meet actual anarchists and they are much cooler as they are not just LARPing liberals that happened upon an aesthetic that lets them pretend to be radical while acting virtually perfectly in line with the status quo.

Funny enough, the highest concentration of actual anarchists I've seen is on hexbear, a place another commenter said would be offputting to anarchists. Perhaps they are thinking of the "anarchists" that just watch YouTube videos to get angry at "the tankies" based on a misunderstanding of history in the 1920s and never saw a NATO putsch they couldn't defend.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (27 children)

Hexbear can indeed be very offputting to anarchists, especially those who learned from history that "left unity" isn't. It's why slrpnk.net has outright blocked hexbear and they also managed to alienate all the admins of dbzer0. Likewise they get very little respect from anarchists in places like kolektiva.social.

In fact, the only people I've seen who keep insisting there's totally a lot of anarchists in hexbear is MLs in lemmy.ml and hexbear.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

A kolektiva.social admin is raided and their hardware and data seized at which point they immediately announce that to everyone

@[email protected] with the galaxy brain take: "Hurr durr, they gave their data away to the FBI. They're a honeypot."

Always bad faith with these sockpuppets...

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