I saw a post that talked about racism towards people and when I talked about it the response I got was very heated and a person even called lemmy.world a community of ‘hitlerites’
I have been around for a week or so and this is my first time seeing such explicit vulgar reaction towards another community, is this a one-off or should I block hexbear?
They seem like grad users in the fact that no one outside their instance wants to federate with their toxic instance. Who would’ve guessed that a highly charged instances calls people “Hitlerites” as an insult. (Obv I lack context here regarding the comment.)
A community of adherents of a political ideology which is fringe and marginal, and at the same time responsible for Trump’s victory. Very dangerous individuals.
You should block hexbear
They mandate trigger warnings for pictures of cheese.
Base line Lemmy has a left skew. Hexbear people are the basis for probably a quarter of conservatives talking points.
Fuck stop appearing in my frontpage
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I like horseshoe theory. Basically far-left and far-right come to be same extremistic pieces of shit that are more alike than not, e.g. Hitler(right) and Stalin(left).
The left-right spectrum itself just isn’t a useful model, but the mere existence of anarchists contradicts horseshoe theory.
Judging by the dislikes in my previous post, my point did not get across, but whatever…
You can be a dictator on either spectrum. And if you’re a dictator, at that point you dont care for any left or right leaning values… Today it seems its easier to become one (a dictator) going right, since these folk are by nature more guilable…
If you consider your self a liberal and you think thats far-left (what republicans for example like to paint their opponents), you’re an idiot. Also those that think they’re marxists or whatever, you’re even bigger idiot, enjoying your materialistic ps5 and 4090 dreaming of a communism… oh the irony
And about anarchists, some people just want to see world burn… or profit in a lawless society
And if you’re a dictator, at that point you dont care for any left or right leaning values…
But this just evidently isn’t true. Take the fascist dictators like ᴉuᴉlossnW and Hitler, who clearly believed in their ultranationalism, irredentism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, militarism, etc. etc. until the days they died (ᴉuᴉlossnW even created a last testament while captured shortly before death re-iterating all their beliefs despite their lost of dictatorship). Then take socialist-party dictators like Castro, Stalin and Mao, who, despite any and all critiques and shortcomings and hypocrisies and failures, intentionally took actions with measurable results to improve living conditions, health and literacy for the worker class as a whole, while limiting and even oppressing the owner class (bourgeoisie). If you already checked out that video in my last reply then we’d know ‘left leaning values’ can mean a heap of different things in different contexts, but I believe that these progressive and anti-capitalist efforts are solid examples to prove the point.
Also those that think they’re marxists or whatever, you’re even bigger idiot, enjoying your materialistic ps5 and 4090 dreaming of a communism… oh the irony
I don’t have either of those, but I can’t understand why there would be any irony or contradiction there, at all. Marxism isn’t an anti-technology or anti-fun lifestyle or some religious glorification of poverty. At its core, it’s an analysis of society which (long-story-short) concludes capitalism is an exploitative system and socialism is an alternative economic system where the worker class, as opposed to an owner class, control the tools and resources of production. There’s far more depth than that, but how much time or money someone has doesn’t (directly!) come into that analysis. The famous rallying cry in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) is “Workers of the World, Unite!”, and those workers rich enough to afford luxuries are still workers with shared class interest with other workers. You don’t need to be committing crimes against labor to reach that level, they’re not buying factories, commissioning mega-yachts and flying to space.
And about anarchists, some people just want to see world burn… or profit in a lawless society
I’m talking about the political philosophy and movement, anarchism. Most of them want to abolish the concept of profit whatsoever, and they make up a major part of the environmental and social justice movements. There’s plenty of critiques of their movement, but they really only want to burn down the state which exploits us.
Lol, ok :)
haha love that
Okay, that is legit hilarious and makes so much sense in retrospect.
Why would supposed right-wingers be holding Leftist theory reading groups, hosting mutual aid comms, donating to Palestinian gofundmes, and supporting trans rights to some of the highest degrees on the fediverse? Irony? Seems like a silly hypothesis.
posted from lemmy.ml
I don’t see how that discounts anything, why would right wingers create a relatively isolated community to read Marxist and Anarchist theory, protect and advocate for trans rights, and frequently pin donation threads for Palestinians? Seems like way too much effort to be ironic, and defederating from other instances would hurt their supposed goal of “trolling.”
hosting mutual aid comms
I’ve seen those posts (I have no filter)… “I need money for rent” 🦗 🦗 🦗
I love this image. Something that always confused me is that they are communist, but support russia? An extremely far right government?
There’s no support for the Russian Federation. Support for the USSR? Absolutely, but not the RF. There’s critical support, as in the RF currently takes an antagonistic stance towards the United States, which many Leftists see as the greater global evil, but no leftist genuinely thinks the RF is doing that out of “good intentions” or has any model that Leftists should replicate.
That sums it up.
I’ve spoken to plenty who were way to sympathetic to Putins ‘Ukrainians are Nazis’ chat with complete disregard of the nuances.
Support for the USSR? Absolutely
Wait, really? The ones responsible for, among other things, the Holodomor? Those guys? Why?!
Marxists support the USSR as the world’s first Socialist State. They don’t believe it was some perfect wonderland free from troubles, issues, problems, etc, rather, they acknowledge that the USSR was real Socialism with real victories, like free healthcare and education, an elimination of famine in a country where starvation was regular, doubled life expectancies, and over tripled literacy rates to near 100%.
Hexbear aren’t unique in general support for the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Marxists see it as far better than Tsarist Russia and the modern Russian Federation.
They don’t believe it was some perfect wonderland free from troubles, issues, problems, etc, rather, they acknowledge that the USSR was real Socialism with real victories, like free healthcare and education, an elimination of famine in a country where starvation was regular, doubled life expectancies, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages,
“doubling” the life expectancy? Life expectancy was 30 years old prior to the USSR forming in 1922, so yes “doubling” to 67 took until 1967, and before they doubled it, they dropped it to 23.6 years old. Tens of millions of Soviet citizens died early deaths to get there. Starvation didn’t end for many and rationing was commonplace. I suppose killing off a sizable portion of your population would mean less mouths to feed, but what a horrible approach to try to solve that problem.
Perhaps a better measure would be infant mortality. The USA, with its “worse” healthcare, has had consistently less than half infant mortality (or even lower) for every year the Soviet Union existed.
and over tripled literacy rates to near 100%.
…in Russian. If you spoke a different language, like Ukrainian, it was forbidden by USSR law from teaching it in schools. This happened to dozens of languages in other Oblasts.
dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages,
On the surface this looks good, but that would be with a Western view of what earned wages could buy. Even with money there was limited food to buy for decades at a time during the Soviet Union. Further, you couldn’t just do something like go a buy a car. You had to get on a wait list for years to even have an option to buy one.
Hexbear aren’t unique in general support for the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Marxists see it as far better than Tsarist Russia and the modern Russian Federation.
Better than Peter the great or Putin, probably, but those are both really low bars to gauge a win by.
I’m not saying everything about the Soviet Union was bad, but holding it up as an example to aspire to would be rejected by most folks that would be forced to live that life (or die an early death under its heel as a consequence of actions of the state). Do the Marxists you’re referring to really pine to live in 1940s or 1950s Soviet Union?
A bit dishonest to point to the drops in life expectancy and the general 1940s and 1950s period without mentioning World War II, where the Nazis waged a war of extermination and genocide on those they considered genetically inferior, don’t you think? Same with comparing a highly developed country that saw no land fighting in World War II to the country devastated the most by it that was a feudal backwater only a couple decades prior when it comes to infant mortality. The bit on literacy is also misleading, the vast majority of all SSRs pre-Socialism were illiterate.
Outside of curiously leaving out World War 2 and the massive devastation it brought (80% of combat in World War 2 was on the Eastern Front), as well as comparing directly to the United States that never saw the same destruction and started the century several laps ahead, your only real criticism was a lack of consumer goods. This is true, light industry was lacking and being closed off from the Global Economy was indeed a contributing factor to its dissolution, but you could have pointed to that honestly.
No, most Marxists don’t want to go back in time to the first Socialist state, they would rather learn from what worked and what didn’t and be part of building a Communist future.
A bit dishonest to point to the drops in life expectancy and the general 1940s and 1950s period without mentioning World War II, where the Nazis waged a war of extermination and genocide on those they considered genetically inferior, don’t you think?
No I don’t think so. For one reason part of the massive losses were Soviet Military tactics of meatwaves (which Russia still uses today) during WWII. For another, the Holomodor was an extra 10 million citizens of the USSR starved to death that occurred long before WWII when Stalin took all the grain from the people that grew it and let them starve to death. Starving your farmers to death is a monumentally stupid decision for a nation that struggles with food supply. This is the hypocrisy of Soviet Communism. Marx and Engels wrote about empowering the masses, equality in everything, and society without class or station. Yet the USSR was anything but that. History shows that the actions of the state saw massive numbers of dead citizens as a means to an end in both war and peace. Trotsky himself was a victim of the Stalin’s USSR. Famous and brilliant Soviet orbital rocket designer Sergei Korolev, was another victim dying from complications from living in gulag. Do you think Marx and Engels would have seen their ideas at work in the Soviet Union?
Same with comparing a highly developed country that saw no land fighting in World War II to the country devastated the most by it that was a feudal backwater only a couple decades prior when it comes to infant mortality.
The infant mortality was more than double the USA every year for the entire existence of the USSR. Or are you claiming WWII was still to blame for the higher infant mortality 45 years after Hitler ate a bullet ending war in the European theater?
No, most Marxists don’t want to go back in time to the first Socialist state, they would rather learn from what worked and what didn’t and be part of building a Communist future.
Is there consensus in the Marxist community about any nation today practicing this Communism 2.0 or is it all just political theory at this point?
“Tankie” here, russia sucks
What makes you a “tankie” if you don’t share their beliefs?
If you agree that “russia sucks” make someone not a tankie, then you’ll conclude that 99% of Hexbear are not tankies.
Russia and China. The two groups who are well documented to use tanks against their citizens; hence the name. A tankie is someone who defends that, at least historically.
Can you go over there and get a poll started?
People usually call me a tankie
You called yourself a tankie
we don’t, we just hate the us more.
It’s obvious you hate yourselves most.
how so?
See, this is why capitalization matters.
im not a native speaker but wouldnt the word for this in this context be “ourselves”?
Authoritarians like authoritarian regimes. They’ll perform extreme mental gymnastics to reconcile their preconceived notions with reality, like the tankies that declare China to be socialist. Also, most of them see the US as the Great Satan that is responsible for any and all evil in the world. Therefore anybody who opposes the Great Satan must be good.
most of them see the US as the Great Satan that is responsible for any and all evil in the world.
That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
America is largely fine. The problem it has is a violently coercive economic model that forces people to be profitable to other people or risk destitution, homelessness, or even death by exposure, and a political system that is militaristic, imperialistic, and dysfunctional.
My favourite quote is this:
America has three political groups, but is serviced by only two political parties - the extreme ChristoFascist right has a party all to themselves, while the moderate right and centrists share a party such that it cannot effectively function.
I can’t help but wonder if tankies are the political equivalent of flat-earthers. I should probably ask that on NSQ some time, when I can figure out a way of asking that won’t get me banned.
Damn, that analogy is apt af
I can’t help but wonder if tankies are the political equivalent of flat-earthers.
One way forward is to ask them for evidence for their viewpoints and investigate their sources for errors. The problem of the flat-earther is that there is objective evidence of a 3D rounded Earth that they can’t adequately counter with objective evidence.
The only problem with that is that I don’t have the political knowledge to be able to counter their responses, and nobody else responds to the thread, so it kind of dies there. If for instance they say (as they have) that North Korea is a perfectly normal country, I don’t have any location-specific knowledge to be able to respond to that, and I’m aware our own media have their own agendas so I’ve no way of knowing objectively who’s right.
What are you talking about? They usually counter with a whole monograph, with links to receipts, like you got just now.
North Korea is a particularly tough topic to have objectivity on. On one hand, their isolation in itself means they’re not a typical country by any interpretation, and not gonna lie I’d be surprised if even their supporters claimed it was perfectly normal. On the other hand, its portrayal in the media is highly propagandized, to the point where some defectors (e.g. Yeonmi Park) have made ridiculous claims like that citizens sometimes push a passenger train to work in power outages, and reputable news outlets simultaneously report that everyone must have the same haircut as Kimmy and that having that haircut is also illegal, or claiming multiple officials have been executed with an anti-aircraft gun but it turns out they’re alive. It’s hard to have a meaningful discussion when this is the information we’re given to work with! While NK is often open for work and tourism (albeit stricter tourism than in most countries) and those tourists often enough share videos or write articles, they’re enough to get a peak inside and learn that ok, it’s not a literal cartoon place, they have a water park and rail with a nicer metro than my city and people’s lives are much closer to normal than what we often hear, but there’s only so much we can really learn from these foreigners’ experiences.
Some of the big points that often get overlooked are:
- Their mindset, especially the skepticism and national security extremism didn’t come from nowhere. A major cause of their lack of development are that the UN Command bombing ‘destroyed nearly all of the country’s cities and towns, including an estimated 85% of its buildings.’ [wiki] and the US and later UN sanctioned them [wiki].
- The pervasive propaganda is VERY blunt by our standards. That said, their nationalism and idolization of political leaders is certainly not unique, even if the pictures and statues of their ‘glorious leaders’ everywhere are freakin’ weird. For a comparison to a more familiar country: the US pledge of allegiance, idolization of the Founding Fathers and pervasive flag display are also unusual manifestations of ingrained nationalism, even if to a lesser degree than NKs patriotism.
- South Korea is also pretty far from normal. Their First Republic stage included their leader getting exempted from 8-year term limits and executing the opposition leader while arresting other members, and has repeatedly become a dictatorship up to the present Sixth Republic, where the current president just got impeached for establishing a dictatorship, making them the third SK president to be impeached so far (the second-previous president was being directed by a cult leader’s daughter along with the ‘Eight Goddesses’ group of billionaires who were basically writing legislation themselves.)
But, at the end of the day, with all that context, I would never call North Korea normal or typical, just nowhere near as bizarre as the mass media portrayal from even reputable outlets. And I suppose that’s why some (imo silly) people will overcompensate and try to say that they’re just the same as other countries.
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Seems this post is being brigaded by hexbear alts fyi
Hexbear, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the “Tankie Triad”.
Hexbear is the worst most extreme of them and lemmy.ml is the least which is why they’ve managed to avoid getting defederated from world (either that or because they’re like the third largest instance behind only .world and SJW)
Hexbear is pretty widely defederated
A lot of .ml users and communities are there just because it was the only big instance much earlier on. I’m in no way a tankie but still use .ml a lot (a community I run is on there) because it was the first one I made and i’m too lazy to look into new instances or switch.
yeah the other two I definately agree with, but lemmy.ml is mostly tame.
It’s all under the surface, the admins, mods and a good portion of users have just as extreme viewpoints, but tend to walk the line quite carefully to avoid being defederated by .world
That’s just not true. They don’t give a shit about .world. They don’t even have to give a shit about .world. They’ve got plenty of traffic to manage without .world. It’s just stupid to do so over some squabbles
Plus, everyone secretly loves the animosity. Like how the Dutch are always making fun of Belgians, but if anyone else ever says anything bad about Belgians, they’ll get a kick in the nuts from the Dutch.
That’s just not true. They don’t give a shit about .world. They don’t even have to give a shit about .world. They’ve got plenty of traffic to manage without .world.
You must not have spent much time over there, go into any .ml threads where .world gets brought up and they’ll shit all over us for being a CIA front, US State Department Mouthpiece, nothin but bots, “Reddit 2.0”, “fake leftist”, front for the US military, to stupid to realize we’re just digesting propaganda and on and on and on
But yet, they won’t defederate and they get awfully mad whenever someone does bring up .world defederating from them.
So I ask you, if they’re so full with traffic to manage, then why do they not defederate from .world?
My guess is as good as any, maybe it’s because tankies need someone to tank against. Can’t be a racist without other races around. Can’t be a misogynist with women around. Can’t be a transphobe without trans people around. Can’t be a .ml tankie without .world people around.
About the traffic, they (used to be or are they still?) the default instance on join-lemmy.org . Thats how a lot of people joined that instance and that’s how they have gained a lot of users and general communities. Maybe that has changed though, I really don’t care enough to actually check current metrics.
All I heard of before is that lemmygrad is more “extreme” than hexbear? My instance defederates from lemmygrad, but federates with hexbear, I don’t know the exact reason for this though.
It’s been a while since my instance was federated with either of them, but I remember grad being more extreme in their beliefs and hb being more… annoying. The hb folks did a ton of brigading and picking fights. Maybe they chilled out since then, but the .world threads were exhausting to read with hbs being assholes in every single one, including things that had absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Huh yea that’s kinda weird, but it’s also fairly subjective or perhaps your instance admins “straw that broke the camels back” just happened to be coming from lemmygrad at the time. But still weird to defederate from one and not the other regardless of which one was first lol
I think it’s the other way round. They share similiar politics but lemmygrad users don’t have the same abrasive commenting style.
Hexbear is pretty widely defederated
Lemmygrad too I guess
ITT: everyone says they’re bad without giving any examples, telling you what to think instead of letting you form your own conclusions.
ITT: the example is in the past and OP is asking why they’re bad.
They’re decent people as long as you don’t argue politics with them… I think
Sometimes I like hexbear, agree with them and laugh with them, and sometimes their insular attitude makes me cringe. I am very critical of the democratic establishment in the US but hexbear’s “blueMAGA” talk is really offputting to me and sounds like the incel / redpill speak from parts of reddit and other online communities.
Worse moderation than Reddit subs. Will ban any views that don’t fit their narratives. Just got a server wide ban for giving links showing how the ceasefire was reached by promising the right wing factions more of the West Bank as Trumps largest donor intended.
You know mod logs on Hexbear are public, right? It’s very, very clear that “giving links” is not why you were banned.
Yes I’m aware. Please quote or link whatever you think is ban worthy. Nice alt btw.
You either block them and die a liberal or you engage and observe and live long enough to start spreading their agitprop and using your new pronoun “comrade” as you lead the way to glorious revolution.
(Seriously though, they’re just people on a leftist political instance. You’ll get the good, bad, and weird, same as any other place).
Hexbear, together with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml are left wing, communist instances here on Lemmy.
A lot of (new) users of Lemmy have very strong - as in negative - feelings about them because of their ideas. Which to me makes sense because a lot of these users tend to be more centrist in their views and have never read Marxist literature before.
I will be honest with you and tell you my experience: they can be dickish and straight up trollish in their behavior, but not anymore than your average online trolls. The actual main reason people dislike them, is because they stick together and sometimes “brigade” post which nominates them and talk shit about them.
I personally was on the receiving end of their trolling when I first joined Lemmy too. But among the trolls, there were also very nice users who gave me friendly replies. And I had great conversations with them.
Eventually I even decided to open an alt account in one of those instances to learn more about their views and engage with them on their political knowledge. I really enjoy learning from them and having open conversations about politics with them. Even when sometimes I see their more extreme opinions, I still try to always be open minded at first. More often than not, I will learn that something I used to think on a subject, was the result of historical misconceptions or straight up propaganda. That is not to say that they can’t be wrong of course. But it pays off to be receptive about new points of view.
There are some elements that can be considered extreme, especially to someone from the general public who has never engaged in political conversations with someone who is very much to the left. It takes a little adjustment if you want to try and engage because so much of the media and literature we consume reinforce our views on the system while they specifically try to be critical of it.
Bur FOR SURE you will never see that instance be racist or bigoted. I have lost counts how many times I’ve seen that in other instances, but with them, you know exactly where they stand on that. As in, they do NOT tolerate that.
Tldr: Hexbear (with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml) are openly communist instances on Lemmy. They are very vocals because they have a large userbase. They can be trolls that stick together sometimes. If you are politically interested/involved, I instead recommend joining one of their instances to see for yourself.
Sorry this is not true. They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly when it disagrees with their very radical beliefs. The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation. Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation.
You ever see the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise is about to get ripped apart by an energy wave that responds more and more violently the more power they put into their shields?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_Worship_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
There’s an analogy for your disparate experiences in the context of your dickish attitude.
Sorry this is not true.
It is true. That’s MY experience with them
They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly
And? I do too when I’m heated about a topic. If your viewpoint is to defend fascism, why not attack it? And I’m not talking specifically about you here. But if we’re debating, I expect someone to bring a good debate.
The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation
Sorry this is not true.
And I already gave my explanation as to why in my original comment.
Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation
So just like your comment? Lol jokes aside, I already addressed everything you said before. But I’m happy you were able to disagree and get it out of your system. I’ve noticed a lot of Lemmy users have this weird obsession with those instances, when in reality they are just instances. They have both shitty and normal users. It’s always more nuanced than that.
Just cleaning up after your whitewashing. Good try though. Their community is just a bunch of trolls like you said. I’m glad the instance I use block overtly toxic ones.
Just cleaning up after your whitewashing
What crimes exactly has any of those communities committed? I must have missed those posts
Their community is just a bunch of trolls like you said
That’s not what I said :) you are very obviously misquoting my comments
I’m glad the instance I use block overtly toxic ones
Neat. Good for you then, that’s the beauty of the fediverse
The amount of pride these people take in their ignorance is astounding… anything that conflicts with their worldview, well it must be fake and you must be lying!!
Note to OP: probably not best to take advice on a topic from people that, in having explicitly blocked that topic from their feeds, have sheltered themselves from it in its entirety and aren’t going to have in-depth knowledge aside from their own worst experience with it or some rumor they heard of someone else’s experience.
I think this is probably the fairest description. Hexbearians are dickish trolls sometimes. Unfortunately, because Hexbear was the biggest Lemmy instance for the longest time, a lot of communities found this initially overwhelming, plus the big jump in political perspective is too jarring and can seem nonsensical.
But I believe anyone who takes a moment to engage in good faith with the cool users, and ignore the trollish ones, will see you can have constructive, interesting and caring discussions and realise what the attraction of the community is.
Here’s my take…
They’re more cohesive and insular than most groups you’ll find on social media.
They’ve brewed their own strongly held culture and ideology.
Many are also used to being ostracised by other communities due to sexual preferences or other personal attributes.
The result is, if you naively post in a thread in which they are active your opinion will get stomped on if it does not directly align with theirs.
Wow, I was wondering why I hadn’t blocked a single hexbear or lemmy.ml user here: my instance did it for me! I’ve had multiple accounts on multiple servers and consistently had to block hexbear users until finally blocking hexbear outright. It’s been a much better experience then.
I mean Mao greatly regretted his plans and was very sad they didnt work, he went onto become a vegan and grow his own food as to not get the food meant for the workers
Responsible for estimated 40 million the on the low end.
“Oopsie, my b.”
All is forgiven.
It shows he tried his best and was sad when he failed, he cared for his people
Mao played a personal role in organising the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas,[175] which were often exceeded.[165] He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.[176]
You ever love a group of people so much you personally set an execution quota on them?
Life expectancy doubled under Mao.
Life expectancy tanked from 40s to the 30s under Mao in 1960 because of the famine. It went back up because Mao took a step back from governing and moderates introduced economic reforms to save the economy that Mao hated by the way and life expectancy shot up.
If I kick someone in the teeth then a dentist gives them implants, they technically have a better smile because of me. Are they gonna give me credit for it? Doubtful. Likewise, don’t give Mao credit for someone else fixing a mess he created.
Mao introduced some terrible measures, for sure, but it’s a long shot to say he’s “Responsible for” every death or imply it was at all deliberate. Famines in China were more widespread and frequent pre-Mao.
So all hitler had to do was say he regretted his plans and all would be fine?
Hitler was a vegetarian, so half as good as Mao who was vegan, obviously.
Hitler killed them on purpose
so did Mao, see this comment
“Anyone right of me is Hitler” sounds pretty on point for them. Instance block and move on with your day.
