As more mainstream libs are discovering Lemmy, we’re seeing a pattern of complaints that opinions outside the ones they deem acceptable are allowed on the platform. We’ve even seen instances defederating because their userbase does not wish to be exposed to these views.
Interestingly, these are the same people who level censorship and control of free speech as their main critique of communists. What we’re seeing is that these people absolutely don’t care about free speech. They understand the necessity of censorship and actively advocate censoring opinions that they find dangerous. Yet, when societies based on values different from their own use these same tools they screech about authoritarianism.
Turns out it’s not authoritarianism libs hate, but having their own views censored. What actually offends them about places like China is that it’s their ideology that’s being suppressed there.
Just to defend the vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism a little, ime huge amount of self proclaimed anarchists don’t have particularly strong opinions on methods for organizing or effecting change at scale, mostly because a lot haven’t done much organizing. In my experiences with anarchist types they’re pretty flexible on the methods part just because it’s nice to do anything for a change and doing basic organizing in the maximally anarchist fashion can just get exhausting.
Granted i’m mostly talking abt like new to leftism anarchist by default types but the anarchists who’re ideologically committed to the point of opposing all centralization in organizing bc authority are overrepresented online and irl MLs are incredibly unlikely to even have a chance to work with them.
For sure, anarchism is far less stigmatized in the west and therefore it’s natural for left leaning people who fall out of the mainstream to get interest in anarchism. I suspect that a lot of people who start seriously thinking about what it takes to effect systemic change end up moving closer to ML point of view later on.
that’s def what happened to me, a huge turning point for me was participating in an small group with a very anarchist structure and seeing all the issues that creates, and eventually finding myself in the small group of de facto leaders doing evil unaccountable centralism bc of a combo of social cachet and being one of the few ppl to actually bother showing up to meetings. coming across The Tyranny of Structurelessness was an unpleasant literally me moment. ragging on ML organizing for not being democratic enough made a lot of sense until everyone’s silently democratically decided you’re responsible for everything or else the whole thing falls apart
Yes but it is not just new people it is also seasoned organizers. In my union, for example, which is full of anarchist types, I think it is problematic that when difficulties arise, we are effectively led into just blowing off anxiety and frustration instead of thinking through how our adversaries are challenging us. Action is prioritized over strategy and even though leadership always says they just follow what union members want, it is always the loudest (and most anxious) people calling the shots while everyone else just tries to maintain solidarity and goes along with it. Maybe I am just too cynical tho idk.
yeah that sounds pretty different from the sorts of situations i’m talking about, it makes a lot of sense to be cynical over it though. i think seasoned anarchists, even if they fully mean well, can turn orgs not explicitly laid out like that into something really unpleasant. there’s a kind of normative behavior that comes out of consensus based organizing that’s very focused on raising basically every single concern you might have and avoiding keeping quiet for the sake of getting along that is pretty essential for consensus to work as intended but can end up pretty obnoxious outside of that context. maybe the only way out is just not going along anymore if enough ppl are tired of it even if it’ll likely be unpleasant.