- 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
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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