Anonymity as cosplay in leftwing debate

For most of the history of leftwing activism in Canada (or indeed, the world), it would have been impossible to imagine having a debate about tactics, strategies or goals among comrades that was held anonymously. There were no shrouds held up while people argued within meetings. Tactics may have been undertaken anonymously in relation to the state, but people doing the work together knew who each other were. And even if one was using a pen name, the permanence of pre-Internet writing made it possible to follow an individual’s logic in writing through years, through struggles and through debates.

Today, most of what passes for debate within leftwing spaces happens online. Whether that’s in direct message groups or message boards, on social media or whatever, we have ditched our real-life spaces for the virtual, for a variety of reasons. One of the side effects of this is that we have become accustomed to debating others who are anonymous.

And this is a disaster for coherant, well-developped left wing thought.

Now, I’m not arguing against anonymity in general online. There is a time and place for being anonymous. Burner accounts or simply enjoying the freedom of being hidden can allow people to engage in ways that the confines of their jobs or whatever doesn’t allow for.

But when it comes to debating leftwing politics, the more anonymous the players are within a debate, the more that debate becomes an exercise in cosplay.

Leftwing debate is never only about theory. It must be about theory and practice. It’s about how well we can apply the theory that we have learned through studying leftwing philosophies to the things that we try to acheive, and always going back and asking how well our experiment turned out. Did we choose the right tool? Did we go too hard on one tactic and not another? Was our timing wrong? Did we use the right words or were we too elusive? Are we providing an accurate account of something or are we being dishonest? Here, I’m asking questions related to something that we have done. And to do that requires that we know who each other is so that we can not only debate things as we say them, but also debate things as we know one another to engage with them, and have seen each other perform their understanding of them.

We have to measure our ideas against things that have been done before because otherwise, how would we be able to say that something is possible or likely or desirable?

When I say that something is to be done about this, my belief has to be rooted in something. Why do I believe this? What has my own experience with changing things made me understand about certain things? Why do I think that the NDP needs to be replaced with a new party? Is this a whim? Is it because I hate certain, specific people? Is it because we can make parallels to other moments of reform and draw conclusions? Do I have insights based on my experience at a convention? If my opinion is rooted in nothing, I’m just randomly saying things that I may have come to learn through reading or experiences but that have never been tested in real life. Those opinions can be valid, but when it comes to the difficult work of actually changing things, you need to have rely on things that have already happened to anticipate how certain things are going to go.

This all becomes impossible under a cloak of anonymity. You don’t know who I am. I go from being Nora Loreto, someone who has been involved in movements that can be named, with comrades who can be named and speak for themsevles, and who has successes and failures that can be pointed to. Otherwise, I’m IdleWylie64, whose experiences are elusive or real, or fabricated or fuzzy. I might be a cop or I might be who I say I am. But my analysis cannot be held up against my record or reputation or anything — I am no one, simply debating words on a screen being thrown up by other anonymous accounts.

There is nothing that tethers the conversation when there are too many people who are anonymous. And in a space where there are no tethers, the debate quickly spins out into something that is useless and a waste of time. There is little to no accountability for the things that we say. Worse, people feel like they’re doing something while actually doing nothing. It’s an outlet that takes energy and with few other accessible options for political expression, it gobbles up people’s time and produces very little.

Online spaces, anonymous or not, are terrible locations in which to engage in debate. And while I’m the last person to stop arguing with people online, we have to understand that these arguments are not capacity or strategy-building debates. They’re just arguments. You might as well be arguing with your aunt or your cousin or your neighbour about bike lanes. Arguments are fine, but they will not refine a tactic. Arguments won’t develop collective knowledge about something to advance leftwing struggle. Arguments won’t share wisdom that has been learned through doing. Debate will, and we need real-life spaces to have these debates.

Because otherwise, the most compelling arguers become the ones who are most skilled in the art of online argumentation. We cannot build movements where those individuals are the ones defining an issue or a moment because being skilled in arguing with strangers online is not the same thing as being skilled in building something in real-life.

Ultimately, I’m arguing something that Marxists will immediately understand as praxis — the act of putting theory into practice, and learning what we can from it. Praxis is fundamental to leftwing thought, as we cannot solve the world’s problems through theory alone. You try and you’re walloped in the face with a wall of contradictions. Solving these contradictions is at the heart of leftwing struggle.

To put a finer point on it, I’ll cite philosophy professor Andrew Feenberg: “The philosophy of praxis holds that fundamental philosophical problems are in reality social contradictions abstractly conceived. These contradictions appear as practical problems without solutions, reflected in cultural dilemmas. Philosophy treats them as theoretical antinomies, insoluble conundrums over which the thinkers struggle without reaching a convincing solution or consensus. They include the antinomies of value and fact, freedom and necessity, individual and society and, ultimately, subject and object. Traditional philosophy is thus theory of culture that does not know itself as such. Philosophy of praxis does know itself as cultural theory and interprets the antinomies accordingly as sublimated expressions of social contradictions.”

Praxis requires that we bring our personal experiences, failures, successes, thoughts and ideas to the table and that — critically — they must be tethered to someone who is real. Only then can our debates produce anything that can be useful. Otherwise, we might as well just argue with strangers in a bar while all wearing disguises and throwing our voices.