

True. It just so happens that all the other anarchist instances also happen to like us. Funny how that works, huh?


True. It just so happens that all the other anarchist instances also happen to like us. Funny how that works, huh?


Except that people have already chosen to get into your system. If they didn’t desire your system, they wouldn’t be in it. They have already chosen for you to have some authority.
oooor, they know that they can demand my (and every other admin’s) recall, and the fact that they haven’t proves they just trust us.
Who are you to tell me what to do?
bed-time is authoritarian, amirite?
You didn’t tho. Despite who organized the vote etc. the post stands posted by an Admin, and the post is in clear violation of your own stated Code of Conduct.
Nu-uh. Lol. Ok you’re stuck in a loop, buddy. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.
Without tools to recognize bias, framing, and authority signals, “self-organization” becomes a tool for the charismatic or well-connected to dominate.
Mate, it’s an niche online forum run by neurodivergents. Charismatic and well-connected we ain’t.
Have you considered that perhaps anarchists who don’t agree with you simply don’t feel that it’s worth the effort to try to challenge your power structures? Judging by the way you respond to me, it would be futile as anyone who disagrees with you isn’t a true anarchist.
Of all the political people, you think it’s anarchists that would be loathe to call out bad power structures? Are you sure this is the argument you want to run with?


Anarchism doesn’t wait for a revolution to begin, unlike movements like Marxism-Leninism. Anarchist theory posits that we build the society we want to have in the here and now, by organizing around principles of direct action and mutual aid (see reply from D Quuil below for that). Structures with horizontal power structures like unions, cooperatives, communes and so on. These orgs work by improving the lives of their people immediately, not in some nebulous future, and therefore radicalize those people and attract more (this is why the state and capitalism intensely hates such orgs and work very very hard to suppress and crush them). If those orgs were to go unchecked, their proliferation would destabilize the capitalist system, as those orgs not only do not sustain it as they don’t try to achieve “infinite growth”, nor are led by the profit motive, and most importantly make their members want to resist the aims of the ruling classes (war, slavery, expoitation). This is the process of Prefiguration, for which you can find plenty of info online.
Prefiguration as I mentioned, is inherently destabilizing to Capitalism. In fact, Capitalism itself arrived by prefiguration itself. The liberal classes under monarchy proliferated wage-slavery and exploitation so far and wide, that monarchies that lasted for tends of thousands of years until that point, collapsed in the span of mere hundreds! And surprise surprise, even if a few liberal democracies succumbed to monarchical counter-revolutions, the result was inevitable. Prefiguration works! You can’t stop an idea whose time has come.
Prefiguration works because it has already built the stable societal form which will replace the one that is collapsing. We don’t have to start figuring things out “after the revolution”. This is what I mean when I say that Anarchism doesn’t just pop into existence. Those unions, cooperatives, mutual banks, communes and so on, will continue existing as they were and continue serving the needs of their people. They would just expand uninhibited until the rest of the society is run like them. This is also why we say we can’t accurately predict what a future anarchist society would look like, anymore than a classical liberal under the monarchy of the Bourbons in the 1700s would be able to predict the Industrial Revolution, never mind the Information Age.
So if those horizontal power structures exist and is how the society is run, where is then this “power vaccuum” to exploit? Any would-be capitalist or monarch would have to convince a society which explicitly rejected their ideas, to go backwards into those ideas. Would you willingly give back universal healthcare just to go back to a US-style healthcare system? No, nobody sane does that (even though the full might of the capitalist propaganda would really like you to). Neither would those people want to go back to a much worse system either. People who’ve tasted freedom would rather die than give it back.
I hope this answers your question and if you want to learn more about anarchism, I can’t suggest The Anarchist FAQ enough as a starting point. We even have a weekly book club about it in !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com


I’m not misrepresenting anything. You declare that by the fact that we have a red A next to our name, it gives us some massive boost in pushing our ideas through, even through democratic decision making, which if you knew anything about real-life anarchists, and particularly the neurodivergent sort we go to great lengths to attract, you’d know that people in position of undesired authority (even thouse imposed by the software) are given even more scrutiny than most. The fact that our instance community went with the vote (which as others mentioned, was raised by a member of the instance, not the admin team) goes to show how overwhelmingly desired the defederation was. Despite all your “But you lead these sheeple by the nose” degrading of the intellect of our members.
You “pulled out some choice morsels” from modlogs to illustrate your point
Which goes to show that you’re merely upset the vote didn’t go the way you wanted. If this was merely “some choice morsels” I guarantee our comm would have unearthed the rest and rubbed them in our faces.
But anarchism is not a set of rules to be obeyed; it is a method of self-organization. You cannot have “self-organization” if the “self” does not have the tools (education/critical thinking) to organize. By claiming education isn’t necessary, the you’re essentially saying: “You don’t need to understand the system, you just need to do what “WE” (“the authority that’s totes not an authority”) call “mutual aid” and vote the way we set up the ballot.” This is Vanguardism, not Anarchism.
Not what I’m saying at all. When I say we need no education, I mean one does not need to read infinite amount of theory before engaging in anarchism, like Marxist-Leninist vanguardists claim for their own movement. People can just do anarchism, and its praxis radicalizes them and invites more education. You should try to be more charitable instead of superficially trying to gotcha people. In our case, indeed we self-organize around anarchist principles, and one of those principles is the right of association (where people choose to associate with other members of our instance and not to associate with zionists), and the right of consensus making through democratic means.
Also, in the spirit of mutual aid, would it not be in your best interest to try your best to educate the people in your community and empower them to think for themselves?
We already do that. But we’re not going to avoid all democratic decision making until everyone is “enlightened” or some whatever shite you’re positing.
You can jump up and down all you want about how we “abandoned the ideals of anarchism”, but the mere dint of the matter that actual anarchists choose to voluntarily continue associating with us (and not raise a shitstorm), rather than the armchair theorist with the most superficial understanding of the theory (like you), is all the proof we need we’re going in the right direction.
Anarchism needs people to cooperate, yet lacks functional power to make cooperation to happen and so, people such as yourself will use some type of coercion (authority) to force cooperation the way they (the authority) wants.
You’ve yet to point out any form of coercion except your pet definition of “Well, you’re so much more charismatic by being an admin, you led everyone by the nose” which flies in the face of reality.


why should your opinion carry more weight? Is your opinion more equal than that of others?
It doesn’t. We asked for a vote for a reason. If people’s opinion changes in the future, they can ask for a vote to reverse it as well.
You have certain power and you specifically used that power to impose your own ideas on others.
How did I impose my own ideas on others? By adding more members to the team? By a member of our team asking for a democratic vote? Sounds like you have some perverted ideas about what “imposing one’s ideas on others” means.
Further you failed to provide grounds for rational discourse, another anarchist ideal.
The voting thread had plenty of rational discourse.
For Anarchism to work, there needs to be consensus, and an Anarchist community needs to do it’s utmost to ensure that all people in the community have roughly the same level of education both in terms of knowledge and ability for critical thinking.
No, actually. For anarchism to work, people just need to do learn to do direct action for mutual aid and reject hierarchical authority. Same level of education and critical thinking is not required.
Instead, you presented the vote from the level of information and opinions you have - driving for the result you wanted.
It seems to me you just dislike how the vote went and are deciding that everyone who voted against the way you want, is too stupid. I.e. you’re an elitist.


I love how there’s a question asking how does a movement work, and most answers are from people outside of that movement, with only a superficial understanding of the theory behind it, confidently declaring it can’t.
To answer your question, anarchism doesn’t magically pop into existence. The way it comes into existence, which is prefiguring the existing system into anarchism, requires that the people already created horizontal power structures which forbid this “power vacuum”


There was no funky business that person doesn’t understand anarchism whatsoever and uses that failed understanding to claim it doesn’t work. Ridiculous statements that the admins should be enlightened centrists or some shite.


That’s the answer right there. The lemmy personal customization is quite flexible. You can even make it behave like an old-school forum if you want.


Oblivious rich People just taking vacation flights into a warzone never fails to entertain


It will be really funny if this is what pops the GenAI bubble


Not possible. Windows is a shit system with sloppy security


Even more ridiculous when they vibe code to do it


and not letting childish anarchist free speech ideals
It’s ironic you state it like this, since we are an explicitly anarchist server ;)


I’m surprised they’re not just lying on their metrics and vote counts tbh


I would argue that this would be the minority of users, not the majority.


- it means a minority can pass a rule without it being even seen by the majority
Why do you think that?
Iocaine expects you know how to detect it the bots, if they can get past anubis do you have another detection process?