Anarchism

It would take a huge amount of space to do those 4+ things justice. I'll share in some of them but I think it would pretty quickly be something deserving its own thread or maybe just some reading recommendations.

Re: Kronstadt, calling that a betrayal is just incorrect. First, they launched a mutiny directed at the Bolsheviks ("no Bolsheviks in the Soviets", so the lines went), of course the Bolsheviks would act in opposition. It was a direct, oppositional fight, not getting stabbed in the back. In addition, part of the "betrayal" narrative depends on characterizing the Kronstadt mutiny as emerging from those who had fought at Kronstadt for the October Revolution, as in, it was the people who fought and died alongside Bolsheviks for freedom who were later jailed and killed by them. But this is also largely inaccurate. The Kronstadt sailors mutinying drew heavily from new recruits from the south that had never been part of Kronstadt during the revolution, they were building their own structures (many of them questionable) using the principles they learned from the diverse ancom traditions in the south. I recommend reading contemporary accounts and items as close to the Soviet archives as possible.

Re: Makhnovschina, this one really requires reading heavily, to get a sense of the oppositional forces. It is, of course, much easier to justify a betrayal narrative here given the repeated alliances and breaking of alliances, the Red Terror, etc. These were people who fought side by side against the Whites, there is no doubt, and the Bolsheviks went to war against the Blacks and heavily oppressed them. My gut inclination was initially to say it was simply a mistake, a wrong. But if you delve more deeply into the specifics of operations, what the realities meant on the ground, it becomes clearer that this was not simply a revanchist attitude by the Bolsheviks, but a direct, material opposition due to the need to feed the workers in cities. This is why the Red Army faced no resistance in the cities and why the Black Army's entire operation was deeply interlinked with the peasantry, namely a petty bourgeois peasantry premised on isolation and, oddly, frequent entitlement to the products of the city, which the Black Army often stole in order to support the peasant communes run by their mayors. Rather than bridge this divide, the Black Army greatly exacerbated it, worsening starvation conditions. And this was not limited in impact just to the region of Machnovschina, as it had long been an exporter of grain to the north. This did develop into a sectarian fight, though it was also not simply The Reds breaking alliances to attack The Blacks. As autonomous groups, subsets of The Blacks often declared agreements to be over sporadically and took up arms and killed of their own volition. So if we call it betrayal, I would say a qualified one.

Re: Spain I would ask you to be more specific.

Re: IWW that publication is a lengthy polemic about every perceived grievance they could muster, and mostly not about the IWW at all, including the inaccuracies about Kronstadt that were belabored without merit until the opening of the archives. I don't know what you would want me to do with it except to suggest reading extensively and not relying on pamphlets. Every polemical claim requires investigation and specifics.

And I said there’s plenty of other decades with “misunderstandings”?

And of fucking course the 20s and 30s are the primary focus because that’s the period with the last revolutionary potential which MLs squandered to build Capitalism again.

If you skip over what I say, you will end up making us go in circles. The next thing I wrote: "I am of course not saying “the only things are from the 1920s”, but that this is a primary focus. And when asked about the time periods you think of as primary, they popped up. Full circle, lol."

No, an affinity group is an affinity group a bunch of admins is something else, but can also be valid.

Then acknowledge what I said before this and that you skipped over: "Right so they are anarchist instances. And they make important decisions about federation by fiat of a couple admins. And that is very funny for anarchists to do. Inventing scenarios that didn’t happen to say how they are reasonable is… not relevant. In many ways you implicitly acknowledge how silly it is, because none of your examples are, “a couple admins just decide it”, instead you talk about affinity group subsets."

There’s plenty of scenarios where anarchists take decisions without voting.

Yes of course there are. This is not a real response to anything I have said. We have already long established that this is about making site-wide censorship decisions re: federation, not literally everything. That is just another implicit straw man.

I think, of course, that is it obvious that a site-wide censorship decision is an important one that it is very funny for an anarchist instance to decide via a couple admins.

Again, you don’t get to declare by fiat what is a “major decision”. But I’m glad you’re self-amused at least.

I do get to say, by fiat, what I think is a major decision. And I think it's actually pretty obviously a major decision, which is why despite being 3-4 comments deep we still have to talk about things like "There’s plenty of scenarios where anarchists take decisions without voting".

Nonense

Yesnsense.

I’m pretty certain you’re a Marxist-Leninist, so you (critically?) support the usual suspects of USSR and PRC. Probably also Cuba and if you’re extreme enough North Korea. Am I wrong?

"I expect you to be able to explain this without my input, as you are so certain, right?"

That’s not a naturalistic fallacy. That’s me pointing out that this way of acting is obvious when you don’t decide by fiat why something is “major decision” for others.

I do get to decide my opinions by "fiat", lol. Got the thought police in here. Why are you copying my terminology to use it inappropriately for other situations?

But okay, I will accept that what you meant was that it was obvious. I will simply disagree (for the 5th time), because I think it is obvious that site-wide censorship is obviously a significant decision.

No, I didn’t say that doing this justifies it. That’s bad uncharitable reading on your part to claim a fallacy. I’ve actually done “voting on every ban” so I’m familiar with how well it works. Have you?

My point, which I will say was not obvious, when it comes to voting on every ban, was that it would be better to overcorrect in the opposite decision.

Just for the record, do tell, what experience do you have running an instance or a comm?

I have experience with both. It's thankless, isn't it?

Do you know that for sure? Did you check when slrpnk defederated hexbear?

slrpnk did not defederate from hexbear. It blocked hexbear without announcement, by fiat of its main admin. It confirmed this blocking/"defedereation" in August last year. This was not something discussed nor presented, lol. It's just one admin doing what they would like.

Again, why do you think you can declare by fiat what is a major decision?

lmao there it is again.

A censorship decision is of course major, it is about who your instance's users can interact with via your website. If your federated social media website is anything at all, it is about users and how they interact, what they post, etc.

And again, non-anarchist instances have done this. It's very very very funny that anarchists ones don't.

It certainly is.

It is painfully obviously not. An admin quietly implementing a decision to block after the instance existed and then letting people know this is how it was last year is not in any way an anarchist collective where everyone's just agreeing to those pre-existing bylaws by joining. It is just a website with an admin making the decision on their own.

Again, do you know when such instances were blocked comparative to the life of the acting instance?

Uh yeah?

Just because you disagree what is a “major decision” for other groups of people you don’t belong to, doesn’t mean you are right.

I think this straw manning thing might be a habit.

The impact of the decision and who gets to vote on it is determined by the people most affected by it.

Of course that is literally not the case here, is it? Or did slrpnk vote to block/defederate?

That’s the core anarchist principle you don’t seem to understand.

The core anarchist principle that nobody gets to judge who is anarchist unless they are a member of that particular anarchist group? I would love to see that core principle justified. Please show me your sources!

It's not lying and I agree folks can check out the link I posted.