Anarcho-Primitivism, or Anprim, is an ideology that draws very heavily from the colonialist’s ahistorical view of “savages”. At the ideology’s very core lives a continuation of colonial racism, every aspect of the ideology is drenched in colonialism.

I’ll start by explaining that the term “primitive” being pointed towards people is derogatory, that was (and still is) done to seperate the colonizers from the colonised. To put it another way, the “civilized” white men, from the “uncivilized” dark men. Further, “Primitive” Anti-Civ ideology was named by its detractors. Believers in the ideology referred to it as “Anti-Civilization”, “Pre-Civilization”, and “Post-Civilization”, and the critics - being colonialists themselves - called it “Primitivism”. If you use “Prim” for Anprim, you might as well be calling the natives of America “red beasts”, or the blacks of Africa “apes”.

Which brings us to the next issue of the ideology, the meme-y desire to treat Anarcho-Primitism as a monkey collective, or more directly, wanting to treat Anti-Civists like apes. Which, comes directly from the aforementioned colonial racism affixed to the ideology. Anti-Civ is a very wide ideology, based widely on technophobia and sentiments around the “failures of civilization”, often citing the rise of capitalism as a mistake that could have been routed if civilization had been built differently, or if it had not been built at all. They’re not “oh haha cities bad throws poop”, as many mistake them as being, they’re a structured ideology based on theories and observable wrongdoings.

The third thing I want to bring up about Anti-Civ - if I may use its proper name - is that it is very often filled with ecofascists, and right-wing chuds. Though there are leftists within the umbrella, if you take the time to visit Anti-Civ communities, you’ll find very quickly that they’re filled with hateful people. You’ll find rampant homophobia, terrible transphobia, and boatloads of racism. That makes it a predominately vile ideology, and not a community I want here on Lemmy.

Of course, I write this because /c/anprim has been made, and I dreaded the day I would have to write this out to protect - if you would - Lemmy from the terrible meme of it. And, of course, I don’t say this to be an asshole or a party pooper, but I can’t allow such a disgusting disgrace of a meme’d ideology to taint our communities. People who are aware of me would know I’m Pagan, and that I specialize - for my career - in guns from the 1800s. Those are two communities that constantly get flooded with Anti-Civ assholes, I’ve seen what happens when they become tolerated, and I don’t want that to happen here.