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".

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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.

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ziq wrote

Someone frame this comment and hang it over r/@'s entrance.

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MountainMan OP wrote

Thanks for the reply! A lot of what you mentioned are issues I've noticed myself. Just this month I've seen more "should anarchists vote" posts than I can keep track of.

I especially agree that it's a horrible misunderstanding to think of anarchy as an end-goal, rather than a way of living right now.

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veuzi wrote

Just this month I've seen more "should anarchists vote" posts than I can keep track of.

That's mostly because of US midterms being right now, as well as several recent high-profile elections in other countries such as the Brazilian election where Lula won against Bolsonaro.

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tuesday wrote

if you want to see in action what we have issue with...

vote abstention has been an anarchist practice for, idk, forever? many classic anarchists have written about it, have advocated for abstention, in the face fascism, in the face of subjugation. the answer to "should we vote" as anarchists has been "No!" Lucy Parsons didn't even have the right to vote as a black woman and even she was vocal about voting abstention.

now look through the comments that are left up on this CA post: https://www.reddit.com/r/COMPLETEANARCHY/comments/ylz1ou/whoever_is_elected_lets_be_ungovernable

the deleted comments were all about why we should vote. note the upvote counts. now look at the downvotes for the comments that were left up.

this is what anarcho-redditism is.

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ziq wrote

Anti-fascist here. I tell whining non voters to fuck themselves all the time in person and otherwise.

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tuesday wrote

You got the mods called out on tiktok lol

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ziq wrote

Wait, I'm the reactionary they're whining about?

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tuesday wrote (edited )

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ziq wrote (edited )

oh, so the person who never actually posts to r/anarchism or any radical subs but constantly identifies as a member of the Democrat party on all the lib subs they do post to, and only came to r/anarchism to try and force the mods to delete (my) anarchist literature and then reported me to the admins for harassment for talking back as they attempt to censor my shit

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tuesday wrote

same name so i assume so.

(which is a weird thing to do for someone who is trying to remain anonymous)

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lettuceLeafer wrote

God, this thread and watching the tiktoks was very funny. I hope u enjoyed it haha

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subrosa wrote

I'm a bit out of the loop, got a tiktok link?

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tuesday wrote

https://www.tiktok.com/@queen.savilene/video/7157781605321395498?_t=8X7D1U8PAoo&_r=1

idk if you found it on your own yet though.

One of the @ mods actually posted a reply but it got taken down for bullying like with 15 minutes. 🙄

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ziq wrote

When did calling someone campaigning for capitalist politicians "liberal" become a slur btw?

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ziq wrote (edited )

And it's hilarious that they think tankies call "us" anarkiddies for being anti-vooting. I'd like to see them try to campaign for their boy joey b on r/communism.

Big tent anarchy my arse

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lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

The fact that the US government hasn't taken all your things and used 1% to pay for my health care is an oppression against me. If you ever complain about it that's a slur. Honestly any time you complain about colonialism is literally violence against me.

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ziq wrote

You forgot to end your struggle session #communist #communism #govoteforwarcriminals #getoutthevote

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tuesday wrote

When liberals started to identify as anarchists.

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subrosa wrote

I found it, but thanks! Just noped out of tiktok very quickly, it made me feel too... generational?

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tuesday wrote

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah

there are a lot of olds on tiktok but it takes a while for the algorithm to figure out that you don't want to watch videos of teenagers.

my 9 year old nephew apparently found the tiktok I had for a while and told me yesterday that he's following me now. I need to figure out how to log back into the account and delete it lol

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Archaplain wrote

i left that one up because i wanted people to see the kinda shit that gets removed so i have to deal with fewer freeze peach warriors.

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lentils wrote (edited )

reddit anarchists tend to believe that anarchy is a state of society we should aim to reach through overthrowing the state, capitalism etc but here i think we tend to take a more anti-ideological approach to anarchy and think that it’s something you can do in the here and now (through things like refusing work and consumer culture, adopting a diy lifestyle etc) rather than waiting for a revolution and mostly go further in our philosophy in a sense by not only critiquing capitalism, the state etc but also pointing out that things like civilisation and morality are hierarchical too.

raddle’s reading list has some great anti-left, anti-work and anti-civ texts.

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AnarchoDoom wrote (edited )

/r/CompleteAnarchy is pretty fine, at least, tho it's mostly a meme sub.

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