Anarchist Messageboards?

July 8, 2005 10:43 PM

LonelyAnarchistFilter: I'd like to know if anyone can recommend me some good anarchist discussion forums out there.

Revolutionary Left just isn't doing it for me--there are about 4 intelligent people and hundreds of ten year olds who just heard about the word "anarchy."

I'd like to know if there are any leftist/anarchist forums that actually have very thought-provocative discussions. I find myself often introspecting or talking to a select few friends about this sort of thing because there's simply no outlet. So, I guess I would like to know if anyone knows a fairly large but not rampantly gigantic forum like this; hopefully, not too overwhelming but I'm open for anything. Thanks!

posted by Lockeownzj00 to Law & Government (3 answers total)

In the past few years, the best anarchist-related discussions I've had have been on the MetaFilter IRC channel, to be honest, but that's only because the people there are (with a few exceptions) excellent people to have rational debate with.

Second to that, I'd say the Debate and Discussion forum that's part of the SomethingAwful forums, which is surprisingly full of well-educated people of all political persuasions. InfoShop has a forums section, but they don't get enough traffic to make ongoing conversation that viable.

So, yeah. The best forum I've found for ongoing discussion of social, political and economic theory is D&D on the SomethingAwful forums. For idle political chit-chat, the #MeFi IRC channel is secretly packed with well-educated folk.

I wouldn't believe it myself if I wasn't part of both communities.
posted by Jairus at 10:02 AM on July 9, 2005

I should also mention that neither of these communities are anarchist communities in the slightest, and aren't necessarily exceedingly welcoming to radical views of any kind -- but in my experience, they're good places for an anarchist to have a discussion.
posted by Jairus at 10:06 AM on July 9, 2005

Best answer: Most of the anarchist discussion that I know about that happens online is either the noisy free for all sort, like you get on a lot of the indymedia sites or very subject specific like RADCAT for radical catalogers, or the anarchist librarians lists or radref for the radical reference crowd. When I'm looking for other anarchists to chitchat with, I usually start with the Infoshop and from there go to the subject areas. You can find places like the Get Connected area [which leads to their main forum section here, Infoshop News, interactivist info exchange and the list of mailing lists on flag.blackened.net
posted by jessamyn at 1:34 PM on July 9, 2005 [1 favorite]