Because the internet is a place where people from the real world come to share their thoughts? I hate to break it to you, but their presence here means they exist in the real world too. So your question could just as well be “why are there so many commies in the world”?
Why so snarky? I just noticed that fed is way more communist than any other space I have ever been in and I am a lecturer at a very left leaning University, living in a very left leaning community.
I only replied with a snarky tone because you started the thread with snark in the title.
Guess it must be that they feel comfortable sharing their views here unlike in real life. I’m all for it, if that’s the case. People should be able to express themselves.
I wonder if it’s calling communists ‘commies’ that some may take offense to.
To my ear, this is sort of a slur in that I’ve only really ever heard it when some army guy is shouting ‘god damn commies’ or the like.
Just a disclaimer, I don’t have particularly strong feelings for either a communist or capatalist structure. I think shitty people tend to gather power so most of us are just taken advantage of in either scenario.
I am sorry if my title was perceived in that manner. My first language is not English, therefore I have some difficulty expressing my thoughts at times.
Some of my students are communists and have referred to themselves as “commies”. I was simply under the impression that this is a colloquium. Nonetheless, I thank you for your advice and trust that you keep well.
When a communist calls themselves a commie, it’s a form of taking the insult’s power away from those that use it as an insult, and gaining solidarity from it, much like how racial pejoratives often come to be claimed by those communities in defiance of the original dehumanizing intent of the aggressors.
A capitalist calling a communist a commie is insulting. Just like a communist or socialist calling a capitalist a bootlicker.
A communist calling another communist a commie is solidarity.
My thought on why you see more communists, anarchists, and leftists in general in open source and federated platforms is that efforts centered around collaboration are likely to draw people who are more collaborative-minded.
Eventually logic and educated thought will drive them to somewhere else. Their ideas look great on paper but never live up to the hype. Human society doesn’t cooperate well in groups larger than one hundred. You need strict rules and major punishments for large groups and that leads to an imbalance of power and authoritarian rule.
How do you know they’re Communists/Marxists? I mean yeah, I noticed something might be the case, but I wouldn’t assume it’s because they’re Communists/Marxists. Not that I would mind (even though I’m not a Communist/Marxist), just being a Communist/Marxist alone is not a big deal (as opposed to being someone who fits the stereotypes of one).
I will say though I do have a friend who identifies that way who I recommended to this place. She has been struggling and I thought it would be a good gesture.
If there were a lot more conservatives or libertarians, the OP might not think there are a lot of communist posters here. Because there are a lot of left leaning people here who upvote anti-capitalist posts and comments, it is easy for the OP to reach the conclusion that there are a lot of communists. My three points explain 1) why the platform was already predisposed towards leftist thought in general, 2 and 3) why there are not a lot of right leaning ideas to balance out the ratio.
Honestly, the same reason you see more Linux users. Federation attracts a certain type of person. Other types of people use Reddit or other services like Twitter.
the largest and most active instance prior to the reddit exodus was hexbear, which is a “big tent” of revolutionary leftism, featuring mostly communists and some anarchists
lemmygrad, an explicitly marxist-leninist instance, is also relatively large
This is fascinating to me. Thank you. Do you have some insight into how the leadership and centralisation of power dilemma of traditional leninist ideology is reconciled within the fed? I noticed many of my student groups running into issues with the concept.
The fediverse isn’t a political organization that’s going to enact change in the real world, so those concerns largely aren’t relevant. Admins (and devs) generally speaking do hold a monopoly of power but that’s the standard for the internet.
And to speak to grad and hexbear, a large part of the reason there are commies here is because they were driven off other platforms. Hexbear and Grad are both decendent from active communities that reddit banned.
Seeing all the scaremongering about those communities here reminds me of the old comic. :
Part of it is the fact that the more right-wing instances end up full of nasty hateful shit which results in everybody else defederating from them - just look at Exploding Heads where two of the posts on their front page are “I absolutely hate fat people” and “I support Trump because if he wins there will be mass suicides”; not exactly the kind of content most users want to engage with!
Specific to Lemmy, perhaps because it was/is developed by communists in reaction to a perceived pro-western, America-centric bias on the rest of the web? See the History of Lemmy.