/anarcho/ - Anarchism Board

>>9797

I should also make it clear that this would by no means be a separatist *chan from /leftypol/ or Bunkerchan, or a hugbox of some sort where all libsoc types and leftists would be banned on sight. Those kinds of things never work out. See: 8chan

We seem to be in a very similar situation, my friend.

To carry

>>8950

and

>>8953

into this thread as well,

I think we've got the broad idea formulated pretty well. Where we're stuck is just at the implementation-part.

I think we should respect lainchan's stance of 'official' apoliticality (are you a fellow lainon?). But that doesn't prevent us from 'advertising' this new chan when it's ready of course.

The recent developments of the leftypol/bunkerchan/GETchan debacle is what's troubling me the most though… It's one of the primary reasons why I got this urge of getting a specific anarchochan going. As an anarchist, I find /leftypol/'s platform insufficient. It blends two irreconcilable currents of revolutionary thought into one disastrous mix. Libertarian socialists and Leninists simply do not mix. Up to this point however, this has not been that much of a problem from my subjective perspective, since the libertarian socialist current has largely dominated the relatively open platform of /leftypol/ (one can take hints from it's prominent culture, iconography, mascots, etc. Overwhelming use of anarcho-syndicalist iconography in OC, Alunya, you know it). But with the inception of Bunkerchan, the self-described 'savior' of /leftypol/ from stormiechan's legitimately unbearable overall environment, the terrain is beginning to shift. Bunkerchan, lead by a confirmed Leninist (who for some fucking reason disallows Tor users from posting. But that's a whole nother rant…) who has chosen to burn forced ML memes into the the fabric of his chan with references like /gulag/, /dprk/, literally being named Hoxha, 'bunkers' being the obvious overall theme, all this which he simply waved away as being "ironic jokes". At first I was skeptical of this suspicious intuition of mine, so I gave it some time, did other stuff for a couple of months to later return and see where the place was heading. As I returned today I was greeted by the news of the now official merger of Bunkerchan and GETchan, the openly Leninist chan, under a system which one of these GETchan administrators unironically referred to as "one chan, two systems". Major boards are going to be shared among their communities.

This makes it clear to me that the time for an anarchist chan is here.

As I understand, we both have a hunch on where to take it, just not the skills to implement it. But that's more of a question of dedication.

I'll let you respond to this post so far before I continue.

>>9799

Thank spooks there are still people who actually check in on /anarcho/ from time to time. It's funny and rather depressing seeing that one of the posts you quoted is mine from back when I first proposed this idea. But such a *chan is even more necessary now than it was eight months ago - and even then it was already evident that 8chan had some serious onset problems that have been massively magnified.

But down to business:

Firstly, I am indeed a lainon too, and I completely agree that we ought to respect the wishes of the moderation to keep things officially apolitical (even if IMO it's really naive to think such a thing is possible, especially when the users themselves have multiple times requested a board for anarchism, but oh well). But assuming that they were open to the idea, I think it would be a very good idea to not only advertise, but to partner with them. That would provide a place for all the anarchists to talk about anarchism without having to be within the confines of a moderation team that doesn't want to deal with political soykaf brewing.

The developments with /leftypol/ alone are a whole issue unto itself, however. The thing about the Leninists as I've come to see it is that anarchists already have enough infighting to prevent the ebin hugbox meme from becoming a reality, and /leftypol/ itself has proven what happens when you force Leninists and libertarian socialists under one vague banner of "leftism" rather than there being a clearly-defined space for each: The authoritarian types override the libertarians. Big fucking surprise, Stormchan is the perennial example of how that happens, and for whatever reason the anarchists in this shithole have given up their territory (i.e. this board) and become assimilated into the Marxist ideology. And as it happens, it's uncommon today for any "anarchists" still on /leftypol/ to be anything other than libertarian Marxists who like the classic anarchist thinkers, or worse yet people who superficially like the classic anarchist thinkers and get the entirety of their theory from the increasingly Marxist /leftypol/ ideology.

I don't think that I'm being too harsh on /leftypol/ saying that, but I do agree that its culture has historically been dominated by the libertarian socialist line of thought. Which isn't ideal IMO, but still a good thing. But as you indicted, the mixing of Leninism and libertarian socialism is just not a good idea, and as far as I can tell it's lead to the fucking confused and strange case of ideology that is /leftypol/.

But even if /leftypol/ were a haven for anarchists, that wouldn't change the fact that /leftypol/ is also 90% /pol/ bait, internalized /pol/ ideology and /pol/ memes, and otherwise essentially a left-wing mirror to /pol/. And, worse still, /leftypol/ relies entirely on the hope that people who are introduced to anti-capitalist politics through their board will just read theory and not go along with the crowd's idle talk. Clearly the latter has happened, and once again this has been a case of history repeating itself on imageboards.

>>9802

But anyways, regarding Bunkerchan/GETchan:

I honestly know very little about GETchan other than that they have historically had a relationship of sorts to /leftypol/, and that their board software is absolute fucking shit, and that they've struggled with keeping a solid userbase. But, I've been involved to a decent extent with Bunkerchan and have been vocal about what, to me at least, is a very fucking clear and obvious need to move away from this god-awful *chan. But 8chan continues to spiral further and further into its own deranged alt-right dogma by the day and gets continually more painful to use while people on /leftypol/ still stubbornly try to cling to the idea that an irrelevant fucking board on an infamously far-right *chan has any influence at all.

IMO, Bunkerchan would be a huge step up relative to how things are right now on /leftypol/ because it would presumably be an end to /pol/ shitposting, but you are correct that at the end of the day, Bunkerchan is just a continuation of what is happening on /leftypol/. More of the leftist and Marxist bullshit getting forced on us, while all the anarchists are expected to just become assimilated into the Marxist board culture and be allowed to retain the libertarian strain of Marxism, essentially. It's a far cry from the /anarcho/ of old, that's to be sure, and I think you are right that this is only further reason for anarchists to have a space of their own among the imageboard community. Because let's face it: 8chan is in its final days, and once /leftypol/ has been dragged kicking and screaming into Bunkerchan (with its new union with GETchan), anti-capitalist discourse on imageboards will be wholly dominated by Marxism and its libertarian strains.

Where we have a distinct advantage over them, though, is in how much more relevant anarchism is today. Marxism is fucking dead and never coming back. There are many anarchists out there and many people who would be open to the ideas of anarchism; we just need to find them, and to provide them with a space that will appeal to both oldfags and newfags of the imageboard community in general.

Which brings me to another point, regarding the *chan I've proposed itself: Aside from the obvious need for an anarchist online space - one that will be unashamedly and even aggressively so - which is best fulfilled by an imageboard, I have been thinking that if we were to go through with making an anarchist *chan, it ought not be merely another imageboard. I'm beginning to notice that imageboard culture itself is in need of a revitalization, and I think in part this is due to the fact that imageboard users are spooked hard by their own conceptions of what an imageboard should be and what imageboard culture should be. And I think history has shown time and time again that the imageboard format and imageboard culture is somewhat at odds with political discussion, and that there is a need to be willing to do something new. And we can look to Lainchan as a unique example within the imageboard community where a willingness towards innovation regarding both the format and the culture has happened.

I'm cautious to say that we would need to go into this with that point in mind, because it's one thing to admin a website - it requires some knowledge and some capital, but you don't need to be a 1337 /-/@xX01^ to install LynxChan on a server and rice the CSS for a website that will at most get a couple hundred users if you are very, very lucky. But development takes real knowledge, skill, and dedication.

But that being said, this would give me personally an excuse to start learning some skills I want to learn anyways, and /anarcho/ was where the Detroit Commune idea started. I don't think it's impossible that we've got another project in us, especially one drastically more do-able in comparison.

>>9803

(I'll also now await your response)

>>9802

>Firstly, I am indeed a lainon too

Neat

>and I completely agree that we ought to respect the wishes of the moderation to keep things officially apolitical (even if IMO it's really naive to think such a thing is possible, especially when the users themselves have multiple times requested a board for anarchism, but oh well).

I've been one of the countless people asking about the board since the very first couple of months of the imageboard, where the first anarchist discussions were already showing up. But yeah, 'oh well' indeed.

>But assuming that they were open to the idea, I think it would be a very good idea to not only advertise, but to partner with them.

>but to partner

Could you elaborate?

>anarchists already have enough infighting to prevent the ebin hugbox meme from becoming a reality

Haha absolutely. Not only that but I think it has the potential to be rather rich dialogues when you have more mild differences. I would love to help foster thought-provoking debates between 'mass'/organizational anarchists and insurrectionary anarchists, just as an example.

>But even if /leftypol/ were a haven for anarchists, that wouldn't change the fact that /leftypol/ is also 90% /pol/ bait, internalized /pol/ ideology and /pol/ memes, and otherwise essentially a left-wing mirror to /pol/.

I fully agree, the situation is absurd.

>>9803

>regarding Bunkerchan/GETchan:

>I honestly know very little about GETchan

It is/was basically a minute collection of tripfagging ML autists who role-played as 2D lolis. I wish I was joking.

>IMO, Bunkerchan would be a huge step up relative to how things are right now on /leftypol/ because it would presumably be an end to /pol/ shitposting, but you are correct that at the end of the day, Bunkerchan is just a continuation of what is happening on /leftypol/. More of the leftist and Marxist bullshit getting forced on us, while all the anarchists are expected to just become assimilated into the Marxist board culture and be allowed to retain the libertarian strain of Marxism, essentially. It's a far cry from the /anarcho/ of old, that's to be sure, and I think you are right that this is only further reason for anarchists to have a space of their own among the imageboard community.

>Where we have a distinct advantage over them, though, is in how much more relevant anarchism is today.

Bingo.

>I have been thinking that if we were to go through with making an anarchist *chan, it ought not be merely another imageboard. I'm beginning to notice that imageboard culture itself is in need of a revitalization

ABSOLUTELY.

I've got some ideas regarding this as well, one could implement rather innovative new ways of power decentralization, for example.

>it's one thing to admin a website - it requires some knowledge and some capital, but you don't need to be a 1337 /-/@xX01^ to install LynxChan on a server and rice the CSS for a website

Does LynxChan have any improvements over vichan (the source for lainchan)? If so, do you know what exactly?

>this would give me personally an excuse to start learning some skills I want to learn anyways

Same here, feels great knowing I'm not alone in this to be quite honest.

>and /anarcho/ was where the Detroit Commune idea started. I don't think it's impossible that we've got another project in us, especially one drastically more do-able in comparison.

Surely. I think Detroit Commune could act as our star. Let's provide the platform for where ideas like that can develop, coalesce and some day even come to fruition.

For next time - because I care about you and don't personally want to know your IP - purchase a fresh USB, 16GB would suffice, search for Tails and install it onto that device. Only carry out your future activity toward this project through that wonderful tool. You will not regret it.

I look forward to chatting more with you.

~ For an anarchist future

>>9805 (cont.)

Get a Sandisk, they're everywhere, so you won't need to order this online or whatever. Pay in cash.

https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/#index1h2

>Basically avoid the Sandisks produced between 2012 and 2014. The Windows 8 logo is the warning-sign.

>>9805

Alright then, I've got my TAILS distro booted up (I've actually had a flash drive with TAILS on it for awhile now but now but hadn't thought that it might be a good idea to use it for something like this).

>SO, regarding the Lainchan point:

Have you noticed that Lainchan is in a kind of partnership with Uboachan, Sushichan, and Lewdchan? Take a look at the navigation bar at the top for that. I was thinking - assuming that the mods at Lainchan are amenable to the idea - to do something similar with this hypothetical *chan. It would be a means of reaching a decently-large imageboard community - many of whom are anarchists, and many of whom are quality posters - and also giving Lainchan a platform for the anarchists to talk about anarchist stuff without Lainchan itself having to take a strong political stance. It's a win-win, and if this thing got going it would definitely be worth suggesting to the admins.

>Regarding the rest:

So, I think we're pretty much in agreement here that there is a clear and present need to be filled by a *chan like this. /leftypol/ itself and Bunkerchan and certainly GETchan not only have a whole host of problems that make them, at best, unpleasant and, at worst, not trustworthy or at least not a good fit with an anarchist userbase.

I do want to make it clear, again, this *chan would not be nor should it in any sense whatsoever present itself as separatist from anything. It simply does not fit to lump together M-L's with anarchists; it never has and has never worked out, and I think that even most lefty anarchists (syndicalists/ancoms) would agree on this matter. There is a need for anarchists to have their own political space to discuss anarchist theory, praxis, and culture and to also debate with the very diverse range of views within anarchist theory and hopefully lead to some productive exchange of ideas.

So with that established, there are two main points to discuss:

-The How: What skills will we need, to what extent, and how can we make getting an actual webspace happen? I suggested LynxChan in light of all the problems I saw with vichan on Bunkerchan before they switched to LynxChan. I'm pretty sure that vichan isn't being developed very actively right now, and doesn't work very well on its own (hence why 8chan uses Infinity, Lainchan uses their version of vichan, etc). LynxChan is also really fast and being actively maintained. But I don't know a whole lot about LynxChan from a technical standpoint and don't have a ton of experience with it. The developer, StephenLynx, hangs out in the Bunkerchan IRC sometimes if you want me to ask him anything.

And very much related that,

-What do we want this imageboard to be, other than an anarchist/nihilist one? You mentioned for instance that you had some ideas on how we can revitalize imageboard culture (which I'd very much like to hear) that would provide a platform for alternative modes of discussion and sharing content on imageboards. We don't need to reinvent the wheel and in the process detract from the core of what makes imageboards imageboards, but we ought to be willing to consider different ideas for site design, for example, as well as moderation and the distribution of power (which you also mentioned and that I'd like to hear). I had for instance thought of having some sort of platform for people to publish their longer, original pieces of writing (obviously anarchy-related, but not limited to theory) that would be more conducive to serious discussion. Perhaps we could also have some kind of feed of stuff from things like AnarchistNews and SubMedia. And perhaps we could have an I2P-only board for organization. The idea as I see it isn't just to provide a space for imageboard users who happen to be anarchists to shitpost ebin anarchist memes and talk about anime and vidya games (though obviously that's all a given too); the idea, perhaps an overly ambitious one, is to both bring together the anarchists on both imageboards and the internet at large into a community where people can exchange ideas, present their ideas, organize, and perhaps even make contributions to the anarchist community and canon as a whole.

That's the ideal, at least.

Also, for future discussions: I'm assuming you have Tox, so if you're interested in discussing this in real time (which I think would pretty much become a requirement if this actually becomes a serious thing) that option is available on my end. If more people got involved, we could consider making an IRC channel, but right now it's only two people.

>>9808

>TAILS

Yeah regarding that, why I commented on it is because I notice that you do not have the designated 'ID: 000000' which gets addressed to people that connect through 8chan's .onion.

>Tox

I have mixed feelings with Tox. Their history has been rather messy for a free software project. The last thing that made me look elsewhere was the financial blunder that happened just a couple of months ago. They had such a bad handle of their donations that they managed to get robbed from the inside by someone who I think took close to tens of thousands and just ran. They never managed to get it back btw.

What about chatting through Pidgin on Tails (XMPP+OTR+Tor) for a shorter while (only a couple of months)? A lot is happening in regards to free software anonymity and security development right now. Here's a relevant talk at the latest Chaos Communication Congress, a yearly gathering of hackers (which I urge you to explore further if you haven't before): https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7322-tor_onion_services_more_useful_than_you_think . It touches on a couple of elements that I will pursue in this post.

1. Tor Messenger: A new XMPP IM that's actually built with security from the ground up

2. Ricochet: An .onion-based, server-less p2p IM with some forked code from for example Tox, but unlike Tox is also anonymous by design.

Tails will probably ship out these applications within the month when they hit beta/stable/acceptable. Tails also ships for example collaboration software and will soon get anti-stylometric software that aims to anonymize publications, both in natural language and another one for programming language as well, which I think is pretty fucking dope to be honest.

This is pretty much the reason why I'm so insistent on the Tails all the time, it's because it's an active, cutting edge security distro that pretty much serves people like us. There are a lot of anarchists among the Tor community, both on the user-end and on the developer-end by the way.

So basically, how about going Tails/Pidgin/OTR for a limited while and if Tor Messenger or Ricochet develops like planned we'll jump over to that? That way I'm not forced to rely on any external repositories on my overall setup, which Tox would require at the moment (Tox hasn't even been packaged to native Debian's unstable branch yet and it's Debian that Tails is based on).

>>9808 (cont.)

>Lainchan, Uboachan, Sushichan, Lewdchan

You know I hadn't thought about that. A ship with black sails appearing out of left field, requesting to dock. Looking forward to their reactions haha. It might work. It's well worth a try.

>Imageboard source code

Yeah now that you say it, one thing I noticed while going to bunkerchan was that it handled .webms a lot nicer than both lainchan and 8chan (lainchan being the worst in this case). I will look closer on LynxChan.

>What do we want this imageboard to be, other than an anarchist/nihilist one?

>nihilist one

Could you elaborate on what nihilism means to you?

>Imageboard revitalization and site design

It's good that you stress this because what I want to avoid with an imageboard like this, more centered on a theme (anarchism, which is something political) is to leave out other major parts of our every-day lives. Creative outlets like drawn art, stencil-making, botany, cooking, sewing, hacking (from bikes to code) - you name it. The need for creative outlets is something we all share and I think it's crucial for a lasting community.

Now on power decentralization which I talked about…

Let's take that in chat. I think it will require a lot of bouncing back-and-forth, back-and-forth since it's still just a very abstract idea of mine, which will need some help fleshing out to something more accurately definable, and I want you to be a part of that active process as well.

>Perhaps we could also have some kind of feed of stuff from things like AnarchistNews and SubMedia

This is a great idea! Like a very sleek RSS feed or something on the front page.

And on the subject of other anarchist websites… I see a lot of places in need of some radical help in the web development (Anarkismo, SubMedia I'm looking at you), but that's for some other time…

>I2P

Sure, branching out to I2P would be a great idea as well. I've heard it's got small pockets of anarchists there already. It's also a very interesting technology. It's not as actively developed as Tor, but it's also got things that Tor will never have, like dedicated torrenting capabilities, and a wider aim, to act as an anonymizing layer capable of replacing -all- of clearnet capabilities, most notably IRC, which is supported through Tor, and okay, but Tor wasn't designed for either filesharing or active, openly pinging ports (which IRC requires), which I2P handles marvelously. Oh and btw, Tails has a dedicated, sandboxed I2P Browser, just letting you know.

While on the topic of networks, in the coming months, as I alluded to earlier, more serious development is not only being undertaken on the Torified, user-end applications front, but also on the network. Large improvements to onion services will take place, not only on cryptography, but the infrastructure as well.

To quote Malatesta:

"We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people, we want the people to emancipate themselves".

Anonymization networks like Tor and I2P are practically developed for us anarchists, and anarchists unwilling to take part in such advancements online will arguably not only expose one's self to elevated danger, but also the people around them.

I want you to consider the real benefits of providing only .onion & .i2p access, in a time where active use of these networks is skyrocketing and where development is intensifying. For example, do we want to advertize the geographic location of this future domain? In a time which let's us choose, why would we -not- pick the option for it to be virtually unconquerable?

The modern anarchist:

- Wake up in networked part of the world

- Acquire laptop & USB

- Global, digital solidarity - networked (Tor, I2P) and social (free software, anarchochan)

- Freedom of information

- Autonomy from the agents of law

Cryptography - perhaps math's/the universe's way to check power hierarchies? ;)

There's a project on Lainchan for an ssh message board. We could set one of those up, would be extremely cheap to run as well.

https://lainchan.org/tech/res/15251.html

>>9808

Mate, did you bail on me? (I'm the one you've been chatting with, waiting for an answer >>9812).

Or did our convo manage to get you v&..?

http://0chan.hk/

>>9797

bump