Yeah they immediately took over Conspiracy and consolidated the hold on Conservative. Made me really sad as conspiracy used to have some incredible rabbit hole posts. Then one day it was just TD all over again.

While true there was a lot more behind the decision than that final post. They had been fighting with the admins for a long time.

Largely because they moved to different subs.

The Chapo crew didn’t want to calm down with all the threats of violence and other ridiculous antics. So they left completely.

The term “authoritarian” is so fraught that under these circumstances it might as well just mean “opponent of the United States” or “organized at all”.

The examples you have provided are quite absurd.

Tiananmen Square (which you misspelled) is indeed poorly understood in The West, including the historical conensus that there was no massacre in the square itself. It is, in fact, historical revisionism to suggest otherwise. In addition, Tiananmen Square is just a place, a very popular one to visit that has been the location for all kinda of events. In China, the events are called the June 4 Incident / events. Calling it “Tiananmen Square” is sometimes a sign that a person is not familiar with the history as they are using the common but misleading term that is virtually only used to forward the previously-mentioned historical revisionism to a Western audience that is in no way interested in understanding.

Re: Uyghurs, I would suggest that you read into this much more, as the topic is full of misinformation, think tanks with shady ties, fake universities, charlatans pretending to be experts, literal teenagers treated as satellite photography analysis experts, and really weird NGOs, including pro-Trump ones. One good topic to focus on is calling it a genocide at all and how that came to be the discourse. In particular, what The Newlines Institute is, why they were amplified by the US State Departmwnt, their rationale, and, of course, why none of that is taken seriously outside of a very specific political block. Following their members, funding, etc is actually a pretty interesting rabbit trail to follow. Bird’s eye view, the rhetorical treatment of Uyghurs as the subject of genocide was more or less invented, and this is is why you naturally don’t see math death, destruction, refugees, or forced migrations of the Uyghur population. This does not mean bad things haven’t happened there nor that policies were not hamfisted, but just compare how China treated a series of sectarian knife attacks (education, jobs, vocational training, investment, banning extremist Salafist practices) to how the West treated and treats Muslims (invading and killing millions).

So, anyways, I hope that you can continue your education and engage with these realities in gold faith.

Many people playing “leftist” are this way, sadly. And <insert religion here>, and <insert country name here> as well, but my favorite example is “conservatives”… who despite both the name itself and the claim to want to return to “traditional” values, instead want to radically overthrow everything that has arisen for the past several hundreds of years.

It turns out that it is really, really, really hard to be truly honest with oneself, about whatever it is that we choose to believe.

One of the mods is an actual Russian troll. Davel@lemmy.ml

Pro-Russian mod who keeps pretending they’re not.

“If those kids could read…” meme would be fitting lol

I mostly agree with you, but that’s the reason why I picked an instance that does not block them: sometimes it is good to see the world from a different point of view. And it’s not like the other Lemmy instances are completely free of propaganda either.

I wonder what that something is?

Keep in mind that user-level instance blocks are not the same as instance-level defederations. AFAIK, it only blocks the communities. You’ll still see comments and posts from that instance in other communities and that instance will still influence your feed with their votes.

It is better to go to an instance that defederates or to convince your current admin to defederate.

well, views are pretty much the same. typically, grad users shitpost less and are less active as a whole but are more sectatarian because the rules of the instance allow for it, although there really isn’t that much sectarianism on there, the comm with the most sectatarinsm “shitultrassay” has only 20 posts in the last six months, whereas the equivalent comm for dunking on social and conservative liberals has over 100 posts in the last month alone

Lemmygrad.ml is a “serious” community of Marxist-Leninists, and are Dengists as well (or at least largely sympathetic towards Deng).

Hexbear is Left-Unity, and more of a community focused instance.

The views are largely similar, but the tone and goals of each instance are different.

I highly recommend you give Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism and On Authority a read. At least On Authority, as it’s a very short piece, but the two combined should give you a basic understanding of the historical and theoretical basis of why marxists defend the use of authority. I can understand where you are coming from, I was more than a little skeptical of authoritarianism when I was younger and still identified as an anarchist, but I think if you take the time to honestly engage with our position then you will at least understand why our stance is what it is, and how we are diametrically opposed to fascism, even if you don’t agree with us.

Plenty HB users are authoritarian. I disagree with them in this; however I don’t think that both things cancel out, given the fascism is orders of magnitude worse than authoritarianism alone.

Is there something in the name requiring people to support fascism if it wears the right color?

Do some people fighting fascism (aka antifa) go overboard? Yes, certainly; that’s bound to happen with any movement, group, or cohort.

For example, someone might miss the target due to witch hunting, or adopt an “ends always justify means” mindset, or even conflate “non-suporter = enemy”.

However. By implying that “antifa is fascism wearing a different colour”, like you are doing, you’re showing to not understand the obvious difference between

• individuals following an ideology grounded on xenophobia, nationalism, racism, militarism, censorship, suppression of your individuality by force, more often than not sexism, homophobia and transphobia; and
• individuals who don’t want the shit above to transform their lives into living hells, including some willing to use force to fight back.

This conflation between both groups is not just immoral. It’s worse - it stinks stupidity and similar filth from a distance. As such I’m not wasting my time further with you, go chew some grass.

I don’t know for sure. I’ll voice a strong belief in this regard, but take it with a grain of salt.

I think that Hexbear’s views on Russia is a specific case of a general tendency that you see all across social media (not just HB or Lemmy): to dichotomise complex matters into exactly one good side and exactly one bad side, while assuming that everyone belongs to those two bags. It should go like:

1. NATO bad.
2. NATO fights Russia.
3. Criticism against Russia assumed to be NATO support.
4. Since NATO bad, NATO supporter bad.
5. Anyone who would otherwise criticise both NATO and Russia gets screeched at, and eventually shuts up.
6. “Russia good” becomes part of a local consensus.

It gets messier when you add Ukraine into the equation, or consider people conflating governments and populations, but it should give you an idea - it starts with somewhat sane premises but quickly devolves into insane lack of logic.

It explains nicely why they’re supporting Palestine, even with the apparent contradiction: Israel is associated with USA and thus with NATO.

IMO their dichotomy in this topic is idiotic. However it is not just from their part, and blaming specifically Hexbear for this, like some people would do, would be unjust (and a self-demonstrating example). We, people using the internet in the 20s, are collectively doing it.

By the way, you see another example of the general phenomenon in this comment chain. Ctrl+F “elephant shit” and look at the comment I was replying to - “you either treat two types of bad as the same, or you’re defending one.”

[Now I probably drew the ire of all sides at the same time. Frankly? I don’t give a fuck; I’m too old and grumpy to play along.]

Why does everyone there unequivocally, wholeheartedly, unquestionably support Russia?

You may not like this, but the simple answer is they don’t.

Russia has barely a trace of communism anymore and it is hard right oligarchy that fits almost every definition of fascism. Not to mention HEAVILY racist and anti-LGBTQ (I have multiple friends who were from Russia and they were the ones who originally told me that before I saw it for myself in Russia)

Correct. Hexbear critically supports the role Russia plays as an anti-NATO country, and ally to the PRC, who Communists do support.

Communists in general see Western Hegemony as the international proletariat’s largest enemy, as the Global North hyper-exploits the Global South. Michael Parenti explains brilliantly in this short, 2 minute clip. Overall, Communists agree with Lenin’s analysis in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and agree that it remains the number 1 enemy of the international proletariat.

NATO is the military alliance of the largest Imperialist exploiters of the Global South, and therefore weakening NATO Hegemony is a good thing. The Nationalist, far-right Russian Bourgeoisie fights against this, because they were not allowed to join the club after the fall of the USSR like they had hoped!

Hope that helps.