possibly a cat @ doom_and_gloom @lemmy.ml

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It's just a murder of crows, coming up slow.

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an exciting fashion

You're like a poet for the self-censorious TikTok generation ;)

Are they trying to convince their kids to have less children? lol. I'm sure that will go just swimmingly for ND's population.

People are people everywhere, but only in the US are there USians. And USians are extremely privileged as a whole (on the backs of other nations), even when its worst victims face some of the worst oppression in the world (i.e., very unprivileged). As such, those who are privileged have an incentive to grandstand. That's what I think is unique here.

Here’s the thing, people have different conceptualizations of what a “hierarchy” is

Anarchy does not support "justified hierarchy" because then you are in the field of supporting hierarchy. That's a great example of why it is important to defend definitions.

I think how the AnCaps conceptualize it is that me declaring myself feudal baron over the parcel of land

AnCaps are not anarchists because they are capitalist, and capitalism requires classes and inequality. It's as simple as that.

Also, private ownership over land fundamentally results in hierarchy, so this thought experiment should really be grounded before it ever takes off.

No one who has gone through the basic process of contemplating hierarchy is going to call a feudal baron an anarchist. Anyone who has not contemplated hierarchy doesn't get to speak for anarchists.

Do we take the Christian Nationalists who tolerate other religions and support abortion seriously when they say that they are proof that Christian Nationalists aren't fundamentally opposed to religious and reproductive freedom? Of course not, they're just bad Christian Nationalists. Their muddying the waters does not change the reality and foundations of the movement.

When people mis-identify their beliefs, what is a more efficient argument against them than spelling out which belief is what?

We need the lines to be more clear. We don't need rightists on the left, and we don't need leftists on the right.

That completely falls apart in practice, which is what we should be attacking them on.

I do. I point out that hierarchy produces inequality which is fundamentally unstable. Easy peasy.

Now, without citing hierarchy and inequality, how do you concisely and effectively communicate why such a project falls apart? Why play on hard mode?

With NATO-Anarchists I think their logic is “lesser-of-two-hierarchy-ism”, they see NATO and the West as hierarchical, but Russian Nationalism and Chinese Dengism are WORSE hierarchies, so unless full anarchism is on the table you should support NATO in the short term.

Meet them at their argument: Work together to spell out the impact of hierarchies on both sides, and show them how this is not true. They could only hold this opinion through lack of observation or, more likely, not having contemplated hierarchy before calling themselves an anarchist. Stick to definitions and this is an easy argument. Expose them as fundamentally pro-NATO, not anti-hierarchy, and prevent them from misleading other polisci newbs.

Personally, I'm not convinced this is even a sizeable or impactful population (most anarchists I know are powerless but happy to see the US overextend and burn itself out), and I'm not about to give up the power of language to a boogeyman. But I don't have to ignore them or give up the significance of anarchism, if I just stick to defending the definitions.

these bull-crap pseudo-left ideologies usually have a kernel of logic to them

and yet

We should be attacking them on the logic of it

That sounds like a real messy approach to me. Why not just point out their divergence from the consensus definition, and then address why the consensus definition exists as it does? . At the end of day, that's exactly where their logical fallacies reside and where they can be most concisely addressed. Take a lesson from pedagogy and illustrate the self-consistent framework, rather than fighting one-off battles.

Let's say we take out the foundation of the anarchist ideology - it's definitional opposition to hierarchy. In this case, where does the strength in our arguments even come from? By talking about everything except hierarchy?

But hey, you do you. I always say "it takes all tactics," and I'm not the kind of person that needs everyone to agree with me. I will continue to attack these most basic categorical errors, and I will trust you to do what you think is best as well.

It terrifies me how much effort piracy communities spend on absolving themselves from immorality by projecting it onto other pirates. No one cares about how broken IP law is, they just care about having the moral high ground. And so the laws continue to get more and more broken.

We're all breaking the law (at least in certain jurisdictions). If morality is tied to law, none of us are moral. And when the law comes for pirates, it doesn't care about our petty divisions.

If you want to protect yourself (and creators for that matter), don't attack each other. Attack unjust laws and systems that deny creators fair compensation.

I'm convinced most of the US population really does not care that much about losing these liberties, and that the ones who do are gaslit by moral grandstanders about how much support they really have.

"Gee, it sure is a shame that you've lost your ability to deny me grandkids!"

I would like to believe that people act in their true best interests, but this is demonstrably not true.

you can say it’s ridiculous, contradictory, in contrast to pretty much every other earlier interpretation, but it’s not really “fake”

So if we have a concept defined by opposition to hierarchy, and then a group comes along and we let them redefine it as supporting hierarchy (e.g. ancaps), what happens to the concept? It can't be defended without reiterating its functional definition.

If I were a rich capitalist trying to erase threats to my power, I would very much push your opinion here: That anyone's interpretation of a well-defined concept is equally valid, that function is inconsequential.

But that's not true because we adopt certain words to describe functional concepts - concepts whose validity is not dependent on our ability to express them. Anarchy is one of those words.

I think it’s better to attack them on more solid grounds

It is perfectly solid ground to attack someone for supporting hierarchy while claiming to do the opposite. The definition of anarchy is literally built into the word itself.

Do just you turn the other cheek when people say that a social safety net is socialism? Would you be fine with socialism coming to mean capitalism? Would you also push back against those defending that socialism is defined by workers' relation to the means of production?

What if Musk comes out and says real communism is capitalism? Should economists and political scientists throw out their libraries?

Anarchy is a type of political organization like ice is a type of molecular organization. We can cede our ability to describe these concepts, but anarchy will remain anarchy and ice will remain ice. So let's not lose our ability to describe either, please.

Yeah, there's a cultural difference regarding the value/desirability of used things. Including cars, and houses although those depreciate for additional reasons.

All killer, no filler.

I'm awful at every version of it so I don't really care which I play.

Eh, plenty of Japanese people are very anti-nationalist. The rich and powerful are nationalist, though, and that's why the conservative Buddhists have held a mandate for decades. Corporate Japan does support these parties by a vast majority, and that is also the group with the most exposure to foreigners.

The anarchists were strong in Japan until they were finally crushed in WWII, and leftism was never allowed to reorganize afterward, which is strongly tied to the manifestation of Japanese counter-culture and disenfranchisement. People with these beliefs still exist widely - they simply have no power or money. Nonetheless they are present enough that they manage to support many left-wing artists, in the fringe and also sometimes in the mainstream. For example Miyazaki is still beloved for Nausicaa, despite him being considered an anti-Japanese traitor by the right. Left-wing media gets more and more flooded out by neoliberal swill as it gains international appeal, unfortunately, and overt leftist themes have become rare since the 90s.

The US did not end the empire when Japan was defeated in WWII. Instead, they used their control over the family so they could be used to keep the population obedient under occupation. Then, fearing leftists in the Cold War, they found that this pre-established political power was closest to their interests and ideals. They kept the current strong in doing so. Even so anti-empire sentiment was strong among the powerless masses for some time after their defeat. But it had no real basis or power because the old powers (and their amassed private property) remained, and now the families attached to the defeated empire are once again ruling with a near-mandate. Unsurprisingly, this occurred after the corporate class grew inequally powerful during the economic miracle. In other words, their government is extreme compared to the ideology of a large number of its population. But that population is largely distinct from the group with the most exposure to the Anglosphere, and largely distinct from the groups greenlighting mass media projects from around 2000 onward.