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?
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.
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.