DOLCI QUANTO BASTA

Reflections on Method — Anonymity and Power in Militant Spaces

(English translation)

In some non-institutional contexts and movements that we— as antagonistic political subjectivities, queer, transfeminist, disabled, and on average poor — have always been part of, there exists a practice that calls for serious and non-superficial reflection. This involves the publication and circulation of accusations in anonymous form, spread through social networks and other public platforms (accessible to anyone), used to delegitimize and marginalize groups of people, often from socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized backgrounds, within the movements themselves — or in the most serious cases, even single individuals — with devastating, sometimes irreversible effects. Meanwhile, the people who are subjected to a media trial are named, or otherwise made easily identifiable, circulated from profile to profile, left exposed to the most unrestrained opinion-making and, above all, to the very same social repressive apparatus we contest, while the accusing subjectivities remain in the shadows.

Sometimes anonymous accusations are amplified — to give them strength and credibility — by people who can be considered influencers, with a very large following on social media, sometimes carrying respectable titles such as professor, journalist, sociologist, scientist, writer, or official expert of something, and therefore with strong social, cultural, political, and economic power despite the claim of being “grassroots activists.” Paradoxically, these are genuine appeals to authority, which we are well acquainted with from the numerous cases of academic essays that rely on their own social respectability to impose false historical and ideological claims. 

This general contribution does not intend to deny the value of denunciation, nor diminish the importance of protecting those who suffer unacceptable behaviors within movements. On the contrary: precisely because protection of people is fundamental, it is necessary to critically examine the method. Because methods — including types of call-outs — are not neutral. And they can produce effects opposite to those declared. 

They can become a tool of repression more reactionary and dangerous than bourgeois justice itself. We must therefore question the boundary between cyberstalking, settling of scores, and social denunciation, remembering that social denunciation is conceived and developed by “us” for those who within this society hold material power by occupying the top of the pyramid — and not for those who sit at the lowest rungs, often in precarious situations and under severe judicial repression (suffering prison, special surveillance, house arrest, asset seizure, dismissal) for contesting not only symbolically (symbolic contestation can sometimes even be economically rewarding in a vicious cycle and mitigate the conflict) the system itself. 

We intend to start from the manipulation and reactionary emptying in MRA (organized misogyny) terms of feminist elaborations. “Sister, I believe you” is a principle elaborated by women as a social class toward cis-hetero men (and not just anyone) due to the disparity of power in society — a disparity (a conceptual discriminant) that leads to being subdued in social, cultural, political, and especially bourgeois judicial contexts. Within — therefore — hierarchical patriarchal dynamics of strong power imbalance. MRA “arguments” have become pervasive, appropriating our theoretical elaborations and translating them in a reactionary way to their advantage, mixing the cards so that the first accusation in chronological order would be the valid one, regardless of political and social context and regardless of any objective verification criteria of facts. 

We recall that the MeToo movement, which took root across every social class internationally, succeeded because of the courage to publicly present accusations in the first person, outside of anonymity, directly confronting those in power. This is not always possible, but it remains a significant added value.

A community that wants to be horizontal cannot ignore the methodological evaluation of accusations that are:

• anonymous,
• lacking the minimum references required for an evaluation as objective as possible by the pre-selected social media “tribunal”, which is accessible to everyone, including repressive apparatus
• spread publicly on social media without any shared procedure,
• involving a further serious danger for marginalized, precarious people who are already targets of government repression,
• severely overdetermining because they occur independently of the will of other people who, despite themselves, find themselves involved.  

Here we see what we consider abusive, in the full, concrete sense of the term. 

Not least because the accused would be forced to disclose sensitive information of their organization in a public forum accessible to anyone, including repressive apparatus, solely to deal with a fire that may be internal or external (ghost accuser: Accuser, judge, and hangman all at once).

Not least because single individuals (when the debate concerns single individuals) inevitably succumb to those who have, on social media or public relations systems, greater dissemination capacities, and they lose (even physically, from self-harm to suicide) because they lack adequate protective means in the face of thousands of opinion-makers on alleged facts about their person. 

We challenge anyone to dispute — in such cases — the recourse to “bourgeois justice,” where it is precisely the system of militant procedures that spectacularly fails, coinciding with liberal mechanisms that reproduce the prison system outside of it.

We are not able to assess whether this is a new phenomenon within the movements or a recurring, or cyclically recurring, issue. The phenomenon was previously known to us only in mainstream liberal spaces.

An anonymous accusation, by definition, is difficult to verify. If it is not also accompanied by evidence or any verification procedure, it becomes impossible to distinguish between:

• founded denunciation,
• misunderstanding,
• personal conflict and resentment,
• Revenge,
• political manipulation,
• political rivalry for greater visibility and influence in shared spaces.  

In such a system, truth loses centrality. What matters becomes the social effect of the accusation, amplified by the use of social media in a liberal regime — where extreme punishment matters more than factual basis. Without clear and shared rules, the risk is that denunciation becomes a tool of political or personal exclusion. 

An unverifiable method is structurally exposed to abuse 

Political Effects: Culture of Suspicion and Fragmentation

In non-institutional movements, mutual trust, as we know, is a fundamental resource. When the circulation of anonymous accusations on social media becomes normalized:

– permanent suspicion increases,

– the fear of being exposed spreads,

– victims of cyberstalking lose any remaining solidarity due to the point above, informal power struggles are triggered,

– fractures that are difficult to repair are created.

The paradoxical result is that the collective fabric weakens. Political energy shifts from social transformation to managing internal conflicts.

The culture of suspicion, in the long term, erodes solidarity and makes movements more fragile than they already are.

Responsibility of the Accusation: Anonymity and Power

Anonymity is not illegitimate in itself. In some contexts, it is a necessary tool of protection, especially when there are power imbalances or real risks of retaliation from those who hold power.

But anonymity outside real power contexts, without a shared procedure, and without a place for verification, produces a radical imbalance: the accuser is not exposed, the accused is.

When the circulation is public and uncontrolled, the effect is a potentially permanent stigmatization, even in the absence of evidence.

Without clear and shared rules, the risk is that the accusation becomes a tool of political or personal exclusion.

Proportionality: sanction as automatism

Another problematic element is the lack of proportionality. Often the mechanism works as follows:

1. an online accusation appears,
2. social pressure is created,
3. total exclusion follows.
   There is no hierarchy of interventions, no intermediate steps, no evaluation of severity or circumstances. Public exclusion is the most extreme measure a community can adopt. It is social prison, the equivalent of a maximum-security regime outside the cage. Applying it without criteria or verification transforms it into an arbitrary act.  

Denunciation is a powerful tool. Precisely for this, it requires responsibility. A community that aspires to transform society cannot give up principles of verification, proportionality, and confrontation. Otherwise, it risks reproducing, in an informal form, the same power dynamics it criticizes. 

The question is not choosing between “believing people” or “defending the accused.” The question is building practices that protect both needs: protect those who suffer real harm and ensure that no one is excluded on the basis of unverified accusations. Without justice in the methods, there is no liberation in the goals. 

Maria Carla Fontanini

About us: We are an open and growing community, coming from diverse backgrounds, made up of 28 political, queer, and transfeminist subjectivities affiliated with the radical left. We will continue to use this new space for collective reflections—both general and methodological—while critically observing the spaces we inhabit and traverse.