It is based on logic and science, rather than philosophy. We do not particularly care about the usual labels and categories that leftists typically use to try to describe their political leanings and beliefs. We only care that the people who join consistently employ empathy and rational thought.

We believe we have a model that explains why the world is as shitty as it is, and also why leftist organization and activism thus far has been so ineffective at doing anything to meaningfully or durably make things better. This model is based on anthropology, psychology, and math. To understand the model requires consuming a fair bit of material, and members aren’t expected to fully understand it right away. Part of the goal of the space is to help educate people. If you’re curious about what we have to say, then please apply to join.

Despite the difference in basis, we still value many of the same things that more traditional leftists do. For example:

• We value truth and compassion.
• We are against sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and things like that.
• We are anti-capitalist and anti-state.
• We are anti-hierarchy and anti-authoritarian.
• We would like to eliminate war and genocide.

Our ultimate goal is to build a community that actually does things, like mutual aid and other (constructive) forms of activism.

Interested parties may apply here.

Discord? No thanks, I think I will avoid using the corporate chat platform that supports age ID.

Comrade, you're describing philosophy.

Personally, I don't think that having yet another space for leftists to gather online is something worth putting effort into. That tends to not result into any actual change.

Try to talk to people in meatspace. That's were all your stuff is you live.

How does your community's model differ from Anarchism in practical terms?

A number of ways, but here are the biggest ones:

1. We're narcissist-aware. It's like being tankie-aware, but much broader and more encompassing. Narcissism is unfortunately very common, and unless you have studied narcissism and narcissistic abuse tactics, it is extremely likely that you will be unable to identify them reliably. The lack of empathy that characterizes narcissism is fundamentally incompatible with leftism - they will always sabotage leftist organizations if they are present, even when they do not specifically intend to do so.
2. If you look at the formal study of fault-tolerance in distributed systems, you see that it isn't enough to simply have the right governance structure in order to avoid a state where the system (or community, in our case) is no longer able to function. The ability to reliably identify and correct (or remove) faulty actors is actually more important than the choice of governance structure for a community. A lot of anarchists believe axiomatically that power should always be decentralized, but fault-tolerance as we understand it would actually force us to avoid distributing certain powers to members who are not yet able to reliably identify faulty (and, in particular, bad-faith) actors. Of course, we still want to decentralize power as much as is practical, so we do our best to educate our members so that we can safely distribute power to them.
3. Looking at anthropology, we see that civilization has been a narcissistic endeavor from the start, and they are still in control of essentially all of it. This immediately implies that reform-based strategies can't actually work in the long run. It also implies that a simple regime change will not be sufficient to achieve lasting change. We've got to build a new kind of society which is able to fill the niche currently occupied by civilization as we know it - one which is actually designed to be robust to infiltration and subversion by bad actors from the start.

Why do you use Discord of all places? That is directly opposed to the values you claim to endorse.

Anarchism is extremely aware of narcissists and similar issues, but the approach differs. The idea is that you absolutely should not have hierarchies and other systems that put individuals into power, as those will inevitably be usurped by bad faith actors, or even more likely, corrupt those granted the power.

What you propose will just result in a witch-hunt with a lot of collateral damage and it also doesn't solve the structural issue that power corrupts even those that are not narcissists to begin with.

So is basically every platform. I do not have the capacity to host something on my own right now, and most people are on Discord already. Besides that, I've found a way to set things up so that we shouldn't have to worry about tripping over Discord's TOS.

I do eventually want to move the community to another (preferably self-hosted) platform once it becomes a practical option.

The idea is that you absolutely should not have hierarchies and other systems that put individuals into power, as those will inevitably be usurped by bad faith actors, or even more likely, corrupt those granted the power.

And how is this state of being enforced? Narcissists will not just obey the rules because people said so. They will create hierarchies without anyone's consent, and they have a wide variety of methods available to them for doing so when presented with a naive population (which I still maintain that leftists largely are, at this point).

Even if you somehow maintain a non-hierarchical state, but do not remove the narcissists, you will still end up having to deal with the social and psychological damage that narcissists do to everyone around them regardless of whether or not they have any kind of special power over others. Why would you want to tolerate this?

What you propose will just result in a witch-hunt with a lot of collateral damage

Only if you mis-identify the bad actors. Part of educating people about how to reliably identify these people is also teaching them how to not mis-identify someone who is not one of these people.

power corrupts even those that are not narcissists to begin with

This premise is actually just false. The psychology and anthropology makes it plainly clear that power does not corrupt - it merely reveals who a person really was all along. If you actually understood narcissism, you'd understand how they mask their personality so that people don't realize just how self-centered and abusive they are. When you give narcissists the ability to avoid accountability (something that typically comes with power), they loosen or even take off the mask because they no longer need it to protect their status, and it is a lot of effort for them to maintain.

You are writing on an platform that is not like that right now, and there are many similar hosted services based on open-source software (XMPP, Matrix etc.) that will also make it much easier to move to a self-hosted system in the future.

If I see a "leftist" project using Discord as their primary communication channel, it is immediately a red flag because that shows not much thought has been put into it.

A hierarchy can not exist when people do not accept it. Even those enforced by direct threat of violence, need a significant number of people accepting it and become enforcers of it.

And no, the vast majority of narcissists are luckily quite powerless and can only do limited damage in their direct sphere of influence like families and such, but this is also why Anarchism is not only a political concept, but one that aims to change human relationships from group up including informal hierarchies like those often found in families.

This premise is actually just false.

Citation needed ;) I am very well aware what kind of characteristics are found in "clinical" narcissists, but there are a lot of people that do not fall into this narrow definition but still exhibit similar behaviours because of adaption or as a cynical response to a surrounding that favors such characteristics like capitalism does.

And aside from that, people corrupted by power usually do not consciously recognize them being corrupted. Power isolates from consequences of ones actions. Thus over time powerful people become careless and priorities shift.

A hierarchy can not exist when people do not accept it

The first hierarchies were not accepted by the people at large. They were enforced by narcissistic individuals taking over the food supply and coercing all of the people in the area who depend upon that food supply to serve them. Only the narcissists at the top accepted the hierarchy, and they accepted it because they were the beneficiaries.

And no, the vast majority of narcissists are luckily quite powerless

Only because the positions of power are already full of other narcissists. These "powerless" ones are the ones sitting in reserve, waiting for their opportunity to be on top - and doing enormous psychological damage to everyone around them while they wait for that chance.

Citation needed

"Goliath's Curse" by Luke Kemp is most of it, but "Hierarchy in the Forest" by Chrostopher Boehm adds some nice details about how egalitarian we were when we still had the ability to effective police these individuals. I would also recommend that you have a look at the works of Dr. Ramani to see just how much damage these people do just with interpersonal relationships: "Don't you Know Who I Am?, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", and "It's Not You".

No, those rulers still needed an army (or police) to enforce their hierarchy. In political science it is commonly assumed that any dictatorship needs active support of 20-30% of the total population to enforce their rule. Obviously not all of those are narcissists.

Those sources you mention are popular secondary literature. I am aware that there is a group of popular writers making a living out of vilifying a group of people (partially justified or not), which plays into the myth that if you would just put the right people into positions of power everything would change for the better. But the real problem is not those individual people, but a systematic one.

I do not appreciate discord but you have your reasons. They are valid! I wish you luck.

I did check a bit the conversation we were having.
I love that we are nitpicking on how to do better while being aligned so much, it bring hope !

Go talk and expand our ideas ;) Use every tool that feel good to you. Acts are superior than principles.
Keep in touch, stay safe, have fun.

I m happy in this safe place and my energy is focused on other projects but if you ever need help in self-hosting, open source or anything, ask and i could at least redirect you ;)

No really my vibe but wishing you the best anyway.

If you feel like it, maybe you could share the experiences and learning you have in this project in !community_community@slrpnk.net ?