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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Anarchy is very cool, until someone has the wrong opinion.

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[-] definitely_AI@feddit.online 58 points 2 weeks ago

Looking at you, leftymemes

ugh

groupthink central, do NOT divert an inch from the state sanctioned opinions, OR ELSE

[-] yucandu@lemmy.world 48 points 2 weeks ago

It's all fun and games until you say that China is wearing socialism as a cloak the same way America wears Christianity or Israel wears anti-semitism.

[-] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 12 points 2 weeks ago

I’ve seen better moderation in .ml instances.

[-] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 16 points 1 week ago

Uh oh. One or the other found you, here comes the brigade!

[-] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 13 points 1 week ago

I’ve been brigaded by better instances.

[-] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 9 points 1 week ago

"You are allowed to do anything you want, so long as it's exactly what we say"

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[-] Wataba@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 weeks ago

Dbshitters are alt-left and should be treated in the same way as any libertarian nutjob.

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

unmoderated internet spaces are quickly overrun with bigotry, csam, and spam.

if, in the name of "free speech", you only moderate the csam and spam, the space will be primarily occupied by people looking for a forum that welcomes bigotry.

respect to @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com for rm'ing bigotry and not letting childish anarchist free speech ideals cause lemmy.dbzer0.com to be a nazi bar 🥂

see also:

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 42 points 2 weeks ago

It's a misunderstanding of anarchy to equate it with either total chaos or total control. True anarchism is about opposing coercive authority, not creating a new, rigid authority that dictates what discourse is acceptable.

You can absolutely oppose bigotry and harm (which are coercive actions) without resorting to silencing anyone who doesn't conform to a specific ideological viewpoint. Genuine community defense is about voluntary association and preventing harassment, not about restricting the exchange of ideas.

[-] chosensilence@pawb.social 8 points 2 weeks ago

you're applying this to an internet community that has no real world interaction as a group. i think it's okay to be authoritarian on your own channel lol.

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

i think it’s okay to be authoritarian on your own channel lol.

Absolutely. But don't pretend to be an anarchist then. Be actually honest about your views and people may then (as per anarchist thought) choose for themselves if they want to get on board with that or not.

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[-] troed@fedia.io 38 points 2 weeks ago

This is very true - I usually refer to it as "BOFH behavior". I think it stems from many people who end up hosting or moderating feeling that they themselves have been marginalised before so "now they're going to show them!".

A great example is a Mastodon instance where if you don't agree with the site's admin they'll block you at the server level instead of from their personal account. The belief is that if they have an opinion that opinion must then be enforced for everyone else under their control too.

[-] BonkTheAnnoyed 32 points 1 week ago

Okay, I'll bite. I need to add to my block list anyway.

Y'all have heard of the Nazi Bar problem, right? Paradox of intolerance? Which turns out not to be a paradox after all? You should def look that one up rather than waiting for me to type it all out.

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

People like to refer to the paradox of tolerance but always skip out on the inconvenient bit:

""Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

— In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.""

If you are not able to rationally argue why we shouldn't be bigoted, I don't know what to tell you.

[-] CXORA@aussie.zone 25 points 1 week ago

One problem with bigots is they dont care about truth or logic. Its a waste of time to continually argue the same points over and over again with people who refuse to learn or think.

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[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If you are not able to rationally argue why we shouldn’t be bigoted, I don’t know what to tell you.

it's not that people can't, but spaces which have unlimited tolerance for sealions suggesting that it's necessary to argue about that are likely to have less interesting discussions than spaces which do not 🙄

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[-] Waveform@multiverse.soulism.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

i think people not knowing how to actually win an argument against a bigot is exactly the reason there are so many these days

shit's easy. not that they'll admit defeat but getting them babbling irrational nonsense takes very little debating skills. and when they inevitably start throwing ad hominems, then the mods have legitimate grounds to kick them out.

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[-] 9bananas@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago

i mean, seems you're also conveniently skipping over the part that says:

as long as we can counter them by rational argument

it's right there in the text:

popper states outright, that there are some ideologies and by extension people, that straight-up cannot be argued with. these, therefore, must be excluded from the community, and thereby form the limit to tolerance that must be enforced.

people really love to misinterpret popper...

what goes along nicely with the tolerance of paradox is the quote about anti-semites being entirely aware of how absurd their position truly are:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

take both popper and sartre together into consideration of a larger context and it becomes abundantly obvious that a certain minimum of intolerance is strictly necessary for a functional society.

what happens when all checks on speech are removed can be clearly seen in the rotting corpses of facebook and twitter... it's disastrous.

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[-] lmmarsano@group.lt 10 points 1 week ago

Y’all have heard of the Nazi Bar problem, right?

Bullshit genetic or reductio ad hitlerum fallacy. Carried to its logical conclusion, anything tainted by Nazis (eg, the universe) is a Nazi bar. Have you considered finding yourself another universe to inhabit, since this one is irredeemably tainted? While we may argue the universe is far too vast to be a "Nazi bar", so is the internet or any "platform".

Worse, censoring ideas gives them covert power. It doesn't discredit them or strip them of power like challenging them in a public forum could. It's also a disservice to better ideas

  • it withholds opportunities for people to become competent enough advocates to discredit bad ideas
  • instead of deradicalize opponents, it drives their discussion elsewhere: they continue to radicalize & grow opposition unchallenged.

Censorship is incompetent advocacy: it mistakes suppressing the expression of bad ideas for effective advocacy that directly discredits bad ideas, develops intellectual growth, and steers toward better ideas.

Paradox of intolerance?

The bogus social media version subverting the original message or the real one?

text alternative

The True Paradox of Tolerance

By philosopher Karl Popper[^popper-source]

You think you know the Popper Paradox thanks to this? (👉 comic from pictoline.com)

Karl Popper: I never said that!

Popper argued that society via its institutions should have a right to prohibit those who are intolerant.

Karl Popper: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.

For Popper, on what grounds may society suppress the intolerant? When they "are not prepared to meet on the level of rational argument" "they forbid their followers to listen to rational argument … & teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols". The argument of the intolerably intolerant is force & violence.

We misconstrue this paradox at our peril … to the extent that one group could declare another group 'intolerant' just to prohibit their ideas, speech & other freedoms.

Grave sign: "The Intolerant" RIP
Underneath it lies a pile of symbols for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Black power. A leg labeled tolerance kicks the Gay Pride symbol into the pile.

Muchas gracias a @lokijustice y asivaespana.com

Karl Popper opposed censorship/argued for free inquiry & open discourse.

I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

Censorship (or willfully blinding ourselves to information) plays no part in suppressing authoritarianism.

Only cowards fear words. Words are not the danger. It's the dangerous people whose words we fail to discredit.

[^popper-source]: Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper

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[-] SalamenceFury@piefed.social 26 points 1 week ago

You know that anarchism doesn't mean no rules right? It just means no rulers, but that's not how it works on Lemmy or any social media of this type for that matter.

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[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

right-wingers aren't allowed on leftist spaces. nothing positive comes from that.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Are you really comparing a completely optional forum to a society where people can and will point guns at you?

[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

"They don't let me spread transphobic rhetoric in this optional community online, literally 1984!"

[-] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 18 points 2 weeks ago

From my experience, no moderator enjoys the job. And the job is tougher than you think.

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

I'm well aware of the challenges, having modded several communities. Which is exactly why I would never do the thing that so many people here do and make themselves the mods of 20+ political communities.

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[-] fizzle@quokk.au 15 points 2 weeks ago

I have a pretty low opinion of moderators generally.

In the vast majority of cases, the people who actually want to be moderators are precisely the worst kinds of people to do the job.

Of course there are exceptions but all too often they're doing it because they like the power and attention.

[-] adhd_traco@piefed.social 11 points 2 weeks ago

I think many people feel this way, and I think in many cases another thing that plays into it is not realising the amount of good moderators, because good moderation usually doesn't make as much noise as when it's bad.

If I think of all the communities in lemmy/piefed I like, the perfect/near perfect moderation from my browsing heavily outweighs anything problematic.

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[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago

Which of these best describes your opinion that the Anarchists disapprove of?:

Sexism,

Racism,

White Supremacy (or any ethnic-supremacy),

Homophobia (or any sexuality-phobia),

Fascism,

Genocide,

Drug-phobia,

Ethnic-, gender-, sexuality-, ableist-, etc., based slurs,

Oath-taking or pledge-taking.

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 weeks ago

Did you intentionally skip over the parts that you don't like in Anarchist thought?

Degrading, disrespecting, or insulting another person or group of people, because of their :

Gender or Gender Identity,
Ethnicity,
Immigrant status,
Religion,
Sexuality,
Language,
Physical appearance or body size,
Substance or medicinal use,
Disability,
Age,
Acceptance of any unfavorable or disfavorable group, whether this group is political, economic, social, or cultural.
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[-] definitely_AI@feddit.online 12 points 2 weeks ago

"If you are not as extreme in your views against these things as I am, then that means you are in favor of those things and will be banned"

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[-] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

You have to lick the correct footwear.

[-] Paragone@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago

Aannndddd..... people "wonder why" nothing changes, when THEIR pack/herd/tribe gains power, or when another's does: it just goes 'round & 'round & 'round, again.

Until one has fundamentally altered one's own unconscious-mind,

altering one's own nature,

then the same nature as what created the problems we're caught-in, is all one has to wield.

"physician, 1st heal thyself" is the key, but nobody's got the guts to enforce the deep transformation.

( & I'm saying that while having failed to break unconscious-ignorance from this-incarnation/life, thus-far, myself, for decades.

It isn't easy, but if one never tries, it'll never have more than 0% chance of happening.

it'd be easier in a culture which accepted such transformations as valid, fersure, but that got eradicated by materialism, didn't it? )


aka Spot-on, Voidan@lemmy-dbzer0.com , spot-on.

( :

_ /\ _

[-] Voidian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago

Aannndddd… yeah. The "round and round" is what happens when we mistake performative rebellion for actual change. Most of us know the system’s broken, but we’d rather rage at the symptoms than admit we’re part of the pattern. You’re dead right about the "physician, heal thyself" bit, except nobody wants to do the boring work of actually examining why they crave control, whether it’s over a Lemmy community or a state. Easier to just slap a label on the ‘enemy’ and call it a day.

True rebellion against fascism starts with the self.

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[-] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 11 points 2 weeks ago

Some of those who moderate postses!

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[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Anybody who sees Authority as a responsability is naturally averse to having it because they would feel the weight of it and would feel bad if, whilst holding Authority, they made a mistake and others got in some way hurt because of that.

Those who see Authority as power to advance something (be it their own personal upsides or some idea they believe in) with little or no feeling of responsability towards others (be it not all directly or they've suppressed it by convincing themselves their actions are somehow "for the greater good" hence any bad they do with the authority has that grand excuse to salve their conscience), have no such aversion to holding authority.

That posture towards authority of people of the second kind applies more broadly to all manner of things which serve to pressure, convince or manipulate others (Authority is generally power force something on others) so of course they also have no aversion to using other such tools, including using ideology to manipulate others, and sometimes that means passing themselves as somebody who holds a certain ideology, and that includes Anarchism.

So yeah, you're going to find that certain people who parrot Anarchist talk aren't in fact people whose Principles mean they're naturally Anarchist but rather people being Performative Anarchists in order to fit-in and manipulate others driven by entirelly different Principles, and such people are absolutelly pro-Authority as long as they're in control of it.

In summary, there are two types of people who seem Anarchist:

  • Those whose personal principles means they are averse to people controlling other people. There are naturally against any form of Authority.
  • Those who want to control other people and are in a specific situation where Theatre Of Anarchism can advance their objectives. These are against forms of Authority which hinder their objectives but are in favor of forms of Authority which advance their objectives.

IMHO, the best way to spot the second kind from the first is to look for the often repetition of common slogans and having a superficial level of ideology with no actual tracing back to personal principles since they learned the ideology at an intellectual level rather than being drived by their Principles - i.e. what feels Right and what feels Wrong - to finding that formal ideology as something that fits them.

By the way, this method to identify the real ones from the performers also works for all other ideologies and even things like Faith - start paying attention and you'll spot all manner of teatrics around ideologies all across the entire political spectrum as well as in people professing some faith or other.

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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Showerthoughts

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