Unfortunately covid based conspiraloonery has crept into an anarchist facebook group that I have just recently been made an admin of. The guy who runs the page is a free speech absolutist and so let's people post this crap, although I did manage to persuade him to remove an anti-lockdown post about a week ago - or atleast I got him to consult with another admin for an opinion on it, and the post was taken down.
I've been posting anarchist communist stuff to this group page, including stuff from my org. I've also invited quite a lot of like-minded comrades into the group, and they've joined. Recently a comrade told me that there's loads of anti-vaxxers in the group. I had seen some suspect stuff posted -left-wing anti-lockdown stuff, but I wasn't aware of the number of anti-vaxxers. Anyway, I've also been posting some stuff that takes the piss out of covid deniers and conspiraloons and posted quite a few memes and tweets doing just that last night. It got quite a reaction and drew a load of people in to debates and discussions, some of which were not at all friendly.
Some good points were made. Obviously you can't get through to the hardcore conspiraloons, but you can show them up in front of others. Today I find out that some of the conspiraloons have had enough and are leaving the page
one of them keeps obsessively posting stuff, pseudo science crap. He says the virus is 'over-exaggerated'. He compares us to fascists and says we are 'siding with the state'. He also says we are the 'anarchist mafia' lol! And these people accuse us of being 'shills for big pharma'.This guy also says that he believes in the 'real science' and understands it so much that he is actually a scientist lol! According to him, he believes in the 'science' that's not bought and paid for, unlike us ofcourse.
Unfortunately one of my comrades seems to have also had enough and it looks like he might be leaving the page. He's already had enough of arguing with these selfish twats. I can understand him leaving and not bothering with these people. But the way I see it, leaving is ceding ground to them and probably encourages them. I think we should maybe not engage with them and just keep posting our stuff. And if I am banned from the group for what I'm posting then it's no great loss, coz it's not the best anarchist group page anyway and there are other pages-and it will highlight the hypocrisy of the 'free speech' policy and show who the 'free speech' is really for.
This comrade of mine very much believes in animal rights. He told me that around the time he started off in the animal rights movement, that an ALF guy called Ronnie Lee said that it was ok for fascists to attend animal rights demos. It was all in the name of 'free speech'. He told me that Screwdriver CDs started turning up in atleast one 'anarchist punk' record shop, that he knew of through a friend of his who visited one of those record shops (which was actually in the US). So his point is basically that free speech absolutism can be used as a trojan horse by the fash.