As more mainstream libs are discovering Lemmy, we’re seeing a pattern of complaints that opinions outside the ones they deem acceptable are allowed on the platform. We’ve even seen instances defederating because their userbase does not wish to be exposed to these views.
Interestingly, these are the same people who level censorship and control of free speech as their main critique of communists. What we’re seeing is that these people absolutely don’t care about free speech. They understand the necessity of censorship and actively advocate censoring opinions that they find dangerous. Yet, when societies based on values different from their own use these same tools they screech about authoritarianism.
Turns out it’s not authoritarianism libs hate, but having their own views censored. What actually offends them about places like China is that it’s their ideology that’s being suppressed there.
For sure, anarchism is far less stigmatized in the west and therefore it’s natural for left leaning people who fall out of the mainstream to get interest in anarchism. I suspect that a lot of people who start seriously thinking about what it takes to effect systemic change end up moving closer to ML point of view later on.
that’s def what happened to me, a huge turning point for me was participating in an small group with a very anarchist structure and seeing all the issues that creates, and eventually finding myself in the small group of de facto leaders doing evil unaccountable centralism bc of a combo of social cachet and being one of the few ppl to actually bother showing up to meetings. coming across The Tyranny of Structurelessness was an unpleasant literally me moment. ragging on ML organizing for not being democratic enough made a lot of sense until everyone’s silently democratically decided you’re responsible for everything or else the whole thing falls apart