I’m trans and I really don’t want to federated with these people if their mods are defending the -tard suffix and they aren’t getting de-modded and banned. I also don’t want to be federated with them if they ban critiquing western chauvinism.
Someone who is an admin and with more of a level head than me RN please talk to their admins about it.
I try to be polite when I’m on Hexbear, because I know there are a few anarchist comrades around.
But this particular type of western “anarchist” is my absolute least favourite type of lib. Ignorant, smug, drunk on the tiniest bit of power they can get, projecting their own faults and character flaws onto the rest of humanity. Assuming everyone else is even more vile and shallow than they are. Absolute scumbags.
As our resident anarchist mod, trust me I agree with you. These people are not anarchists, they are liberals or outright fascists, they just don’t know it or are acting in bad faith.
Seeing how many people firmly ensconsed in liberal politics have appropriated anarchism in name only is very upsetting. It creates bad blood on the left, and diverts potential comrades from reaching actual leftist information and politics.
I agree and it’s the same as how more recently the whole maga communist/patriotic socialist thing has come about.
These people are not our comrades, though I have a bit more sympathy toward the misguided anarchists because I think their reactionary views are at least a bit more organic and just due to being immersed in a century of anti-communist propaganda.
I think tailism is also a pretty easy error to fall into as it happens repeatedly throughout history, but obviously some of them are just opportunistic fash grifters
“Anarchist” in the west is surprisingly often used to mean “Person who’s given up making sense of life”
I think it’s very much an online thing. Comrades I’ve met on the ground don’t care about this aggressively online stuff. They’re worried about feeding homeless neighbors, undermining the cops, and other pro-social community work.
Oh for sure, way too many people in the west think anarchism is just “chaos” or “nihilism” or something.
People here, even. Subconsciously perhaps. They’ve scaled back a bit since federation tho, thankfully.
It’s a problem. We must not allow ourselves to become trapped by thinking everyone claiming Anarchy is a vaushite or one of the weird no politics twitter “anarchists”. Re-fighting the battles of the 20th century breaks of the left without gaining anything. Battling each other over things dead people did a century ago in a radically different culture, economy, and geopolitical space with very different theory is not helpful.
https://twitter.com/RefuseRaccoon/status/1488653392389890049
If I ever say something stupid or transphobic I really hope people do call me out on it. I would hate to upset people and just keep doing it because I didn’t even know it was a problem.
right? this is what gets me. if someone points out I’m being shitty to comrades, I’m grateful, not mad at the messenger.
As a former anarchist, this kind of ‘anarchist’ would have pissed me off when I was one myself, so don’t worry.
It’s the anarchist equiv of people who think they’re leftists becase they voted for Obama
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Anarchism can be “trendy” sometimes. It can be a way to “fight the system” without directly threatening it, so it can be presented as a kind of false leftist idea, that is just liberalism with the little A symbol on it. These people will sincerely call themselves anarchists, and probably believe it too, then will talk about how important it is to “save democracy” by voting for Biden. Capitalism will try to commodify everything, including leftist tendencies. When they do this, they strip it of all meaning and reduce it to a simple “image” for profit.
There’s anarchism, a real political ideology with a rich tradition of struggle and thought and then there’s “anarchism” which is an aesthetic that will make you look cool and piss off your dad at the same time.
As an anarchist (specifically an anarcho communist), there are a lot of liberals who wear the label of anarchist but have fuck all idea what it means beyond some idea of edgy rebellion.
This isn’t a new thing that’s come about with the internet, gestures wildly at The Sex Pistols. But I feel that it has become more numerous in recent years.
On the plus side in all my years organising, the only times I’ve run into anyone IRL that acts like that, they’ve not been the sorts to directly interfere with how an org is run and thus don’t do much to bog down movements in their crusade against socialists.
There was one that stood up during a BLM protest to make a speech that was a rattling tirade about “tankies”, and I think that gives a cross section on these types.