/r/LeftWithoutEdge

2,072 Leftists peacefully protesting for 1 year!

In these times of political strife many people have forgotten just why perpetrating violence is inherently evil. /r/LeftWithoutEdge is a bastion of non-violenct activism for those people who would never justify blowing up a Mosque, beating up a Trump-supporter, killing a cop, or starting a garbage fire, but still believe in a socialist state. /r/LeftWithoutEdge is the most innocuous, left-wing political subreddit on reddit.

The users of /r/LeftWithoutEdge are in fact so innocuous that they beget rage from everybody else who is just so dang worked up over politics. Users on /r/LeftWithoutEdge are banned from more aggressive subs for being too nice so often that it's become a running joke.

The sub focuses on real philosophical thought rather than mindless name-calling and bickering. This has led to a fair amount of incredibly thought-provoking, original posts written by /r/LeftWithoutEdge users. My favorite is a verbose, well-argued, nicely structured essay that's so good it could have come from the man himself.

In addition, the sub is filled with quality articles espousing the benefits of socialism. But because /r/LeftWithoutEdge gets brigaded sometimes there's also a few upvoted articles condoning violence

As is the rule with all far-left communities, /r/leftwithoutedge has it's fair share of liberal-bashing. And of course, being human, the users on /r/LeftWithoutEdge will willfully lie about their enemies to suit their own needs.

All in all, /r/LeftWithoutEdge is in the top 3 best subs for leftist political thought. So if you believe in a society without currency but you don't want to shoot anybody, make your way on over to /r/LeftWithoutEdge and join the peaceful socialists.

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1. What is the 'edge' of the left?

Prince_Kropotkin: I'd define edginess in general as basically saying (not doing) outrageous things to make people upset or offended at how strong your beliefs are on a given topic, typically from the safety of a keyboard. When it comes to the left, this can often represent itself as purity contests, finding the most controversial socialist (nominal or actual) leaders in history like Stalin and Mao and praising them, talking about how everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders should be murdered (and Sanders is often not spared in these rants), and so on. As an example, there's "ACAB"/"All Cops Are Bastards" as a slogan that's a little edgy but can at least lead to a deeper institutional critique of police, and then there's posting pictures of dead cops to show everyone how radical you are which is mega edgy and not likely to lead to any useful conversation. Treating violence as trivial or funny seems to be a big part of being edgy.

Cyclone_1: Hello! Newest mod member (I believe) for r/leftwithoutedge but I'll chime in next. I think for me the "edge" of the left is the aggressive condescending tone that exists between, or among, one Leftist to another. Which I think is a shame for lots of reasons but primarily if you are anti-capitalist, you're a comrade.

The in-fighting is absurd.

InOranAsElsewhere: Within the context of the left, I personally see it is fetishizing, romanticizing, or glorifying violence. Usually this turns into contest to one up others with who is more violent or edgy, and I feel this turns people off to leftist discourse, which I think many people can see the value in.

2. Your sidebar claims that "the presence of viewpoints and opinions different from your own is a good thing". Do you believe that at a certain point this is no longer true? Where do you set the bar for allowed opinions and disallowed opinions (if you set one at all)?

Prince_Kropotkin: In general, echo chambers tend to produce bad theory and bad arguments, as you can't test them out very well. But of course there is a limit to how open people should be, offline and online. To use the most extreme example, nobody at LWoE likes Nazis, and I personally stop tolerating their presence in society (c.f. Karl Popper's arguments about an open society and the limits of tolerance) when they start organizing to carry out genocides, which is when I'd advocate physical violence to stop them. I think this (high) bar is being reached in Europe, in particular with the Golden Dawn in Greece for example, but it isn't reached when talking about a handful of Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois in 1977. But online and as for our own little subreddit, we're explicitly not there to be a free speech and debate sub above everything else, so we tend to say "socialists of all stripes, social democrats, and left-interested liberals are welcome, but we don't want conservatives and others who are just there to fight and debate, much less fascists advocating genocide, it's not the purpose of the community". There's plenty of other places for that. At the end of the day, we're trying to build a community that can discuss socialist issues without having to deal with edgelords on the left or right trying to engage in purity contests and posting shock content.

Cyclone_1: I think it is a good thing abstractly. I think it's important to present in a respectful way different view points, especially among those who would identify somewhere on the "left" on the larger political spectrum. I do think, however, there is a point where differing views are not constructive if they are seeped in bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, transphobia, etc, etc.

InOranAsElsewhere: I think that disagreement with others is valuable in that allows for you to walk through your arguments, strengthen them, and thus win supports. Theirs a few differing perspectives on this modteam alone, and some of us have modified our perspectives based upon discussions we've had here.

That said, I don't think this is a place for trolling, shit-stirring, or bigotry. We're trying to build a community to have more discussions and a source of news for people of further left perspectives. We loose that when we get caught up in these things.

3. What type of content do you like to see on your sub?

Prince_Kropotkin: We tend to promote high quality news pieces, analysis pieces, and discussions started by well written questions. We discourage memes and shitposts and think they tend to derail otherwise good conversations. There are other places for that!

Cyclone_1: No comment from me. I entered the fray late in the game so I have nothing against any Leftist sub, really. I suppose I am way, way outside of the loop on this but that's fine. I enjoy being there when it comes to that kind of drama more often than not.

InOranAsElsewhere: A mix of interesting and thought-provoking articles and discussions. I like to have occasional lighter off-topic or meme threads, because they help build a sense of community, but the real emphasis here is a bit on deeper discussion.

4. What do you think of the counter sub, /r/LeftWithSharpEdge being banned recently?

Prince_Kropotkin: It's friggin' hilarious to me seeing them so upset about it, with their most visible member talking about turning into a mountain hermit because their subreddit was banned. But it was a long time coming; they had a history of serious harassment and threats against people they didn't like (i.e almost everyone, but most of us mods at /r/LeftWithoutEdge faced direct threats and harassment at one point or another). I believe the last straw was them being featured as Subreddit of the Day and then immediately posting four or five Youtube videos about torturing, murdering and cannibalizing me personally, directing that large flow of SotD users to see them, as the admins banned the place shortly after that. I might be wrong but that kind of thing is what they loved doing, and Reddit can't be a place for wild witch-hunts and threats against specific users like that.

Cyclone_1: Along with high quality news pieces (which I would define as critical, thought-provoking, critiques of power, personally) I do enjoy great discussion questions. I would love to see more of those.

InOranAsElsewhere: Nothing of value was lost.

But no meme, I think they were an active disruption to this sub and other subs.

5. Which mod is the least edgy?

Prince_Kropotkin: My vote goes for InOranAsElsewhere, but I don't think any of us are that edgy. Some of us like bantz and drama more than others, to be sure.

Cyclone_1: Man, I think it's really a no-edge crew for the most part at least from what I have seen in my limited time as a mod. But sure I'll go with InOranAsElsewhere. Close second for me might be SirNeon.

InOranAsElsewhere: rie is the biggest pacifist among us, I think. We're all not particularly edgy, though.

6. Which mod could have been a moderator of /r/LeftWithSharpEdge?

Prince_Kropotkin: Tough question. I don't think any of us could have been able to stand that place.

Cyclone_1: Hard for me to comment. Barely knew the place, never ventured to it, and couldn't say for sure but for whatever it's worth I'll echo PK and say none.

InOranAsElsewhere: Personally, I could've seen myself modding there maybe ten years ago. As I've gotten older, my edge level has dropped down. I've seen that creating shocking content for the sake of shocking content is a really shitty strategy to convince people of your perspective.

Follow up questions:

7. What do you think of /r/altright being banned recently? Do you think these bans spell doom for other highly partisan political subreddits??

Malevolent_USB_Drive: I personally am fairly happy to see the ban, unfortunately I don't believe the ban had much to do with their white nationalism or antisemitism, my understanding is that the biggest contributor to their ban was a highly upvoted, stickied post called "Open season on leftists" which basically had a list of various leftists on reddit and encouraged "retaliation" against them, of which the details were left unspoken.

Furthermore, there was also an issue with a website they apparently kept linking to which offered a bounty on said leftists, which even after it being soft banned from reddit, they continued to approve and post to.

The point of all of this is that I don't believe that their ban had anything to do with their partisan views, I believe it had everything to do with them leading a witch hunt against those with views they disagree with.

This tells me that so long as other partisan political subreddits keep away from engaging in doxxing, harassment, blatant incitement to violence, and witch hunts against individuals, that they can be as extreme as they like without repercussion from the admins.

InOranAsElsewhere: The admins were being consistent. Given the ban was for issues with personal information (e.g., the bounty to find the guy who punched Richard Spencer), I think it's a reminder for all subs to stay within the site wide rules. People will try to say it was ideology, but that's just spinning a narrative. Unfortunately, with the sub banned, it's harder to pull up proof of the reason.

As far as other subs go, I think if they stay within the rules, this doesn't spell doom for them at all. Any time a fringe political sub gets banned, they try to frame it as the admins acting ideologically. But if you dig deeper, flagrant rule violations were occurring. Unfortunately, lies travel faster.

Prince_Kropotkin: /r/altright needed to go; they were compiling lists of individual Redditors, linking to crowdsourced doxxed sites, and so on. That stuff alone gave the admins cause to ban them under sitewite rules. But they were also nothing more than a memey neo-Nazi den filled with edginess and slurs - why the hell keep that around?

I don't think other political subs are in danger unless they insist on breaking sitewide rules or are so legendarily awful that they make the New York Times (we'll see about /r/anarchism's new public take on attacking everyone who disagrees with them, I guess).

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Written by apparent neo-nazi, marxist, degenerate, white nationalist extraordinaire, /u/WoodrowWilsonLong