The AFCC (Anarchist Federation of Cyber Communes)[1] is an effort to link existing and new organisations that operate according to Anarchist principles. Our mission is to facilitate the creation and growth of active communities, to amplify anarchist voices, and to occupy the web with an anarchist presence.
The Cyber-Anarchist Manifesto
The Anarchist Federation of Cyber Communes is another chapter in the struggle against oppression, one which honours and builds on the web's anarchist traditions. We envision the web as a medium through which we can share anarchist insights, organize among already existing online and offline structures all while using this space to implement an anarchist society.
1. Spreading Anarchist Principles
1.1. Expanding beyond "Western"-centric Anarchism
The web has allowed for completely different parts of the world to come into contact like no other means of communication has before. This gives the Anarchist community the opportunity of listening and amplifying the views and analyses of Anarchism beyond this movement's western roots. There are many contributions from Anarchists from all around the world which are both not accessible or widely shared. There also are active Anarchists whose struggle is not widely known about for which Anarchists around the world should rise. We already have a very international movement, this a characteristic which is both intrinsic to our ideology and for which the web is uniquely poised to act on. We must make sure that anyone, anywhere can identify with Anarchism.
1.2. Accessibility
This is a public education project. In the context of our heavily indoctrinated society, Anarchist ideals are not immediately accessible to the general public. First you need to overcome all the stigma of even considering Anarchism beyond what the word means in the popular consciousness. Second you need to understand the Anarchist principles to a reasonable level. Thirdly and perhaps most difficultly, you need to manage to effectively apply these principles. Various projects on the web have already made this process more accessible and many of us would not be radicalised if it weren't for the current Anarchist presence. We want to keep a strong presence and improve the education of baby Anarchists.
2. Federating the Web
2.1. Existing organizations
Our project is not the first appearance of Anarchism on the web nor does it claim to be. The Anarchist sphere is already active on every social media platform with lively discussions of Anarchist theory, talk of past as well as current Anarchist or Anarchist adjacent real world events and exciting new ideas. We have websites for Anarchist news, dusty online libraries, places to participate in mutual aid, etc. This vibrant ecosystem is the result of years of work from Anarchists across the world and much of the inspiration for this project. We do not wish to replace it, but to build on it. The goal of the federation is to pool these forces together to centralise information and be able to coordinate larger initiatives in an accessible and transparent manner while keeping the decentralised nature and the ability to associate freely that already exists in this movement. Concretely this means that this space is for organising in between "communes" i.e organisations and to create web-wide initiatives. Should a new Anarchist project be launched, this should be a good place to find people who adhere to it and who are willing to work on it.
2.2. Linking offline and online
Many current online Anarchist organisations lack a real anchoring in the offline Anarchist community while many offline Anarchist organisations have a merely superficial presence online. With the AFCC, we want to bridge the gap so that we can operate more effectively in both spaces.
3. Our Web
3.1 Taking Back our Space
The web has an Anarchist tradition. In between open-source software, collaborative websites, and freely available resources our predecessors have created an oasis which we have maintained and improved. But this space has also been degraded and corrupted. We now live in an era where there are monopolies on all facets of this space from the hardware side to the software side. We are reaching a stage where every aspect of the web is commercialised from our private lives to the information search engines give us. The web has also become a tool of mass state surveillance and fascist political indoctrination. These developments are the result of the capitalist, statist, and colonial logic of our society. They are not an inherent feature of the web.
3.2 The Web an Organizational Tool for an Anarchist Revolution
We can do more than simply free the web. Even under the current system, the web is an amazing tool to spread information, organise effectively and discuss. The web is a blueprint for an Anarchist society. Just like how Anarcho-Syndicalists see the workers union as a structure through which we can implement an Anarchist revolution, we see the world wide web as a structure capable of much the same. Concretely, we think that we can set up the features of an Anarchist society online which would allow us to create an experiment on a much larger scale than ever attempted before. By creating an Anarchist society without having to conquer any offline space, we would be able to prove the concept of an Anarchist society without having to deal with many of the threats that previous experiments have met. Granted it would be more than bold to assume that such a leap is possible in the current form. By setting up this organisation, we want to make that vision possible.