‘Minarchism’ in my book is a term invented by fascist and capitalist entryists, and people who use it to gatekeep anarchism should be on the other side of the gate.

They don’t need to be ‘appointed’ by a king or politician in order to exist. Committees are one of the essential organs of actual right-now functioning real-life working large-scale anarchist groups. When done well, they include the voices of all of the significant stakeholders in a decision, and efficiently discover solutions that achieve the goal while respecting the autonomy and interests of all of the participants.

Don’t @ me, but definitely reply to @[email protected] with the disemboweled anarchism you propose as an alternative.

El Faro hosts the interview with English subtitles.

I also think the authors that have left Substack have done something admirable, and I agree we should boost their work to encourage more people to follow suit.

I notice you don’t post. I encourage you to give it a try. Following the authors who have left Substack and posting their work in the appropriate communities would be a great introduction to sharing stories on the Fediverse.

There was significant pushback against Lemmy when I first joined based on the prominent role authoritarian apologists for the Soviet Union played in its infrastructure and federation network. I saw the underlying structure of federation between servers and the collaborative nature of the threaded discussion system as unambiguously anarchist. I joined Lemmy to contribute my own thoughts and share the stories that catch my attention to the decentralized discussion, in spite of those valid concerns. I think I made the right choice. Lemmy is not pure, but it is good enough to build upon.

In February 2025 (Pushing Back Against Big Tech), all of our admins in our capacity as moderators and posters agreed to stop sharing stories from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Google in response to the leadership of those platforms overt support for fascism. We encouraged our moderators to follow suit, which they’ve done with overwhelming support. This is part of a coordinated movement to de-center these platforms from the web.

Many famous people who used Twitter as their main social media have joined the movement also, and moved to alternative platforms to stop bringing traffic to the enemy. This represents a sacrifice on their part, as many do their own social media, and have to learn a new set of media tools. We support those creators who are making that sacrifice.

Substack is one of those platforms many creators have made their new home. It has shown extreme growth since the collapse of Twitter. As an admin, I’m disappointed to hear that fascist voices are also finding a home on Substack. While Substack has declined to censor them, it has not overtly endorsed those voices, and is not boosting them over their non-fascist content. As a corporation hosted in America where censoring fascists is likely to draw attention from the new regime, their stance has an uncomfortable context. I hope they eventually do better.

Assuming the shared goal of de-centering Twitter and dis-empowering its fascist CEO, blacklisting Substack is counter-productive. Substack is the home of several anarchist, left, and progressive voices. Linking to them should be encouraged. While it would be better if everyone joined the Fediverse or self-hosted instead of choosing another form of corporate social media, this is the home that many people fighting fascism have found. If they are producing anti-fascist content, it is counter-productive to our goals not to link to it.

While many remain on Substack in spite of its poor decision, many authors have shown great moral fortitude by leaving the platform in protest. Authors like Jonathan M. Katz, Molly White, Ryan Broderick, and Casey Newton have left Substack and now publish content directly from their own websites. This is widely considered professional suicide, but you can support their ethical antifascist stance by reading their content and sharing it across the Fediverse. If they can survive and thrive without a corporate sponsor, it will encourage other writers to follow their example.

We are living at a time when writing is dangerous. Rewarding authors with positive attention who take bold anti-fascist actions I think will be much more effective than trying to cut off another source of revenue for struggling writers. It is difficult enough to find content when the corporate behemoths are no longer an option. I think removing Substack in its entirety as a source at this point would make the Fediverse worse.

That’s the sanitized version. They re-worded it to hide their endorsement of the redefinition of antisemitism.

The recent version:

This previous version was available while the IDF was engaged in the genocide of Palestinians:

I keep saying “them/they/their” but it’s not really a group. It’s mostly one guy, Dave M. Van Zandt, who has no academic media literacy qualifications. He’s not a social scientist. He should not be running a site that is being used to censor news feeds.

The irony is that he admits that his system for judging ‘bias’ is pseudoscience, but at the same time claims that MBFC’s purpose is to debunk pseudoscience. He appears to have no idea what science is. His methods are not public, repeatable, or by his own admission falsifiable.

News from the left-leaning journalists should not be categorized with the same qualifiers as AI-generated Russian fake news sites. LGBT advocacy and lobbying organizations that have no economic intersectionality are not “Left” – LGBT sexual identities are not inherently political. CNN is a corporate news network, not a socialist organization. It’s pretty obvious the deeply flawed simplification of the political spectrum to a continuum is based on an American moderate Republican capitalist’s narrow understanding of politics, and Van Zandt admits as much:

He is actively harming media diversity and LW should be ashamed for taking this charlatan seriously.

Is it your position that criticism of Israel should be censored? Is being pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, or anti-genocide antisemitic?

This is the position of Media Bias/Fact Check. By endorsing their platform, you are also endorsing their radically biased re-definition of antisemitism that is being used to slander holocaust survivors and progressive Jewish voices along with truth speakers of all races and creeds.

Groups like MBFC use their position as gatekeepers of the political spectrum to disguise radical ideas as centrist positions, and it’s ironic that you’re using such a biased propaganda platform to tell your readers what is credible.

Bias is not the same thing as propaganda, propaganda is not the same thing as misinformation. Articles should be evaluated on how factual they are, and there are plenty of platforms that are doing the hard work of verifying information without putting their political ideology above their credibility. This bot is a mistake.

Yes, that is telling. I think I misread the tone of your comment. Sorry about that.

Semafor isnt American?