It might vary from app to app, but there are usually options to toggle between Local and Everywhere for “All” content, if you want to see just what is on your own instance versus all other instances yours is federated with.

Sure, but I meant you asked if everyone in hexbear is insane, and they included you and themselves in the hexbear server, I think?

Anyway, you can block users/communities/servers, still. Maybe that can improve your experience?

Hey EABOD25, what’s the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?

I do remember that, and I remember them half-assing the Donald by just letting them make a new sub (or overrun conspiracy irrc)

The Donald had largely abandoned the sub well before it was banned though.

The_Donald was dead amd had migrated to a non-reddit forum a month before the ban. It was typical “both sides” bullshit from a dude who always uses the kiddy gloves with fascists while throwing the book at any leftists

They were banned while saying John Brown did nothing wrong and that slaveowners deserve to die.

Sounds pretty cool to me.

No, The Donald was encouraging political violence and was becoming a legal liability for Reddit to continue hosting. But they needed to ban a major left wing subreddit at the same time to do a “both sides bad” thing and preempt the fascist talking points about social media having a liberal bias.

Coming up with theory in an echo chamber isn’t hard.

There’s much to learn from Stalin. But, advocating his authoritarian means is a bannable offense there just as they are in any meritable leftist forum. They tolerate a minority of revolutionaries ideologically leading the lumpen as it’s a historically very well-supoorted position. But, that doesn’t extend to physical force as that’s also a historically very well supported position.

It’s much easier, convenient, and comfortable to demonized them than understand them. They even provided proactive assistance when many were deciding if they should defederate. They voted internally for defederation to defend their community from the medicrity of the masses.

Honestly what is with the comrade/them shit they do about? I thought it was ironic like they were making fun of neopronouns or they were the 4chan people who popularised them in the first place

Yes, please read what the .ee admin says about where the bigoted users originate and the actions of the hexbear mods in response. It certainly speaks for itself.

though, to be fair, kulaks are bad.

The comrade in it actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric

Perhaps now is the time.

The kulaks were not an ethnic minority persecuted by the bolsheviks as a scapegoat for society’s ills. They were the economic class directly responsible for many of those ills. They were the capitalists of the peasantry, enclosing land and claiming ownership over what should have been the common means of production, precisely the kind of group that communists the world over want to destroy in order to liberate the majority of people.

When it was written that the kulaks were to be “liquidated”, it did not mean that they were to be mass executed, it meant that their private property was to be moved into public ownership, ending the existence of the kulak class and making them into regular workers.

As is the case in every single campaign of economic or social justice, the privileged class fought back with everything they had. Kulaks contributed to the Soviet Famine of 1930-1933 by mass slaughtering their cattle and burning their fields. Kulaks hoarded grain, took the wealth that they had stolen from their neighbors and fled the country, plotted sabotage and insurrection against the workers’ movement. And for those crimes, many Kulaks were caught and executed.

So if the original commenter’s great grandparents were kulaks who “suffered at the hands of the soviet union,” they deserved it.

I also haven’t seen this but it seems to make fun of the authoritarian excesses in Mao’s China (struggle session).

The Three Body Problem show features this, leading a character to go mad and wanting to destroy humanity.

The funny thing is that this post is sort of a struggle session, an attempt to build consensus against socialists.

The best example I’ve experienced online is hexbear’s process to derive forum ruleset with respect to their minority of GLBTQ+. The consensus was that many understood and that those that did not would follow in faith, assuming that they would soon understand. The second best online example was the GME subreddits’ cultural response to initial scaling. The consensus was that each should individually choose and the collective’s purpose was to educate, this strengthening individual wisdom.

But, my guidance would be to first pursue such things in real life. A leftist’s best work is almost always grassroots local.

Notable struggle sessions:

Pronouns End result: Transphobes outed themselves and were purged)

Veganism End result: Vegans who couldn’t stop stoking the fire and anti-vegans who wouldn’t stop trolling or using indigenous people as a shield were purged, CWs were required for meat, vegans generally chilled out

Stacking rocks End result: White guys using indigenous tribes they aren’t a part of as a shield were heavily mocked)

Outdoor Cats End result: outdoor cats bad

AES countries End result: For each country, there are/have been significant issues, but nearly every western criticism is worthless for understanding them due to being false or lacking the historical context.

I don’t think they really helped with the financing

All the computational resources the users tested the code base on must’ve been free.

I’m surprised to see a sympathetic comment like this from an account on an instance that has them defederated

Identity politics from .ml?

If you’re surprised at such small acts of individual praxis, you’d be amazed at what we’ve accomplished in groups.

Hello, low effort neolib troll. Thanks for the opportunity to continue to speak truth.

There’s a cultural similarity to what 4-chan was prior to the LOIC. But, they’re definitely not tankies. Sincere expressions of authoritarian means are soundly defeated and usually result in permabans. The principle and practice is consistent for MAGA, neolibs, and other authoritarians.

Oh. My bad

That would work for some - hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml - but not for others, like lemmy.ml and maybe Midwest.social. At some point users need to start blocking on their own.

While I would prefer defederation in this case, I found being on an instance ran by competent admin small price to pay.

They aren’t even really left. They are super authoritarian.

I blocked them since they spew Russian and Chinese propaganda points and take revisionist stances on Tianman square and deny the Uyghur Genocide.

everyone who isn’t farther left than me is a right-wing nazi

If one’s a strict authoritarian, thats a pretty sensible thing to say 🤷‍♂️

There’s at least one interesting fellow in this very thread sharing extremely predictable opinions.

I thought I was annoying when arguing. Still do, but I found someone worse. Doesn’t make me feel better, because it seems I’m sharing a table with them.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Something about it rubbed me the wrong way

I can see it, 196 gets a little spicy around critical events

Would you insult and belittle people in person? That’s what I’m referring to. You give them an opposing view and they go insane. I don’t care if they have a different opinion. Their opinion doesn’t impact my life. But if some of those people talked like that to people’s faces, they’d probably get punched

Defending communist genocide wanabes with moral relativism makes me think you are neither smarter nor better than them.

Just because someone is in big group doesn’t mean he is good person and deserves any kind of respect.

They’re not insane, they’re just victims of tribal thinking like the rest of us. Very narrow worldview reinforced by the others around them, bashing outsiders, thinking “they” are smarter than everyone else. Mostly, they see themselves as good and everyone else as bad, which isn’t very unique among humans either.

Absolutely yes. I should have clarified that I agree with your first several points:-). I only disagreed (somewhat strongly) with the last one. Definitely the “is everyone insane (except me ofc 🙃)?” is hyperbolic, and mostly venting, and I even treated it as being a silly / unserious wording, but also halfway serious in terms of seeking information and reassurance that the Fediverse is worth visiting, if someone is more careful where they tread.

Therefore, the OP is not doing the identical thing in reverse, imho, b/c OP is responding to the way that they were treated, which is necessarily not thought-out fully but rather a knee-jerk reaction. OP came to us for help in emotionally processing what(ever) happened to them, whereas people on hexbear.net continually act that way for years and years, plus actively resist any efforts to change (which OP hasn’t even had the opportunity to do yet, this post being mere hours old), which seems to me more than enough time for them to have settled and made a conscientious, intentional decision as to how they want to live their lives. So again, yes OP may have done something of a similar nature, at least similar in kind, but the fact that the degree differs makes all the difference in the world. Maybe?

As for creating division and causing hostility, definitely users of Chapotraphouse have been known to do similarly… but if you want to respond that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, then I will preemptively agree.:-) Except that the Fediverse has in the past allowed no distinction between communities - TheDonald (if one existed here) would be presented to a (especially new) user in exactly the same manner as e.g. No Stupid Questions (technically I believe that 0.19.5 introduced the allowance for labelling a community by an instance owner, though I am aware of zero communities so far that have used this feature, and many instances have not even upgraded to it yet - at least mine has not yet, though I see that yours has and more are catching up as time passes, maybe even most of the major ones at this point? so maybe there are such labels all around and I am simply not seeing them, though reports such as OP’s and lack of discussion about such makes me strongly doubt that). Except the former would be much more likely to ban you outright for asking a “stupid” question (in their eyes), since as we agree, they feel themselves to be the sole arbiters and conveyors of truth, and moreover, unlike you and I who are discussing this topic so politely (and even pleasantly?) here, are not open to any dissenting POVs (+ are much more likely to enact a full-on ban rather than mere post removal).

Fwiw, I liken it to porn. If someone wants that… then they should be allowed to have it - why should I try to block someone’s access to a contentious conversation, or impinge upon freedom of speech in any way? On the other hand, when someone else’s freedom to speak impinges upon MY freedom to not have to listen to such crap, especially when it blows up my inbox (for WEEKS and WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding!!!), that’s where I draw the line. That’s literally not what “freedom” means - except in their eyes, where they feel that they should be free to ban outsiders, but not for outsiders to block them in return. Put another way: we control ourselves rather than spew our thoughts uncontrollably onto someone, but so many people on certain instances do the opposite, since their culture has taken root to actively applaud that behavior. And yet, except on instances that have already banned hexbear.net (& lemmygrad.ml, and imho lemmy.ml as well, except no major instances do the latter afaik), new users are constantly exposed to that porn style of “contentious content”, which goes against Western standards of normal behavior, without any such warning messages. Thereby leading to posts such as OP’s, who was shocked to see it. As so many have been before, and so many will continue to be, unless something is done about it.

So what I am getting at is that in large measure, what causes division and hostility is coming across such a thing unawares. If it were labelled, it would be different - e.g. if you clicked upon a post with an interesting title and a warning popped up “Warning: this community have chosen to voluntarily label itself as containing NSFW/NSFL “potentially contentious content”, please read this [external statement] before replying to anyone in it.” (and then had an option to not show

That’s a phrase I live my life by to be honest lol

This generalization does not hold. Sometimes vinegar is better at “catching” these “flies”. For examples being nice to a fascist gives the impression that they are acceptable and have valuable opinions. If you treat them with the contempt they deserve, you more correctly communicate your sentiment and model it for others. This also applies to a person you are talking to directly. If you try to, for example, politely debate genocide as if it is not generally understood to be the worst and most serious crime to be avoided at all costs, you feed into the idea that is not so bad, it is a chip to be wagered just like any other political “compromise” when being “pragmatic”. I have yet to see anyone win over to actually changing their mind and doing something about Gaza because someone validated their logic on supporting Biden buy I have seen people make a complete about-face when presented with the harsh realities.

More realistically, the people who are complacent are the majority in this space and do not like to feel challenged or guilty (even though they are wrong and complicit). Rather than become consistent by actually opposing genocide or otherwise becoming informed on the topics in question, they find an environment full of half-truth excuses that tells them they don’t need to actually change what they are doing and can actually somehow the genociders without supporting genocide.

What they need is not honey. Honey is plentiful and they still do not drink it. But some vinegar may wake them up, give them a chance to self-criticize.

Haha. And you decided to waste your mental energy to try and call me out. Two questions

1. Do you feel better about yourself?

2. What were the circumstances of the ban?

Edit: no response, so I guess I’ll enlighten you (and anyone who is interested)

The first ban was because I said something along the line of “Can we stop trying to normalize the use of the word ‘tard’”

The second ban was because I said “Putin had no reason to invade Ukraine”

And the third was along the lines of “I like having civil conversations with people with opposing views because it might give me info I didn’t know about and I might do the same, and if you talk disrespectfully to me, I talk disrespectfully to them”

But I’m the asshole?

Yeah. I wasn’t aware, but it’s all good

The fact that you think that thread full of putin propaganda speaks in defense of your side is hilarious.

Downvotes are open, but yeah, not currently exposed to every client, but its possible :) Maybe a server can show a sentiment score for a user, i do know one lemmy fork actually does that already, but I forgot which one.

thanks for satisfying my curiosity anyways 👍

Hmm… you got me then, friendo

This is my philosophy as well.

Hexbear isn’t actually very large. Just very active.

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

But if you’re anti fascism but pro authoritarianism, you’re still wrong…

Maybe you can clear this up then:

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

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)

Yet the “antifa” hexbear will literally down vote you to hell and ban you if you say anything even slightly bad about Russia.

Also news@hexbear is 80% articles about the war with everyone citing Russian propaganda as absolute truth and every western media, every human rights group, etc… is completely lying about the war.

An interesting juxtaposition as they are in the same way pro Palestine and cite those human rights groups as telling the absolute truth in that case

Organized anti-fascist groups often have a mix of left ideological backgrounds, but are mostly anarchists and communists. We work together when it comes to physical defense, barricades, etc.

e.g. many people in black bloc are Maoists even though outsiders tend to assume they are all anarchists.

Browsing their coms can be a pretty unique experience, especially if you go in with a preformed idea of what their communities are like. There’s a huge spread of interests and experiences, and sometimes you can be browsing a niche community and forget that these were the people posting BPB on lemmy.world threads a year ago.

Knowing the academic writings and history they’re referencing helps a lot with understanding where they are coming from, even if you may not agree with all of it.

That is one of the few instances my instance is defederated from, so I haven’t had much interaction with them. I can speak about Hexbear because I see their posts and interact with them.

With China, mostly yes. With Russia, only in very specific contexts, otherwise they are VERY critical of it (as they are with most burgeois government, but particularly more due to the reactionary nature of the Russian government from what I’ve seen).

Support for PRC? Yes.

Support for the Russian Federation? Purely the anti-NATO role it takes, Hexbear hates Putin and the reactionary nature of the Russian Federation.

Afraid not. I’m banned from that community now, but here are the links

theguardian.com/…/china-is-committing-a-genocide-…

vox.com/…/china-uyghur-muslim-genocide-xinjiang-u…

www.globalr2p.org/countries/china/

thediplomat.com/…/erasing-memories-concealing-evi…

genocidewatch.com/…/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-i…

hrw.org/…/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targetin…

…gwu.edu/…/chinas-genocide-against-uyghurs/

foreignpolicy.com/…/uyghur-genocide-nury-turkel-i…

Here it is hexbear.net/post/3384251/5347245

I think I handled very well. The one person continued to refuse my assignment, so I left before OP, and I was going to get at each other’s throats. I got nothing at all against OP because they were cool. I’m pretty sure I said that 100 times by now. It was everyone else that was the problem.

I’ve said it multiple times. If I get talked to respectfully, I talk respectfully. If someone is a smartass, I’m a smartass. OP of the post yesterday was respectful so I had a conversation with him while everyone was telling me how big of pile of shit I am. I know why I got banned. You don’t have to send me anything. And I guess I’m up to 3 communities now because I said the same exact thing this morning. Someone calls me pig shit and I’m supposed to just be like “Hey. I’m here to learn”. No. Sorry. Not how I operate

But I will say our arguments must have went well because you aren’t on my ban list lol. So I’ll keep up with the theme of talking to you respectfully

Edit: And I’m not angry at all. It started out as a legitimate question of if I’m the problem on HB, and then are started reading experiences from other people, but I blocked the instance so neither of us have to worry about it. If you choose not to respond, I hope you have a good weekend

Those aren’t good responses. The narrative of “poor Putin just had to invade Ukraine, don’t you see?” is bollocks.

Their weird insistence that anyone that doesn’t agree with them is a “lib” that needs “dunking on” is tiring. If you don’t show full-throated support for authoritarian regimes that they happen to like, then you clearly support Israel and genocide. They need to mature a bit, and realize that the world isn’t black and white, and it doesn’t neatly fall into convenient categories that can be nicely labelled.

Well put. To be fair, there’s people that disagree with them that would ridicule them too. Everyone just expects people to be shitty. My opinion is we need to change the atmosphere altogether, but I can only control my own actions.

With that being said, I am guilty of a “gotcha” move to test the waters. I didn’t necessarily see it as disrespectful in the moment because the whole post was “Libs bad! Get the torches”.

I want to keep saying though that OP of the post was absolutely respectful, but our discussion just degraded because he kept refusing the sources I presented and it just went to shit after that. I even explained my comment to OP and apologized to them if I offended them with my comment.

But everyone else just proved that they’re garbage people that just want to treat everyone like shit and not try to educate or learn.

And now I guess people who often posts like that on HB are losing their mind because I’m criticizing them in a way lesser way they were criticizing me. I don’t get it lol

VERY well-stated, imho. I nominated your comment to !BestOfLemmy@lemmy.world.

I’m a grad user not a hexbear user but views are pretty much the same, I’ll say here: it matters a ton in the thread and way in which you tried to do this. if you give the slightest hint that you’re asking questions in bad faith, they’re going to pounce on you, because communists online constantly have to deal with bad faith trolls. There are an extremely small number of communists in the west, we are outnumbered basically everywhere online and in real life, so we are naturally protective of the very few places where we hold the majority opinion.

I’m not gonna go looking for your interactions with hexbear to actually see but I’ll answer any questions you have right now. also, you haven’t been banned or had any action taken against you by hexbear mods at all. you could always pose respectful questions in one of their general mega threads, or in ask chapo

Voting for the people doing genocide does make you complicit. Feeling that the genocide is bad is limited to your mind, it is of no use to the dead and dying children. You do actually have to do something about it if you think genocide is something to be opposed.

If this is your idea of hexbears being crazy or wrong, you picked possibly the worst example you could. Though I am sure it resonates with many others who want to feel good about their complicity.

This is such a bad faith comment. Im not a hexbear user but my instance is federated with them and ive interacted with lots of their posts. Go into any post on hexbear and youll see tons of examples of them disagreeing WITH EACHOTHER. they commonly have huge arguments in the comments and as long as everyone is civil and not arguing in bad faith noone gets banned and noone gets urt feelings. Stop lying and using hexbear as the lemmy boogeyman because its a bad look.

Then I think I made the same mistake that you did. However I took a shot and dunked on them, and they went insane. Like water in a fryer

I’ve never heard of communism being an economic framework before, I thought it just meant a system without capitalism or a state. Do you have something short I could read about communism being an economic framework?

See this just reads as a complete misunderstanding of what communism is. The word Communism is derived from the word Commune, in which there is traditionally no standard power structure. Too much red scare propaganda. To me of the most prevalent feelings of authoritarianism in my life has been the boss/underling dynamic in the workplace under capitalism.

I’m pro communist economics and pro democratic governance. There is a reason the movement here in the US is towards “democratic socialism”, because they are two separate facets of a country. The governance (democratic) and the economic (socialism).

I’m a democratic Communist

At least you got them all working together for a common cause. I mean, it’s a start.

Paid propagandist, true believer, troll. I’m not sure it makes that much difference.

Whether they are paid or not we don’t know, but they are spreading propaganda so they are definitely propagandists.

They feed off of righteous anger at the state of the world, and promise neat, easy solutions

communists don’t think there are “neat, easy solutions” this is fundamentally a misunderstanding of our positions. this is the entire point behind why people constantly accuse tankies of being bootlickers and what not: we think transforming the world will be hard, and will involve making harder decisions than me you or anyone else on this website has ever or probably will ever have to make, and that mistakes that socialist states make in these circumstances are entirely understandable even though they are tragic. Of course, socialist states are evil or something which is totally not black and white thinking by your side, of course. America’s enemies are totally doing worse things than america does which has very nuanced and reasonable reasons for overthrowing democratically elected socialist leaders or invading countries and killing millions of people to stop communism or even just general anti-colonial governments and replacing them with fascists and socialists and other anti-imperialists are evil barbarians with no nuanced reasons to try to use whatever methods they can to stop them. why am i arguing with such an obviously bad faith person what is wrong with me

So when people constantly call us deluded, cult followers, bots, shills, brainwashed, fascists, bigots, trump supporters, and any other number of dehumanizing insults, often coming into our spaces to do so, all the while themselves defending some of the most violent and evil people in history in the name of “lesser evil”, are we supposed to just turn the other cheek and never respond in kind? When we witness the regular defense of the people ensuring the destruction of Palestine continues, are we supposed to just patiently and calmly explain how genocide is bad, actually? When dot worlders accuse me of faking being trans and being a privileged child, am I not justified in losing my temper? Y’all do not even try to understand where we are coming from, constantly use strawman arguments and put words in our mouths, but we’re supposed to smile politely while you spit in our faces? Like this is literally a thread spawning from an OP that is just an ableist insult, and yet some of us are still in here trying to talk things out despite that!

And it’s not like it’s limited to Lemmy, right? Literally everywhere I go I have to either tolerate anti-communist red scare bullshit, transphobia, ableism, misogyny, etc., or I have to try and have stressful and exhausting conversations with people who never, ever take me seriously. So yeah, we’re kind of on edge! If you get shit on for that when it wasn’t deserved, then I’m genuinely sorry, and I wish it wasn’t something that happens. But can you at the least understand that it is not a one-way street here?

Many a time

That’s an understandable explanation. I’ve never been to 4chan because a person who attended it told me he would kick my 2 year old niece in the face and told me that’s a common belief there. Not flaunting, but I told him that no one would ever find his body if he did that.

So I avoided 4chan because my crazy would probably cause conflict with their crazy

Edit: this was in person btw

Fair enough. Like I said. I could have miunderstood. Sorry. I’m a little bit up in arms today to due some backlash

It wasn’t edgy, OP just read into it a ton of stuff that the commenter didn’t ever say or imply.

I agree but I would rather think this is just this guys downtime.

Nah. The porn account follows porn like a normal person.

Someone actually followed world news?

No. Not really. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy of political and social discussions from around the world, and people want to act like different perspectives are common sense. If it was common sense, then it would be common knowledge. All that was proven to me is that bias is forever going to be biased, and the world isn’t going to improve social climates because of that bias. Very few people are interested in a dialog on whatever side of the social or political spectrum they’re on. It’s all just a fucking farce, and everyone pays for it

I don’t because I blocked the instance. I’d recommend if you’re curious, just take a look at it. I’m probably being more dramatic than necessary, and I know there are some good instances there. Just be careful

You got cause and effect mixed up.

We disagree with them because they are crazy.

This isn’t accurate, they were very active in brigandine other federations, hitting random threads on .world for instance with hundreds of reply comments drowning out anything that may be a tiny bit critical of china or Russia. Or pro west.

There wereultiple cross-posts daily pointing to specific threads posted on hexbear to organize brigading.

I’m not trying to join their cult. I’m not feeling excluded from their cult. I’m saying their cult should not exist. It is a mixture of crazy people and Chinese propaganda, and it deserves to be stamped out.

Yep, to be clear ideologically I fall more into the “queer anarchist” camp and am not an authoritarian communist.

I know that hexbear is mostly old chapotraphouse posters who are more in the Marxist-Leninist camp. I don’t agree with them on many things, but I think their brand of being rude and insulting to capitalists and liberals is valid and kind of funny.

Not only is capitalism morally reprehensible and responsible for colonisation, white supremacy, inequality, and genocide. It’s also just a really stupid and nonsensical system that expects infinite growth within a system with finite resources. It’s a death cult with the growth pattern of cancer. Continuing with that system in spite of decades of empirical evidence that it is leading our world into collapse is completely insane in my opinion. People who believe in that shouldn’t be reasoned with, they should be insulted.

Anyway on first glance through hexbear I didn’t see anything “completely insane”. However if I go to somewhere like Reddit what I see is the complete insanity of people justifying and making excuses for morally reprehensible systems such as capitalism and acts of genocide.

I think liberals and centrists view themselves as being rational and reasonable when they’re not at all.

What a disingenous comment. Having two accounts of two defederated instances makes even more sense than having them on two federated instances.

Prolly just a regular idiot then

It’s Leate, he exclusively accuses everyone of being a bot and blocked me for saying Lenin was a Marxist.

Every accusation is a confession, it seems

I don’t understand… I was describing the reality of climate change. Does that make you uncomfortable?

Yeah, I think humans deserve the consequences of our actions with respect to climate change. And…?

Was I advocating for it? Do you maybe not know what that word means?

How does it feel to be the person who takes screenshots of other people’s comments on an Internet forum because you think it’s some kind of “gotcha”?

I dunno, I ended up blocking the instance way before I knew about their reputation (like, when I first joined Lemmy) because all of the users their kept posting the most unhinged shit.

I have definitely seen blatant apologism for China/Russia from them.

FWIW, I’m much further left than your average Democrat (I consider myself a leftist/anarchist). I personally don’t consider what I’ve seen from them to be very “left”, just authoritarian.

It’s extremely unconvincing to say “Sure it was horrible last time, but next time it’ll be different.” Trotskyists and ultraleftists compensate by prettying up their picture of socialism and picking more obscure (usually short-lived) experiments to uphold as the real deal. But this just gives ammunition to those who say “Socialism doesn’t work” or “Socialism is a utopian fantasy.” And lurking behind the whole conversation is Stalin, who for the average Westerner represents the unadvisability of trying to radically change the world at all. No matter how much you insist that your thing isn’t Stalinist, the specter of Stalin is still going to affect how people think about (any form of) socialism — tankies have decided that there is no getting around the problem of addressing Stalin’s legacy. That legacy, as it stands, at least in Western public opinion (they feel differently about him in other parts of the world), is largely the product of Cold War propaganda.

That’s the gist. Then he goes on with another paragraph of whataboutism but of course not a single mention of the tens of millions of dead both, Stalin and Mao, were responsible for.

Of course he’s also an western armchair socialist. People that actually lived in the Sowjet Union (and not in today’s Russia) draw quite a different picture.

Did not know about this site. It was a nice read and their mission statement is cool. Thanks for sharing! :)

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/…/authority.htm

excluding anything tanke related.

I’m a lefty but I didn’t know which instances leaned which way when I got here. I chose lemm.ee because their defed policy itself was neutral and that appealed to me because I can do my own damn blocking thank you.

I couldn’t let it go.

Nutomic: I always thought that .ml was used simply because its free. But what do I know…

My bad, you are correct 👍

That’s cool.

Right. They ‘hate Russia’, and anything in the west.

their support for other imperialist superpowers like Russia and China

I wonder what definition of imperialism you’re using. China doesn’t have a financial capitalist class which influences it’s government to seek foreign markets (i.e. overthrow foreign governments to privatize their state assets for the financial capitalist class to buy up)

Because if America bad Russia and China good is an easy train of thought.

It may seem to lib outside observers like that

But users there moreso question whether certain atrocities happened. They’re not saying ‘yeah the CCP is currently Genociding Uyghurs in concentration camps. but you have to vote for Xi Jingping to save Democracy’.

Tell me you haven’t lurked there without having told me you having lurked there and talking out of your ass.

To play devil’s advocate, leahy law;

…prohibits the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.

But the fact that Israel is a democracy, suggests there are reprocessions, eg. Netenyahu could lose the election, and even face reprocessions from the next elected leader. So that’s not acting “with impunity”.

Israel has taken measures to make their genocide look considered (eg. Dropping flyers, naming bombing targets)… And to some extent, anyone wanting to claim they’re acting woth impunity (although it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever see reprocessions) - will have similar issues to those faced at Nuremberg, where the US didn’t want to invent laws to accuse them of being guilty of or having violated (as that would look like a kangaroo court, or future crime)…

…and unfortunately, due to the US having it’s own patchy human rights record, they avoid being a signatatory to international courts like The Hague.

So yeah, your claim wouldn’t be substantiated. It’s not that simple, you may as we’ll be claiming we can “reform our way our of Capitalism”… That’s a nice idea (as Leahy Law is), but they’re just not practically applicable.

Which is why I directed people to the “Rules for Rulers” video (by CPG grey), because it explains these basics to Socialists who basically live in these fantasy land conceptions of politics.

Of course fantasy land conceptions get upvotes, reality checks get downvotes, it’s a great system, designed to cause mental stagnation and “apathy through idealism” in the masses.

this person needs serious help, and by help i mean <img alt="barbara-pit" src="https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a37d97d4-adaf-4d3b-9590-57d3590bc268.png">

eliminating one or the other is agiast self determination, 2 state or die.

Lol Demential DonOLD is a fucking puppet who got his stage thanks to Russian interference. He’s whatever the highest bidder wants. Obviously Putin, the highest of bidders, wants him in so he can have his access to top secret documents restored and the supplies to Ukraine stopped.

what about the 10s of thousands of baltics sent to siberia? wasn’t that a genocide? or all the famine in Ukraine? or the invasion of Hungary and checkoslovaka after they implemented democratic reforms?

There was no economic or rational factors. The only thing that makes a lick of sense is the irrational.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/…/627064/

vox.com/…/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-war-brian…

Those are a warm-up, but then you have the purges since the invasion began.

newyorker.com/…/the-purges-in-putins-shrinking-in…

Putin has sort of been the butt of jokes for years for killing anyone who looks at him funny. He’s a KGB stooge, who made his career out of backstabbing and paranoia. His entire inner circle were afraid to tell him the truth, because he would kill them if they did.

He’s never been “savvy”, he’s just been willing to kill as many people as necessary to secure his own power.

The classic authoritarian dictator who throws people out of windows for saying no. And whose vaulted military had body armor made of cardboard, because the corruption was so ingrained that every single level was accepting bribes and stealing shit.

I’m surprised that they’re still going, but Russia has shown the world that they’re a third rate military, at best.

As to Palestine. It doesn’t matter what the resistance movements call themselves now. Israel will just say they’re Hamas, and no one likes Hamas. There are good reasons not to like Hamas, they’re religious extremists who want to kill all Jews.

And for decades, Israel has funded Hamas behind the scenes, while coming down extra heavy on any other resistance movement. And now it’s all paid off for them because they can just claim that anyone they kill was actually Hamas.

timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-…

washingtonpost.com/…/how-israel-helped-create-ham…

This tactic of creating the perfectly detestable opposition has been used in quite a few places. For example, Greenpeace gets a lot of money from oil company heirs. Specifically the Rockefeller family.

I doubt anyone from Hamas, or Greenpeace, ever took orders from the people giving them money. They were given the money with no strings attached, because they were already jackasses. The money just extended their reach.

That’s ok. Instead of having a normal dialog or civil disagreement, they want to be cowards and try to bully or demean people that disagree with them. Those people that do that are honestly sad and I pity them

Lemmy, famous for not allowing alt accounts 😅

This is why people don’t like hexbear, because they consistently try to gaslight and use disingenous arguments such as this. How are you disputing the fact that OP is getting downvoted by hexbears right now? That’s insane.

Couldn’t that be said of any and all groups? A few bad posters has soured me on the lemm.ee instance, but would it be logical or fair or me to assume that a few bad experiences reflects an entire group?

First, I see you disagree, and thank you for expressing your disagreement in a respectful way.

Now, with that being said, what evidence do you have that your media is no different?

And please understand I’m not being sarcastic or playing a game. I am legitimately curious of your perspective. I really wish to understand your perspective. If any other person tries to treat you like crap, I’ll do my best to keep them from being shitty to you. Please feel free to explain your ideology in a respectful way and I will do my best to protect you from ridicule as well

Edit: also if I misunderstood what you’re saying, please say so and I’ll correct myself

There is also a bunch of books and historical records that point to the same conclusions.

But, sure, backhanded invectives that someone is brainwashed and stupid will sure convince people otherwise.

I am already aware of the CIA’s fuckery. It’s no different than what the KGB was. They claim(ed) counter intelligence, but ultimately, their job is/was to destabilize to create political advantage. Career liars every last one of them

It can take some people a longer time to mature than others.

How are you defining authority? My understanding is it’s specifically referring to “power over”; via implicit/explicit coercion, threat, manipulation, and so on. I don’t see why opposition to such uses of power, and the desire to build alternative systems which don’t rely on such means, has to be a negative or “naive” or “unrealistic” thing.

In my mind, the idea of left politics is to democratize society as much as possible. Any type of Authoritarianism goes against that, including the idea of a single party with a single leader. It’s anti-democratic, and therefore does not fit into the category of leftist politics, even if they call themselves left. No racist is gonna call himself racists. And fashists neither.

This person is saying Putin wants the territory back, not the government system. They even say the statement was hyperbolic.

But in their eyes, I’m the crazy, illiterate, stupid lib

In certain forums, unless I’m very well-informed about a topic, I’ve learned to shut the fuck up unless asking questions, and to ask them with humility.

This is a core principle in Communist organization. “No investigation, no right to speak.” As a consequence, discussion tends to be better-informed in my experience.

It seems to me you’re under the belief that they can say and believe whatever they want without criticism, and they shouldn’t be allowed to be criticized. Also, I see you have used the phrase “neolib,” so your beliefs are probably more in line with theirs than mine are. Of course, you’re not going to be criticized. However, I do have the right to critique the approach with their criticism. The short-and-skinny of what I observed is that they can dish it out, but can’t take it. It’s irrational and a very closed off way if thinking. If they want to be talked to and about in a certain way, then they themselves need to do the same

Jerking communist doctrine while ignoring historic facts is indeed their with "what about capitalism" MO tiring.

Yeah the west sucks but they are winning the battle for now. Pretending like communist Revolution is the better route over structural reforms is also unstated theme.

Which leads me to believe that they are bad faith actors.

Hexbear has been around for 4 years, unfederated. They only started slowly federating around 10 months ago.

At least try to be honest.

On what bounds do you say that? If they read Leftist theory, advocate for Leftism, and attack Imperialism and Capitalism, then they are Leftists.

Hexbear was the only lemmy for 4 years, over that time their code base diverged, it took a few months to make federation possible again… a lot of users opposed federation concerns about harassment or just valuing one of the few leftist communities. The end result was slow federation, with users suggesting specific instances to federate with, and instances getting defederated if the admins failed to take adequate action against transphobes/chasers.

Now there’s two of us that are speaking truth.

Half this thread is hexbears and others telling people exactly what they believe about random topics.

Are they? That wouldn’t be thematically consistent with their years of telling others what they’d like to hear for their entertainment. Their culture is selfish in that way.

There was never a consensus on whether HB should be segregated

There was never formal consensus in that leadership repeatedly denied the vote, favoring a granular, instance-by-instance approach.

What are you talking about?

An organized, grassroots movement that employed questionable means to force the wisest decision upon leadership and everyone else.

Is your question why a propaganda operation focused on disrupting or presidential elections would “go live” 18-ish months before the presidential election?

If your assumption that Hexbear is just bots and propaganda was true, why would it remain isolated for 4 years, with posters talking only to each other? 4 years of training? And, correction on your part, it started federating 10 months ago, not 18.

It makes more sense for these to be people with genuine views and aligned interests.

And are you asking if I have specific evidence that they’re trolls? Or that the governments I’ve listed have troll farms? Or that specifically HB is specifically rife with trolls from this governments’ farms? Because I definitely don’t have specific evidence. Just the historical evidence of (attempted) general interference from those countries in our previous elections.

So you don’t, you’re just accusing people you disagree with of being propaganda agents and bots, despite them existing for 4 years in pure isolation. That’s silly.