Is there any line of leftists that are either developing ways to use the same online tactics as the neofascists (eg. flooding every comment section with the same opinion to dominate the narrative, with real comments or not) or ways to render these tactics obsolete?
This kind of stuff is extremely effective, as the last decade has shown. Then, why is it that I only hear of the fascists developing and using it? Why is the left ignoring this efficient stuff?
You should be spending more time organizing to take over your local schoolboard like the right has already shown as a tried and tested strategy for success than anything at all ever to do with the fucking internet
yeah there's no left public figure with the cult of personality to harness anything large scale like that. the media circus of national election poisons our minds into only thinking in those terms and we should not repeat the mistakes of the democratic party
We need a national victory that can spark a national movement that can achieve a national victory that can spark a national movement ad nauseam.
“The left” as it exists, if it exists, in america needs to sack up and do the shit eating work of grinding against the foundations at the lowest level like a termite infestation. We can only build a movement upon successes but we’re always going for a fucking hail mary play like it’s the only way we can win (this ignores the context that most serious movements in the west were taken behind the shed and shot in the back of the head before they could become too successful)
I broadly agree with this, but you'll run into at least the following criticism from other leftists:
- "You can't reform the system from inside it"
- "This is woefully insufficient"
- "Why are we spending time and energy on this small thing when there are all these bigger issues"
- Intra-left squabbles about topics that are largely meaningless at lower levels like school boards, e.g., what middle schoolers should learn about the Korean War
There have to be some principled answers to all these and more if the idea is to eventually tie local victories into a larger leftist project.
i'll take a crack at it:
the objective isn't to reform the system, it's to take power where we can in the workplace, and improve people's lives where we can in local politics
it's woefully insufficient because there's nothing sufficient we can do unless you know how to make bombs and want to die or go to federal prison
school boards have a lot of influence in a lot of peoples lives and things like school breakfast were good enough for the panthers to be doing, so making sure kids are eating every meal is probably good enough for us
"shut up and go do some propaganda of the deed"
If we do that we get banned. If the fascists do it, the social media companies will help them generate millions of sockpuppets. The internet is enemy territory
This. It's an uphill battle for us. That's why we're on hexbear and not Reddit in the first place.
Fascists either have a lot of time to spare and nothing really better to do than vegetate on reddit (unlike an enlightened hexbear user like myself of course) due to their class position or the government is actually paying them to be there (they recently passed a bill costing half a billion dollars to do this). It's difficult for communists, who typically have to work a lot (this being one of many reasons for our radicalization), to compete against this.
nothing really better to do than vegetate on reddit
They can do this because their political project is already being carried out and executed for them via the inertia of the american empire. Anything extra they want to tag on that takes effort against popular will is usually bank rolled by the petty bourgeois or bourgeoisie, so they don’t have the same hurdles as a true working class movement
I think fascists did measurable damage by founding and occupying the /r/antifa subreddit, doing nothing particularly interesting with it, and eventually getting it banned. The long name of the current one, /r/AntifascistsOfReddit is too long and hard to type. Lots of momentum was lost there. I tried to make /r/AntifaNow but it didn't kick off.
Anyways, something to think about next time you have the chance to found or be added as a mod to a subreddit, even a non-political sub. If you don't, a fascist might.
I left reddit a long time ago. I think its reputation as a hangout for school shooters means that there isn’t much potential for radicalizing people there. The case for radicalizing people could have been made when the admins weren’t banning communists left and right (when the chapo sub was still a thing), but now it seems harder to argue.
This kind of stuff is extremely effective, as the last decade has shown.
Is it? I think the effect gets really overstated by people whose entire life revolves around online communities or who financially benefit from this being the case. I rarely meet someone irl repeat online fascist talking points, except ones that are sort of ambiently everpresent in the culture. Look at the anti-trans stuff, it's extremely unpopular in polling across US, Canada, and the UK, despite being probably the loudest and most widespread message both online and in traditional media.
I'd agree with this. Comment sections are usually regarded as being unhinged and not to be taken seriously.
This kind of stuff is extremely effective, as the last decade has shown
You lived through another right wing cultural revolution, like we've been having along with our "shock therapy" (recessions) for the last 50 years. I assure you, this was not carried out by reply guys ranting about immigrants and participation trophies in Fox news comment sections or on Reddit. It's systematic.
because if there's one thing leftists hate more than fascists, it's slightly different leftists
It's inefficient to do this manually. Bot power is what does it. Moreso in the new era of Large Language Models.
There was this paper – https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-19097-1_3 – about how the moment war were declared someone turns on the propoganda taps and millions of bots come out doing exactly what you're saying.
You also mention "flooding every comment section", but who owns the comment section? You're playing in their house, feeding them. Often an American Big Tech company tied to the Pentagon.
I disagree that manual posting is effective against bot armies and Big Tech platforms. You're playing the game they want you to play.
As long as we're talking strategy, we should really be going harder on "You like weekends? Thank the commies."
It's not really possible without people with big bucks doing astroturfing for you
Because we're trying to educate people, not deceive them and that takes more work.
