Well first of all, I think that characterizing what someone else said as me saying "heinous shit" is showing bad faith. I won't get into an argument on what someone else said and meant, but I'll only say that 1. you're mischaracterizing their position to make it sound much worse and 2. this is about shit that happened ~100 years ago. You keep telling anarchists to get over the betrayals and purges that anarchists went through at the hands of MLs, ~100 years ago, and trivialize those away as well, but then get all upset when an anarchist doesn't show the right amount of respect to USSR soldiers. You can't have it both ways.

My point wasn't that you should do everything that I did. My point was that you are basically being a contrarian throwing a fit for years on end[...]

And this again, shows bad faith on your end. Me being "a contrarian" is just being being consistent for the past 20 years. Me "throwing a fit" is me pointing out the bad faith and attempts at bullying directed at me whenever they happen. I literally avoid going out of my way to interact with hexbears, especially politically, because I've found it impossible to have a good faith discussion. You can't plead for a good faith interaction, and then just paint me so uncharitably while you're doing it.

I'm not asking about what someone must do, I'm talking about what someone should do.

By doing this, you are making an ethical statement. When something is ethical and one should do it, there's an unspoken implication that someone is less ethical by not doing it. I don't think you're trying to deliberately do a "sleight-of-hand" either, but you also can't bristle at someone reacting defensively to you implying they're acting less ethically than you are. The point of my statement was to dismiss you ethical statement. No, someone shouldn't always do what you did, because material reality prohibits most people from doing it. It's just as valid however to completely block all interaction with people one considers toxic, just as it is valid for someone to ridicule people for being toxic. Your chosen course-of-action, as successful as it has been for you, does not assert an ethical superiority to all others.

You should have some standards for yourself, and shit-flinging about le tankies is not enough to say you have a serious political attitude.

Does that only apply to MLs, or to all other political positions as well? (i.e. can I shit-fling at libs without being labeled unserious?) If the former, who determines which political position deserves unconditional respect in order to signify a "serious political attitude"?

What I am talking about here is how people can, based on being more consistent with their own political ideologies (and not just personal drama contrarianism) seek a better outcome for everyone involved, even if what you should do is not exactly what I did. If that's too much for you, why are you talking about revolutionary organizing?

First of all, I think that if you're seriously committed in having a good faith discussion you need to get out of the condescending frame-of-mind where you constantly belittle me as a "drama contrarian". It is not conductive to your stated reason for interacting with me.

That being said, I reject the idea that the right course of action is always to reach across, like a new Jesus, regardless of how many times you get slapped in the face while doing so. I also reject that it is stepping stone for revolutionary organizing. Like most other anarchists I believe in plurality of action. Some of us will be better at mending bridges and converting others. Some of us won't, but will be good at other things. I happen to be able to do both, but only when in the right frame of mind and material situation. I personally don't put a lot of weight in online discourse for achieving "revolutionary organizing" as I find that the true radicalization happens in real life experiences. I.e. people get radicalized through direct action for mutual aid, not online arguments.

That is to say, I don't feel guilty for trolling people when they're trying to act like dicks online, even when people like you claim I should have risen above this. You may disagree with me on that, but I haven't seen a convincing argument otherwise.

"Caution" and "antagonism" are not the same thing

I think you and other MLs seriously need to take a step back and realize that not everything is about you. Me posting a meme in an anarchist comm about historical grievances isn't trying to "antagonize" you. MLs don't actually need to go on into anarchist spaces to start flamewars due to memes, nor do they need to take everything so fucking seriously. I guarantee the impact of that meme on people's opinion of MLs will be much lower than a 1000-comment bullying pile-on.

From my perspective, posting a meme about historical grievances, or about the failings of state-socialism is a form of caution. I am trying to caution people to criticize ML ideology and its results. Sure it can be seen as antagonizing, but only if one always assumes they're the main char and that a meme inside an anarchist comm is directed at them directly.

Which leads me to the following:

but you're glossing over where I pointed out that it would need to be mutual with HB laying off you and that I would advocate to them on your behalf in the interest of normalizing relations. I'm literally already acknowledging that there is a side here attacking you and they also would need to stop, so it's silly to just pretend that I'm telling you to unilaterally get in line and take it on the chin.

You're conflating two very different things. There's a very large difference between attacking a person and attacking an ideology. Hexbears have a habit of taking criticism of ML ideology or practice, as a personal affront to themselves, therefore seeing criticism of their ideology, as a personal attack. To date (iirc), I've never personally attacked a single ML person for their ML takes, in all my posts. Likewise, hexbears never criticize anarchism itself, they only attack people directly for expressing takes they don't like.

You can't conflate these two things as being equal! You can't say: "I agree we should stop attacking you as a person, but you also need to stop critizing ML theory. By extension, if you do continue to criticize ML theory, you can't complain about being attacked personally." These are not the same thing. It brings to mind that saying about the two meaning of respect; respect of a person and respect of authority, and how people in authority conflate these two deliberately.

I'm completely serious about this and I'm confident that I could enlist a few other people (who are more respected on HB than I am) to help me make the case to the community. In fact, I think an important element would be discussing with you what you think fair terms are and what other parties think fair terms are and trying to come to an agreement on that basis.

I applaud your aims even if I am disbelieving about your potential to herd these cats. I appreciate being able to discuss in what appears to be good faith, because until now such attempts have been thrown back in my face (which is why I permanently have "shields up" when discussing with hexbears.)

I think it's silly to "discuss terms". We're not warring nations. I think y'all being able to distinguish between criticism of an ideology and personal attacks would go a long way towards normalizing relations. Personally I'm not someone who holds grudges, but I'm also not one to "turn the other cheek" either, that is to say, I can easily adjust to whatever vibes come from hexbears whether good or bad.

On the other hand what part of the anarchist flotilla do you think is problematic and should stop?

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well first of all, I think that characterizing what someone else said as me saying "heinous shit" is showing bad faith.

If you look at the context of the statement, you'll see that this was in the "protecting heinous shit" conversational thread, I never conflated it with what you said and in fact don't think that you would say it. Obviously, I think you're just getting confused here rather than deliberately misrepresenting me. I was furthermore very careful about my claim because I was there for when that fight happened and saw the attitude that you and the other admin took, but what I just said is very concretely and undeniably true when you look at some of the various remarks the person made at the time, though of course this is colored by the fact that the user very obviously also just wasn't familiar with the historical subject and therefore didn't understand the real meaning of what he was saying.

this is about shit that happened ~100 years ago.

Was it even 1 year ago? I guess it might have been.

You keep telling anarchists to get over the betrayals and purges that anarchists went through at the hands of MLs, ~100 years ago, and trivialize those away as well,

I (thank god) am not Stalin, and I have plenty of practical and ideological differences with Stalin and you (thank god) are not Makhno and presumably have many differences with him. I don't think it's useful to project things this way instead of looking at people's actual professed beliefs unless they demonstrate having the same attitude (as, for example, when liberals respond to rising fascism by punching left). You can hate Stalin all you want, I don't care, I'm not arguing to pantomime his policies and lines and I would oppose someone who did.

I also just think that it's counterproductive to say "Why are you still blaming me for something that I did maybe a year ago while not taking personal responsibility for what someone who you never met and who would have hated you did a century ago? Pretty hypocritical." These just aren't comparable and I'm trying to talk to you mostly on the level of a human being. Blame me for my own actions.

By doing this, you are making an ethical statement. When something is ethical and one should do it, there's an unspoken implication that someone is less ethical by not doing it.

By the time you said this, it wasn't unspoken:

I'm just saying you made a poor choice and have continuously recommitted yourself to that poor choice.

But that's taking the very broad definition of "ethical," when I think what you're suggesting is that I'm making a moral claim (since the two commonly mean the same thing). To be clear, I don't believe in morality and I'm not assigning immorality to you. When I say "should," I mean it in the more banal prescriptive sense of "If you want the plant to grow, you should water it regularly." What I am saying is that if you're interested in a better state of affairs for yourself and others, then a different course of action makes more sense. So again, yes, I am saying you made a poor choice many times, that's why I'm arguing for changing course. That's not me claiming some sort of obligation on your part, because what I'm counting on is that theoretically you also want for things to be better for yourself and others. There is no duty or imposition here, again I am trying to talk to you on the level of a human being.

No, someone shouldn't always do what you did

Nor did I say they should always do so.

because material reality prohibits most people from doing it.

This is sometimes true, but it is less true than you think it is. People are too used to falling into antagonistic behaviors when they really don't need to do such a thing and it makes things worse for themselves compared to alternative courses of action.

It's just as valid however to completely block all interaction with people one considers toxic, just as it is valid for someone to ridicule people for being toxic. Your chosen course-of-action, as successful as it has been for you, does not assert an ethical superiority to all others.

I really don't know what I need to tell you for you to internalize that I'm not saying everyone should respond just as I did, because I listed other responses and indicated that there were yet others that I think would also be reasonable. That said, I think people cling to the idea of "validity" to avoid considering what the best thing to do really is. Obviously all people are imperfect (and I'm a wreck of a person, I just have this one specific interest) and we can say that things are going well if they consistently choose "pretty okay" courses of action, but we shouldn't fail to acknowledge that there are frequently better courses of action, which is why when we aren't talking about people in general but ourselves specifically we need to give the subject substantially more scrutiny than what we suppose is fine for what the general population does on average. Basically I think it's an excuse to avoid making choices that are more strenuous. I'm not talking about people in aggregate, I'm talking about you and myself.

And for completeness, I will say that online especially there is probably the least real excuse for treating someone abusively, whatever they might have done that makes one want to treat them that way, because one can just block them. Generally, shit-flinging makes the problem worse, people just do it to feel righteous or to lash out in frustration, but it's generally detrimental to themselves and others, so I don't think it's "valid." Here I will again remind you of my own efforts to argue against the "bullying works" culture on HB, because my stance is precisely that in aggregate it does not.

Also, obviously, I reject the Christ comparison for countless reasons, but we don't need to discuss that.

I think you and other MLs seriously need to take a step back and realize that not everything is about you.

You've made it very clear that it actually is about us. The first comment that I was responding to said so.

You're conflating two very different things. There's a very large difference between attacking a person and attacking an ideology

And here I will say again that this seems like your response, talking about how you used to be more positive toward MLs until Hexbear bullied you. You can split hairs about how that's attacking a very broad historical group of people defined by adherence to an ideological category rather than attacking the ideological category, but I don't think that's a very useful distinction.

To date (iirc), I've never personally attacked a single ML person for their ML takes, in all my posts.

I'm a little confused by this distinction based on what else you've said.

Likewise, hexbears never criticize anarchism itself, they only attack people directly for expressing takes they don't like.

This, however, I can say is not true. There are subcategories of anarchism that do receive direct criticism. Here's me and another user doing that, as an example. Hexbears also criticize chauvinist "ML" ideologies like whatever the ACP is going on about, and various other takes that at least you'd put in that umbrella if not us ourselves that we disagree with. I readily admit that "internet anarchists" are overrepresented compared to chauvinist MLs in our discussions, but I think part of it is that the ACP types tend to just be nauseating to wade through with their nasty statements about various marginalized groups, the same as we don't just endlessly repost groyper memes, while the internet anarchists are more fun because they're attacking ML-ism directly in a very frivolous manner or making silly philosophical claims. I still think there's some further bias though.

You can't conflate these two things as being equal! You can't say: "I agree we should stop attacking you as a person, but you also need to stop critizing ML theory. By extension, if you do continue to criticize ML theory, you can't complain about being attacked personally." These are not the same thing. It brings to mind that saying about the two meaning of respect; respect of a person and respect of authority, and how people in authority conflate these two deliberately.

You are right, but this is part of why I said we (as in the communities, or at least you and HB) would need to have a discussion about if what we view as reasonable.

I applaud your aims even if I am disbelieving about your potential to herd these cats.

My point in talking about my own experiences before was not to boast but to demonstrate that herding cats is doable, because I have historically seen that it mostly is.

I think it's silly to "discuss terms". We're not warring nations. I think y'all being able to distinguish between criticism of an ideology and personal attacks would go a long way towards normalizing relations.

Personally, I think "normalizing relations" is the way sillier "forum slapfight as warring nations" turn of phrase on my part.

Personally I'm not . . .

Look, if we can't agree on the aforementioned "heinous shit," not for the sake of litigating the ban of some silly kid or removing a year-old post, but as a baseline standard for the future, then I think you and I aren't going to personally get anywhere.

However, should you ever decide that you want to change things with Hexbear even if it requires some sort of compromise or re-evaluation on your part, you can ping/dm me and I'll try to help you. I'm not going to pretend that I think it's very likely, but I am completely sincere and hope that you do take the offer sometime. I expect you'll see such a thing as vacuous, but my view remains that this is a situation where compromise is needed because both parties have failed to take the best course of action.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I (thank god) am not Stalin, and I have plenty of practical and ideological differences with Stalin and you (thank god) are not Makhno and presumably have many differences with him. I don't think it's useful to project things this way instead of looking at people's actual professed beliefs unless they demonstrate having the same attitude

Actually that's in fact the salient point: The argument anarchists like me are making is that hierarchical power (i.e. a state) is simply going to breed the next Stalin, regardless of originating good intentions. From where we stand, history bears this out.

I was furthermore very careful about my claim because I was there for when that fight happened and saw the attitude that you and the other admin took, but what I just said is very concretely and undeniably true when you look at some of the various remarks the person made at the time

I mean, so was I. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the "heinousness" or the statement and what was really meant by the author. But the fact that your interpretation is repeated and misquoted like a broken telephone is why relations can't improve. In fact it reaches the point where you have members of your instance literally call me a neo-nazi. It boggles my mind that you can't see how removing all nuance in this way breeds hostility. When you reach the point where members of you community start calling anarchists "neo-nazis" and the rest go "mhm, uh-huh, this checks out", I think all expectation of compromise are out the window.

[...]So again, yes, I am saying you made a poor choice many times, that's why I'm arguing for changing course.[...]

I mean, "poor choice" in relation to what? Poor in being conducive to Hexbears like me? Perhaps. But it is not an imperative for me for Hexbers to like me. In fact it's Hexbears who request that I take steps to make them like me in the name of "left unity". And I think that's ass-backwards.

I think this is ultimately the sticking point. From where I stand, I am not opposed to improving relations, but I do deny the idea that it falls on is on me to make an effort to be nicer than what I get back. Rather it's the ones who actually believe in left unity who should be making such an effort.

This, however, I can say is not true. There are subcategories of anarchism that do receive direct criticism. Here's me and another user doing that, as an example.

It's a welcome sight to see this play out like this, instead of the /c/slop reaction which is usually the case. Unfortunately 90% of the time, I see the slop approach.

You are right, but this is part of why I said we (as in the communities, or at least you and HB) would need to have a discussion about if what we view as reasonable.

Honestly I don't understand what kind of discussion you expect. There's no way I would censor myself from criticising authcom ideologies from the left, in the spirit of improving relations, nevermind convincing others to do so likewise.

Look, if we can't agree on the aforementioned "heinous shit," not for the sake of litigating the ban of some silly kid or removing a year-old post, but as a baseline standard for the future, then I think you and I aren't going to personally get anywhere.

What is there to agree on? If you're seriously entertaining the idea that the person is a neo-nazi for having a spicy take, or that I'm a neo-nazi for interpreting them charitably, then yes, we're not going to get anywhere.

However, should you ever decide that you want to change things with Hexbear even if it requires some sort of compromise or re-evaluation on your part

I am still yet to hear what form this compromise or re-evaluation could possibly take.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net -1 points 1 day ago

What is there to agree on? If you're seriously entertaining the idea that the person is a neo-nazi for having a spicy take, or that I'm a neo-nazi for interpreting them charitably, then yes, we're not going to get anywhere.

I never said that and have multiple times in this exchange expressed my disbelief of both claims. I don't see why you insist on misrepresenting me this way when I have been very explicit that a) you would not say what that other person said and b) even that other person did not really understand what he was saying because he has no grasp of the history he is making claims about.

I am not the other people you have grievances with.

Do you have anything else in mind that I did not understand?

I didn't have anything in mind for the purpose of this conversation. As I said, I don't think you and I can make progress on this issue personally. Basically what I meant is that at a later time your perspective on things might change and that if that should ever happen and you would like to investigate having a better relationship with Hexbear in any respect, I am willing to advocate on your behalf to the community and I believe I can get other people to help me. As I said, I don't think it's terribly likely that you will make such a choice, but I am completely sincere and hope that some other circumstance leads you to do so.