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 
. 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 
keep keeping it real
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.
From personal experiences:
Terminally online Internet anarchists
IRL anarchists
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.
We're not all that active or a fraction as adventure-y. And a lot of us are just big nerds who will join Lemmy servers that are openly hostile (not really) toward anarchism just for dank memes. But yeah, I don’t care about a lot other than spending winters in seedbomb production mode and looking at plat maps for spring.
i know there's more of you here, but i have to say: @Nakoichi@hexbear.net goated
we love our anarchist comrades, don't we folks?
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.
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.
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?
Very true. Summer 2020 was a rich time for discovering that most people who purport to be anarchists have listened to a few Robert Evans podcasts and that’s about it.
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
First "anarchist" I ever met was stanning Tulsi's primary run, it can mean a variety of things
I used to know an anarchist who wanted the US to invade Iran.
Yeah even offline is a crap shoot.
Believe it or not, everything said online is said by actual humans who exist irl.
At least one guy had pretty legit opinions and knowledge. Was a professor for African American studies and active in mutual aid groups and what not. Just a complete idiot that thought destroying random aesthetic property was praxis
On the other hand I was once at a riot-lite thing where I met an anarchist who was a lawyer. They spent the whole night advising people on their rights and fucking with cops by highlighting how they were breaking constitutional rights lol. Gave their card to everyone who got arrested.
destroyed/vandalized random signs or aesthetic structures right in front of cops
you don't get to choose your comrades, but you do choose how you work with them. never met a better bunch of tankie authcoms.
They are usually hotter than any other tendency too.
uh mods...? mods??? please delete for sectarianism; I'm way hotter than any anarchist
We need to do a hexbear's drag race to fairly decide which faction is hottest
There at least three people here who can tell you I am not a bad looker and also have serious drip.
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.
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).
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.
Absolutely. Anyway I love this space and I am actually having a discussion about this with an Argentinian comrade in the hexbear gaming discord right now lol
If you ever wanna come hang out with us here's the link https://discord.gg/8xW22BNFek
I honestly struggle sometimes with seeing myself as an online anarchist at this point. I was raised Mennonite Brethren, and used to do all kinds of work on the ground to help people, but since I've become more politically educated I realized I had to transition for my own mental health, which resulted in a loss of any ability to do what I had previously. I can't get a "normal" job anymore, so I can hardly help others materially, though I still do. I'm thankful to my family for housing and feeding me but I can't help but feel so useless. My whole life I've been taught to help others around me but I can't even help myself anymore.
Hopefully having an associates will help with the employment discrimination.
Sorry if this wasn't welcome.
Nah, it's welcome. I appreciate you sharing your experience and being honest about how you feel.
So I got dealt a pretty shit hand - a really horribly abusive childhood, plenty of mental illness that comes with that, and then being autistic and ADHD on top of it all. (Hooray!! 🎉) If I bothered listing all the diagnoses it starts looking a lot like alphabetti spaghetti.
What that means is that I'm not nearly as capable of engaging in IRL activism as I wish I was able to, so I have a lot of sympathy for the people who find themselves in a similar situation. I know how hard it can be when you're acutely aware of the injustice in the world and how fucked up everything is but it's even harder when you feel like you aren't capable of doing anything about it. It's a kind of suffering I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.
I guess what I'm driving at here is that my comment wasn't meant to slag off people who spend a lot of time online in radical spaces but it was taking aim at a particular type of person who spends basically all of their time online and is never involved in any efforts to put their politics into practice, even in the small ways, but instead they are just a political dilettante. The ones who treat their politics as a fashion parade and who pick out a bespoke political orientation because they feel that it's most flattering on them. That sort of thing. (And tbh there are Marxists who are definitely guilty of the exact same problems too.)
I know there are plenty of comrades who are facing dire circumstances with regards to housing, employment, family, and health situations. The harsh truth is that you aren't going to be of any use to the revolution if you aren't taking care of yourself and so I have nothing but love for the people who want to be more engaged in enacting their politics but, due to circumstances, they are unable to. This also goes for people who live in remote locations or who are living somewhere so hostile to socialism and organising that it's borderline impossible to achieve anything in their communities.
Thank you for helping me internalize that I should consider my self a "to each" instead of a "from each".
I didn't see your comment as slagging off on my type, I guess I just really wanted to vent. Thank you for being a part of one of the few days where I've felt accepted whole cloth by the people I've talked to. I am grateful to you for easing my suffering.
I really hope I never meet an anarchist who has any positive things to say about NATO lol.
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.
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
Did they unironically identify with that term? If so... Holy shit
Oooo i’m tired of posting & reading memes, how does one meet (and even participate in activities with) our anarchist comrades 🤔🦧
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
Seconding food not bombs. Feeding the hungry is probably the easiest possible way to find us IRL
Was expecting
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But, you right, i need to touch grass
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.
