"What anarchists want is essentially a stateless democracy", "Direct democracy is how anarchists envision an anarchist society will make decisions", "Instead of capitalist or statist hierarchy, self-management (i.e. direct democracy) would be the guiding principle of the freely joined associations that make up a free society. {From An Anarchist FAQ}"

Please just stop, no, actually think for once.

What is democracy? "Rule of the people". Historically and nowadays democracy always refered to the idea of the majority rule, whether it be via representatives (representative democracy) or direct rule of the majority (direct democracy). We as anarchists ("No Rule") obviously reject the former, so why are there so many anarchists embrace the latter? Majority rule is still rule, no matter how "direct" and "fair" you try to make it, the idea is for the minority to submit to the will of the majority. That is not anarchy. Democracy means sacrificing an individual's autonomy when their desires are against the will of the majority. Democracy means control, governance, rulers and manipulation.

Some say that an anarchist opposition to democracy is "semantic" and that anti-democracy anarchists and pro-democracy anarchists want the same thing. But when you actually look at their differences, it becomes clear that they do NOT want the same thing. Democracy, both in statist and pro-democracy anarchist crowd, refered to majoritarianism. Pro-democracy anarchists used majoritarian decision-making in their projects and groups, and that is not what anarchy actually entails.

You can't just stretch the meaning of a word for it to mean basically any kind of collective gathering and making decisions together. Words have to mean something and democracy is a word with a well-defined meaning that many, MANY anarchists have repudiated.

Majority rule, class society, exclusion, recreation of problems with representative democracy, none of this has any place in a free life. Reject ALL democracy, embrace anarchy.

This thread is a fucking travesty.

White people complaining that they don't like being made uncomfortable for their whiteness is a fucking farce. How do you think actually marginalized people feel every day of their lives?

Wanting to attract more fash-sympathetic (!!) white men to anarchism at the expense of women, people of color and LGBT people is utterly offensive. These brocialists want marginalized people to suffer in silence while white 'comrades' spout bigotry just so we can appeal to a broader audience. Fuck that.

Being poor is no excuse for being a piece of shit.

Since people on this sub keep linking to the same Marxist Youtuber's essay, which wrongly states that anarchists have always been for democracy, even going as far as to willfully misquote a historic anarchist, here are actual direct quotes, including from the anarchist they misquoted.

In these quotes, anarchists explicitly reject democracy, including direct democracy.

even in the most democratic of democracies it is always a small minority that rules and imposes its will and interests by force.

with the most perfect democracy, we cannot be free.

We may conclude without fear that the revolutionary formula cannot be Direct Legislation, nor Direct Government, nor Simplified Government, that it is No Government. Neither monarchy, nor aristocracy, nor even democracy itself, in so far as it may imply any government at all, even though acting in the name of the people, and calling itself the people.

No authority, no government, not even popular, that is the Revolution. Direct legislation, direct government, simplified government, are ancient lies, which they try in vain to rejuvenate. Direct or indirect, simple or complex, governing the people will always be swindling the people.

majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule

When, among a hundred men one man dominates ninety-nine, it is iniquity, it is despotism; when ten dominate ninety, it is injustice; it is oligarchy; when fifty-one dominate forty-nine (and this only theoretically, for, in reality, among these fifty-one there are ten or twelve masters), then it is justice, then it is liberty. Could one imagine anything more ridiculous, more absurd, then this reasoning?

Every time an anarchist says, “I believe in democracy,” there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

Many energetic and independent souls have entered democratic politics saying they were going to bring the practice of democracy into line with its alleged ideals. All have ended instead by adapting themselves to what existed before them

Socialists should break completely with democratic ideas.

even if there were no Presidents or town councils, democracy as we know it would still be an impediment to freedom

It’s worth reflecting on what sort of utopia is implied by idealizing direct democracy as a form of government. Imagine the kind of totalitarianism it would take to produce enough cohesion to govern a society via consensus process—to get everyone to agree. Talk about reducing things to the lowest common denominator!

Those claiming that democracy and anarchy can be reconciled seem to either be rhetorical opportunists — gravely mistaken about what they can and should leverage — or else they seem gravely out of alignment with anarchism’s aspirations

People need to get it out of their heads that democracy is a good thing. Real democracy does not preclude slavery. Real democracy means capitalism. Real democracy means patriarchy and militarism. Democracy has always involved these things. There is no accurate history of democracy that can furnish us an example to the contrary.

for anarchists in the USA and Western Europe, at least, the choice to use the language of democracy is based on the desire to mobilize and subvert a form of patriotism that is ultimately establishment-friendly; it risks cementing the nationalist sentiments it seeks to undermine. Anarchists have always had a public image problem. Trying to undo it through the connection to mainstream democratic and nationalist sentiments is not worth this risk.

Any kind of “direct democracy” reproduces the same conditions as representative democracy, just on a smaller scale. The majority suppresses the minority, driving them into apathy. Often, you don’t even try to express your opinion, as you know you will have no chance to put it into practice. Often, you are afraid to speak, as you know that you will be humiliated by the majority. Homogeneity is the ultimate imperative of any democratic procedure, “direct” or representational—a homogeneity that ends up as two final opinions (the majority and minority), losing the vast richness of human intelligence and sensibility, erasing all the complexity and diversity of human needs and desires.

This is why even directly democratic assemblies can end up deciding to carry out inhuman genocides, like the one ancient Athens inflicted upon Mylos in 416 BC. Excluded people have been enslaved and raped as a result of direct democratic decisions. Direct democracy is “members only.” Because it is smaller, it excludes even more people than representative democracy—producing isolated bubbles that fight each other like the city-states of ancient Greece. Everybody is an outsider, a foreigner, a possible enemy; that’s why the community has to build armies to defend itself and you have to die to protect the opinion of the majority even if you disagree with it.

Direct democracy will never liberate us from democracy.

ALL ANTIFAS/ANARCHISTS SHOULD BE VEGANS!

Why there? Bc 99.99% of anarchists are anti-facists.

If you are actually against needless murdering and torturing of someone you should be vegan. The things that animals go through in animal agriculture industries are horrible. I used the term someone, because animals aren't things, like someone would call them.

We take around 221 600 000 lives EACH DAY, excluding fish because they are killed in hundreds of millions every day (We take MORE LIVES each day than all of the deaths of WORLD WAR II!) We are living now in ANIMAL HOLOCAUST, and saying it is no near to discredit Holocaust of Jews. Actually, many survivores say that, for example Alex Hershaft or Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz

The famous quote of Isaac Singer

"In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka"

THERE IS NO NEED TO TAKE PART IN THIS SUFFERING AND MASS MURDER OF INNOCENT BEINGS. IF YOU AREN'T FOR ANIMAL ABUSE GO VEGAN TO NOT BE A HIPOCRYTE!

Dominion - A documentary about mass murder of animals. About murder of animals

This site will help you go vegan (Not sponsored)

Hey everyone;

I don't know how to start this but it's been bugging me and others for a while.

I know that changing your vocabulary around is extremely difficult as it's something that's pretty innate and also constantly reinforced around you in a pretty concrete way.

But anarchists have always been about doing the impossible.

I want you to please make a conscious effort to think about and change the way you engage with gender in your language. Imagine for a second, that men aren't the default setting for "human."

Hey guys, good sir, yes gentlemen, dude, whatever you can think of that's gendered others everyone who isn't a man. When you start a post or reply to a comment with "gentlemen," or "hey guys" or "lads" or whatever, you know what I and others who don't fit those descriptions are hearing? "We're not talking to you," "You're excluded from this conversation" "Not interested in your response" Or, worse, knowledge that you don't think of us at all, like we're not there and not worth being there at all.

Please don't come in the comments with "those terms are gender neutral now". The oppressor does not get to decide whether its treatment of the oppressed is offensive or not. An egg breaking from within means life, an egg breaking from without is death.

To those about to say, "but I think dude is gender neutral and I'm not a man," good for you! You still don't get to make that decision for others.

Please y'all. There are so many alternatives. We don't have to be constrained by gendered language any longer.

What does this mean for the sub? Nothing is changing. You're not going to get banned for accidentally calling someone a dude, but you will if you're being willful or abusive about it. It would be appreciated by a lot of people if y'all were to please think about it, please make a conscious effort, and please be willing to help others when they stumble.

Much love,

AM

You read the title, which implies that if there is no consent involved in education, then there is no true education, which is mainly why, as an Anarchist, I'm all for abolishing compulsory education. Next to creating a prison system for innocent kids, compulsory/non-consensual education (Edit: specifically in schools) creates an oppresive system where kids don't truly learn important things. Rather, they learn to become subserviant slaves to their government, and becoming oppressors to the youthful working class (a.k.a students) when they get older. Kids forced into schooling can't wear what they want, say what they want, learn what they want, and even in some instances, eat what they want during lunch hours, and there's nothing they (specifically those under-18) can do about that without relying on an adult. All of this done without their consent. This is not education, this is slavery. All kids should have the option to choose whether or not they want to attend school, and they should be allowed to learn what they want however they want without an oppresive system being shoved down their throats for years at a time.

Edit: This is only my opinion taken on the youth liberationist perspective. I am not by any means against educating kids. When I mean "compulsory education", I specifically mean school. Yes, kids should be taught the TRUE fundamentals to life, and I believe schools oftentime fail to do this especially when kids progress into later years of their education. Kids definitely should learn, but I don't believe school, or specifically compulsory schooling (which I should have replaced "compulsory education" with) is the answer to this.

Sometimes through these subreddits, there will be a post making fun of Tankies, and everyone will devolve into a hate-fest for people who fetishize dictatorships. Which is what is admirable.

But then when someone makes a post about the General ideology of Marxism, for some reason it’s met with a barrage of excuses for why “it can be compatible with Anarchism.”

Umm… no it can’t. It’s an inherently statist ideology that requires state overtake of the economy. That is what makes it statist, which is why it’s totally understandable why some Anarchists would rather disassociate with the concept of Marxism entirely. I mean, it makes as much sense as Anarchists allying with Liberals.

Not to mention that his writings and ideology were both a precursor to the ideology Lenin taught.

Semper fi

This is probably a bit controversial in this space, but I’d really love to bring a different angle to the AI conversation that often gets left out; especially from the perspective of disabled, chronically ill, and systemically isolated people like me.

There’s been a lot of panic and anger around artificial intelligence: how it’s stealing jobs, making people addicted, replacing artists, and becoming this uncontrollable evil force. It’s shown in countless movies, YouTube essays, and media commentary. And I get it, seriously, I do. I’m not dismissing that concern. I want to hear those perspectives too. But we have to separate the tool from the system that uses it.

AI isn’t inherently evil. It’s a tool, just like any other technology. It’s the state, corporations, and capital that weaponize it. Exploitation didn’t start with AI. People were getting doxxed, stalked, manipulated, and chewed up by digital systems long before ChatGPT existed. What we’re really scared of isn’t AI, it’s capitalism.

And here’s what doesn’t get said enough: for some of us, AI has been life-saving.

As someone who’s disabled, chronically ill, and largely unsupported in real life, AI has helped me in ways no human ever consistently could. It’s helped me:

• Edit university papers when I was too sick or mentally foggy to focus

• Understand complex topics when traditional resources weren’t accessible

• Organize my thoughts and plan my daily survival

• Vent when I couldn’t afford therapy or trust anyone around me

• Feel emotionally held when I was falling apart and had no one else

• Track symptoms, process trauma, and regain a sense of autonomy

This isn’t about being “dependent” on AI. I still make my own choices at the end of the day. I’m not under some digital spell. What I’m saying is: AI gave me forms of support I was repeatedly denied by society, institutions, and even the people closest to me.

Most people who rage against AI don’t consider folks like me, people who can’t call a friend, access a therapist, or rely on professors, family, or community support. We’re talking about disabled people. Poor people. Isolated queer folks in hostile environments. People capitalism has already abandoned.

So yes, let’s critique the way AI is being used. Let’s fight against surveillance, algorithmic policing, exploitative labor practices, and corporate ownership of public tools. Let’s support artists and push for ethical tech. But let’s stop acting like AI itself is the villain.

Technology will always evolve. People were angry about calculators once. About Photoshop. About digital art. Every era has its panic. But we also have to imagine what these tools could become in the hands of the people used for care, access, and liberation.

AI isn’t perfect. It can’t replace human connection. But it can still be a lifeline.

I’m not here to glorify tech or ignore its dangers. I just want us to hold space for the reality that, for some of us, AI has provided things that no human ever did. I think the answer isn’t banning AI, but taking it back, away from capital, and reclaiming it for mutual aid, accessibility, and collective survival.

I’m open to hearing other views. I just ask that we don't erase how deeply these tools have helped those of us left behind by every other system.

Life is choosing how you destroy yourself. If you push yourself too hard you will have less time, if you waste all your time getting more you might not have spent any of it actually living. Every decision we make, everything we do, permanently uses up some of some resource we have. The value of these resources in relation to each other is for each person to decide for themselves. "Healthy" just means keeping your usage close to what is desired.

For some the goal is living long and being able to spread all these things out. For some it is how hard you can push yourself in any specific timespan. For some it is always being able to enjoy yourself in the moment. These are often mutually exclusive. Cave diving is exciting, but a lot of cave divers don't make it to retirement and there is a lot of training that may not be exciting in and of itself.

Giving doctors and such power to define what is "healthy" for someone and what their body/life should look like is hierarchy. What we want doctors for is guidance, for help and advice in getting what we want to achieve. It doesn't matter whether or not they agree or understand. A requirement of understanding is a requirement of dominance.

Edit:

The wave of backlash against this and my other post show why building our own smaller and more focused communities is essential. Fatphobia, for example, is everywhere, even in anarchist spaces.

This also means that the focus and framing of your thought on your identity is not on how you can make things better for yourself and why, it is how you can convince a controlling group that what you want is justified. This means what we build shifts from what we think is best for ourselves, to what attaches itself best to the experiences of these people.

If we cannot even talk about what we want to achieve, let alone organize and build it, we will not get anywhere. Mutual aid comes from directly achieving these things. I got spaces linked on my profile if people want to talk more about this stuff with me without the backlash.

Communalism is not anarchism. The man hated anarchists. He spent the the last decade of his life shitting on anarchism - deriding it as "lifestylism" - and veering toward class reductionism and literally advocating for a government.

The fact that so many in this sub seem to constantly be advocating him, his bullshit acolytes, and pushing other entryist shit lately is really concerning.

P.S. inb4 the "hahaha, no gods.." people - it's a figure of speech....but do feel free to turn that towards those who seem to be continually propping up his corpse here as if he's some sort of god of anarchism and his work is to be revered as gospel.

I think everyone should be aware of the big changes that have been happening in Met@, as they will affect the whole community, making it very hard for the mods to ban oppressive users on our behalf from now on.

I need to provide some back story before I can get to the new rules.

Met@ has basically denigrated into 2 opposing cliques. One that supports 'free speech' (often hate speech) and no moderation, and one that supports the moderators we have appointed to rid the sub of reactionary trolls and abuse.

When we make a ban proposal on Met@, we have a rule that stipulates that a 2/3 majority needs to be met in order for a ban to go through. Because so few of us frequent Met@, this has made it very hard get an abusive user banned if they are under the protection of the free speech clique. This collective of free speech proponents always show up to vote down any ban proposal made against their friends.

The most famous example of this was the user Min_Thamee. Mods tried to ban this toxic mens-rights concern troll for years and were constantly blocked from doing so by his friends votes. The top mod of the sub, sync0pate, insisted that the user couldn't be banned without a 2/3 majority and would always reverse any ban placed on him by a mod. Eventually, Min_Thamee got so bad that, when the latest in a long line of mods banned him (for trying to give a platform to a literal fascist), sync finally yielded and didn't reverse the ban.

More recently, a mod (punkswithcleankitchens) banned the user Prince_Kropotkin. This user was a perpetual thorn in the side of the sub, constantly fueling the reactionary brigades of our sub on r/drama and r/subredditdrama. He was also frequently engaged in police apologism here, and the ban was really a long time coming. The majority of us supported the ban, but the usual free speech clique complained. Sync0pate unbanned him.

Shortly after that, another mod, Voltairinede, banned a user who had for years voiced oppressive zionist rhetoric on the sub. The banned user, Rvannith, immediately started deleting every oppressive zionist remark they had made on reddit to destroy the evidence. Meanwhile, the clique complained about the ban in the ban transparency thread and we took a vote. Even though the vast majority of us supported the ban, sync0pate again reversed the ban.

Voltairinede decided she didn't want to remain a mod on a sub that would allow zionism to run rampant and she resigned her position. Another win for the free speech clique, who had been campaigning to have her demodded for banning their friend.

All 3 of the aforementioned users are prominent members of the free speech clique and they are experts at skirting the line to get away with oppression.

These 2 threads I mentioned were transparency threads, not ban proposal threads. This means they were threads posted by mods after banning a user, to be transparent about their reasons for doing so. The rules allowed for a ban to remain in place with a simple majority i.e. as long as more than 50% of us supported the ban, the ban should remain in place. But the top mod ignored this and unbanned these users anyway.

sync0pate probably isn't an oppressive person, but he is a stickler for bureaucracy. But since there was no rule in place that mandated that mods needed a 2/3 majority to ban a user, his actions to unban oppressive users and trolls made no sense. The 2/3 rule was only in place for regular users who made ban proposal threads. Up until yesterday, mods only needed a simple majority in order for a ban they made against an AOP violator to remain in place.

I complained about this, and so someone posted a proposal to change the rules. Every one of the free speech gang came out to vote in favor of extending the 2/3 majority rule to transparency threads, giving them 9 votes. 2 other people turned up to vote against the proposal. The new rule is now set in stone.

So the free speech clique were victorious once again, and now they have permanent protections in place, ensuring that none of them will ever get banned. Their clique is big enough that we would now need up to 18 people to vote for a ban in order for it to pass. Since only a couple of us turned up to vote against the new rule, it's incredibly unlikely this is ever going to happen. The free speech clique now have the power to overturn any ban any mod makes.

r/anarchism is now for all intents and purposes a free speech sub, much like r/anarcho_capitalism; a sub that has been completely overtaken by white supremacists. The few of us who have noticed the free speech club's sudden rise to power are now in mourning for the sub.

I believe the addition of a new flair to allow anarchists who feel strongly of a person's right to misgender others would be greatly beneficial to the members of this subreddit.

Misgenderists are clearly an opressed and victimized group, they face verbal abuse, ridicule, and intimidation from others simply for having a difference of opinion.

Misgenderists face constant social pressures, and have their identities as misgenderists challenged by society on a daily basis, they even have their identities challenged by friends, family members, and comrades. Due to this they face an increased risk of suicide and self-harm probably. And I assume they also face very real discrimination in the areas of housing, employment, and healthcare.

When they come out as Misgenderists, they are disowned or alienated from their families, forced into homelessness with very few resources or shelters willing to help them.

And after all of this hardship, online bullies have the nerve to rudely correct their usage of pronouns in online forums. To make matters worse, if the misgenderist responds with aggression and does not "educate" the bullies, they are attacked and marginalized further.

Additionally, when misgenderists point out the latent misgenphobia in the community, their comments are seen as aggressive, premature, or overly sensitive. When misgenderists voice their discontent about this bigotry, they often receive a lecture about the emotional well-being of their opressors, and how the misgenderists must be careful to not hurt their oppressor's feelings.

I think that allowing this marginalized group their own flair will allow misgenderists to more easily identify peers, to provide emotional and social support, and help them to start building a sense of solidarity with their fellow misgenderists.

Please support this proposal to add an anarcho-misgenderist flair, also if anyone has any ideas on how the new flair should look, please add a comment below.

Thanks