Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.
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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.
Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.
The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:
- “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
- “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
- “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”
The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.
In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.
Here are some examples:
“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”
“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.
We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.
Why is it wrong to be critical of western propaganda?
Because “critical of western propaganda” is a front for promoting authorianism and intolerance. The “western propaganda” they’re critical of include human rights, inclusiveness, social security etc.
This is what I find absolutely crazy. I am, by and large, in agreement with socialists on economic matters. But why do they always support China and Russia? Like wtf? In what world is the genocide being committed against the Uyghur people cool? In what world is banning access to free communication including many of the largest websites worth defending? Why is it ok to lock up gay people? How is aggressively invading a neighbouring country cool? How is threatening to invade a neighbouring independent country (which has been de facto independent for over 70 years) whilst frequently flying your military into their airspace as a form of threat somehow the actions of the good guys?
You can believe in socialist economics without needing to defend the extreme authoritarian nature of countries that pretend as though their economy runs on socialist principles (or worse, which are the explicitly non-socialist successor state to a country that formerly professed to socialism). Tankies make no fucking sense to me.
I just want to say that most communists/socialists are not in favor of china or other authoritarian “communist” regimes (any country where factories need suicide nets can hardly be called communist, even if you disregard all the other ways they fail at communist ideals).
Unfortunately tankies are incredibly loud and often well-organized. They are just authoritarian dickriders, no better than the imperialist they claim to oppose.
Communists practice critical support. To quote Marx, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” We do not believe China’s economy is socialist. But the CPC has lifted more people out of poverty than any government in history, at the same time that living standards for the Western working class have collapsed. In so far as they support the working class, we critically support the CPC.
What you call ‘Tankies’, is a word that has been used to associate Marxist-Leninist’s with all kinds of bizarre micro-ideologies. But Marxism-Leninism is the primary form of communism in most countries in the world, and in that sense most communists will practice critical support towards AES states.
I can agree that getting people out of poverty is cool. But tankies generally don’t practice “critical support” of CPC. They practice unwavering boot-deepthroating. I have never heard anyone from that side of the left say (or acknowledge) anything negative about CPC. Any critiques put up is usually dismissed as “CIA propaganda”.
There are a wide range of views towards China among communist and amongst ourselves we argue about them a lot. The thing is, a lot of the criticisms of China that the average Westerner has, are naturally informed by the Western media. This is understandable, but it leads to criticisms that often aren’t based in reality. I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone tell me, for example, that China is a warmongering, imperialist state, when in reality they haven’t been in a war for more than half a century. So this creates the idea among non-communists that we are aligned and have a unified, uncritical front in regard to China, whereas actually nothing could be further from the truth.
I agree, but I’m not so sure that it’s the case in the more extreme communities, otherwise those views would be downvoted/grouppressured out to a larger extent.
To be fair, this sound like a Muslim decrying that ISIS doesn’t consist of “actual” Muslims. If they themselves identify as Muslims, or communists in this case, that’s what counts for me. You can’t wipe your driveway clean of that stain just by saying “meh, they’re not really communist”.
I do agree that’s it’s a bit of a “no true scotsman” fallacy, but on the other hand many states call them themselves “democratic” without being so. At some point you have to look at the actual ideology and see if the state lives up to it. And nearly all self-proclaimed communist states simply do not. But it doesn’t really matter if they are “real” communists or not - they are not what a lot of communists/socialist believe in and support.
China lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty in one generation. This is pretty impressive.
You can do good things and bad things at the same time. What I find funny is people complaining about censorship and at the same time support states like Russia and China, their extreme censorship goes hand in hand with the authoritarian rule.
Censorship in China does not have an impact on my life, or on the life of most people here. Let the Chinese people be the judge of what happens in China.
On the other hand, censorship here matters a lot to us.
I’m sure it doesn’t have an impact on your life… if you agree with whatever the government does.
I don’t live in China. But I live in a country where there are millions of refugees fleeing America’s wars.
Do you not understand what the general ‘you’ means? I wasn’t talking about you in specific.
Chinese people who support the government obviously have no problem with the censorship and oppression. Plenty of Chinese people do, which is why they do all they can to get around it- like refer to Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh (until that was outlawed).
Also, America bad does not equal China good.
That may be true but it should be considered before defending China in a conversation. Otherwise it would be like me advocating social justice and at the same time defending the Iranian government. All I’m saying is freedom of speech goes together with China like oil with water. But if you don’t really defend China then my comment doesn’t really apply.
That being said I do tentatively (don’t really know the content of hexbear) disagree with defederating.
Literally so did the Nazis.
Socialist covers a pretty wide swath of political ideologies. Some of them buy into the old propaganda that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, etc, were actually on the right track, and that we can only achieve some sort of utopia with extreme authoritarianism first. They’re generally no better than people on the right who fall into the Trump cult of personality. There’s a lot of denial on both sides.
The type of Socialists that are generally more sane and denounce those dictators for the monsters they were are the the Libertarian-Left ideologies, like Anarchists.
Far from all socialists are tankies but yeah, tankies are a maddening bunch of hypocrites for sure!
This is the real reason why Hexbear cannot be federated.
There has been a large push to redefine Marxists Leninists as ‘Tankies’. They are this associated with bizarre, reactionary micro-ideologies, uninformed cliches about supporting Russia, etc.
Any interaction with hexbear users would quickly dispel such ideas.
Communists do not ‘support’ Russia, - the Russian oligarchic state represents everything they despise. But these are people who are highly engaged with politics. And their worldview is a lot more nuanced than the average person, who doesn’t have any particular interest in politics and so will only pickup the general gist of mainstream narratives, and accept them without much criticism.
So for example, in relation to Russia, while Marxists do not support their war in Ukraine, they do recognise that Russia was baited into that war by the West, and by a Ukranian state that was captured by a minority of far-right fascists following the Maiden revolution. That is geopolitical realism, and has nothing to do with ideology. No Marxist supports the economic system or cultural bigotry of modern Russia.
Socialism naturally aligns with the humanist value systems that most people hold, and which Western countries claim to uphold even as their actions contradict them. It is essential for those who would uphold the status quo to shut out socialist voices and paint them as extremists. Your confusion - ‘why would people who extol equality and tolerance support inequality and intolerance?’ - is really answering your own question. They don’t.
Russia was not baited into a war. They attacked a sovereign nation and expected no resistance.
This is why it’s a good thing that LW is defederating.
Even in the 90s, analysts understood that Russia viewed NATO expansion as an existential threat. Now missiles on the border can strike Moscow in 5 minutes. America nearly invaded Cuba under similar circumstances, during the Cuban missile crisis. The missiles were withdrawn from Cuba before that could happen.
Still doesn’t mean they were baited. They attacked an independent nation and got what they deserved.
Got what they deserved? Ukraine isn’t winning. Both sides are locked in a stalemate. Maybe that’s what you meant.
Just because you redefine a narrative in Russia’s favour as “nuanced” doesn’t mean you’re now somehow not saying pretty much exactly what Russia wants you to think and say. Same for all the defenses of China and Vietnam.
I honestly don’t know what your trying to say. Do you imagine socialists care whether their views are supposedly to the benefit of one or another capitalist country? Our views are not informed by the interests of capitalist countries full stop.
What I’m trying to say is, if you push rhetoric that supports and subscribes to a state’s narrative, that doesn’t change no matter how nuanced or informed you say your rhetoric is. The effects of it are the same.
Holy lack-of-paragraphs, Batman!
I’m pretty socialist and incredibly anti-authoritarian, so seems odd to me that socialist societies are pretty authoritarian. It should be the other way but I guess power hungry arseholes corrupt everything
My view of the socialist position on China is that it is not “the Chinese state is good”, but rather “stop being mean to Chinese people”.
China is an empire, and socialists hate empires. But the US is also an empire (in that there’s a core that gets all the good stuff and a periphery that gets the good stuff extracted from it, which for the US is often places not technically in the country but in practice obligated to listen to it). So when the US comes in all scandalized and decides that what we really need to do to save people from the Chinese empire is to make sure that US companies don’t lose market share in GPU computing, and can manufacture solar panels at competitive prices, and that people get their short videos from Instagram Reels and not TikTok, the socialists are very suspicious. The net result looks a lot more like imperial protectionism and/or racism than a coherent anti-imperial program.
I’m not sure why this ends up as a socialist talking point? Maybe because the nonsense of the policies seems obvious? Maybe because it seems like warmongering and wars are terrible and so it must be stopped at once? Maybe just to get a break from telling people that they should probably make sure people have houses?
As a socialist, my view is that China is the lesser evil compared to American hegemony
I’m not sure it’s feasible to try and compare the two in an objective way. It’s easy to know which oppressive empire one personally prefers, but trying to actually reach consensus on which was better or worse using some kind of convincing evidence would be so complicated that it would probably amount to a waste of everyone’s time.
They always say the same opinions because it’s part of a massive astroturfing campaign by Chinese and Russian state actors. They’re both attempting to sow discord in the West and lay the foundation to ramp it up to interfere in the 2024 US election.
Do you remember what a shit show Reddit became in 2016? We’ve seen this exact pattern before, where a deluge of people with the same carefully calibrated opinions on everything appear out of the blue. They want to create the illusion that there’s some popular movement towards all these inane opinions, and you can even see from the comments on this thread. They’re using the same known troll tactics to push this (eg. “Just asking questions”).
This a good test of Lemmy’s moderation and federation model and will be indicative of how it fairs next year when these campaigns really ramp up. Good on the admins for taking this seriously and nipping it in the bud.
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Every fucking “social security” that exists in the western world was achieved by those of us that wave the red flag ffs. 5 day week? Socialists. Most of your holidays? Socialists. Worker protections? Socialists. The length of your work day? Socialists. Healthcare? Socialists. Eliminating child labour? Socialists. The list goes on and on and on.
And inclusiveness? How the fuck do you work out that the only lemmy that has visible pronouns is not inclusive? 20-30% of the userbase is trans ffs. It’s MORE inclusive that this instance which has left transphobic and hateful posts up for many hours at a time on occasion. The post that looked like a relic from r/fatpeoplehate was up for 12 hours before it got taken down.
A prominent example you left out: American politicians and the billionaire-owned media don’t like when someone brings it up, but the man who more than anyone else has been hailed by the establishment as the embodiment of peaceful struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr, was a pro-union socialist and would have been as disgusted by the neoliberal hypocrites in charge of the Dems as the blatant racists of the far right
There’s a user down in the comments with a history of transphobic garbage bragging about not having been banned yet. Liberal inclusivity.
ffs
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Which union movements led to the implementation of those policies and who were the prominent leaders of the unions in those movements? Maybe look into whose blood was spilled in the streets fighting for it too.
Linking to a wikipedia page and vaguely gesturing is functionally meaningless.
Maybe look up the International Workingmen’s Association, and the 8 hour day movement, which followed the Nine Hours Movement of 1871–72. Or read a little about where the weekend comes from.
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None of those unions had liberal or conservative leaders numbnuts. They were built by socialists, just like all the new unions you’re seeing pop up today. The Amazon union? Chris Smalls? They read lenin mate.
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I know because I personally spoke to him when he came over to the UK to help with some strike action that was happening here, Coventry if I recall correctly? But I guess you want video or some shit? Hasan and Chris Smalls quoting and big-ing up Lenin on stage?
Yes. Communism is good and capitalism is bad. All of human history shows revolutions caused by class struggle drive forward human progress from one stage of society to the next. Communism will win. It is inevitable. No matter how many of us that you kill off.
Labour unions are not the same as a communist party or vanguard but to claim they’re not mostly organized and consisting of socialists is just immensely naive and stupid.
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You know, as a general internet arguing advice, when you have no points to make anymore, and the response you write to the other person is literally just a bunch of insults, it’s probably better to just disengage.
You know you’re really arguing with an intellectual heavyweight when they keep quoting Wikipedia
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Did communists steal your grandfathers farm or something?
The society that spent the last 20 years in a murder spree in the Middle East does not get to lecture anyone about intolerance.
How many countries has America invaded in your lifetime? How many murders have American thugs committed?
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Which Soviet overloards? There never was Soviet rule in my country. Stop talking nonsense.
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Factually untrue. When compared at an equal level of development socialist countries provide a better physical quality of life.
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What? No they fucking aren’t. They are all literally the countries that you would call tankie. You have not read it. Bozo.
The actual socialist countries included(quoting from the study): China, Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Albania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany.
Liberals and literally just telling bare-faced lies. Name a more iconic duo.
This is nonsense.
How many countries has America invaded in your lifetime?
The point is that America is a murderous nation.
Yeah, you’re thinking of (and listening to, by the looks of it) western propaganda institutions such as the John Birch Society, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party neoliberal leadership 🙄
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lmao
Western countries, famous for loving social security.
Yes, as “western countries” famously is not just the US.
Let me guess, your examples are Finland and Sweden, two countries that have been gradually dismantling their welfare states for decades?
Every European country has social security
Achieved by the ideology of the very people you’re currently suppressing. All you’re doing is moving this community hard-right, alienating the left by saying “this is not for you”.
How do you think this discussion is gonna go down every single time this community ever gets linked anywhere now? It’s gonna be “the community that banned socialists” and it’s gonna attract the neoliberals and the far right as a result while ensuring everyone that leans remotely left says “oh, fuck that then”. It’s a completely shortsighted move for the future of the instance. It’s going to have nazi bar syndrome.
As soon as we had that PM where you said “survival of the fittest” to me I knew something was up. You literally quoted Thatcherite/Ayn Randian philosophy to justify selectively not intervening in name squatting and community theft, a move that completely fucked over this instance’s potential to work with any subreddit modteams in further hastening the reddit migration. Livid that I was led on by this place to begin with.
Oh you mean that time where you asked me to remove the current mod from !gamingcirclejerk@lemmy.world? Where you asked me to either add you as a topmod or rename the existing one because you were the moderators of that community on Reddit?
I told you to pick it up with the current one or to create it on another instance. I said that with your entire reddit community behind you you would quickly become to bigger “gamingcirclejerk” without me having to intervene. It was in that context that I called it “survival of the fittest” of communities on instances. Nothing too philosophical about that.
Feel free to post our entire conversation here.
Yes I do mean the time the official gamingcirclejerk team asked you to stop the misrepresentation of this GCJ, which is literally stealing the branding, and the graphics created by the official team on the subreddit, and presenting itself as a continuation of it. I asked you to resolve it. Whether that meant putting the official team in charge, or whether that meant some other resolution, because attempts to reach out were being ignored. I am not misrepresenting that conversation, neither are you really I don’t see a reason to contest that other than me as topmod, nobody suggested anything other than the existing team being added to it, most likely in the existing hierarchy but we didn’t get that far in conversation did we? So given there’s no much disagreement on the content let’s just skip to the end eh?
And there was no response from then on.
After discussing it with some of the team gossip got around various reddit mod backrooms and bish bash bosh nobody wanted to have anything to do with this space anymore because it doesn’t respect the work and effort people put into creating those communities and bringing them up to what they are today.
Like, what exactly did you expect this response to do? Inspire faith in the way this team respects other teams, wants to maintain positive relations and genuinely does care about the work people put into their communities? It was flippant. And the expectation was that same flippancy about everything would be the experience modteams would all get if communities were made here - so they weren’t, with completely valid concerns.
And now what’s happening? More incredibly shortsighted decision making. This topic is going to come up every single time lemmyworld is ever mentioned now. It is going to haunt the site. And on top of that the site already struggles with clear wreckers trying to harm it, coming from fascists or from some other instance that wants to see it fail or maybe reddit, who the fuck knows. And now it’s taken the risk of adding thousands of extremely pissed off and sleighted leftists to that, completely unnecessarily, because you know damn well they absolutely wanted to play nicely. Are these the actions of an instance carefully thinking about its health(avoiding drama that inspires unstoppable wrecker behaviour that constantly cripples the site) and maximising its growth(networking with and promoting the transition of users from elsewhere) while promoting a positive environment(making people nice to each other instead of hostile)? Fuck no they’re not.
Is that the best you’ve got? Systems that have been “gradually dismantled for decades” but still provide a higher quality of life for their citizens than not just the US but every single authoritarian government. Also the list is a lot bigger than two countries.
Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?
What on earth are you on about? The USSR provided guaranteed housing and employment for all citizens. Cuba has a world-class universal health system despite more than half a century under economic sanctions. China will exceed the living standards of the Western working class within this generation. And the “welfare” states of the West, even before they were dismantled, were only possible under capitalism because of the enormous wealth that the West had accrued by economic imperialism.
How’s that USSR working out?
Yes, Cuba, a country that despite not having the ability to exploit ‘the global south’ still has better health and happiness than “exploitative” countries, refer to my last point from the rest of the conversation below that you chose to ignore, you’re agreeing with me.
China has just been through the harshest pandemic lock down of all countries and still failed to avoid economic suffering, are you really so ignorant to think their populace is happy? The same populace with 24% unemployment in the under 25 age bracket? The same populace under the boot of an authoritarian leader that disallows dissent?
Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?
Can you name a single Western government with a higher approval rating than the CPC?
I mean, that’s the best the West has got. Everywhere else, social security is considerably worse and means-tested. Plus, both have got right-wing governments that aren’t exactly fans of social security: the last right-wing Finnish government introduced an ”activation” system for unemployment which was so bureaucratic a lot of people’s benefits were cut for not being able to jump through arbitary hoops, and they’re bringing a similar system back, as well as cutting many, more focused benefits. What @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world said also applies here, since the whole welfare state only exists due to the CIA funding social democrats during the Cold War as a counter to socialism.
There’s many more factors to consider than whether or not a country is AuThOrItArIaN. A country living off the backs of the global south can give its citizens a better standard of living than countries in the global south? Surprised Pikachu.
Are you sure? And yet, even if it is, it’s still providing better quality of life for more citizens than anything that came before it.
You mean there’s a number of voters that would vote for non-socially democratic parties and that those parties would try to dismantle socialised institutions? Surprised Pikachu.
You are aware that there’s idiots voting for anti-social parties in even the most socially advanced countries too right, you’re not just disingenuously blaming the ineffectualities of the system on those that support it, right?
What does the CIA have to do with the anti-social masses in all the other countries around the world? Doesn’t take a psyop campaign to find authoritarian morons.
Yeah, like how their populace votes.
No shit. Just like a country that engages in good faith democratic representation and supports social services can also provide better healthcare and happiness index ratings than the US, Russia, and China.
Name a “non-western” state where you would like to live and enjoy their social security.
Have you ever lived off social security?
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Think of it like a social contract. If you don’t play by the “rules”, you’re not protected by those same “rules”. If someone is intolerant, it’s silly for that person to expect people to extend them the same courtesy that they themselves refuse to extend to others. Hypocritical, too.
It’s kind of like the free speech thing. Maybe you could talk about grass for days on end, but that wouldn’t mean that anyone would have to listen to you talk about grass for days on end.
It is, but it’s necessary. Look up the “paradox of tolerance”.
For these racists folks anyone who is not a Westerner is subhuman. Their voices do not matter. They should shut up and know their place.
You are the intolerant one.
Be that as it may, why should people be prevented from questioning it? Isolating people does not make them better informed. Conversation does. All that isolation accomplishes is creating echochambers --which only serves to strengthen their beliefs.
They aren’t and they aren’t even being prevented from doing it on this very instance. There’s pleny of anti-western and anti-capitalist sentiment in here, particularly from lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml. My take away on this is that the Admins are defederating from hexbear due to their stated plan to propagandize the shit out of every instance in the fediverse. Who wants to deal with a coordinated army of tankies coming from another instance?