> Greta Thunberg > @GretaThunberg
[https://x.com/GretaThunberg/status/1852331823428247927] > > #UsaElection
#USA2024 #StopArminglsrael #FreePalestine #ClimateJusticeNow > > This year we
have seen many defining elections all over the world. On November 5th, It is
time for one of the most powerful countries in the world — the USA — to go to
the polls. It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this
specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity. > >
There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous
than the other. But no matter if Trump or Harris wins, the USA — a country built
on stolen land and genocide on indigenous people -will soll be an imperialist
hyper-capitalist world power that will ultimately continue to lead the world
further into a racist, unequal world with an ever increasingly escalating
climate- and environmental emergency. > > With this in mind, my main message to
Americans is to remember that you cannot only settle for the least worst option.
Democracy is not only every four years on election day, but also every hour of
every day in between. You cannot think you have done “enough’ only by voting,
especially when both those candidates have blood on their hands. Lets not forget
that the genocide in Palestine is happening under the Biden and Harris
administration, with American money and complicity. It is not in any way
'feminist.” “progressive” or “humanitarian” to bomb innocent children and
civilians — it is the opposite, even It it is a woman in charge. And this is of
course one example among many of American imperialism. I cannot for my life
understand how some can even pretend to talk about humanitarian values, without
even questioning their own role In further deepening global oppression and
massacres of entire countries. > > So, Americans, you must do everything in your
power to call out this extreme hypocrisy and the catastrophic consequences
American Imperialism has on a global scale. Be uncomfortable, fill the streets,
block, organise, boycott, occupy, explicitly call out those in power whose
actions and Inaction lead to death and destruction. Join and support those who
are resisting and leading the change. Nothing less will ever be acceptable.
Mod of !anarchism@slrpnk.net posts a great Greta Thunberg quote, but then tries to use it to justify not voting in the upcoming US election
Multiple people point out that’s very clearly not what she meant
Removed by modRemoved by modRemoved by modRemoved by mod
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
Most anarchists I’ve spoken to, when pressed, just don’t want to follow other peoples rules. If they get to tel everyone else what to do suddenly anarchy loses its appeal.
I think there’s a difference between anarchists and “anarchists.” I read about Kropotkin and the first kind, and, if nothing else, his horror and opposition to the early Soviet state as a way of achieving economic justice, and how accurately he was able to diagnose how and why it would go wrong, puts him as pretty forward-thinking in my book.
I think OPP is neither of those things, and just wants Trump to get elected and is wearing a little plastic anarchist-mask to get it done. Somewhere deep in the forest you can find he and I talking about it.
Anarchists: Trust me, bro, we don’t NEED guardrails on power or democratic systems. We can just say “just be a good broski” and it all works out, if everyone’s living’ right. It’s beautiful, man.
Also anarchists, whenever they get even a pretty infinitesimal amount of power:
This is almost the exact opposite of an anarchist understanding of power.
The point of anarchist critiques of the state is that the structure and systems themselves corrupt and constrain people into acting in ways that are authoritarian and harmful.
So, even if you put a good person, and yes, even an anarchist into an authoritarian system, it will inevitably result in an abuse of power and violence towards oppressed people.
This is exactly why anarchists generally don’t put forth candidates or actively campaign or support political parties in the existing system. Because embedding a different, even better person into a corrupt system will only lead to further corruption.
I actually think that, ironically, this is a perfect validation of anarchist theory. Lemmy is a platform that was built by and for authoritarians (initially capitalists as Reddit, then only slightly modified by authoritarian leftists on Lemmy). The structure of moderation with mods and admins able to unilaterally take action and the difficulty of organized resistance inevitably leads to abuses, which is what this community is about.
I’m still waiting for the social media platform that has better infrastructure for distributed power among users rather than the chosen few.
This is exactly why anarchists generally don’t put forth candidates or actively campaign or support political parties in the existing system. Because embedding a different, even better person into a corrupt system will only lead to further corruption.
I feel obligated to point out that the goal is not necessarily to make the system ‘good’, but to avert catastrophic consequences from the very-powerful-current-system taking an all-out position of “Crush the workers, kill the minorities” when such a thing is very much negative for anarchist initiatives and very much avoidable.
All politics is about power, whether its restraint, its redistribution, or its dismantling - and decisions from anyone who considers their political positions serious must, in that vein, be strategic, not merely spiritual.
I agree with you but I don’t think these two ideas are completely contradictory. My experience after participating in and studying liberal democracy for decades now is that the existing political structure is not going to meaningfully stop its worst harms no matter who is elected to lead it. As a result, organizations that build power outside of the constraints of electoral politics will be essential for any meaningful change, whether incremental or revolutionary.
But yes, if we can keep fascists out of power by voting, I support that. However, I feel strongly that voting is not even the bare minimum of political activity that we should be engaged in.
See, I think liberal democracy is perfectly capable of stopping its worst harms in the case of an educated and active citizenry (what a fucking endeavor that is to undertake… we’re nowhere close to that at the moment), but I also support organizations that build power outside of electoral politics, as alternative bases of power mandate negotiation, implicit or explicit, from the ruling power, and reduce the chance of abuse of power.
While the view of the government as a single unitary entity is foolish in my view, and thus even a society without strong non-government entities is not automatically doomed to tyranny because of the necessarily factional and disunited nature of government, a society with strong non-government entities providing alternatives is almost always better poised for liberty (and the preservation of liberty) than one without. At least within the modern context of statehood. Pre-modern polities were often worse off regarding liberty with strong non-government entities.
It’s why I like anarchists, even though I don’t count myself as one. I view their methods and goals as conducive to liberty, even if I’m not sure as to the desirability or practicality of entirely abolishing the state as we would recognize it.
As a result, organizations that build power outside of the constraints of electoral politics will be essential for any meaningful change, whether incremental or revolutionary.
There is a great article somewhere that makes a case that unions as the prime entities of political power and organization, as opposed to political parties staffed by a separate class of politicians who do politics and only politics full-time, is about a hundred times better.
It used to be that way in this country, and then it wasn’t and we got that second thing instead, and my god look at what happened.
There is a great article somewhere that makes a case that unions as the prime entities of political power and organization, as opposed to political parties staffed by a separate class of politicians who do politics and only politics full-time, is about a hundred times better.
It’s not a problem with anarchists in general, I think, but that the kind of anarchists who put themselves into positions of power are generally… not the ones you want in power. Regardless of ideology, power, even the smallest, pettiest kind, tends to attract a certain kind of person more often, on average.
Yeah, but if your system is anarchist, those are exactly the kind of people who are going to wind up running things.
There’s a lot of overlap between anarchism and good sense. I’m not trying to be snarky about it. But it does seem that it has a couple of fatal flaws, and that is one. You could say that the early anarchists and the American founding fathers both identified the same types of failure modes in government and societal hierarchy, and where the founding fathers came up with a flawed system that nonetheless made a sincere effort to design a society of free individuals who could each live their lives in a pretty anarchist-friendly fashion, while still taking account of the realities of power and how to mitigate the problems of it… the anarchists just decided, “If we don’t pay attention to these problems then they won’t exist, much easier.”
Just picking a random point in this giant thread to chime in. I am an anarchist who is sometimes capable of being serious. So if you want to pick my brain, as PugJesus suggested, feel free.
One thing that I feel I should point out in regards to this particular comment is that anarchists do not advocate for creating power vacuums. Generally speaking, we advocate for people to self-govern in a much more direct way than representative democracy allows for. We urge the creation of voluntary institutions for managing social coordination, shaped by the needs of their members. We want to get rid of positions of power in ways that don’t result in a power vacuum, because people have their needs met and are no longer looking for guidance from a strongman.
We also (usually) recognize that our ideal isn’t going to be perfectly achievable, but we instead seek to get closer to that ideal as we discover new ways to practically do so.
I see that you read a summary of Kropotkin’s ideas, which is cool. He was an anarcho-communist specifically, which is probably the most popular anarchist tendency. I tend to advocate for mutualism, in part because I think it’s easier to understand for people that are accustomed to how capitalist societies function. The short, very oversimplified version is: abolish absentee ownership, create an economy of cooperatives, and gradually replace government institutions with more co-ops.
There’s sometimes tension between the different strains of anarchism, but usually we recognize that we’re all working towards roughly the same thing. Any future anarchist society is likely to be a patchwork of various frameworks serving different groups of people who have different preferences.
There are always positions of power. Anarchists are interested in minimizing the institutionalization of power and individual offices. And also, that even anarchists don’t live in a currently-anarchist society/structure, and have to work within that. Don’t believe Lemmy has implemented
Taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs…
Just to add on to your mention of there always being positions of power, I believe there is a difference between someone having power/authority in a specific moment or in a limited capacity versus a hierarchy.
A hierarchy enforces compliance from the top down, while individuals are capable of ceding to limited authority in specific situations; see every Anarchist military unit like the CNT, RIAU, BOAK, YPG and YPJ. Any individual member has the right to disobey, to leave. It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I think the difference between positions inherently having power and hierarchical power have been explained much better in other comments, but I just wanted to add that there are real world examples of Anarchists consenting to power/leadership, and it resulting in effective small unit combat effectiveness, outside of thought experiments or generalities.
It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I mean, I feel the need to point out that dissent, refusal of orders, and desertion were all punishable in CNT militias.
Any wartime unit is necessarily going to be stricter on such things, as coordination, timing, and accurate estimations are all vital in military operations.
The anarchist militias were very effective in the Spanish Civil War, though, you are correct about that.
Doesn’t seem very anarchist
Most anarchists I’ve spoken to, when pressed, just don’t want to follow other peoples rules. If they get to tel everyone else what to do suddenly anarchy loses its appeal.
I think there’s a difference between anarchists and “anarchists.” I read about Kropotkin and the first kind, and, if nothing else, his horror and opposition to the early Soviet state as a way of achieving economic justice, and how accurately he was able to diagnose how and why it would go wrong, puts him as pretty forward-thinking in my book.
I think OPP is neither of those things, and just wants Trump to get elected and is wearing a little plastic anarchist-mask to get it done. Somewhere deep in the forest you can find he and I talking about it.
Anarchists: Trust me, bro, we don’t NEED guardrails on power or democratic systems. We can just say “just be a good broski” and it all works out, if everyone’s living’ right. It’s beautiful, man.
Also anarchists, whenever they get even a pretty infinitesimal amount of power:
This is almost the exact opposite of an anarchist understanding of power.
The point of anarchist critiques of the state is that the structure and systems themselves corrupt and constrain people into acting in ways that are authoritarian and harmful.
So, even if you put a good person, and yes, even an anarchist into an authoritarian system, it will inevitably result in an abuse of power and violence towards oppressed people.
This is exactly why anarchists generally don’t put forth candidates or actively campaign or support political parties in the existing system. Because embedding a different, even better person into a corrupt system will only lead to further corruption.
I actually think that, ironically, this is a perfect validation of anarchist theory. Lemmy is a platform that was built by and for authoritarians (initially capitalists as Reddit, then only slightly modified by authoritarian leftists on Lemmy). The structure of moderation with mods and admins able to unilaterally take action and the difficulty of organized resistance inevitably leads to abuses, which is what this community is about.
I’m still waiting for the social media platform that has better infrastructure for distributed power among users rather than the chosen few.
I feel obligated to point out that the goal is not necessarily to make the system ‘good’, but to avert catastrophic consequences from the very-powerful-current-system taking an all-out position of “Crush the workers, kill the minorities” when such a thing is very much negative for anarchist initiatives and very much avoidable.
All politics is about power, whether its restraint, its redistribution, or its dismantling - and decisions from anyone who considers their political positions serious must, in that vein, be strategic, not merely spiritual.
I agree with you but I don’t think these two ideas are completely contradictory. My experience after participating in and studying liberal democracy for decades now is that the existing political structure is not going to meaningfully stop its worst harms no matter who is elected to lead it. As a result, organizations that build power outside of the constraints of electoral politics will be essential for any meaningful change, whether incremental or revolutionary.
But yes, if we can keep fascists out of power by voting, I support that. However, I feel strongly that voting is not even the bare minimum of political activity that we should be engaged in.
See, I think liberal democracy is perfectly capable of stopping its worst harms in the case of an educated and active citizenry (what a fucking endeavor that is to undertake… we’re nowhere close to that at the moment), but I also support organizations that build power outside of electoral politics, as alternative bases of power mandate negotiation, implicit or explicit, from the ruling power, and reduce the chance of abuse of power.
While the view of the government as a single unitary entity is foolish in my view, and thus even a society without strong non-government entities is not automatically doomed to tyranny because of the necessarily factional and disunited nature of government, a society with strong non-government entities providing alternatives is almost always better poised for liberty (and the preservation of liberty) than one without. At least within the modern context of statehood. Pre-modern polities were often worse off regarding liberty with strong non-government entities.
It’s why I like anarchists, even though I don’t count myself as one. I view their methods and goals as conducive to liberty, even if I’m not sure as to the desirability or practicality of entirely abolishing the state as we would recognize it.
There is a great article somewhere that makes a case that unions as the prime entities of political power and organization, as opposed to political parties staffed by a separate class of politicians who do politics and only politics full-time, is about a hundred times better.
It used to be that way in this country, and then it wasn’t and we got that second thing instead, and my god look at what happened.
You sound primed for syndicalism, honestly.
It’s not a problem with anarchists in general, I think, but that the kind of anarchists who put themselves into positions of power are generally… not the ones you want in power. Regardless of ideology, power, even the smallest, pettiest kind, tends to attract a certain kind of person more often, on average.
Yeah, but if your system is anarchist, those are exactly the kind of people who are going to wind up running things.
There’s a lot of overlap between anarchism and good sense. I’m not trying to be snarky about it. But it does seem that it has a couple of fatal flaws, and that is one. You could say that the early anarchists and the American founding fathers both identified the same types of failure modes in government and societal hierarchy, and where the founding fathers came up with a flawed system that nonetheless made a sincere effort to design a society of free individuals who could each live their lives in a pretty anarchist-friendly fashion, while still taking account of the realities of power and how to mitigate the problems of it… the anarchists just decided, “If we don’t pay attention to these problems then they won’t exist, much easier.”
Just picking a random point in this giant thread to chime in. I am an anarchist who is sometimes capable of being serious. So if you want to pick my brain, as PugJesus suggested, feel free.
One thing that I feel I should point out in regards to this particular comment is that anarchists do not advocate for creating power vacuums. Generally speaking, we advocate for people to self-govern in a much more direct way than representative democracy allows for. We urge the creation of voluntary institutions for managing social coordination, shaped by the needs of their members. We want to get rid of positions of power in ways that don’t result in a power vacuum, because people have their needs met and are no longer looking for guidance from a strongman.
We also (usually) recognize that our ideal isn’t going to be perfectly achievable, but we instead seek to get closer to that ideal as we discover new ways to practically do so.
I see that you read a summary of Kropotkin’s ideas, which is cool. He was an anarcho-communist specifically, which is probably the most popular anarchist tendency. I tend to advocate for mutualism, in part because I think it’s easier to understand for people that are accustomed to how capitalist societies function. The short, very oversimplified version is: abolish absentee ownership, create an economy of cooperatives, and gradually replace government institutions with more co-ops.
There’s sometimes tension between the different strains of anarchism, but usually we recognize that we’re all working towards roughly the same thing. Any future anarchist society is likely to be a patchwork of various frameworks serving different groups of people who have different preferences.
I thought the point of anarchy was not having positions of power.
There are always positions of power. Anarchists are interested in minimizing the institutionalization of power and individual offices. And also, that even anarchists don’t live in a currently-anarchist society/structure, and have to work within that. Don’t believe Lemmy has implemented
Just to add on to your mention of there always being positions of power, I believe there is a difference between someone having power/authority in a specific moment or in a limited capacity versus a hierarchy.
A hierarchy enforces compliance from the top down, while individuals are capable of ceding to limited authority in specific situations; see every Anarchist military unit like the CNT, RIAU, BOAK, YPG and YPJ. Any individual member has the right to disobey, to leave. It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I think the difference between positions inherently having power and hierarchical power have been explained much better in other comments, but I just wanted to add that there are real world examples of Anarchists consenting to power/leadership, and it resulting in effective small unit combat effectiveness, outside of thought experiments or generalities.
I mean, I feel the need to point out that dissent, refusal of orders, and desertion were all punishable in CNT militias.
Any wartime unit is necessarily going to be stricter on such things, as coordination, timing, and accurate estimations are all vital in military operations.
The anarchist militias were very effective in the Spanish Civil War, though, you are correct about that.