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chapotraphouse @hexbear.net
AcidSmiley [she/her] @hexbear.net

I got kicked off my favorite trans discord for defending the USSR

It wasn't a hostile discussion or anything, i didn't even go full "the kulaks deserved it" (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full "the kulaks did not deserve it"). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said "the revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary" and that there's one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: "If the October Revolution hadn't succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussolini's March on Rome". Basically the whole "Jakarta Method" train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.

Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went "disengage" on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, that's apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no "sis, you're talking to me as a mod here", not even a notification that i got banned.

The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, she's now completely going off about "authoritarians". The nerve some people have.

Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.

127 comments

  • this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join

    she's now completely going off about "authoritarians"

    I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.

    In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.

    • Anti-authoritarianism is weird because it sees government authority as an ultimate evil but private entities authority as the status quo.

      Private banks forcing people out of their homes? Thats a good society. Government doing the same and distributing it? Authoritarian evil.

      Then if there is a successful revolution - anything the revolutionaries do is now authoritarian because they took over the government.

      • The problem is authoritarian doesn't have a precise mechanical definition at all. Anarchists and liberals don't use the word in the same way. A lot of my anarchist comrades don't even use the term because of how imprecise it is. Instead I'll see anarchists mention lopsided hierarchies in general, imperialism, or how a hierarchy can lead to abuses of power. Or more broadly they might disagree with seizing state power as a tactic, but I think well-read anarchists realize that authoritarian is not a coherent ideological position. No one identifies as an authoritarian, for instance.

        Liberals use it as a way to conflate fascists and communists. They use it to mean there's a lack of representation from groups/interests they believe are inherent to any society. Since all socialist countries exclude or restrain representation of the capitalist class, that makes all socialism authoritarian by a liberal point of view. They see a single party state as tyrannical, because they would prefer to see a state with various competing bourgeois elements rather than the single uniting interest of the working class.

        Liberals also use the term (and tankie) in a completely racist way. White countries aren't authoritarian, that's reserved for scary foreigners

    • I think it’s strident individualism masquerading as anarchism.

      Both anarchism and socialism heavily center community. They put slightly different emphasis on different parts of community and anarchism is more decentralized but anarchism still places community and a persons place and rights vis a vis their community as well as the expectations a community can have of its members at the center.

      It’s less obvious with anarchism since anarchism is less proscriptive about what form community should take and usually it’s some vision of a decentralized variety of voluntarist communes or something like that, but it always has the idea of a person as a part of their community at the center.

      Strident individualism, the idea that the individual is more important than the collective, is antithetical to both anarchism and socialism and this is what really separates right-libertarianism from anarchism.

      • A lot of people make the claim that individualist anarchism is right wing because they just don't know what it's actually about and think it's some kind of philosophical anarcho-capitalism. But I've never met someone who read Renzo Novatore and thought he was right wing at all. Edgy? Extremely so. Kinda dumb? Honestly I think so too. But right wing as in in favour of the reaction and the capitalist class, no way.

    • I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.

      In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.

      You have described neo-liberalism; nothing must change, only managed decline.

      • Maybe that's the correct way to frame anti-authoritarianism to actually get people to start recognising the need for some authority if you're going to see change.

        We might honestly be slowly re-treading ground that the neoliberal thinktanks have already been over in their decision-making to support, back and push this ideology.

    • Its just crypto-libertarianism, right?

      • I mean, sorta?

        The distinguishing feature of anarchists is that they do in fact want revolution and are willing to shoot guns over it. While there is no such feature of ancaps, the NAP is explicitly anti-revolutionary, and opposes all capability to effect change within the system through any means other than the use of money and property.

        So yes. I can kinda see that comparison. The only thing I will say however is that the anti-authoritarians that can be pipelined leftwards are usually still in favour of use of authority for some things, such as enforcing the age of consent. Whereas the libertarians seem to be against authority in even that case too. This distinguishes which group of anti-authoritarians that pipeline left vs which group of them pipeline right.

      • I wrote a longer rely to op but I think it’s when the rights and liberties of the individual are made supreme to the point of overriding the rights of the community, that’s when it’s just crypto-libertarianism masquerading as anarchism.

    • I don't think anti-authoritarianism (as you describe it) can be separated from leftism (anarchism is right there), nor should it be (it's largely correct in many cases and also a powerful organizing tool). Rather, I think anyone who digs in on that front should be asked two questions:

      1. How would you get from our current society to the one you think is best?
      2. In the society you think is best, what would happen when Person A harms Person B?

      Either they will have practical answers that lead naturally into discussions like "when is authority justified, and what actions can a justified authority take?" or they'll show their ass with some "abolish bedtimes" baby anarchist stuff.

      • I don't think anti-authoritarianism (as you describe it) can be separated from leftism (anarchism is right there)

        Anti-authoritarianism is distinguishable from anarchism because anarchists do not oppose use of authority for revolution nor to maintain post-revolution, they support authoritarian means in those cases.

        Anything that opposes revolution upholds the status quo.

        The anti-authoritarians might be a pipeline into the left, but are not yet among the left in that their ideology literally upholds neoliberalism by opposing all use of authority to change it. You could view them in the same way that belief in alternative medicines isn't right wing but is a pipeline into right wing conspiracy thought. Distinguished from the right but you can see how it leads into it. Anti-authoritarians are distinguishable from the left in that they oppose all the things we need to bring about any real change, but they can be a pipeline into the left by making them realise this.

        This is also why the anti-tankie rhetoric is so necessary for liberals. It makes it harder to do the work to pipeline the anti-authoritarians into the left by aiming to kick all real leftists out of the anti-authoritarian spaces and shut down all thought-processes of anti-authoritarians if/when they speak to people that are part of the proper left.

      • (it's largely correct in many cases

        This seems to be the case mainly because the principal authorities in capitalist society are ones that should be opposed and destroyed. That doesn't make it a coherent political position. See Gramsci's letter to anarchists.

    • So,

      ?

    • In addition to what everyone else already said, being against something isn't the same as supporting something.

      Anarchists are pro-anarchy, communists are pro-communism, but anti-authoritarians aren't necessarily either of those two. They're anti-authority, which is often a word they themselves can't even define. And because it's impossible to exercise in reality, they have to pick and choose which powers they consider "authoritarian" and which aren't. Since these people don't read, this just ends up looking like another flavor of liberalism.

    • nah

      • < Me staring at this trying to work out what it's supposed to mean

      • Like, there's a word for an antagonism to authority. It's anarchism. This doesn't imply an ignorance of power or of its present application in the real world, nor does it imply that all authorities are indistinguishable, but it does imply that we hold no structures so sacred as to be above question. That's not counterrevolutionary: it's the very thing that revolution consists of.

    • I don't have the time or energy to argue for/against a state at the moment but I'd like to leave some stuff for anyone interested in an actual anarchist analysis of the state over idle speculation from people who have a clear bias against left-libertarian politics. Plenty of anarchists read statist material to gain an understanding of the statist perspective. I've personally read enough of Lenin (including the state and revolution), Trotsky and all that to know it isn't my jam. Not to mention, Marx and Engles were against the state as a revolutionary apparatus (it's included in the link, don't @ me).

      The State is Counterrevolutionary

      And for an anarchist analysis on revolution, complex systems analysis, etc. The Revolution Series

      A Modern Anarchism

      Marx Against the State (article)

      I'm only linking the one channel because it's relevant. Anarchism, as an inherently decentralized ideology and movement has a wide variety of theorists, analysis and opinions. Anarks material is well imformed and comprehensive. I'm not looking to convince anyone to "switch teams" but if we're going to criticize one another it would help to know what we all actually believe and stand for

  • That really sucks.

    Whenever I bring up commie shit in real life, people are generally just really surprised because they haven't ever heard those ideas or perspectives before. Sure they argue sometimes, but they can't just kick you out of a place.

    Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.

    • Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.

      Sounds like this is a result of the rapidly increasing prevalence of liberal solipsism originating from the massively overblown obsession with the few 2016 election ads Russia bought. Now liberals have an easy get out of being flanked from the left card by always accusing anti-western communists of being either literal chat bots or paid shills. That's much harder for a lib to do offline while the conversation is literally face to face.

      Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.

      • Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.

        When a lib calls someone a bot, they aren't trying to make a factual statement about the world. It's a social signal: "I don't have to listen to or engage with the content of what you say because you're on the Bad Team."

      • I would hope that liberals don't literally believe that we are all AI chatbots that are replying to each other over and over, I think it's just used in the same way that chuds use "NPC". like, the only way you could get to our views is if you have zero critical thought about the world, know very little, are hyper suggestible to the first narrative you see, etc, which is very funny coming from (typically American) liberals whose entire concept of the world is generated by scrolling through reddit and half-remembered thoughts from high school

      • I thought the obsession over the advertisements were deflection from the Wikileaks e-mail dumps (DNC & Podesta leaks) about the Clinton campaign and the confirmation of the open secrets within those e-mails. (e.g: incestuous relationship between the campaign and the media, the Clinton campaign preemptively taking control of the DNC, and the Pied Piper strategy to set up radicals like Trump to enable Clinton to have an easier time getting elected.)

        Those leaks created a crisis of legitimacy, which has only been resolved artificially through self-delusion, and has only served to institutionalize learned helplessness and alienation from power.

        We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

  • I feel like the kind of shit marginalized people go through in the imperial core tends to be inherently radicalizing in an anti-capitalist direction without necessarily being radicalizing in a pro-communist and anti-west direction.

    That makes a lot of sense considering even the most marginalized people in the imperial core have the privilege of not having to worry about bombs being dropped on their homes, CIA backed coups deposing their democratically elected leaders, nor the general all encompassing horror of imperial resource extraction. The result is that western marginalized and privileged citizens alike will both readily accept the never ending deluge of atrocity propaganda against AES emanating out of essentially all western media outlets.

    If you believed in literally everything the CIA said about AES, how would you feel about countries like the USSR or PRC? At that point, the red fascist rhetoric actually makes sense. How many fascists should you allow to sit at your table? 0. It's insidious, and it has broken the brains of too many otherwise decent people. For that reason I try not to judge people like your discord moderator (other than for unironically being a discord moderator) too harshly for things like this.

    I don't think people within the imperial core in general will soften up on AES until real communist organizations can build up local mutual aid networks to support the most precarious of us in their communities. Ideally they'd provide necessary social services running parallel to the rotting remains of the social safety nets once maintained by western governments until the fall of the USSR. That would lend to us the necessary position of public trust to displace the misinformation put out by corporate media by providing relevant education on communism, specifically AES, where the public education system has purposefully failed. Deliberate agitation on this front is very necessary in that there is no horrible experience one can endure in the imperial core that would result in intuitively figuring out we need to organize society in a similar way to AES countries.

    • I am pretty aware that I would be dead three times over in third world country by now, the point is though that the west tries to pass that off as its achievement, and not it causing the conditions that make ND trans people die in the third world. Maybe I'd be fine in Cuba, idk, I just hate queers who defend capitalism a bit more bc they are happy servants of an evil that kills their siblings and keeps them down extra hard

    • If you believed in literally everything the CIA said about AES, how would you feel about countries like the USSR or PRC? At that point, the red fascist rhetoric actually makes sense. How many fascists should you allow to sit at your table? 0. It's insidious, and it has broken the brains of too many otherwise decent people. For that reason I try not to judge people like your discord moderator (other than for unironically being a discord moderator) too harshly for things like this.

      I'm glad someone mentions this. We're constantly being bombarded by propaganda and there's very little pushback, I can't really blame people for believing that the USSR was a cruel, genocidal regime and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are acting in "good faith" when they do shit like this. If I believed that Stalin deliberately engineered the Holodomor etc., I would ban people from my discord too if they said the USSR was cool.

  • I'm sorry that happened to you.

    There always seems to be a political bias against communists, especially in this new phase of the red scare, and mods will find any pretext to ban communists because they've been so heavily indoctrinated against communism.

    Once things have cooled off, I would consider messaging that mod and pointing out that you didn't attack anyone, you just defended your political position, and you were banned without warning although the person who was slinging personal insults got multiple warnings and was treated with kid gloves. I personally wouldn't want to be invited back but I would put a little bit of a barb in the end of my message by saying that the mods actions not only were an expression of authoritarianism by silencing dissenting voices on the left but that their actions are a tacit approval of the tyranny of a political orthodoxy that permits slinging personal insults so long as the person has the "correct" political beliefs. Then I'd say that they are a parody of anti-authoritarianism and they'll probably justify their actions and inaction to themselves because the spooky tankie is pointing out uncomfortable truths which is further evidence of how they cannot be permitted into these spaces (because otherwise you'd be forced to confront your own cognitive dissonance - the horror!)

    Note that doing so will not earn you any friends. But sometimes people like this need to be called to account and, perhaps over time, cracks will start to form in their anti-communist indoctrination.

    • Yeah, i'll try to fix this as best as i can. It's not easy, i can't message her if she doesn't add me as a friend because we do not share a server anymore. So she can just ignore me without listening what i have to say. But a friend of mine will try to get a word in with the mods, she's been unhappy with that one mod's moderation style for some time now, and maybe that'll help. IDK.

      I'll be honest here, i would actually want to get back into that place, i really like a lot of the people there and don't want to be cut off from them. I've only exchanged DMs with a handful of them because i've just been there for a few months and don't go DMing people out of my own, but that handful now includes people i'm meeting irl. I'm actually having vegan sushi with a girl i met there tomorrow. I just click with a lot of the transfems there and idk if there's another server with users from my country where that's the case. I'm looking around rn, but it's not looking good, the other big servers tend to have transmed and / or chaser problems and that's an instant hard nope for me. It's not made easier that i just don't feel very comfortable around dudes and am not interested in servers that aren't overwhelmingly transfem.

      • Ah, fair enough.

        In that case I'd avoid slinging shit at the mod and just keep it to the fact that you were stating your own political beliefs, you weren't using personal insults against anyone, and despite that fact you were given no warnings you were immediately banned. I'd also mention that the other user was given multiple warnings for actually breaking the rules and yet they weren't banned.

        If you can get a message across to the head mod, try to explain that you feel as though the mod that banned you allowed their own personal bias to influence their actions in a way that was unjustly harsh against you, unjustly tolerant of the other user, and how this ultimately crrates a hostile community that could rapidly become toxic if allowed to continue.

        I think in future, especially in broad left spaces, I'd recommend hiding your power level and avoiding getting too involved in ideological debates. There's a time and a place for that stuff and when you are marginalised it can be hard to come across safer spaces for finding community and, unfortunately, it often means that you have to bite your tongue and then vent later on in a place like Hexbear or you can take out your ideological frustrations on some unwitting "anti-tankie" on some other platform.

        I know it fucking sucks to find a place that accepts you and is safer only to find out that it's openly hostile to your politics (despite being for leftists 🙄) but often it's a choice of whether you want to be right or if you want to be accepted. (I'm not trans myself but I'm queer and very much neurodivergent so there aren't that many spaces which are welcoming and supportive for me that are actually safe enough. I often find myself needing to compartmentalise my capital-P politics in these spaces.)

        Congrats on finding someone to meet up with! I hope you enjoy the sushi.

        Good luck with it.

      • It sounds like it is possible that the other mods would significantly disagree with your ban

  • i think this is the biggest weakness of online "community." i know for a lot of people in a lot of situations it's all that's available, but a single egomaniac shouldn't be able to unilaterally cut you off from your friends.

    • yeah absolutely

      I mean, the two people on their who are actually my friends already, i can stay in contact with them. We know each other outside of the server and that's great. But all the people i just loved to shitpost and joke around with, some of whom would have become actual friends over time, they're gone, i'm not gonna see most of these again.

    • seize the means of producing friends

  • Fucking labor aristocrats. They know they're on the side of imperialism even if they don't admit it, and that's why they purge anyone who opposes the subjugation and enslavement of the global south.

  • I was banned from Keffals discord for saying that Kim Jong Un isn't starving the people of North Korea for fun and laughs. Obvs not the same, but reminded me nonetheless

  • God that fuckin blows. I hang out occasionally on a trans discord I found through a friend that's mostly advertised on tumblr. It's explicitly ml though, which keeps away this kind of shit. I can link you in dm's if you want. The server is explicitly for transfem communists.

  • I have trouble letting shit go when I see it online but more and more I've gotten used to simply picking my battles when I see shit that Id isagree with that I know I'll get written off as a tankie if I speak up about. I'm active in a few servers and none are really satisfying to me. The one with a mostly ML admin team has... other problems and the rest are either just like the server you describe ("left leaning" but filled with "anti-authoritarian" brain worms) or worse are outright liberal. I just avoid politics altogether, or only discuss the stuff we agree on. I value the social engagement too much I guess.

    • yeah that's probably for the better. idk, i knew this mod has Dune-sized brainworms, she's called me out for "internalized transphobia" in the past for quoting Leslie Feinberg. She's a total bellend, an absolute dingdong, a neverending wellspring of bad takes. This wasn't our first discussion about communism vs her liberal carricature of anarchism, and she seriously told me last time that tankies want to put her up against the wall. That person just can't be trusted, yet she's the most active mod on one of Germany's biggest trans servers, and by far the biggest one that does not tolerate chasers, transmeds and similar scum. It fucking hurts to have the door to that slammed in your face like this.

  • F sorry Acid, can you just make an alt?

    • I've thought about that, but because that was a closed-off trans only space and because i did not treat that server as a dedicated place where i get political and practice the according amount of opsec, i would either be recognizable with that new acc or i would have to hold back on my public interactions with people. Like, i couldn't post any selfies because people there know my face. And until today, that was something i was completely fine with. I was there because i wanted that kind of closeness and intimacy. It's like going to pride in a really skimpy outfit, y know? You expose yourself because you're in a safe space. It's public, but you know you're among your own people. That kind of vibe. I wouldn't get that back with a new acc.

127 comments