My main contention comes from personal experience with some of those who started Raddit, when I was a mod on /r/anarchism (many of these people left reddit after the /r/leftwithsharpedge drama). I found nearly all of them to be new accounts engaged almost entirely in trolling and witch-hunting, who virtually never contributed any content to the sub that did not relate directly to banning users or silencing discussions with dogma. I became convinced that their rhetoric could not serve any purpose other than to promote the most flaccid and ineffectual sort of discourse in the anarchist community, and noticed that in producing this kind of environment on the forum, they operated as a team, usually posting 24/7 to sway the climate of the community toward deliriously ideological ends, where everything splintered into a dozen different factions, and everyone was out for one another. A sensible and rational individual would abandon the space - I didn't only because I was a mod, and hoped to revitalize the space. Eventually many people did abandon the space - only to head over to the space that was being heavily promoted, if not actually started, by a team of sketchy trolls.
Another incident was in the back of my mind during this stuff. Last year, a new account that had a post history strictly shilling for Hillary Clinton offered me $600 to buy my account. I didn't accept, but it served as a reminder: The state once, when we were younger, did not know what to do with the internet or how to manipulate public opinions on it at all, much less as surgically as they had learned to via TV and radio. Now, I believe they understand. For example, monsanto shill accounts flock to every mention of the term "GMO" on reddit. Hillary accounts did the same thing during the election, during working hours. People in the state and in corporations are likely being paid to use Reddit to influence discussions in their favor. Why would the deeper elements of the USG not do the same thing? No one can prove it's them, they can operate anonymously, and through a trickling effect, they can watch the discussion move exactly where they need it to.
This being what it is, I'm of the mind that the deep state is over "entrapping leftists", as they used to. They still are doing it, of course, but now it is no longer their mainstay. Now, their end is mostly to manipulate anarchist discourse to be as self-defeating as possible.
Modern anarchism is a disaster zone. Dogmatists cling religiously to their doctrines in a fashion no different from that of a Republican. Anarchism is now a patch you put on your vest, and a symbol you wear to state that you'll be the most lily-livered loon in the room, heaving a trough of guilt around to dump on everyone one categorizes as "the enemy". Bookchin tells us to get a job, Black Rose federation historically re-enacts 1939, and the identity politics crowd doxxes their enemies into submission. Are we really this innately self-defeating? Are we this foolish? Or were we deliberately misled down this path by our enemies?
Anyway, this is a topic that gets me quite worked up. Call me a "tin foil hat" type as much as you please, but if you think the state is not moving the narrative towards division and ineffectiveness, you've got to be thinking quite wishfully. And to close, I have many reasons to suspect that the Raddit people are just such operators.
