apparently r/anarchism has been in lockdown for quite some time now and they link to their own reddit alternative called raddle.me, which is not fediverse integrated, sadly. they also have a long list of alternatives, but lemmy isn’t one of them
That seems to be the case because lemmy’s main dev is a ml. (edit: meaning 'marxist leninist, apologies for not being clear on that)
It’s somewhat sad for me because the whole philosophy of the fediverse is anarchistic in its core, it is how it should be, it is how the internet should work. So I wondered - what are the biggest anarchistic communities in the fediverse so far?
It’s ridiculous how many people completely dismiss something/someone just because of one thing. True, the main Lemmy devs seem to have some very questionable views on some topics. But they also quite obviously care a lot about privacy, free and open platforms, decentralization of power, I’ve not found any evidence of them censoring or even shittalking any opposing views, and their goal is to have a world where everyone is well taken care of and there’s no corporate greed ruining communities.
It’s just irrational blind hate because of political disagreement. Politics is the mind-killer.
I think it is worth pointing out that this entire rivaly (if you can call it that) between lemmy and raddle is wayyy older than the reddit migration. Back them these spaces consisted mostly of leftists and their differences seem much more insignificant now that so many “normies” join the plattform. And I guess this whole federation thing seemed a lot less compelling when there were only of handful active communities about a pretty limited set of topics
Yeah it goes way back to the early days of lemmy, and it should be said that the the main Lemmy developers have from the begining been very welcoming to anarchists, have encouraged and helped anarchists run instances, and generally been very diplomatic and comradely despite obvious ideological differences.
Contrast that with the raddle people who were hostile from the begging and I think still are even opposed to the idea of federation itself – an irony many have pointed out, anarchists being against decentralization – the take that ‘federation is just a fad’ could be said 5 years ago but definitely not now. I think the raddle people are just really attached to their platform postmill and the dev never intended to do federation.
A problem with the whole ML milieu, is you have more serious Marxist-leninists who have very nuanced views of marxism, and are critical of Stalin or Mao and the like, are willing to work with people who disagree with them, and then you have people who call themselves ML’s who are really red fash i.e. think Putin is great – some non-zero number of these people are probably russian or chinese bots, let’s be real.
Before lemmygrad all the tankiest* tanks were on the main lemmy.ml and they were were just a bunch of meanies. It’s like every day was Tianamen Square ( which is like Christmas in tankistan ) so if you were an anarchist they’d harass the fuck out of you, so this fed into the idea that the "friendly* attitude of the admin’s was just a ploy to fuck with anarchists, like a “beware of bolsheviks bearing gifts” type situation and anarchist were being led into some kind of virtual kronstadt. But as time went on the platform grew and those little commissars were gulaged into lemmygrad and that became less of a problem.
And to be fair, anarchists have these kind of liabilities too, like eco extremists and ted k fanboys. And lo and behold they all have accounts on raddle.me
*and no i don’t just call everyone a tankie, but if you just love Stalin and dedicate endless hours of your life “debunking” the holodomor, yes, you’re a tankie lol
Given the horrendous history of /r/Anarchism’s moderation and the fact that Raddle is a direct continuation of that garbage, I’d say it’s both no surprise and no loss. Let them go honeypot and jackboot themselves into oblivion. The unfortunate thing, of course, is that they’ve controlled a forum with a very obvious name for half a decade, and can shepherd a lot of unknowing users into their cesspit with them. But there’s probably not a lot that can be done about that.
can you give me some context of that history? I’d like to read more about it
In IDK like the 2015-2017 timeframe some really edgy people started taking over in /r/metanarchism (the private sub where moderation decisions are made for /r/Anarchism). They formed a clique—a cult, really—and managed to force out anyone else who weren’t part of it, totally ignoring even the rules they’d setup themselves for how people were to be banned. Their notion was basically that you had to subscribe to and promote the most violent possible solutions to every situation, and if you didn’t jump on board enthusiastically, you weren’t a “real anarchist”. It was basically the most dark aesthetics of anarchism without any of the actual philosophy.
There were whole drama wars about it, where the people they banned congregated in /r/LeftWithoutEdge, /r/AnarchismOnline, and other subs, and in response the edge cult setup /r/LeftWithSharpEdge, trolled those subs their victims fled to, and harassed people with things like bloody cannibalism fantasies about their victims. Those are the folks still moderating in /r/Anarchism, and they have at least a couple moderators in subs like /r/LateStageCapitalism as well.
One of the most prolific and obsessed trolls is the guy who setup Raddit. He was caught having whole conversation trees with himself in order to fake participation on the site and set its tone. A number of times he declared he was “stepping back” from moderating it and would just run the server…and then didn’t.
He was caught having whole conversation trees with himself in order to fake participation on the site and set its tone.
Yep… I remember that - the little shit was masquerading as a “concerned anarchist” while using Stalinist tactics to harass their critics off the sub - and then started Raddle essentially to have an entire leftist forum for them to play overlord with.
I abandoned r/anarchism pretty much at that time - arguing with right-wingers is a shit-ton easier than dealing with two-faced imposters like that.
edit: For the record, I feel I have to add that it wasn’t actually this useless litle fucker’s activity that drove me off r/anarchism - it was my disappointment at the fact that the mods couldn’t spot their shitfuckery and come up with a way to deal with it when I’ve seen other mod teams manage it.
this all checks out, I was never on r/anarchism but I’ve tried to go on raddle numerous times over the years, and every time i basically just leave in disgust because there’s so little nuance or good faith and if you aren’t completely down there their particular particular green-nihilist tendency you basically get treated like an enemy – not that I’m even against that tendency, but there’s many kinds of anarchism. And the mod(s? was it ever more than one person?) they were always having some public meltdown or being viciously attacked by people who they could have just banned ( or were they talking to themselves? ) It just always gives the place a spooky vibe, deep web forums are less paranoia inducing.
And the mod(s? was it ever more than one person?
Quite honestly it’s difficult to tell whether it was all just an army of sock accounts or if this user (still going as ziq over on raddle) had actually managed to recruit some loyal followers into their weird little purity-testing cult or something. Either way, it’s pretty fucked up.
But it did teach me an important lesson, though… any online space dedicated to leftists is going to inevitably attract these dangerous and toxic Napoleon-types (yes, I am naming them after the pig in Animal Farm - I’m going there) - people whose “leftism” only consists of that which facilitates their megalomania and who has the time and resources available to them to subvert those very spaces. It really explains why tankies have such a toxic presence online. Leftists should never fool themselves into assuming that someone understanding leftist theory automatically means they are acting in good faith.
So I don’t get too heavily invested in leftist-only spaces - I prefer being out there engaging people and doing counter-propaganda. It just feels a whole lot more productive.
thanks for the insight!
Sure thing. Edited to add a paragraph at the end about Raddit itself.
I completely agree. As a leftist space, Lemmy is friendly only to the most extreme form of authoritarian Leninist traditions and is actively hostile towards left-lib ideas.
These users are also incidentally very dumb. I had someone unironically tell me to read Chomsky while trying to argue in favor of state media censorship. Literally the world’s most famous anarchist/libertarian socialist. These people are aggressive, annoying and poorly informed all at the same time.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure I’ve seen what you’re talking about? Admittedly I’m on beehaw which is defederated from lemmygrad and several other instances, but it also has this community, and the sidebar links to a half dozen other anarchist communities. I agree with OP that federation as a concept is anarchistic in its core, and I don’t see the argument for how it could be considered friendly only to extreme authoritarianism.
As far as the users on the fediverse go, but most of the communities I’m in are either explicitly leftist or anarchist, or lean left (like 196, for example). Even on the “normie” communities like memes and stuff, I regularly see a meme referring to a leftist idea, some comment(s) decrying some typical capitalist propaganda like “but communism is only a fictitious ideal”, and then many people responding with corrections on what communism or anarchism actually are, what a non-authoritarian leftist society would look like, etc. and they get more upvotes than the propaganda comment! I just really haven’t seen any of this “left-lib hostility” you’re talking about.
Go through my profile if you want to see it. Look for the downvoted comments.
You should probably find another Lemmy instance. That makes it easier to distance yourself from stuff like that when it happens.
Lemmy deserves a better class of communist. And I’m going to give it to them.
Fair enough. Heh. Good luck with it!
It’s weird they have more hate for the ml devs of lemmy then the capitalist mega corp devs of Reddit. Also they could fork the software and make their own instance and reach way more people while having a much more anarchist software than the top down control raddle has
In terms of anarchist communities on the fediverse all i know of is this anarchism /c/ https://kolektiva.social and the https://merveilles.town mastodon instance
You can argue that classical liberalism is marginally more aligned with anarchist traditions than the idiotic form of autocratic ML vanguardism you see around here.
What’s wrong with .ml?
It stands for M😨arxist-L😱eninist, a political philosophy that endorses a strong state to act as vanguard for the communist revolution. Anarchists in contrast advocate for the dissolution of the political hierarchy that is the state.
They like to fight on the internet a lot.
There’s also an entire spectrum of left-lib in there as well.
What’s “a ml" in this context?
Is the dev really teeny and takes up only a cubic centimetre when liquified?
Marxist-Leninist.
Kinda funny they reject Lemmy for that but didn’t reject reddit for being a capitalist but okay. There are instances ran by anarchists too.
I just got your joke. wooosh
They’re redditors who choose to stay on the platform. Their opinion is invalid.
Anarchism until it’s inconvenient
to be fair we all are like that to some extend. switching to lemmy is more convenient to us than to many others as we are more tech-savy. Similarly, anarchists who have a garden and the necessary know-how to cultivate their own plants might judge others for buying veggies from the supermarket. They’d have a point but it wouldn’t be entirely fair
What do they think about kbin ? It is part of fediverse, but not developed by ML.
came there to say that, kbin is nice, but then if you want to go just ‘on paper’ security and resource efficiency, lemmy is Rust and Kbin is php, lots of people really hate php lol
MLs call it an infantile disorder for a reason…
No offense.
That reason being projection…?
Ah yes, MLs, well known for being young and not reading theory lol
Exactly. I’m glad we agree on the nature of the situation.
So far that has been my experience in here so far. I’ve been told to read Chomsky by someone arguing in favor of state media control, and I’ve had someone cite Lenin to claim that “dictatorship of the proletariat” doesn’t imply violence. The essay cited is the one where he literally writes “civil war gives the proletariat practice at arms.” As far as I can tell, they haven’t read any of it and just assume everyone else hasn’t either.
These are not people well versed in political science.
