There’s a good retrospective on the mass protest movements of the 2010s called If We Burn. The main takeaway I got was that leaderlessness and horizonalism do not work.
If you don’t pick your leaders, they will pick themselves.
Anarchism is the worst social order, except for all others that have been tried.
I mean, anarchism was the initial state, so it has been tried. It seems that it is not very resilient against being replaced by other systems, so it can’t really be the best system in the real world.
The anarchists love to come out of the woodwork whenever democracy is having a bad day, then they disappear whenever someone mentions medicine being more of a global effort.
Yes, I’m sure an entirely fragmented world full of companies protected by privatized militias would be extremely cooperative, with the added bonus modifier of there being no borders.
Unlike the resilient anti-capitalism of Marxist states amirite.
It’s almost like you need to learn and evolve from the mistakes of the past to create systems that work in the present.
For example, when white colonizers land on your shores, don’t ignore them and start an escalating series of tribal wars to sell them war-slaves.
Also, maybe don’t have slaves.
See? We’ve already improved on proto-anarchism.
Anarchism can’t defend itself. That’s the point. Either it gets coopted and recuperated under capital, or it gets hijacked by reactionary forces for their own purposes.
While Marxism-Leninism gets hijacked by reactionary forces for their own purposes and gets recuperated under capital after that.
How has it been weaponized against democracy?
It’s still the best way to get info not filtered by MSM. There’s a reason politicians in both parties are calling for increased social media censorship.
Its much more complicated than that, and yes contemporart information sources (i.e., the internet) have absolutely been weaponized by both state (Russia should come to mind) and non-state (say, ISIL, energy companies, etc) actors, as has been detailed in tens of thousands of pages of research and independent analysis focused on digital forensics. And its not just about the content (i.e., the ideological, cognitive apsects). It’s also about control of the infrastructure - think media capture by oligarchs such as Musk or the reverse enginering of social media algorithms by countries like Russia to reach as many people as possible.
I would argue it’s disingenuous to equate the activities of the two American parties in this field. If you were to take a comprehensive look at what they’ve been doing, there is a clear difference in their approach and intent. Where the Democratic Party wants to curtail the influence of foreign authoritarian states and local oligarchs by limiting their ability to spread disinformation, Republicans have been actively undermining these efforts, including by going after US agencies (such as the GEC) and independent researchers at NGOs. Why? Because these agencies and NGOs are exposing their lies and labeling their messages as misleading and dangerous. They are also exposing how aligned the Republics are with foreign authoritarian states.
Granted, I’m a bit biased. I’m one of those researchers. And dealing with SLAPPs and other measures by Republicans and their proxies has been undermining information integrity significantly in the last two years, within and without the US.
You’re absolutely biased, and spreading disinformation of your own. People in the US are much more likely to be subjected to disinformation and propaganda from their own government online than any foreign actor. It’s not even close- we’re being flooded with state propaganda from the US astroturfing farms, compared to a trickle from outside sources.
And it’s false to claim the Democrats are attempting to censor for our well-being. Whenever their activities are revealed in leaks or fulfilled FOIA requests, the vast majority is revealed to be censorship of criticism or dissent, or censoring anyone countering the state narrative. Truth and public good are not on the Dem priority list anymore than it’s on the Republicans’.
And worth noting, these censorship efforts are illegal. This is a crime spree.
It seems I am “absolutely biased” whereas you are clearly absolutely objective. My mistake!
Elon Musk happened. Twitter’s staff banned Trump after 2020 elections, but (luke warm take) Musk bought Twitter to reinstate Trump
Anonymity.
When you can set up thousands of bots and say whatever you want without consequence of course this would be the result.
We let the normies into our spaces.