The person complaining about authoritarians is a petty discord tyrant
chapotraphouse
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank
Dunk posts in general go in the_dunk_tank, not here
Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from the_dunk_tank
no surprise she's also pro-kulak
this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join
she's now completely going off about "authoritarians"
I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.
In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.
Anti-authoritarianism is weird because it sees government authority as an ultimate evil but private entities authority as the status quo.
Private banks forcing people out of their homes? Thats a good society. Government doing the same and distributing it? Authoritarian evil.
Then if there is a successful revolution - anything the revolutionaries do is now authoritarian because they took over the government.
The problem is authoritarian doesn't have a precise mechanical definition at all. Anarchists and liberals don't use the word in the same way. A lot of my anarchist comrades don't even use the term because of how imprecise it is. Instead I'll see anarchists mention lopsided hierarchies in general, imperialism, or how a hierarchy can lead to abuses of power. Or more broadly they might disagree with seizing state power as a tactic, but I think well-read anarchists realize that authoritarian is not a coherent ideological position. No one identifies as an authoritarian, for instance.
Liberals use it as a way to conflate fascists and communists. They use it to mean there's a lack of representation from groups/interests they believe are inherent to any society. Since all socialist countries exclude or restrain representation of the capitalist class, that makes all socialism authoritarian by a liberal point of view. They see a single party state as tyrannical, because they would prefer to see a state with various competing bourgeois elements rather than the single uniting interest of the working class.
Liberals also use the term (and tankie) in a completely racist way. White countries aren't authoritarian, that's reserved for scary foreigners
States are "secure" and "safe"
Regimes are "authoritarian" and a "police state"
The problem is authoritarian doesn't have a precise mechanical definition at all. Anarchists and liberals don't use the word in the same way. A lot of my anarchist comrades don't even use the term because of how imprecise it is. Instead I'll see anarchists mention lopsided hierarchies in general, imperialism, or how a hierarchy can lead to abuses of power. Or more broadly they might disagree with seizing state power as a tactic, but I think well-read anarchists realize that authoritarian is not a coherent ideological position. No one identifies as an authoritarian, for instance.
it's also why, for instance, the political compass is such an awful concept in general
but yeah, I try to be cognizant of how different parts of the Left just have fundamentally different definitions behind the same words, like "authority" for instance, and so bringing up e.g. Engels to somebody who doesn't think authority means what Engels defines it as is kinda pointless, but the liberals have turned "authority" into such a meaningless term now that I can understand why your anarchist comrades don't care to use it
There's a line in the explanation of that compass, I guess written by the authors, saying that Stalin and Hitler could have a cordial discussion about politics so long as economics aren't mentioned. Which is absurd. Stalin was a Marxist and Hitler believed politics was a matter of skull measurements and racial destinies.
saying that Stalin and Hitler could have a cordial discussion about politics so long as economics aren't mentioned
what the fuck? did they think WW2 and millions of deaths was just an economics debate that got too far? the only possible way you could think this is true is if you literally didn't know shit about fuck. "yeah, actually, the guy who liberated the Jews from the concentration camps was actually basically the same politically as the guy who put them in there"
I think it’s strident individualism masquerading as anarchism.
Both anarchism and socialism heavily center community. They put slightly different emphasis on different parts of community and anarchism is more decentralized but anarchism still places community and a persons place and rights vis a vis their community as well as the expectations a community can have of its members at the center.
It’s less obvious with anarchism since anarchism is less proscriptive about what form community should take and usually it’s some vision of a decentralized variety of voluntarist communes or something like that, but it always has the idea of a person as a part of their community at the center.
Strident individualism, the idea that the individual is more important than the collective, is antithetical to both anarchism and socialism and this is what really separates right-libertarianism from anarchism.
I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.
In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.
You have described neo-liberalism; nothing must change, only managed decline.
Maybe that's the correct way to frame anti-authoritarianism to actually get people to start recognising the need for some authority if you're going to see change.
We might honestly be slowly re-treading ground that the neoliberal thinktanks have already been over in their decision-making to support, back and push this ideology.
That really sucks.
Whenever I bring up commie shit in real life, people are generally just really surprised because they haven't ever heard those ideas or perspectives before. Sure they argue sometimes, but they can't just kick you out of a place.
Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.
Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.
Sounds like this is a result of the rapidly increasing prevalence of liberal solipsism originating from the massively overblown obsession with the few 2016 election ads Russia bought. Now liberals have an easy get out of being flanked from the left card by always accusing anti-western communists of being either literal chat bots or paid shills. That's much harder for a lib to do offline while the conversation is literally face to face.
Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.
Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.
When a lib calls someone a bot, they aren't trying to make a factual statement about the world. It's a social signal: "I don't have to listen to or engage with the content of what you say because you're on the Bad Team."
The red scare fuckin' blows
I feel like the kind of shit marginalized people go through in the imperial core tends to be inherently radicalizing in an anti-capitalist direction without necessarily being radicalizing in a pro-communist and anti-west direction.
That makes a lot of sense considering even the most marginalized people in the imperial core have the privilege of not having to worry about bombs being dropped on their homes, CIA backed coups deposing their democratically elected leaders, nor the general all encompassing horror of imperial resource extraction. The result is that western marginalized and privileged citizens alike will both readily accept the never ending deluge of atrocity propaganda against AES emanating out of essentially all western media outlets.
If you believed in literally everything the CIA said about AES, how would you feel about countries like the USSR or PRC? At that point, the red fascist rhetoric actually makes sense. How many fascists should you allow to sit at your table? 0. It's insidious, and it has broken the brains of too many otherwise decent people. For that reason I try not to judge people like your discord moderator (other than for unironically being a discord moderator) too harshly for things like this.
I don't think people within the imperial core in general will soften up on AES until real communist organizations can build up local mutual aid networks to support the most precarious of us in their communities. Ideally they'd provide necessary social services running parallel to the rotting remains of the social safety nets once maintained by western governments until the fall of the USSR. That would lend to us the necessary position of public trust to displace the misinformation put out by corporate media by providing relevant education on communism, specifically AES, where the public education system has purposefully failed. Deliberate agitation on this front is very necessary in that there is no horrible experience one can endure in the imperial core that would result in intuitively figuring out we need to organize society in a similar way to AES countries.
I am pretty aware that I would be dead three times over in third world country by now, the point is though that the west tries to pass that off as its achievement, and not it causing the conditions that make ND trans people die in the third world. Maybe I'd be fine in Cuba, idk, I just hate queers who defend capitalism a bit more bc they are happy servants of an evil that kills their siblings and keeps them down extra hard
If you believed in literally everything the CIA said about AES, how would you feel about countries like the USSR or PRC? At that point, the red fascist rhetoric actually makes sense. How many fascists should you allow to sit at your table? 0. It's insidious, and it has broken the brains of too many otherwise decent people. For that reason I try not to judge people like your discord moderator (other than for unironically being a discord moderator) too harshly for things like this.
I'm glad someone mentions this. We're constantly being bombarded by propaganda and there's very little pushback, I can't really blame people for believing that the USSR was a cruel, genocidal regime and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are acting in "good faith" when they do shit like this. If I believed that Stalin deliberately engineered the Holodomor etc., I would ban people from my discord too if they said the USSR was cool.
Sorry, comrade, that sucks. But this person chose anti-communism over solidarity, so fuck em
A few months ago I was excluded from an anarchist server for defending the USSR.
Sucks for the libs that those turned out to be... since then I'm now on a regional anarchist server, an intentional community server, and a permaculture server where my presence is appreciated.
I hope you find something good
Sorry comrade. I am not sober, so I didn't comprehend everything you posted, but I support you and hate your enemies forever. Hope that helps
I'm sorry that happened to you.
There always seems to be a political bias against communists, especially in this new phase of the red scare, and mods will find any pretext to ban communists because they've been so heavily indoctrinated against communism.
Once things have cooled off, I would consider messaging that mod and pointing out that you didn't attack anyone, you just defended your political position, and you were banned without warning although the person who was slinging personal insults got multiple warnings and was treated with kid gloves. I personally wouldn't want to be invited back but I would put a little bit of a barb in the end of my message by saying that the mods actions not only were an expression of authoritarianism by silencing dissenting voices on the left but that their actions are a tacit approval of the tyranny of a political orthodoxy that permits slinging personal insults so long as the person has the "correct" political beliefs. Then I'd say that they are a parody of anti-authoritarianism and they'll probably justify their actions and inaction to themselves because the spooky tankie is pointing out uncomfortable truths which is further evidence of how they cannot be permitted into these spaces (because otherwise you'd be forced to confront your own cognitive dissonance - the horror!)
Note that doing so will not earn you any friends. But sometimes people like this need to be called to account and, perhaps over time, cracks will start to form in their anti-communist indoctrination.
Yeah, i'll try to fix this as best as i can. It's not easy, i can't message her if she doesn't add me as a friend because we do not share a server anymore. So she can just ignore me without listening what i have to say. But a friend of mine will try to get a word in with the mods, she's been unhappy with that one mod's moderation style for some time now, and maybe that'll help. IDK.
I'll be honest here, i would actually want to get back into that place, i really like a lot of the people there and don't want to be cut off from them. I've only exchanged DMs with a handful of them because i've just been there for a few months and don't go DMing people out of my own, but that handful now includes people i'm meeting irl. I'm actually having vegan sushi with a girl i met there tomorrow. I just click with a lot of the transfems there and idk if there's another server with users from my country where that's the case. I'm looking around rn, but it's not looking good, the other big servers tend to have transmed and / or chaser problems and that's an instant hard nope for me. It's not made easier that i just don't feel very comfortable around dudes and am not interested in servers that aren't overwhelmingly transfem.
i think this is the biggest weakness of online "community." i know for a lot of people in a lot of situations it's all that's available, but a single egomaniac shouldn't be able to unilaterally cut you off from your friends.
yeah absolutely
I mean, the two people on their who are actually my friends already, i can stay in contact with them. We know each other outside of the server and that's great. But all the people i just loved to shitpost and joke around with, some of whom would have become actual friends over time, they're gone, i'm not gonna see most of these again.
Sorry comrade. and
has overtaken most of the internet.
My favorite online trans community is
Fucking labor aristocrats. They know they're on the side of imperialism even if they don't admit it, and that's why they purge anyone who opposes the subjugation and enslavement of the global south.
I was banned from Keffals discord for saying that Kim Jong Un isn't starving the people of North Korea for fun and laughs. Obvs not the same, but reminded me nonetheless
I joined, saw someone claiming that saying rich people have undue influence on politics is an antisemitic dogwhistle, and then left
Anarcho-bidenism strikes again
One of the wake-up calls that got me to quit Reddit forever was powermods that banned people for even suggesting socialism as an alternative, usually with some bloviating about how under gommunizm vulvulzula, LGBTQIA+ were discriminated against which totally doesn't ever ever happen under the system they were stanning for.
thats pretty shit, they never hear of trans solidarity? and do they not understand that the communist movements in those countries are still the biggest proponents of lgbt rights and are the only groups that are organized enough to achieve them?
there are many people in the communist party in russia that have advocated for lgbt rights, including Oleg Mikhailov and Alexey Kornienko, for example. and in czechia my communist representative was the one that pushed and passed czechias current lgbt laws. he lamented to me that it didnt go far enough and that the liberals in the social democrat party were watering it down. but you would never see this information on western news, if you google oleg and alexey, its just basic wikipedia articles. if you search them on russian social media, there is a huge uproar against 'grooming communists' who simply dont want gay and trans people to be shit on by all of society, including calls to ban the CPRF
We're talking about a person who literally got mad at a 17 year old girl in the discussion because she's interested in trotzkism - not for the reasons we dunk on trots, but because Trotzki was mean to the kulaks. What kind of person sees dekulakization as a reason to get mad at an underage trans girl just minding her business in her supposed safe space? A class traitor looking for an excuse to be a Neo-McCarthyist while still being able to do leftist clout chasing, that's who.
social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism
why are you booing me, I’m right
God that fuckin blows. I hang out occasionally on a trans discord I found through a friend that's mostly advertised on tumblr. It's explicitly ml though, which keeps away this kind of shit. I can link you in dm's if you want. The server is explicitly for transfem communists.