how come this site isnt called post-left 101?

Question

i do understand it's not a lie if you believe it. is that why? or something worse?

Answer 1

The site is open to use and participation by anyone as far as posing questions. Anarchists of any stripe except National Anarchists (aka Nazis) and anarcho-capitalists (aka capitalists) are invited to offer answers.

Your observation of the general tendency of most of the regular participants isn't off base, we trend green, post-left, and/or nihilist, but if you look you will find strains of insurrecto-, anarchafeminism, and even sometimes anarcho-communists and syndicalists. We even had a transhumanist participating for a bit a couple years back. There is definitely a -without adjectives strain that runs through some folks thinking.

Due to the nature of the answer/comment format, and the willingness of regular posters to ask probing/critical questions, a lot of those folks seem to dip after not very long, but personally I think they tend to make the conversation richer, even though mostly I think the conclusions they reach and the methodology they use to reach them are wrong.

Personally I am a post-lefty type who would welcome more contributions from other corners of the big tent.

Comments

i guess george is bothered by the fact that there are some dominant strains of thought on here that tend to provide guard rails for the discussions, which i can relate to since i definetly can get profoundly irritated by the conversations on here and on @news. However, I would be pressed to find any forum or RL group without dominant strains of thought that tend to set the path for the rest of the future discussions...

---

@Nihilist- I definitely get that. The folks here (and also @ anews) have strong opinions. Then again, I am not going to find more kinship on various (much more heavily moderated) red anarchist sites or ideologically entrenched anarcho-primitivist forums. I do what I can to make these virtual spaces the ones I want to be engaged with. Your continued participation helps shape that as well.

---

yeah i looked at the anti-civ.net site, to me seems very dogmatic and strange, i read someone say everyone agrees on the importance of equality except for right-wingers

but through experience i also realize that saying nothing can be way better than saying something, so i often find myself troubled when wanting to post shit on forums. the internet is pretty creepy, it resembles a one-way mirror in my mind.

Also, I wanted to add my thoughts about the spectre of "the left": the aspects of the left that i find to be somewhat admirable/practical are the realization that bringing down the entire political system is hopeless and the emphasis on trying to gently make reforms so that people aren't quite as miserable as they are. However, the fact that politics is still political is the sickening thing that I can't compromise with. I don't want to feel like a sign-post for anything (even anarchism) any longer than I already have. I would be happy if the left reverted to the perspective of trying to squeeze money out of their bosses and get free shit, but i guess general conservativism and not wanting to be seen as a "freeloader" have made that struggle a little more difficult...i guess if you add nihilism to communism then the polis gets confused really easily. I guess then the polis gets easier to scam when they are confused?! I feel like there are so many amoral approaches to things that people just aren't making use of!

---

@nihilist i dont think reformism is very much a hallmark of the left at all. its certainly present to some extent, although tell that to a ml or ancom and you might get a funny look.  but even then reformist leftism doesnt really seem focused that much on now, but more the next election, or the next mass protest, or whatever.

---

i don't understand the downvotes; it's a legitimate question, if posed rather aggressively. it seems to be true that the majority of people who post answers and replies could be considered post-left even if the format allows for non-post-left @s to participate fully. as Nihilist mentioned, most of the responses trend to the post-left (however poorly defined), and that means that many non-post-left @s will tire of the discourse -- just as i am bored by almost all the discussions over at libcom, for a counter-example.

---

@shinminmetroskyline: the way im using leftist has to do with the way i've experienced it, more or less moderate democrat or pragmatist. You seem to be talking about the "radical left" or "far left", which i admittingly have very little experience with and I'm glad because those groups tend to be more authoritarian. I realize issues with being a moderate democrat but I would prefer the leftist that doesn't call me an oppressor and scream at me for no reason. This isn't how I would charactrerize all communist or far left groups but the loudest ones appear to be this way.

---

boles, i downvoted because the question says it assumes lies or "something worse"...and also because it sounds much more like a statement than any sort of question...and also because plenty of people here (like me) don't consider themselves "post-left"...and also because the site discusses anarchy more than post-left.....and also because i don't see why anyone would look up "post-left 101" anyway in contrast to wanting to find out more about anarchy......

---

i acknowledged that the question was posed aggressively. however, i still believe it's as legitimate a question as many of the other examples of aggressive or bad faith questions that have spurred people into deeper explanations of their perspectives. to have some folks point out that they don't consider themselves post-left anarchists is a fine result of a shitty question.

---

i like your point there, boles...that something interesting can come from something aggressive/shitty....

but still,  "shitty question" means a downvote from me, while i upvote the "fine result" answer or comment.....

i'd still prefer to see questions intended to go deeper rather than relying on the thoughtfulness of the people answering an insult (very) thinly disguised as a question....

anyway, you wanted to know why i downvoted, so there you go....and fwiw, i don't describe anything as "legitimate" or "illegitimate", so i can't disagree with you on that point. :)

---

ingrate what do you mean by open to use and participate? everything i post has to be approved by the mods of this website which is fine but i wouldnt call that open to participate. it confuses george that any answer, comment and question i post is moderated and im doubting that like that for everyone else. im not a national bolshevik anarchist, whatever that is or an anarcho-$$$

boles the downvoting thing is akin to see monkey, do monkey. it's like that on many forums. the downvotes and upvotes are meaningless anyways. i am curious on why you have 20 anarchy101 points and another user has -1000 points while i have more than you? im not sure what you mean by my question is aggressive but in the future i will try to use non-aggressive language depending on how aggressive is being defined. anarching can be perplexing to george.

bornagainanarchist could you explain how my question is shitty? when i read other answers and comments on this site it's readily apparent the ideological views of post-leftism is dominant. im sorry i wrote "something worse" and used a george costanza saying. i assuming someone wanting to learn more about anarchy would want to learn about the whole shebang instead of mainly post-leftism and individualism that is a large chunk of this site. it would make more sense to me to just call the site post-leftism 101 and be open about it. i don't understand why people do a lot of things but that doesn't mean they don't or wouldnt

---

GC: posts from users with a low score are moderated. they still go through, but this is mostly a spam-related tactic.

other people have already addressed the other things you bring up, so i wn't bother repeating them.

---

everyting i post has to be approved by the mods too. that's just the price of participation, which is, despite your complaint, open (or self-selecting if you prefer). as dot said, people with low scores go through that. if you want to play the game, you can't demand that the rules be changed as a condition of your participation. 

i understand the dynamics of up and down votes. my question only had to do with what i sensed as a refusal to accept that the question (not the explanation) was valid. "i do understand it's not a lie if you believe it" is aggressive because you're presuming to have a better understanding of the motives, intentions, and perspectives of an imagined group of participants. when i read this statement, i have to conclude that the reasoning behind your question has to do with a perception of a narrower focus of participants than actually exists (as ba@ outlined in one of his responses). when you call someone or a group of someones liars, that's aggressive, straight up. i use "aggressive" to mean an attitude that is (gratuitously) hostile and/or provocative. here's an example of how the same question could be posed unaggressively: 

"i have noticed that the dominant trend among participants on this site tends toward what i understand as post-left anarchy. is that how most people here identify? and if that's the case, wouldn't it be more accurate to call this website 'post-left 101'?" those are actual questions, where the presumed responses are not embedded in the formulation of the question, where the question isn't merely a statement with a question mark at the end.

(edited for a missing letter)

---

i don't call myself "post-left" or "individualist" or any other label (well, i had to have one to post here, so ba@, i guess)....i don't give a shit about any of those labels....i hate the state, i hate capitalism, i hate corporations, i hate a helluva lot of things about technology, i hate authority....label me what you will.... i don't care at all what people call this website....i just like a lot of the conversations i've had here and the thoughts bouncing around....end of story.

---

Dear Comrade, by post left do you mean post communist or socialist  rule?Then you should understand that , there is popular misconception that communism is only way to destroy the state. communism has many facist tendencies. there are high chances of these communist movements to transform into socialist facism or utopian radicalism because of their obsession with eliminating non socialist movements and in turn anarchist movements. anarchism is very much different from accepting ideals of French liberalism or Paris commune. Anarchism is a solution and is nothing but lack of authority and a development of consciousness. false consciousness is accepting authority or the state(though this is a marxist term, we can use this to refer to existing culture of accepting state in any form). that is this anarchism can be achieved by simply eliminating elements of society which force authority in some form or the other. if the element gives up the ideology of authoritarianism then we can leave those elements of society. but history of communists movements show us very different picture. communists beginning from Stalin and Mao ultimately and consistently are failing to achieve the ultimate objective of revolutions and movements. they are transforming themselves into extreme authoritarian movements and brutal dictatorships of a committee or one person. this sad and unfortunate.anarchism rejects this kind of authoritarianism. Anarchism is possible without communism(I dont mean without armed revolution). but defnitely we can achieve anarchist societies by developing consciousness through awareness and rebellions against brutal authorities.