Submitted by MountainMan in Anarchism
To clarify, yes, I'm a Reddit Anarchist (specifically anarcho-communist). By that I mean I'm an anarchist and my only social media has been Reddit for quite a few years. That's not to say I'm an online-only anarchist, I try to do my part out in the world.
I'm wondering what specifically you see as wrong with Reddit anarchists. Is it specific views on anarchy? Is it their generally-shitty attitude? I'll agree Reddit isn't the best of communities, and I'm glad I found Raddle, and I plan to be using Reddit less now, but I'm drawing a blank on the anarchy bit.
I'm here to learn, not to win arguments or whatever. I'm hoping by coming here I'll discover new ideas and theory. I hope my title come off less as "what's your problem" and more as "what am I missing".
veuzi wrote (edited )
First off, I would like to make it clear that most users here are or have been "Reddit anarchists" at one point, as in anarchists who use Reddit.
The problem with "Reddit anarchists", and certain parts of anarchist presence on social media in general, is related to dogma and what sort of ideas that tend to have more popular appeal in these corporatized online-only spheres. Anarchists on Reddit will inevitably end up interacting with non-anarchist leftists, liberals, libertarians, conservatives and fascists. And these interactions and this resulting conflict has an effect on how anarchist ideas and conclusions are presented on the platform.
The heavy presence of Americans means that American politics will be inevitably dominant in certain discussions. The mainstream popularity of Reddit means that mainstream political ideologies has more of a chokehold on the bigger subreddits, which expands into and influences the less popular subreddits, including the anarchist ones. With these factors in mind, anarchists are in a somewhat unique position. It remains a fringe on the platform overall, but with how Reddit's popularity, algorithms and overall forum structure enables karma farming and brigading, anarchist ideas are likely to get watered down towards less threatening and often more dogmatic forms.
Reddit isn't entirely to blame for the "justified hierarchy", "lesser evil voting", "left unity" and "FALGSC" discourse. We can easily connect those and similar ideas to influential individuals like Chomsky, Graeber, Baker (anarchopac), Bookchin and more. But Reddit's online culture generally favor those anti-establishment ideas that are easy to digest, can be explained within the confines of a single short comment or a meme, can be repeated without much given thought and can cater to the sensibilities of young, privileged tech nerds living in the West who make up the majority of Reddit's userbase (and that includes myself by the way).
To summarize: the stereotypical "anarcho-Redditor" sees anarchy and Marxism as having the same end goal, voting being praxis and/or "harm reduction", democracy as anti-authoritarian, anarchy as a formal societal organization to be imposed with unconscious authority, civilization and the logic of unending "progress" as an inherent good, anti-civilization ideas as "eco-fascism", morality as sacred. And if not, they see anarchy as an impossibility, a teenage rebellion, a voter demographic to be influenced towards the more legitimate forms of political participation, a Hobbesian war of all against all or as free real estate for asserting classical liberal property norms.