I was organizing with a group of (mostly) anarchists today. In my experience every anarchist I’ve organized with in real life is cool af and takes their praxis very seriously with major time commitments focused on improving the lives of workers and lumpen. They are usually hotter than any other tendency too shrug-outta-hecks. No whining about “tankies” or Kronstadt, just showing up to meetings, finding creative solutions and putting in the work.

Despite our nominal non-sectarian rule, I feel like there is still general derision towards anarchists here so I just wanted to remind everyone that these internet anarcho-Atlanticists on [insert dunk_tank instance or subreddit here] are just an online phenomenon and not real life. (Have I met those guys IRL too? Yes, but not in real organizing just in book clubs etc and they are tedious but there’s still more to work with than than a lib.)

So here’s to our anarchist comrades maduro-coffee keep keeping it real

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    47·
    10 months ago

    Real life anarchists are all so based they don’t have time to post. They’re too busy doing real shit that matters to real people in the world.

    • themoken@startrek.websiteEnglish
      30·
      10 months ago

      IRL anarchists are too busy anarchy-ing to fuck around on the internet full time. They spent the last week burning forestry equipment in Atlanta. They spent the last week getting arrested for feeding the homeless. They spent the last week planning a march on your boss. They DGAF about memes, or really anything except creating areas of the world where life is slightly less shit.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    25·
    10 months ago

    my partner calls themself an anarcho-tankie sometimes (they are an ancom).

    they do this to disassociate themselves from the online anarcho-liberal NATO-oids. funny-clown-hammer

    also they said they’d be absolutely happy living under a socialist state of any flavor over any capitalist one, even one with a “small or minimal government”.

    they dream of a stateless, classless, moneyless future just like we all do.

    in the end, whatever comes of whatever revolution occurs in the future, we will have to discard all orthdoxy and fuse together a wide variety of leftist ideologies into something that applies to the material conditions. if we’re picking up the pieces in a post-collapse scenerio, i’d want anarchists to take the lead and they will.

    we all have our roles to play and we’ll see what comes out the other side. left-unity-2

  • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    10 months ago

    Irl anarchists have a super wide range IME

    I’ve seen multiple that just destroyed/vandalized random signs or aesthetic structures right in front of cops with 0 escape plans and immediately got chased down and arrested

    Wasted all our time making sure they were alright, gave the cops an excuse to escalate with riot gear and reinforcements and dispersed the protest early. All to inflict like 2 thousand dollars of damages at best to a multi-billion dollar company

  • Babs [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    10 months ago

    We have the best anarchists here, because Hexbear has a certain culture to it that makes our anarchists very acceptable to our marxist majority. Irl anarchists can be a mixed bag. Maybe because it’s more common for unread radlibs to call themselves anarchists rather than communists?

  • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    10 months ago

    In my experience there are two main types of anarchists - the ones who are out there getting shit done and the ones who spend their time online engaging in ideological pissing contests or in echo chambers.

    They are wildly different in their disposition and their politics.

    Active anarchists are generally easy to get along with and want to get shit done - whether it’s making life materially better for people who are oppressed or whether it’s wrecking shit up for reactionaries.

    The other type of anarchist is mostly concerned with purity of ideology and praxis, and in finding ways to justify their support for NATO and shit like that. These are often the people who presume that because they personally do not engage in any practical application of their politics that therefore their ideological opponents do not either and they’ll challenge you to describe what action you have been involved in recently (Bruh, I ain’t gonna dox myself and I sure as hell ain’t gonna dox myself in an attempt to impress some dork whose praxis starts and ends with sharing memes.)

    I know I can be a vocal critic of anarchists sometimes but I sincerely appreciate the grass-toucher anarchists because they are a staunch lot. It’s the terminally-online types that rub me up the wrong way though.

    • Nakoichi [he/him]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      16·
      10 months ago

      Trust me, us grass toucher types fucking LOATH the terminally online types (of which I am sort of one but only cuz I help hold this crazy weird little corner of the internet together out of love for yall).

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        10 months ago

        I reckon you would know it as well as I do - there are plenty of anarchists who do spend a lot of time online (shit, some of them are basically engaged full-time in online activism doing critical work like surveilling and doxing fascists) but they still aren’t of the terminally-online variety, and as soon as they encounter the terminally-online type they get the ick.

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        10 months ago

        The good thing is that type of anarchist doesn’t go outside, and certainly not to engage in activism, so you’re pretty safe.

        This type of anarchist is courted by NAFO chuds and they tend to take people like Vaush, Dylan Burns, Animarchy, Destiny, and Keffals seriously.

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    10 months ago

    I have met a few irl anarcho-bidenists, but they were literally children and therefore forgiven

    Hopefully, my gentle rejoiners pushed them in a better direction

  • aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    10·
    10 months ago

    Oooo i’m tired of posting & reading memes, how does one meet (and even participate in activities with) our anarchist comrades 🤔🦧

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      10 months ago

      Volunteer for something with a leftists vibe - soup kitchens, food not bombs, security for leftist events, mutual aid stuff.
      There’s usually a few in those groups, and it’s an easy way to get an in. If you’ve got a local punk bar then visit that as well. Maybe help them host a “riot night” if you’ve got video-editing experience (a riot night is when you hook up a projector to a montage of cops getting beat up, and then that is just run in the background the whole night. Good fun).

      In short: go outside

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    10 months ago

    I have some sympathy for the Anarcho-Bidenists because I was, at one time, a teenager who called himself an anarchist but who really had just read a few CrimethInc. books. I think the entryway into identifying as an anarchist is much more accessible to folks because it’s so ideologically heterogenous and less societally stigmatized, which makes it easier to claim radical politics without the grounding in theory that allows you to purge yourself of reactionary views.