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?
TLDR: they are right-wingers pretending to be left wing
I love this image. Something that always confused me is that they are communist, but support russia? An extremely far right government?
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.
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.
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.
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.
What are you talking about? They usually counter with a whole monograph, with links to receipts, like you got just now.
Damn, that analogy is apt af
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.
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 too 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, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages, 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 the final Tsar 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
we don’t, we just hate the us more.
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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.”
You’re forgetting that Hexbear and lemmy.ml tend to support Russia and the CCP, both authoritarian dictatorships with Russia being openly Fascist. This is because of the general “America bad” viewpoint on these instances.
While the US has its… problems, that doesn’t mean their geopolitical rivals are then magically all-benevolent. Multiple sides in conflict can be shitty, and ignoring the genocides that Russia and China have been committing over the past few years is unacceptable.
What does the Y axis represent here?
The amount of mental gymnastics being done to justify their ideology
Mental gymnastics is the term given to people who read books by the mental couch and potato chip crowd.
Technically, the X-axis doesn’t represent anything either, as the far-right plot point curves upward, rather than continuing.
Separation from reality, maybe?
It looks like another way of drawing the political compass left/right (collective vs individual rights) on the x axis and authoritarian/libertarian (obedience to centralized authority hierarchy vs distributed political pluralism) on the y axis. Tankies and far right would be in auth q1 and q2, far left q3, and not representing q4 labeling the quadrants from top left clockwise.
It’s a reference to horseshoe theory with the addition of the left wing where it’s actually democratic as opposed to communism authoritarianism which can resemble fascist authoritarianism in a war economy.
“tankies” (aka Marxist-leninists) fully believe in Democracy - they just reject the idea that neoliberal two party American democracy is the be all and end all.
For some reason they are more pro Russian suppression state, Chinese one-party censorship state and even apologise for DPRK. It’s pretty tall order to call any of those democratic. Then from my discussion with tankies they often advocate for an armed revolution which are very undemocratic in their nature and often lead to one-party states or a military junta government.
Marxist-Leninism is a democratic ideology but the way tankies talk doesn’t sound very democratic to me.
For some reason they are more pro Russian suppression state
They really aren’t. I keep seeing .worlders assert this but I’ve never seen it there. China and DPRK yes, but not Russia. (I also do consider China to be at least as democratic as western countries, not so much Korea, but I don’t mind hearing opposing views.)
Is it the way tankies talk that make it sound not democratic to you? Or it the biases you went in with?
“Y” is the name of one of the major meme/shitpost contributors on lemmy.ml
If we read it as a political compass
Auth+
Lib-
Okay, that is legit hilarious and makes so much sense in retrospect.
haha love that
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 :)
I would block hexbear. I’ve done it server-wide. They are mostly very loud trolls pretending to be communists. Some could be actual communists, but I don’t buy anyone actually wanting to be in such a toxic environment and believe what they claim to believe.
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User blocking also doesn’t block votes so they’ll also still influence your feed.
Hexbear, lemmygrad and (in great part) lemmy.ml are tankie instances.
They basically deny any crimes of Stalin, Mao etc…
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 deaths on the low end.
“Oopsie, my b.”
All is forgiven.
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.
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.
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
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.
Hexbear is pretty widely defederated
Lemmygrad too I guess
Hexbear.net is a Left-Unity instance populated mainly by Marxists and Anarchists. They generally don’t get along with Lemmy.world, whose admins defederated from the major Marxist-aligned instances.
Whether you block Hexbear is up to you, I enjoy my time there a lot but it’s also because I’m a Marxist. The ones saying they are “pretending” to be Leftist never seem to be able to explain why a large group of people would all ironically have theory reading groups and ironically support trans rights for years, even before federating with anyone else. What would they have to gain?
If I were you, I’d ask on an instance actually federated with them. You’ll get different perspectives than you will here, which is always the case when it comes to controversial topics like Marxism, where opinion varies greatly from instance to instance.
The issue with hexbear isn’t Marxism or anarchism or communism, it’s apologism for violent authoritarian regimes to the point of insisting on an “alternative facts” version of “history”.
Alternative facts is when you refuse to admit you were wrong after carrying water for a single source white supremacist even when all the major media platforms that boosted the claim dropped it years ago.
So for years, as a ‘good leftist’, you continue repeating blood libel while you scream at people to support a capitalist committing genocide.
I really can’t tell what you are talking about.
Adrian Zenz
I really don’t think they are a left-unity instance considering that they get very upset and unpleasant to talk to if you don’t support authoritarianism or their alternative “facts.”
Like I’m cool with all sorts of different leftist viewpoints and I think it’s necessary that we support each other, but I draw the line at authoritarianism and rewriting history.
Anarchists are explicitly welcome, so authoritarianism is definitely not a requirement. And what “alternative facts”?
Things like the denial of the tiananmen square massacre or claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation, both of which I have seen with my own two eyes on hexbear.
While I am not an anarchist, generally I am cool with them. Who I am not cool with are Marxist-Leninists, which are authoritarian.
From the wikipedia article on Marxist-Leninists:
In the words of historians Silvio Pons and Robert Service, elections are “generally not competitive, with voters having no choice or only a strictly limited choice”. Generally, when alternative candidates have been allowed to stand for election, they have not been allowed to promote very different political views.
6·2 months agoThe people of the soviet union, at least as far as Pat Sloan experienced in ~1937, had the most limited choice: any person
I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship is no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organization was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet?
As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organization or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organizations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters.Several things in there I dislike:
Raising hands does not seem like an accurate way vote. Peasants who employed labor couldn’t vote. People could vote even if they weren’t citizens. No mention of being able to vote for non-communists. There are trade-unions and other candidates but it doesn’t mention their political alignment
To defend non-citizens voting, the Soviets valued labor over nationalism and anyone could vote despite not being citizens if they worked there. Kinda like if the US allowed immigrants to vote who weren’t yet citizens.
Trade Unions were often independent as well. Really, the book itself is fascinating.
I support immigration but allowing non-citizens to vote seems like an easy way for foreign governments to swing elections in their favor.
Yes, I get that the trade unions were their own thing but that doesn’t mean they can’t also be communist.
No mention of being able to vote for non-communists
???
Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party
???
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here, you’re being very vague. I’m a Marxist, I enjoy my time there, I don’t really think I can say I share your same views on it.
When the instance I’m on was still federated with hexbear I did go and check them out to see what they had to say and with my own two eyes I saw people there denying the tiananmen square massacre and claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation. Not to mention that when visiting other instances, such as the one I’m on, many would be extremely rude, which is why they got defederated.
Hexbear’s stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.
I reiterate, Hexbear’s stance isn’t that the massacre didn’t happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:
In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]
As for the DPRK, I’d have to see what you mean as an example. The common consensus is that the DPRK has a well-documented “defector storytelling industry” where defectors are paid for outlandish stories, and due to their unverifiability gets passed on as truth. A good documentary on this subject is Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul. Therefore, really, very little can be trusted on the subject. Brutal executions being reported such as one official being eaten to death by 120 dogs end up being reported uncritically, despite said official turning up alive later and the story originating from a Chinese satirical column, akin to the Onion.
This is where the joke of “Juche Necromancy” comes from, because supposedly executed officials regularly turn up alive.
The reason they got defederated from so many major instances is less to do with the politics and more to do with the spam, brigading, and bad faith interactions that had no intention of civility.
This is objectively untrue, Lemmy.world refused to ever federate, as, in their own words, a “pre-emptive last resort”.
In their statement, the reasoning they explicitly highlighted was Hexbear’s stances like being against western propaganda and disliking the mass overseas wars driven by the US. Don’t believe me? You can read it here - https://lemmy.world/post/2498330
So no, Hexbear was very explicitly defederated because of politics.
The world mods also outright support Israel.
You can tell someone is terminally reddit brained when they’re still accusing people from federated instances of “brigading”.
Left-Unity instance
I doubt it or I’d be over there. Instead, I got attacked and mocked by a circlejerking mob of angsty teens from Hexbear operating in bad faith for remotely questioning something about communism and then got permabanned from Lemmy.ml. I didn’t even attack it! 😂
Do you have a link? Would be interested to see.
Remember that they don’t consider liberals to be leftists
Credit where credit is due, youre honest and youre correct. Have my upvote!
I try to be both, lol. Thanks!
You should block hexbear
Oh another one of these
Short answer:
“What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi”
Similar level of assholety and low post quality. Better politics. Overall don’t bother, not worth it.
lmao the blatant transphobia “disengage with the largest trans safe space on lemmy”
you’re so obvious
even if one assumes your trollish comment was in good faith, it only takes a single glance at hexbears front page to see it’s filled with kindness and reason. just people having fun online while still making space for serious discussion. and again, making sure marginalized people are safe and welcome. I wonder what your real issue with the site is?
seriously, what other site allows trans people to safely and comfortably be ourselves like this? https://hexbear.net/post/4271750
Tank goes vroooooommm.
There is literally nothing transphohic about their comment, what the hell are you on about? People don’t like Hexbear because it’s trans-friendly, people dislike it because of their tankie politics and users that act like edgy 14 year olds.
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That’s a bold claim. A quick look at their top communities list (one of the top 15 being explicitly a ‘community for transgender and gender diverse people’) and the first two rules of their CoC make it seem especially trans friendly.
MLs are incredibly good at hypocrisy.
Transphobia is when you disagree with a liberal about anything, regardless of how much you support and respect trans people, apparently.
This is a very bad take. It is well-documented that Hexbear’s userbase is around 50% trans, and has a well-developed moderation team in order to protect their userbase. Discounting trans people because they disagree with you politically is in fact transphobia.
If you think Hexbear is trans-friendly, then you’re transphobic.
No, lol.
Someone complaining about being harassed by transphobic chasers and you said “good”, it’s for allies.
bruh wtf
Leate’s modlog is filled with homophobia and transphobia under the guise of being an ally, this is a pattern and not a one-off.
Many such cases tbh, so many of these types are extremely quick to accuse others of ‘faking’ their positions and it’s always projection.
100%. Leate in particular has a nasty habit of suicide baiting and blocking anyone who calls them out, DM harrassment, and more. The loudest complainers about Hexbear are overwhelmingly the ones who got banned for bigotry, which they think they can hide by not mentioning that factor.
I’ve noticed that in .world spaces that users will bring up suicide unprompted, or call me mentally ill, only to delete their posts before moderation happens
Better politics.
The same way getting stabbed is better than taking a round of buckshot.
Flashback three months and you were supporting a genocide
Bullshit.
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Abstentionism is transphobic.
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“What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi”
Not quite, that would be /leftypol/
Better politics.
This reminds me of one of their site banners:
Hexbear has its origins on Reddit’s ChapoTrapHouse which I’m pretty sure has a connection to leftypol in its history.
But sure
My point is:
Hexbear = Jerkoffs, except class conscious
Would be nice if they weren’t jerkoffs but hey, at least they have class consciousness.
This analysis isn’t quite accurate. On the whole, Hexbear is actually one of the kindest and coolest and community-minded places I’ve ever been on the internet. But I’d agree there’s an issue of a portion of users who happily get overly aggro if you annoy them (and being allowed to get away with it).
It’s a tankie instance. You’re not missing anything important or reality-based by blocking it. You should also block lemmy.ml.
In fact, you should block everything and everyone expect for a small walled garden of committed neoliberals
If I wanted to hang out in an ideological ghetto, I’d unblock lemmy ml.
I’m sorry if I sound tone deaf I am new to Lemmy .~.
Welcome to lemmy! For the most part lemmy is nice place to be. You will still see the occasional crazy though. Defiantly not something you see all the time. If you find a user, community or instance popping off a bunch of crazy the best thing to do is block them. You won’t be missing anything without them.
Welcome and there is zero need to apologize. Some people (and group of them) can be a real pain. Once you have learned how to filter them out, it’s a nice place with nice people. There is no shame in blocking them, a bit like I would not let someone enter my home so they shout their nonsense into my ears, or make their mess on the carpet.
Once again, welcome ;)
Howdy! Can confirm that most people and places I’ve seen on the Fediverse are lovely… Except Hexbear. They’re one wall of cognitive dissonance away from being right wingers and constantly complaining that liberals are all lying to themselves about their liberalism. That THEY are the TRUE left wingers.
Weird, because I find them also lovely.
You likely have never been a target of their vitriol. Consider yourself lucky.
I nearly left lemmy because of Hexbear. Learning they could be blocked salvaged the platform for me. It’s not just you - they are pretty widely reviled.
Welcome !
Welcome to
City 17Lemmy!
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.
Tankies, mostly. They’re on my blocklist,but managed to avoid it for a disgustingly long time; they do have some good content from time to time, but in the end seeing the repeated vitriol and genocide denialism simply wasn’t worth it.
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Hmm, I obviously know it’s not cool to use the R-word, but the M-word is also out of bounds now? I will rephrase my comment out of respect for persons of intellectual disability who might happen to come across my comment on Lemmy, while still attempting to convey my feelings about hexbear in an attempt to answer the question posed by OP.
Yeah I think a lot of Lemmings tried to give them a chance when we first joined, because we are pretty left leaning already so we figured communists couldn’t be that bad. Unfortunately, they’re actually far more stupid and toxic than anyone could possibly imagine.
I used to recommend for people to make up their own mind whether to block them, but I now feel it’s better to block them immediately, because they’re really just the worst kind of people who will do anything to bring others down to their level of misery.
If the S-word is also problematic, please provide me some guidance as to how I might describe persons of a certain type without offending anybody. I assume the D-word could be construed as offensive towards certain groups as well. I am asking genuinely, because I have no interest in causing anyone undue distress, but there surely must be a way of using the English language to express meaning precisely, otherwise it wouldn’t be a very useful language.
I’ll do you one better, why is Hexbear??
I’ve had more issues with .world mods then any of the communist ones.
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.
Edit: you can also tell how much people here have a negative feeling about those instances by the reactions in this post. Everything remotely critical is upvoted, while anything that even hints a positive opinion of them, will be downvoted. And then more and more users will start downvoting without even reading the comments. And they will start attacking users because they disagree and feel the need to attack them because “that instance bad”…in a way not too dissimilar from the brigading I mentioned before for some of the users from those instances. Showing you a real life example of how there are extreme users in every online community
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.
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.
Also…I admitted some views can be extreme/incorrect. I never said they are the perfect instance. None is. And that’s not how you use that term by the way, my friend
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.
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.
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.
“Anyone right of me is Hitler” sounds pretty on point for them. Instance block and move on with your day.
