- 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:
It’s not a problem with anarchists in general, I think, but that the kind of anarchists who put themselves into positions of power are generally… not the ones you want in power. Regardless of ideology, power, even the smallest, pettiest kind, tends to attract a certain kind of person more often, on average.
I thought the point of anarchy was not having positions of power.
There are always positions of power. Anarchists are interested in minimizing the institutionalization of power and individual offices. And also, that even anarchists don’t live in a currently-anarchist society/structure, and have to work within that. Don’t believe Lemmy has implemented
Taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs…
Just to add on to your mention of there always being positions of power, I believe there is a difference between someone having power/authority in a specific moment or in a limited capacity versus a hierarchy.
A hierarchy enforces compliance from the top down, while individuals are capable of ceding to limited authority in specific situations; see every Anarchist military unit like the CNT, RIAU, BOAK, YPG and YPJ. Any individual member has the right to disobey, to leave. It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I think the difference between positions inherently having power and hierarchical power have been explained much better in other comments, but I just wanted to add that there are real world examples of Anarchists consenting to power/leadership, and it resulting in effective small unit combat effectiveness, outside of thought experiments or generalities.
It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I mean, I feel the need to point out that dissent, refusal of orders, and desertion were all punishable in CNT militias.
Any wartime unit is necessarily going to be stricter on such things, as coordination, timing, and accurate estimations are all vital in military operations.
The anarchist militias were very effective in the Spanish Civil War, though, you are correct about that.
Thank you for the clarification, that’s really interesting.
Was desertion specifically deserting a line unit on rotation? Could an enlisted person willingly leave when their unit was rotated off the line for resupply for example? Or was it more a situation where upon enlistment you willfully submitted to the commands authority for the period of enlistment?
Do you have any recommendations for reading material on that subject specifically? I had just assumed the CNT operated like most of the other militias I mentioned, although now that I’m thinking about it I guess most of the anecdotal evidence for fighters dropping in and out at will are foreign (predominantly white) volunteers, so that just might be my privilege showing.
Yeah, but if your system is anarchist, those are exactly the kind of people who are going to wind up running things.
There’s a lot of overlap between anarchism and good sense. I’m not trying to be snarky about it. But it does seem that it has a couple of fatal flaws, and that is one. You could say that the early anarchists and the American founding fathers both identified the same types of failure modes in government and societal hierarchy, and where the founding fathers came up with a flawed system that nonetheless made a sincere effort to design a society of free individuals who could each live their lives in a pretty anarchist-friendly fashion, while still taking account of the realities of power and how to mitigate the problems of it… the anarchists just decided, “If we don’t pay attention to these problems then they won’t exist, much easier.”
Just picking a random point in this giant thread to chime in. I am an anarchist who is sometimes capable of being serious. So if you want to pick my brain, as PugJesus suggested, feel free.
One thing that I feel I should point out in regards to this particular comment is that anarchists do not advocate for creating power vacuums. Generally speaking, we advocate for people to self-govern in a much more direct way than representative democracy allows for. We urge the creation of voluntary institutions for managing social coordination, shaped by the needs of their members. We want to get rid of positions of power in ways that don’t result in a power vacuum, because people have their needs met and are no longer looking for guidance from a strongman.
We also (usually) recognize that our ideal isn’t going to be perfectly achievable, but we instead seek to get closer to that ideal as we discover new ways to practically do so.
I see that you read a summary of Kropotkin’s ideas, which is cool. He was an anarcho-communist specifically, which is probably the most popular anarchist tendency. I tend to advocate for mutualism, in part because I think it’s easier to understand for people that are accustomed to how capitalist societies function. The short, very oversimplified version is: abolish absentee ownership, create an economy of cooperatives, and gradually replace government institutions with more co-ops.
There’s sometimes tension between the different strains of anarchism, but usually we recognize that we’re all working towards roughly the same thing. Any future anarchist society is likely to be a patchwork of various frameworks serving different groups of people who have different preferences.
It all sounds very good. I don’t, honestly, feel like I have any questions at this point, but it sounds really good, thank you for your message.
It’s… more complex than that. You should pick a more serious anarchist’s brain. They do consider these problems.
Personally, I think the term ‘anarchy’ works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations. I always mentally replace it with the synonym of libertarian socialism, and find it works wonders in reducing preconceptions.
Personally, I think the term ‘anarchy’ works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations.
It does, but there isn’t much we can do about it. Its literal meaning (an-archos, no rulers) is exactly what we want, so we have to die on that hill.
The “bad” meaning of anarchy comes from what most people think would happen without some kind of ruler in charge of society. So if we were to largely switch to some other term, people would start to view that more negatively the more it caught on. Even “libertarian socialism” is pretty awkward, given the connotations of “socialism” in the mainstream.
Is there someone I should read? I read some of the Wikipedia article to try to educate myself but I didn’t get all that far.
Edit: I think the fact that I made someone so salty they felt the need to downvote this comment means I’m doing something right.
Discussing the matter with actual anarchists is preferable. There are fewer central agreed-upon texts to anarchism (appropriately enough, lmao), and many of those that remain influential are… quite thick. Kropotkin is available if you are the patient sort.
I read the abridged version of the abridged version of Kropotkin just now. I like it quite a lot. I more or less stand by my assessment of the flaws in it, as compared with an approach like the founders of the US, but it sounds like good stuff. I think like a lot of things the devil is in the details.
I am mostly being snarky about the laughable brand of faux-anarchism that got me banned and deleted in this instance, not trying to throw too much shade at real anarchism.
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
I don’t think mods should be moderating their own posts, generally.
Definitely
Mainly BPR imo. I can sympathise with the mod not wanting the thread to be hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote, as though that will address any of the concerns raised by Greta. The clear message from Greta is that voting is not sufficent to move the dial on US policy in these areas. She didn’t recommend to vote or not to vote, she just pointed out (correctly IMO) that only voting won’t move the dial on many problematic US policies that both major parties are aligned on. That requires large-scale direct action.
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding by a lot of liberals who think anarchism means ‘no rules’ and ‘free speech’ no matter what. That’s more like libertarianism than anarchism though. Anarchism is more about directly opposing or subverting the existing external power structures (aka authority) of state and capitalism instead of working within them to effect meaningful change (e.g. by voting in a 2-party system where both parties share the majority of policies).
So advocating for not voting but instead engaging in direct action against problematic US policies is entirely consistent with an Anarchist view. But so is advocating for voting and engaging in direct action. So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases. But if all they are saying is vote, vote, vote, then it’s perfectly reasonable to remove those comments imo.
Here’s what I actually said. It’s three messages:
You realize that allowing Trump to come to power is more Palestinian death, right? It’s literally right there at the beginning of Greta’s statement: This election is hugely important and, however shit some Democratic policies are when compared against what we actually need, Trump is clearly dangerous as fuck on a whole other level. That applies to the Mideast just as firmly as it does on climate change. Personally I agree with 100% of what she has to say here, both the first and second parts.
You’ve mentioned this concept more than once. Can you explain? Are you under the impression that if any number of people don’t vote for Harris, the genocide will stop? Usually that’s how co-signing works, but that is not how this genocide works. That’s kind of the whole point. Running from a house fire outside into a dangerous blizzard isn’t “co-signing the blizzard.” It is reducing the harm that this awful thing can do, replacing a certainly deadly thing with one that is less dangerous.
Greta Thunberg would, I think, be disappointed and angry that anyone would take what she said as a justification for ways to help get Trump elected. Let me highlight the very clearly written part that you seem to have missed:
It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other.
If you want real positive change, listen to Greta and fight for change outside the system. If you want third parties, support RCV and proportional representation, to make them viable. If you want the end of the fucking world, then don’t vote, or vote for spoiler candidates within the current system that makes them unelectable.
The part of your statement where you say:
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said “maybe a bit of.”
The part of your statement where you say:
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think there’s maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said “maybe a bit of.”
Ok, fair enough from your perspective. From my perspective, it is still entirely consistent with anarchism to outright reject calls to participate in a 2-party democracy by voting though. While personally, I see no harm in doing both things (voting + direct action) and wouldn’t remove comments advocating for such, another anarchist might see one thing as taking away from the impetus for the other, which is why I qualified my remark.
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
But this comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism vs libertarianism/free speech and really isn’t a valid criticism.
I think if your “ism” involves telling me I’m not allowed to point out an urgent threat to both of our well-being and advocate for a partial solution, mechanically enforcing silence on me if I persist in talking about the threat, then your “ism” is a bunch of garbage.
There may be a way of applying anarchism which isn’t subject to that laughably obvious danger, in which case I have no problem with that alternative way. Like I said, I don’t think this person is an anarchist. Most of their posts seem to be about the election, with only a small minority being anarchist stuff.
Speaking as a moderator, moderating communities isn’t exclusively about ideology. I believe, ideologically, in freedom of speech - but I’m not going to let shitheads shit up my communities just because they have the legal or moral right to spout off. I have the right to keep a clean house - to not provide a platform to whoever wants it. Hell, this extends to the simply irrelevant - if someone, genuinely and innocently but insistently - started posting fantasy artifacts in !historyartifacts@lemmy.world, I would remove their posts in a heartbeat.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean giving everyone your platform to speak out - anarchism doesn’t mean communities cannot be curated. Though, I believe, in terms of praxis it would mandate a more democratic means of curating communities, but as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Lemmy’s not really got the tools for that.
Yes. Lemmy seems like it’s got this tempting authoritarianism-trigger built right in and readily accessible, which doesn’t seem like great design. I get the necessity of moderation so that things don’t become a cess, but in practice it seems like it tempts people into policing allowed points of view in a sizable minority of communities.
Nobody is “mechanically enforcing silence” on you. There’s plenty of other mainstream communities and instances to share your opinion. But you don’t have the right to present your opinions in an anarchist community any more than you have a “right” to come into my home and berate me about voting. That’s just a libertarian free-speech(ism) mentality.
I think this is a difference of opinion between two different views which both have some level of validity. I may expand my response into a whole essay not directly connected to this issue, but to cut it short, my personal view is that a forum about anarchism is not equivalent to the moderator’s “home.” I don’t think the comments sections and content from other users “belong” to the moderators, to curate viewpoints within as they choose.
I think being able to take it somewhere else and continue the discussion is a nice type of harm reduction when that does happen. But a quick look at Reddit, lemmy.ml, and so on will clearly tell you that having the idea that particular comments sections “belong” to the mods in question, like their home, such that they delete comments they officially don’t agree with as part of their duties, leads to a toxic result.
I like that we can continue the conversation elsewhere. That’s the reason you and I can have this conversation, and it’s great. What I’m saying is that making little safe spaces where you’re not allowed to disagree with certain viewpoints is not the type of network I want to be a part of, regardless of what the viewpoints are, or whether I agree with them. I think that’s probably the majority view among Lemmy users.
In an anarchist community, it’s anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldn’t be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess it’s open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job. The reason leftists don’t let Nazis post swastikas everywhere is the same reason anarchists don’t want liberals posting about their particular brand of politics all over anarchist communities. If you want to have a liberalism vs anarchism discussion, then maybe pick a community that is more geared towards those sorts of debates, instead of inviting yourself in to an anarchist community just to tell them about how your opinion is better than theirs, and insist that your voice is heard. Your attitude just reeks of entitlement tbh.
In an anarchist community, it’s anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldn’t be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
The weird thing is… if I squint my eyes up a certain way, I actually competely agree with you here.
I think that the anarchism communities on Lemmy should be free of a person coming in and posting faux-anarchism, whose post history is:
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = party of genocide
- Kamala Harris = genocide
- Democrats = genocide
- Greta Thunberg quote
- “Elect the Democrats” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
- “Vote Democrat” satire
- “Don’t think, just vote” satire
That’s the top of Mambabasa’s user page, going down as far as I really wanted to go down. Notice a pattern? There’s some general anarchism stuff, but the things they really put some energy and consistency of posting into, have often been electoral things in the recent past. They weren’t really that active until the election started coming to the fore.
They claim they’re not American, but they sure do care about the American election. They claim they’re posting about anarchism because they are an anarchist, but they sure do seem to care a whole lot about who gets to win this particular contest for US state power.
I think the anarchist community should be free of that. That’s the sense in which I agree with your statement here. I think someone who really wants to talk electoral politics, and comes into the anarchism community with a kind of “Boy that Kamala Harris, she sure is a stinker fellow anarchists, amirite” type of energy, at length and repeatedly, should maybe not be allowed to hijack the discussion away from the real anarchists.
I spent some time talking with this person this week, just discussion back and forth, which is fine, and I just now today really formed a firm opinion that they’re probably mainly trying to influence the election in favor of Trump, and not just an anarchist talking about anarchism things. Yes, I think protecting the anarchism forums against that is important.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess it’s open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job.
I mentioned before that I think there are multiple valid opinions about this. My opinion is that they shouldn’t be censoring things purely because of a viewpoint. I recognize that there are other opinions on it.
In my opinion, Mambabasa is dogpiling an anti-Democrat (not anti-politician, but very specifically anti-Democrat) viewpoint into a community where it doesn’t belong, and the structure of Lemmy allows them to do that, because they are for some reason a mod. I think that’s a problem. More so than people coming in and disagreeing with them. I would never go in and say “Democrats Democrats Democrats!” as you seem to be strawmanning that I did. If I see someone in the anarchism forum already talking about Democrats, I might also say my opinion on it. I think that’s a useful check, maybe the most realistic one that can exist in a system like Lemmy, against someone doing which it looks pretty clear to me that Mambabasa is doing.
Can you find a comments section in an anarchism post, where the OP didn’t first start talking about Democrats, and some Democrats came in and started talking anything about Democrats out of nowhere? That whole thing where people are coming from the wider community and just talking trash to the minority because they’re a minority, sounds like a strawman to me. Maybe it happens on !conservative@lemm.ee. I know it often happens in the other direction, where some outsider comes into a minority community and all the existing members of the community dogpile on them about how the existing community viewpoint is the right one. But even then, I don’t really think it’s a problem. It’s just people talking, which is the point.
Thanks. Blocked him, the guy saying to vote for Putin Shill Jill and the community.
I went to unsubscribe, but apparently I am banned already. 🤷
It’s up to Removed by mod x7 now, almost half the comments. The part of Thunberg’s quote that I highlighted in my deleted comment was:
It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other.
I’m really confused as an anarchist myself.
I know some anarchists who believe we should boycott the system and not vote, I know some anarchists who believe we should vote for Jill Stein because she is the most progressive candidate, and I know some anarchists (which include myself) who think along more utilitarian lines, that this election will can only end in two outcomes, and that one will cause a lot more suffering than the other, therefore I will vote for the one that causes the least suffering.
We anarchists believe more in direct action than voting, but that doesn’t mean we can’t vote.
I’m very concerned about this censorship of discourse on an anarchist community. And want to know what the moderator who made this decision’s rationale was. Would this comment be removed in !anarchism@slrpnk.net because I say not all anarchists vote for Jill Stein?
They made a long attempt to defend themself here:
https://slrpnk.net/comment/11904145
If you have some time, read the whole thing. There’s all kinds of interesting treasure in there.
So my comment would be removed because according to the mod I provide “ideological cover for evil”, by not supporting Jill Stein, even though my rationale conforms with anarchist ideals?
Your guess is as good as mine. My feeling is the same as yours. I don’t really have anything to add to this comment:
https://ponder.cat/comment/794343
I share your alarm about the censorship of discourse. It seems like there are at least three “anarchist instance” administrators in these comments who approve of it. I think they may either be jaded by a nonstop influx of trolls and noisemakers to the point that they are too tired to deal with anything disagreeable, or else they may just have not thought through enough what type of instance they want to have and what impacts this kind of policy is going to have.
If you want an answer to your question, in other words, I think you’ll have to ask the people making the decisions.
Drag thinks Greta should have been clearer about her arguments, to prevent people co-opting them for the nonvoter movement. As it is, Greta’s actions could end up worsening a genocide as astroturfers con anarchists into interpreting her words as anti-voting. And not voting means supporting genocide.
Drag also thinks SLRPNK is very poorly administrated for its goal of being a leftist space. The admins consistently goof into trusting bad-faith mods spreading deceptive narratives. There needs to be some regulation against astroturfing on that site, and there isn’t.
PTB, but wow, that quote made my blood pressure skyrocket.
deleted by creator
She literally advocated for one of the two viable candidates…
She didn’t quite say that. She said, both are bad but one is unequivocally a catastrophic danger to the entire world, with probably permanent destructive consequences to an already-dire situation.
Then someone else turned that around into a really good reason not to vote, somehow.
Then when people said that makes no sense at all, people like your parent comment came in and tried to say talking about voting has suddenly become off-topic.
Right, but contextually, knowing what we publicly know about Greta Thunberg, by stating that it’s “probably impossible to overstate the consequences” of the election and further saying “Trump - is way more dangerous than the other,” she’s very clearly advocating for a certain candidate.
Regardless, I’m in agreement with you. She very clearly endorsed voting plus action.
Removed by mod
I don’t think you know what anarchism is
Wikipedia says it is “a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy.”
so you can see by pushing back on advocacy for the ruling hegemony, they are being anarchists
No they aren’t. Anarchists would be spending most of their time talking about direct action on behalf of Palestine, promoting individual freedoms and climate policies… you know, anarchist stuff.
Focusing all of your attention and energy on the 2024 US presidential election, but then saying that the most important thing to talk about is that election, and in particular not voting in it, is a suspicious thing for an anarchist to do. It sounds like this person is not an anarchist, and doesn’t especially care about the Palestinians who are almost guaranteed to suffer an increased calamity even above their present holocaust if Trump gets his hand on power. It sounds like this person’s “anarchism” begins and ends with how important it is not to vote for Kamala Harris.
That sounds pretty electoral to me. It doesn’t sound anarchist. Greta Thunberg’s actual statement sounded great to me. The only thing I ever objected to was taking the first few sentences of it, retelling only that part of her statement except flipped around 180 degrees backwards, and then going banhammer-happy when a bunch of people said that that’s clearly not what she meant.
when you are an anarchist, you will get to tell exactly one anarchist what their praxis should be
I know one anarchist who used his authority to tell his software to coerce me into not being able to post anymore. I think your lecture should be more properly directed at him.
I personally feel that I’m allowed to object to people’s conduct when it impacts me, whether or not I am an anarchist or have “earned it” or whatever you are thinking should be a precondition before I can do that.
you can personally object, but all I hear is this
Anyone who unironically uses the word “praxis” should rethink their whole life.
oh no! you found a real anarchist! run!
Anarchy is not equal to “no rules”. That’s anti-anarchy propaganda.
Lemmy in itself is anarchist because each community is allowed to have its own set of rules, and each instances as well.
The point of anarchy is that if you and a group of other people disagree with how someone is handling things, you can exclude them from your group. Of course, this is all in the context of leftist and communist ideologies.
The point of anarchy is that if you and a group of other people disagree with how someone is handling things, you can exclude them from your group.
I must have missed that part being key, when I was reading about Kropotkin and the mutualists. I thought it was some other things were mainly “the point.”
It is key. Anarchist theory is supposed to prove that hierarchy is not necessary. Proving that a group of people can manage themselves without one is the point.
I also added in the last sentence in order to include this. Multual aid is a leftist theory. Maybe the misunderstanding stems from this, as I didn’t intend it to mean “that’s the only point of anarchy”, so my bad. I still think it is important though.
It is key. Anarchist theory is supposed to prove that hierarchy is not necessary. Proving that a group of people can manage themselves without one is the point.
It’s so key that Kropotkin said you need to nominate a leader for each discussion, so that the leader can kick people out if they’re supporting the wrong ideologies. It’s one of the key tenets, and thank you for reinforcing it.
Also:
I’m not really talking about what Kropotkin said. I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic here.
Also literally the first line of your Wikipedia article:
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and anti-capitalist market socialist economic theory
I’m being extremely sarcastic.
I’m saying that proving that hierarchy is not necessary, and a group of people can manage themselves without one, by nominating one person to have ultimate authority over what actions can and can’t be taken within your anarchism group, so that person can make sure it stays anarchist, is a very silly thing to do.
But what I’m trying to point out is that this one person does not have authority over anyone due to the nature of the fediverse. If they did, your post right here would be gone.
If the users that are in the community of the moderator didn’t like how they managed things, they could make their own community. And if they didn’t like that the instance let the community exist for whatever reason, they can change for a better instance. Admittedly it’s hard to do so, but it’s a pretty good model.
They can’t stop users from making their own solar punk meme community.
Yeah, but I don’t think authority needs to be inescapable in order to be authority.
If I don’t like the laws of the state of Ohio, I can leave Ohio. That doesn’t mean the cops in Ohio have no authority.
In this case, it’s actually even a little bit sillier than that, because we’re just talking about words. There’s no way to even do any actions. All you can do is say stuff. If people come in and start talking about things, and that’s so destructive to your way of being that you have to wield your authority within that particular domain to eject them from it and stop them from saying those things, what’s that say about your ability to work things out without a hierarchy and get along? How are you going to deal with it in your anarchist community if someone’s playing music too late at night and keeping someone else awake, or saying things at meetings that you don’t think they should be allowed to say? Or even doing something even more destructive, letting their dog loose and it might hurt somebody, something like that? If someone has to default back to putting one person in charge and having them wield ultimate power to keep things in line this early in the process, it doesn’t sound to me like they’re very serious about anarchism.
I’m not trying to be negative or sarcastic about anarchism. I think, on the whole, it’s great. I talked more about it and learned some down in the deep forest of comments. I’m just saying that it sounds to me like !anarchism@slrpnk.net could use a lot more anarchism in its governance.
The word your looking for is Free Association. And yes you are right, it is a key part of anarchism and you are mostly right. I do think moderation isnt being handled in a very anarchist manner, but the ideas of free association are still at play here.
But what I’m trying to point out is that this one person does not have authority over anyone due to the nature of the fediverse. If they did, your post right here would be gone.
Saying they don’t have authority because fediverse is a very disingenuous thing to say, they do indeed have some amount of authority because they run and control servers. Everyone who runs a server does and they have the capability to limit reach. Being able to start your own community doesn’t mean that others don’t have authority. The biggest servers have the most authority, if Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml wanted to both silence someone their post history would be wiped off the two largest servers entirely, and completely from all the communities they own, even in servers they don’t, as much as you insist it isn’t the case there absolutely is authority in the Fediverse.
If there wasn’t really, hijacking, comandeering, and then kicking people out of their own admin servers would be fair game. It isn’t though and is highly frowned upon, because they have authority over those servers and the slice of the pie, and that means they can silence you. Don’t try and delude people into thinking that isn’t possible, when it absolutely is and is kind of the reason why federation works the way it does. Since historically uncontrollable spaces were a bad idea that attract criminals and bad faith actors.
So I’m not saying it shouldn’t be the way it is, but I am saying it is disingenuous to frame the Fediverse like it is Nostr, because that’s not what it’s like and we don’t want to attract or welcome people who think it is.
YDI: Going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints makes the use of mod powers to remove such viewpoints reasonable. It’s like going to a vegan place to argue about the benefits of meat, or going to a feminist place to argue “not all men”.
Some anarchist communities are setup for this sort of debate. Some are not. Both are OK to exist.
Yeah, no. Pointing out that a quote does not support the point of view that someone is trying to use it to support is tacitly not equivalent to “going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints.” Your other examples are insufficient analogies, and I hope you can see that.
If your hypothetical vegan space had a moderator who posted a quote of Lynda Carter saying “I try to avoid cheese, dairy, and a lot of meat, but I do like them,” and attempted to interpret that as “Wonder Woman advocates veganism,” it’s perfectly valid to call out the absence of that sentiment in the source quote. Removing such responses, especially on one’s own post, reeks of a petty reaction to criticism.
While I typically find value in your opinions, including the ones I don’t agree with, I’m having trouble mustering respect for this one.
From what I see, Greta was sufficiently vague on this either way. In that case, going to an anarchist space to argue for electoralism using this vagueness as a starting point seems to be sufficient reason for removal. The removed comment from the OP was not even correcting people misrepresenting Greta’s words, it was about starting an argument with someone suggesting 3rd parties (a support which I think also doesn’t belong in an anarchist space, but whatever) with the usual 2-party electoralist talking points
You can read the text of my comments here, or in the modlog:
https://ponder.cat/comment/791878
There were two that were reinforcing Greta Thunberg’s words, which were in no way vague, and then one that could be interpreted as “electoralism.”
Not gonna argue with you, mate. I’m just clearing out that you did not go there to correct misinformation as the person I was replying to made an analogy with, but to argue against 3rd parties and for electoralism in general.
You’re welcome to your interpretation. In my opinion I went there to protect the space against someone who mainly wants to use it to talk about Kamala Harris and the Democrats, and is wearing a fairly unconvincing anarchist disguise and couching their message in terms of “not voting at all” without bothering to disguise it all that much.
If anything, this liberal throwing the toys out of the pram makes me even less likely to vote. 🍉
Aren’t you British, anyway?
As a British person, I think living under Keir has made me even more apathetic to the US’s faux-democracy.
8 days ago
I’m going to make a bold prediction that the person you’re talking to is never going to address this in a coherent way.
Curiouser and curiouser.
They said “pram,” of course they’re British
thatsthejoke.jpg
It really doesn’t make sense for that to be the joke, given you couldn’t have reasonably expected anyone to know you are british.
I zoomed out and looked at these comments, and I noticed there is a common thread in the way certain people talk about the other participants:
this liberal throwing the toys out of the pram
hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote
Will you gladly and willfully walk over thousands of Palestinian corpses to cast your vote for the one who is killing them?
come into my home and berate me about voting
Nobody else in these comments is speaking this way. They can disagree about things, even important things, but they’re just talking about it. It’s not a hyper-emotional or aggressive thing that always has to hook into the other person being bad or pathetic in some way. It’s remarkable, now that I’m looking at it, how isolated the handful of accounts are that are all hooking into some kind of strongly emotionally negative way of looking at the other person in the conversation.
You’re getting the classic hexbear/.Ml brigade experience.
LOL no American knows WTF a pram is.
We also have elections between two identical candidates
