Lemmy.world Hexbear Statement

Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

————-

Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

  • “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
  • “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
  • “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

Kiki, (edited )

How is the second statement problematic? It is a fact, that is largely documented in academia and many movements everywhere in the world. Disappointing decision…

redtea,

The six million people killed in NATO’s war o[f] terror are easily forgotten about and some people don’t want pesky reminders thank you very much.

ccdfa,

I also don’t see how the first statement is problematic. To me it reads like they are encouraging their users to act with civility on other instances and keep the regular Hexbear stuff “to Hexbear itself”. The statement explicitly tells users to instead debate users in other instances using citations. From where I’m at, this seems like the best way to go about ideological disagreements in the first place; it’s certainly not a reason to defederate.

ccdfa,

I also don’t see how the first statement is problematic. To me it reads like they are encouraging their users to act with civility on other instances and keep the regular Hexbear stuff “to Hexbear itself”. The statement explicitly tells users to instead debate users in other instances using citations. To me this seems like the best way to go about ideological disagreements in the first place; it’s certainly not a reason to defederate.

Made a new Lemmy account somewhere else and will stay there unless this decision is reversed and the policy regarding these kinds of decisions is changed.

ccdfa,

I also don’t see how the first statement is problematic. To me it reads like they are encouraging their users to act with civility on other instances and keep the regular Hexbear stuff “to Hexbear itself”. The statement explicitly tells users to instead debate users in other instances using citations. From where I’m at, this seems like the best way to go about ideological disagreements in the first place; it’s certainly not a reason to defederate.

toasteecup,

I definitely appreciate the hesitation in defederation, but I’m in favor of defeding with both hexbear and lemmygrad.

I’ve seen more than enough “Stalin did nothing wrong posts” to know that discussions are pointless and would lead me only to frustration and a desire to drink.

ghariksforge,

I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.

oddsbodkins,

It’s because as a solid minority. That is often hated in the places they once had jurisdiction for good reason. You generally don’t get the chance. Or if you did, it would close you off in a tiny little Echo chamber that’s already far too strong. And I say this as someone who is supportive and open towards communism and abolishing Concepts such as private property and replacing with personal property. But I am sanctially against ml communism.

I absolutely think there can be a discussion about whether or not Vladimir Lenin’s Legacy on the whole was neutral. He definitely did some good things for russia. Though those same things were happening around the world regardless. So it is impossible to say that they wouldn’t have happened without him. But it is possible to say absolutely that a lot of death destruction and brutality were enabled by him. And his ideology single-handedly setback discussions of all left-wing Economic Development for a century or so. Those defending Stalin Mao or even Xi today. Well I don’t have anything diplomatic to say about them.

moosetwin, (edited )

Au contraire, mon ami:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5eddeb80-7fbb-40f6-bebd-fd4fccfa8c08.png

link

ghariksforge,

I was demonstrating a point.

BuckRowdy,
@BuckRowdy@lemmy.world avatar

just admit you were wrong. It’s ok.

ghariksforge,

?

you high?

PorkrollPosadist,

Does hesitation mean something else where you live?

XiaoHei,

looks like the lemmy.world admins are doing the right thing to keep us safe from the wokies hopefully they take the time to look at tankygrad (lemmygrad.ml) and the woke developers instance (lemmy.ml) both are MARKIST LENININST and need to be cut off from the free-speachverse

necrxfagivs,

Just block them bro.

xthedeerlordx,

discussions are pointless

I find this to be the most frustrating. hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy.ml users are the whiniest group of users I see on lemmy. They complain about not having a place to share their views (despite all the instances catered/created for them), then complain about you not sharing their views/diminishing the views of others on the left (echochamber disguised as “open discussions of world views”). It’s wild they’re all complaining about getting defed’ed.

SovereignState,

“Stalin did nothing wrong” posts. Where are those, exactly?

We criticize Stalin plenty. We just don’t buy that he ate babies and murdered innocent farmers with his bare hands.

PoppinKREAM,

Honestly the hardcore tankies initially soured me from joining the fediverse at first, until I understood how the fediverse functioned and realized it was just a loud minority that held extreme views. It’s still disturbing to read genocide denialism while openly supporting things such as authoritarianism and Russian imperialism.

Paralda,

Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?

PoppinKREAM,

Yes I am, hello o/

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

Why not kbin?

NightOwl,

Whether it’s reddit or lemmy I’ve always blocked all politics and world/local news related communities, since they rarely seem to really be a place that’s been cordial in the comments. And I’ve moved onto RSS feeds anyways over user submission driven news feeds.

Seems to be what has kept me the most sane and happy using social media.

ech,

Yeah, I checked out Lemmy some time ago and noped out pretty quick after seeing it was mostly just Lemmygrad at the time. Happy to be here now that there’s a lot more going on and not super keen on that face of Lemmy gaining a bigger presence again.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

Tankies are souring a lot of people from joining in my subjective experience. One of my friends questioned the presence of them and the views of the developers (and also why the “main” (not accurate but they haven’t even joined, so) instance lemmy.ml had the .ml domain to begin with) and I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer at the time, as I didn’t know enough about the place yet.

Upstanding instances should do their part to defederate from any tankie or fascist instances, so we can all distance ourselves from extremist rhetoric and make it seem like an actually OK place to hang out.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

I moderate 8 subreddits with a combined userbase of 4.2million subscribers. And a bunch of small ones.

Originally I intended to bring those userbases over here. But the way this instance has been run and the interactions I and other mods have had with the team over PM trying to resolve various issues resulted in each and every one of the modteams I’m in saying “yeah fuck that” over time and getting to know the place. This would have resulted in stickyposts and bringing over thousands, perhaps 10s of thousands, in extremely enthusiastic waves. And this didn’t just affect the teams I’m part of, because everyone on those teams also shares links to many many other teams through all the backrooms.

Communists aren’t the problem. This instance’s policies - which started out looking incredibly promising and had everyone highly optimistic - has singlehandedly killed the interest of dozens and dozens of modteams and by extension the opportunity to bring across massively more people.

deweydecibel, (edited )

(previous comment bugged, reposting it)

Given the way Hexbears own rules are written, the tone and very obvious motivations behind it, I’m not sure we’re missing much.

But would you care to share some examples of what the issues are?

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry what? I can’t read context so I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say. Could you maybe quote what you were responding to?

I’m not sure what the problem is with hexbear’s rules. It’s a socialist instance of course it aims to remain socialist. Do you look at the lgbt instances and say “how dare they have motivations to keep their community lgbt!” No of course you don’t. It’s a fundamentally absurd notion.

Hexbear’s goal is to be leftist and have a fucking laugh while doing it. Nothing more. This shit has created a mountain of entertainment, nothing changes for Hexbear but this instance has pissed and shit all over itself.

Kalcifer,

You do realize that you don’t need to join Lemmy.world, right? There’s plenty of other instances with different moderation policies that might suit you, or you could just make your own instance. That’s kind of the whole point of the fediverse. The reason why there’s so much contention around this post is because the people who have accounts here are somewhat stuck until account migration is added.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Of course I do have you read my username?

Kalcifer,

Apologies, I did not.

jake_eric,

I’m gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I’m not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.

I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.

But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there’s a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren’t given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?

If it was just some small instance of trolls that’s one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don’t like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.

astraeus,
@astraeus@programming.dev avatar

The users already made their intentions clear with their instance rules acting as proxy. It’s an aggressive stance and it is not conducive to fair and open conversations about anything.

freehugs,

Seconded

APassenger,

Is joining hexbear an option for you? It’s not like we’re obligated to only have one account across the lemmyverse.

jake_eric,

Sure, but having fewer accounts is easier: that’s the whole purpose of federation in the first place, isn’t it?

It’s fine now, but I haven’t been on Lemmy for that long, and I don’t want to have to make a new account every few months to see a new instance.

Lifecoach5000,

Well I think this is just the nature fediverse as well. You gotta respect the admin and it’s really not super hard to use multiple logins with different instances via an app.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

If Lemmy starts to allow seamless migration of accounts across instances, this will become less of an issue. But I suspect creating multiple accounts isn’t going to be palatable to most users.

Zaktor,

A single login solution is to find a third party that federates with both lemmy.world and hexbear. Hexbear’s list is pretty limited so it’d have to be one of those, but unless others follow lemmy.world’s choice you’ll be able to see and post on both instances.

solrize,

Maybe “federation” or something like it should actually take place on the client side, so you’d join instances with almost the ease of subscribing to communities. Then the client code would handle combining feeds, using the right credentials to post to a given place, funnelling DM’s from multiple instances to a single inbox, etc.

I think if we are here now, the fediverse vision has already failed. Defederation is a last resort yet this is the third round of drama in the 1 month past redditgeddon? Two actual defederations and one extended discussion set off by a single troll on another instance.

So, I think fediverse decentralization hasn’t yet gone far enough. Thus the idea of handling instance coordination on the client rather than leaving it up to server admins.

MisterFrog,
@MisterFrog@lemmy.world avatar

The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.

MisterFrog,
@MisterFrog@lemmy.world avatar

The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.

d4rknusw1ld,

Find another instance? That’s the beauty of the fediverse.

jake_eric,

Well yeah, I already said I know that’s the go-to if you don’t like one instance. But I’d still like to be able to express my opinions before doing that. It’s not that big a deal but I’d still ideally rather not, y’know?

Zink,

This is exactly the thought process I went through while reading the post. Doing it preemptively can make it come across like you’re severing the connection due to opinions rather than rule breaking.

But still, THANK YOU to the admins, in general. I am not accusing you of anything negative like that. I trust that you thought it through way more than I did. Thanks for keeping this big general insurance of ours awesome.

SheeEttin,

Well, you picked the wrong instance, then. Lemmy.world never claimed to be neutral. The goals have always been clearly stated, currently here: lemmy.world/legal

jake_eric,

Well the server is described up at the top as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” which feels like it’s setting up to be a pretty neutral stance.

Cornelius_Wangenheim, (edited )

Hating tankies is a neutral stance. Red fascists deserve just as much scorn as the regular kind.

Astrealix,
@Astrealix@lemmy.world avatar

They specifically said they’re being trolls and going to brigade tbf.

jake_eric,

That first bullet is saying “don’t do stuff that’s going to get us defederated” to their users, no? It’s a bit tongue in cheek but I feel like it’s not as aggressive as some people are describing. The whole server came from a subreddit that was very memey/shitpost.

Zaktor, (edited )

I think their admins are doing an honest job trying to put out reminders for good behavior (**edit: I hadn’t originally followed the links to the admin’s comments elsewhere, I no longer think they’re doing an honest job), the problem is that the sub they grew from never heeded similar admonishments and their federation post explicitly says they will not be moderated for activity outside of hexbear, so it’s really just a suggestion, not a rule.

I don’t agree with anti-western ideology being a good reason for defederation, but I do expect hexbear to be a major source of trolling from past experience with r/CTH. Reddit post-Donald and post-CTH bans was a noticeably less trolly (NOT saying they’re even remotely equivalent, just both were sources of trolling and were banned at the same time).

C4RCOSA,

Concerning

Shinhoshi,

Wasn’t The_Donald already abandoned by its members before Reddit banned them to make it look like they were being neutral?

Zamboniman,
@Zamboniman@lemmy.ca avatar

As always, the limits of tolerance are met when it comes to suggesting we tolerate intolerance. The boundary must be set there.

thal3s,
@thal3s@sh.itjust.works avatar

You don’t welcome cancer in to your body because you support all life.

Nazis and Russian trolls are not here to debate or inform. Their sole purpose is to degrade trust in democracy, spread propaganda, and other heinous shit.

Defederation is our only defense and we owe it to users to fight hate and lies.

iridaniotter,
@iridaniotter@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Unfortunately for you, the userbase of Hexbear is predominantly non-Russian! Ergo, your conclusion is incorrect!

ronalicious,

russian trolls aren’t necessarily russian… remember that donald trump guy?

iridaniotter,
@iridaniotter@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Oy vey. Conspiracy theories are against the Code of Conduct! Rule 3. I’ll leave you with a warning.

Blamemeta,

Well, okay, tankie scum. Happy with that label?

jake_eric,

The thing is that kind of example assumes that it is cancer. Which is something I’m not happy assuming yet, especially without discussion.

Hexbear has over 20k users. I find it hard to believe they’re all Russian trolls, or even that most of them are.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

A perfectly fair and balanced opinion. It's ultimately up to the admins since they've effective got to clean the mess if it happens, but gauging community sentiment would always be nice

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Well said.

Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?

Admins not bothering with users’ thoughts or opinions is what brought us here from Reddit. I wish they would poll us, even informally, before making these kinds of decisions.

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.world avatar

Your desire to “connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic” is admirable,. Just remember, please, that the wider the gates are opened, the more idiots wander in and the more work for mods and admins.

After dealing with the first thousand or so idiots, you can smell 'em coming. I’m with the admins on this.

Zaktor,

Non-federation with a CTH-successor certainly makes running a community on lemmy.world more desirable. Back on reddit, before the bannings about 1/3 of mod actions were from TD users, 1/3 were from CTH users, and the last 1/3 was just randos. It’s not like CTH was just a regular sub, they were the source of a lot of moderation.

jake_eric,

Sure, I’m aware of idiots on the internet, but if we tried to avoid idiots on the site we wouldn’t federate with anyone. Lemmy.world is specifically billed as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” I want the gates to be open fairly wide, that’s why I’m here. Not for everyone, like I’m glad we defederated with exploding heads, but we still gave them a shot first and there was at least some more community discussion on it before that decision was made. That’s what would make me feel a lot better about this.

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.world avatar

“Give them a shot first” is easy to say, but it’s hours or days of moderators and admins’ lives.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Avoiding echo chambering (is that a verb?) will take work. Admins and mods should be willing and ready to do that for the health of the fediverse.

Fwiw, I was a reddit mod for a sub of 4.3 million, so I’d like to think I’m not being naive about this, but I could be wrong…

Angry_Maple,
@Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

I would like to start off with apologizing for if this comes off harshly.

I respect that you were a mod for a community that size, but I’m not really sure that I can give that much credit without knowing more. Reddit had all kinds of mods. Good mods, bad mods, sleeping mods, controlling mods, chill mods, etc. Reddit hasn’t exactly had much of a great reputation for many of it’s mods and admins, you know? I’ve seen some very bizarre things happen on that website in the past regarding certain mods, to put it one way.

Since this is a different platform with different groundwork, I would imagine that the tools would probably be at least a little bit different. Maybe the mods who used to moderate 24/7 have decided to spend more of their time on their hobbies or with their loved ones. Maybe they are on a different platform. Maybe they got bored of moderating, who knows.

I think that we should make sure that we keep human expectations for people if we want to keep our mods good and happy. I think that that’s another way that Reddit really messed up. Reddit’s 24/7 pressure to constantly moderate probably led to a lot of mods becoming burnt out. If people try to treat volunteers as employees, they’re likely to lose many of those volunteers. I mean, these people are already going our of their way to help contribute.

I have to say, I see a hell of a lot more "other people need to do xy " on this thread, than I see “I think x is missing. I’ll help add it!”.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Not harsh at all 🤝 I respect your perspective, but I stand by my comment. If we sign up for a job, we should do right by it. Also shameless plug: the community was r/streetwear and you can find us at !streetwear

P.S. feel free to peruse my history on r/streetwear to judge if I was a lazy/crazy mod

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Echo chambering is arguably one of the worst things that can happen to a group. There's plenty of reasons why you'd want to disassociate with various people, but the prevailing notion of "oh I don't like what they say, let's defederate" I'm seeing around here is shocking.

The counter argument is always the paradox of tolerance, that you can't tolerate intolerance and while that's good and fine, it feels like nowadays that people will use any excuse to silo themselves. For example people cheering on de-federating from a group of potentially 20k users because some of these users might be bad actors

MarxMadness,

As others have pointed out, the population of the whole fediverse is currently less than a bunch of subreddits with far less than 4.3 million users. Mod/admin energy shouldn’t be taken for granted, but people are way overstating the potential for issues.

A game thread on any popular sporting event has way more comments and problems than basically any post in the history of this place.

SovereignState,

They chose to be admins and moderators. Perhaps they should be expected to administrate and moderate.

histy,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Caoldence222,

    tbf all costs (besides probably labor, which isn’t insignificant, but harder to quantify from the outside) are paid by donations, so it isn’t just the kindness of their hearts opening their servers to us. They also chose to present their server as a general purpose one where everyone is welcome (within reason)

    Sentrovasi,

    In another very real sense, their users chose the instance they're on. People were asking at the beginning what the difference between each instance was. This is how the admins have chosen to administrate and moderate. Maybe it's the users who should recognise that the shoe is on the other foot.

    Fwiw though, I don't disagree with the choice to defederate.

    AFKBRBChocolate,

    I get your argument, but I’m with the admins. It’s not like a shop keeper closing their doors because they see someone coming with tattoos and a biker jacket. It’s more like they’re closing their doors because they heard the person saying they make their living shoplifting and they intend to shoplift in that store. Hexbear stated pretty explicitly that they intend to be a problem. No reason to wait for them to do that.

    jake_eric,

    I’m not really seeing it to be honest. That first bullet point there seems pretty clearly saying to their users to not be a problem so that they don’t get defederated.

    I’m sure you can find someone calling to brigade such and such on there somewhere but they have over 20 thousand users total. That’s a lot of people to rule out.

    AFKBRBChocolate,

    The message is pretty clear though: be as subversive as possible but don’t set off the alarms that will get us defederated. I don’t see them telling their users to be good, I see them telling them not to get caught.

    AngrilyEatingMuffins,
    AngrilyEatingMuffins avatar

    If the rule is fifteen pieces of flair you shouldn’t need to be like pretty boy Bryan and wear thirty seven to be on the law’s good side.

    MarxMadness,

    There is nothing wrong with following the rules and being “subversive.” That is literally just challenging people’s ideas.

    AnonymousLlama,
    AnonymousLlama avatar

    Feels like a pretty big call to look at a place that has 20k users and think they're all trolls and bots. I get that people aren't interested in differing opinions / discourse nowadays, but defederation before even giving it a go feels a little weak.

    GreenCrush,

    Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I’m pro NATO. I don’t give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.

    XiaoHei,

    thank you for your bravery it is clear that the FIFTY CENT is here (paid wokies)

    SankaraStan,

    Surely you could just block individual users that you find horrible instead of the admins blocking an instance of 20k users?

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Critical thinking is when you believe US antiChina propaganda.

    Cabrio,

    Critical thinking is when you believe China, it’s not like they hide that their government is authoritarian trash.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    it’s not like they hide that their government is authoritarian trash.

    All I hear you saying is they don’t hide the truth.

    Doublethink.

    Cabrio,

    If you believe that then you’re just as wilfully ignorant as the people you accuse of ignorance. Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

    nephs,

    It’s funny how people in the west can’t imagine on their wildest dreams an actually competent government that won’t just be controlled to make things easier for their rich elite (the bourgeoisie, for the well informed).

    Cabrio,

    It’s funny how tankies make assumptions like ‘can’t imagine competent government’ because instead of wanting to tear down the most successful institutions of human health, safety, and wellbeing we want to tear down the shit ones spreading the most hate and suffering first, including the ones in our own back yards.

    OurToothbrush,

    instead of wanting to tear down the most successful institutions of human health, safety, and wellbeing

    No, we don’t want to tear down Cuba.

    Cabrio,

    No, we don’t. Just be cause the US does something doesn’t mean ‘the west’ supports it, even Americans think it’s stupid to still be sanctioning Cuba.

    It’s like you practice being disingenuous because you can’t practice being intelligent.

    OurToothbrush,

    I believe you missed the joke.

    OurToothbrush,

    Reread what I wrote, you missed the joke.

    Cabrio,

    Poe’s law. Explain yourself.

    OurToothbrush, (edited )

    You claimed socialists shouldn’t try to tear down some of the best systems in the world, I said that none of us are going after Cuba.

    Edit: my bad, I got you confused with another thread.

    I’m not sure they’re from hexbear, but IDK. It is a silly bit but I dont get why it is bothering people so much?

    Cabrio,

    All good, I get what you were saying though, viva la Cuba.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Just be cause the US does something doesn’t mean ‘the west’ supports it

    It literally does.

    Otherwise the rest of the West would do literally anything to stop the US when it does awful shit.

    Cabrio,

    You have a misapprehension of how international political influence works.

    That’s like me saying your country supports slavery because you haven’t stopped the US from having legalised slavery in their constitution for prisoners.

    Or you support genocide because your country hasn’t stopped Russia from going to war.

    Or you support racism because your country hasn’t made all the countries in africa stop being racist.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    My country does support slavery, because my country is the US. It also supports genocide because it’s the US and it supports racism because it’s the US.

    Blaming me for that would be ridiculous, because I’m basically powerless. But like, I can criticize the UK for not standing up the US on its use of prison labor and its genocidal programs and its racism. I can criticize France and Canada and Australia for it too.

    Let’s not pretend the West is powerless to stop the US from doing whatever it wants. If they wanted to, these countries could make the US hurt for the things it does and force it to back down. They could even force the US to stop supporting Israeli apartheid.

    They won’t, because they ultimately support the US more than they dislike the things the US does.

    Cabrio,

    I love it when a voter blames everything outside of their country for how their citizenry votes.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Barely half of the citizenry here votes, and when they do they often see their votes discarded because of electoral college bullshit.

    In my state they destroyed the results of the 2020 caucus by sabotaging the vote counting app to stop the socialist from winning.

    Lets not pretend like voters have power lol

    Cabrio, (edited )

    They have the power, choosing not to vote is choosing not to use that power, nobody outside of your country will make your voters vote, these are systems your countrymen built and voted to implement, if half of them chose not to vote then they agree with those systems by default.

    Can’t reply edit:

    It doesn’t matter how rigged it is, it got that way because the people that voted did so for representatives that implemented these systems. The electoral college isn’t even your only hurdle, there’s first past the post, and gerrymandering too, both things implemented by the representatives of the voters.

    People don’t vote because they’re stupid, lazy, and disinterested. There’s no fixing the ignorance of someone who decides to throw away their only chance to influence their country, no matter how small or futile it seems, choosing not to try is the same as giving up.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    50% of the presidents in my lifetime were elected despite losing the popular vote.

    And, again, remember the 2020 Iowa caucus. They destroyed the caucus to stop the socialist.

    That’s why people don’t vote. It’s literally rigged.

    PeleSpirit,

    It has a hanky vibe to it, I think it’s a conservative version of Stephen Colbert.

    crius,

    The fact that Russia and China are still even considered “Communist” is just happening for the US propaganda really.

    They are regime that are moved only by greed.

    squiblet,
    squiblet avatar

    Their politics, like Chapo’s, confuses me. I try reading it and their positions and beliefs don’t seem coherent or to line up with anything I understand.

    raspberriesareyummy,

    This is not a pissing contest on whose propaganda you like better. The US, Russia & China international politics have all been evil throughout history, and the only reason other nations don’t stand out as much is because they are currently not world powers. You only like NATO because you prefer their propaganda - and possibly because the p.o.s. Putler unknowingly was baited into the greatest NATO PR campaign of all times in Ukraine. Nevertheless, defederating from servers who are making statements against NATO and the western world order is a very brainwashed and dumb move.

    kmkz_ninja,

    And Hitler was baited into invading Poland by the Jews, I assume?

    Pili,

    If you want to meet leftist, you will meet people who are against NATO and who know all the evil the USA has done. Those are entities that have spent the last 100 years genociding left leaning people with the help of fascist groups all around the world, so of course we aren’t friendly to them. If you aren’t aware of that, you may be from Europe, so I suggest you research Operation Gladio to have an example of what they did here, to their supposed allied countries.

    If you’re not open to those ideas, I really don’t understand why you were hoping to meet leftists.

    kbotc,

    Being against NATO is concisely being Pro-Russian. You cannot separate the two as NATO only continues to exist as a counter to Russian nuclear imperial ambitions.

    It is possible to be critical of the US without pro-Russian stances.

    Cassilda,

    Nah, NATO and Russia can both be bad. Of course, I remember back when liberals used to criticize Dubya for “with us or against us”.

    kbotc,

    What do you expect to happen if NATO goes away in your eyes? Really lay it out for me.

    redtea,

    World peace would be a step close, for a start.

    kbotc,

    In what fantasy land does dissolving NATO end Russia’s imperial ambitions. They’ve taken a chunk out of multiple neighbors, as long as they were not part of a defense pact, they were targeted.

    redtea,

    I fear that we have reached an impasse in this conversation already. To continue talking would risk talking past one another. All I can do is proffer this meagre offering: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2451jFeZp0

    redtea,

    What was NATO doing in Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq? How many Russians are there in Iran, Korea, or Syria?

    kbotc, (edited )

    NATO wasn’t in Iran, Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. Lotta swing and misses there. It really feels like maybe you either don’t know what you are talking about or are arguing straight up in bad faith, and at this point I think it’s bad faith.

    EDIT: I do take back Libya. NATO enforced the no-fly zone, and the arms embargo.

    redtea,

    You can pretend that NATO member states are separate from NATO if you like but we can’t really continue a conversation if you think the people behind NATO are not also the same people behind the wars and/or embargoes of the above states. Just because the swap the mask every now and then doesn’t mean it’s a different actor.

    kbotc,

    I would figure someone who spends countless hours arguing the minutia of Marxist thought would have some idea of how words have meaning and when they are used incorrectly, the person using them incorrectly likely has an agenda.

    Your agenda seems to be being a useful idiot for a guy who is currently committing genocide and you’ll just make up whatever you can to validate your predetermined opinion. Don’t do Putin’s work for him.

    redtea,

    Marxism is dialectical and historical materialism. It is the analysis of contradictory and internally-connected relations and processes. To detach NATO from the actions of its member states is anti-dialectical.

    Additionally, as you say, words have meanings. When people criticise NATO it is as a stand-in for the imperialist world order. It includes the IMF, World Bank, the WTO, the ‘international’ courts and rules, and all their elements and capitalist lackeys. You’re making a semantic argument, which misses the crucial point: that NATO and its member states are concerned only with the wealth and power of their bourgeoisie, regardless of Russia.

    I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have an agenda, that we can’t have world peace until there are no more imperialists, which includes and is often, in ordinary language, represented by NATO. If you interpret that as support for Russia, there’s not much left for us to discuss.

    curryandbeans,

    How many Russians are there in Iran, Korea, or Syria?

    Lots? With plenty of bombs, aircraft, and chemical weapons?

    SankaraStan,

    what? lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia. This isn’t a Marvel movie, you can have nuanced takes with what is a proxy world war decades in the making

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia.

    Sure, I don’t think anyone is really arguing against that. However when you’re against NATO right now when most, if not all, of its members are currently helping Ukraine against Russia and you are coming from an over-the-top Communist instance like hexbear it looks like nothing more than Tankies being Tankies.

    planish,

    What does it even mean to be “against NATO”? Is it, like, saying “the NATO alliance ought to disband because the terms of the alliance are bad for my country actually”? Is it like “I hope NATO countries lose all their wars”? Or like “NATO is a dangerous thing to exist because it allows an invasion of Country X, which is likely to happen, to result in a global thermonuclear war”?

    A bunch of countries could be arming Ukraine without the sort of all-for-one, one-for-all terms of NATO specifically that make it likely to figure prominently in any explanation for why we have all died of nuclear weapons.

    SankaraStan,

    the person i replied to said that you cannot be anti-NATO and anti-Russia, that is what i was responding to

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    Ah, sorry that misunderstood. Carry on!

    kbotc,

    Not really. NATO only has a single purpose: Containing Russia’s imperial ambitions. No NATO, Russia goes whole hog reclaiming the land they consider “theirs” as we are currently seeing in Ukraine.

    It is like saying “I can support worker’s rights but I’m against unions”

    If you take away the protection the imperialists will do the imperialism thing.

    SankaraStan, (edited )
    • bombing yugoslavia famously because Hillary Clinton requested the bombing and Bill relented that was the first time she talked to him in 8 months after the Lewinsky scandal
    • bombing kosovo creating more death and destruction than the conflict had until that point
    • funding stay behind missions in europe like Operation Gladio
    • Hiring wehrmacht generals as 3 star NATO generals (Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger)
    • economically crushing the poorer countries within the EU with loaded IMF loans

    are weird ways to contain russia’s ambitions

    it’s also really weird to refuse several offers of peace from russia in the last 20 years and instead march aggressively towards them, going back on every agreement back dating back to Yeltsin (really, further back than that but we’re talking Russia post-USSR here). seems like those leftists might have something of a decent critique around an organisation doing those things since its inception

    kbotc,

    Ah here goes the fun one where you explicitly support a genocide, confuse NATO with the IMF, and regurgitate Russian propaganda that countries that feared Russia blackmailing the US to join NATO was a “march on Russia”

    This is why I said what I said, and stand by what I said: Anti-NATO is literally Russian propaganda dressed up.

    SankaraStan, (edited )

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with the genocide comment edit: oh you think because i criticized NATO bombing civilians, i’m pro-genocide. incredible

    Greece had to take the IMF loans to continue being in NATO and the EU, that was part of the agreement

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with Russian blackmailing, I was referring to the 00s expansions of NATO that violated the agreement between Russia/NATO to stop expanding

    kbotc,

    You brought up Kosovo, you know, defending the war where Slobodan Milošević was committing crimes against humanity, including genocide.

    Again: The EU is not NATO. The IMF is not NATO. Greece did not take the loan out to “stay in NATO” and that’s a bad faith argument from you.

    Poland blackmailed the west to become part of NATO.

    The bad faith pro-Russian straight up propaganda argument comes out again. There was never an agreement to not expand NATO. There was one diplomat that offered it, but it never made it further than that. Never written down, and the Russian President agreed that it was not part of any agreement.

    Stop citing Russian lies and I’ll stop calling you a pro-Russian useful idiot.

    SankaraStan,

    my sibling in christ you can look at the IMF loan document for Greece online for free. It states they needed funds to stay in NATO and the EU. Greece spent 7.5 billion on NATO contributions last year, that money doesn’t come from nowhere

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with poland, i never mentioned anything about blackmail and I don’t think that

    my language re: kosovo came from amnesty international. you can read their report here. nato used depleted uraniam weapons, cluster bombs, and indiscrimately murdered thousands of civilians, upwards of 5,000 in some counts though this report limits totals to the hundreds

    redtea,

    NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

    www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html

    It would seem that NATO itself disagrees with you.

    Edit: NATO are the imperialists. By any definition. Please read any of the following authors’s works on imperialism/empire: Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin, David Harvey, John Smith, Michael Hudson, Zac Cope, Anievas and Nisancioglu, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Paul Kennedy, or Niall Ferguson.

    MonsieurHedge,
    MonsieurHedge avatar

    I'm not sure where "global communism" and "fascist state headed by Vladimir Putin" intersect, but it sure ain't anywhere sane. Defederation from the Lemmygrad school of insanity seems like a grand old time.

    Shinhoshi,

    It’s more like “the enemy of my enemy is a friend.” We don’t love the Russian Federation and would rather the Soviet Union still existed.

    The reason we have critical support to Russia at all is because the United States empire throws a coup in your country any time you go against their interests (see Euromaidan in Ukraine).

    Think of it like how the US and the Soviet Union were temporarily allied to fight the common enemy of the Nazis.

    MonsieurHedge,
    MonsieurHedge avatar

    On one hand, imperialistic hyperliberalism. On the other hand, imperialistic fascism.

    A fascist and a "critically supportive communist" at a table is two fascists at a table. You get the bullet.

    Shinhoshi,

    Don’t support fascism.

    MonsieurHedge,
    MonsieurHedge avatar

    Buddy, you are supporting fascism. Your assesment of the lesser-of-two-evils here is based in neither compassion nor reason, but idiotic spite. You will actively side with a fascist regime against a liberal one not because you truly want a better world, but because you're a contrarian idiot. You are the greatest weapon fascism has on attacking the left, because you will blindly support everything it does.

    I cannot stress this enough: You are both deeply evil and need to be outright killed so that the increasing influence of fascism can be stemmed and revolutionary consciousness can be developed.

    Shinhoshi,

    I’m new to this communism thing. As far as I’m aware, I’m a communist because I actually do want a better world.

    If you’re talking about the Russian Federation, I certainly don’t think they’re still socialist. The word critical in critical support does heavy lifting here. I want a communist government, not the Russian Federation government, and I’m happy to criticize them. Can you please explain how the Russian Federation is fascist though?

    As an aside, in my previous example, do you think the USA got along great with the USSR after World War 2 even though they had been fighting together?

    revolutionary consciousness can be developed.

    If you want to see revolutionary consciousness developed, then why exactly am I deeply evil and need to be murdered?

    MonsieurHedge,
    MonsieurHedge avatar

    Pictured here: The classic neofascist tactic of "concern trolling", sometimes known as sealioning. Your communist impression isn't very good, dog. The day of the rope is coming and you and your ilk will not be spared.

    VentraSqwal,

    Still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, nor to a lot of other people. Ukraine doesn’t have the right to decide their country wants to join NATO? Russia wants oil or a buffer so innocent Ukrainian citizens get to die? It’s not innocent Russians dying, because they are the aggressor in this case. They are being the US here, like the US was in Iraq. They interfere in just as many elections, have oligarchs, so much corruption, etc. But because they’re not the West, they’re the good guys?

    But while I still don’t agree with that lemmygrad’s strange, hypocritical takes, I still don’t agree with defederating (with them or hexbear). Defederating should be a last resort in my opinion.I don’t want echo chambers. Talk to people or ban the troublesome ones. Hopefully improved mod tools released one day helps with all this defederating.

    Shinhoshi,

    Ukraine doesn’t have the right to decide their country wants to join NATO?

    NATO doesn’t even want Ukraine remember? Then they’d have to actually contribute to the war more than letting it be fought to the last Ukrainian.

    so innocent Ukrainian citizens get to die?

    We don’t want more dead Ukrainians. If you’d like to hear our take, go check it out.

    They are being the US here

    The US is involved in this situation — are you sure the US isn’t being the US here?

    Defederating should be a last resort in my opinion.I don’t want echo chambers.

    Agreed, I’m glad Lemmygrad doesn’t defederate Lemmy.world despite how tempting that must be sometimes to our admins.

    kmkz_ninja,

    Ahh yep there’s the pro-Russian opinion.

    “Stop giving arms to Ukraine so we can invade without killing so many of them, or them killing so many of us”.

    Fuck off, invader apologists.

    SiliconDon,

    What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.

    Ignacio,

    As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat “fighting liberalism on the fediverse” like it’s activism? Go outside.

    XiaoHei,

    “as a tankie” fixed that for you now get off the instance and go back to hexbear

    Ignacio,

    You’re just throwing around insults because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Very childish.

    XiaoHei,

    wrong i know exactly what i am talking about same as the admins there is a clear and present danger from the woke instances on lemmy

    • hexbear (tankie)
    • lemmy (woke)
    • lemmygrad (tankie)

    those three are the oldest lemmy instances and coordinate their tankie bunkers to ensure there is contant woke comments in every post unless they are BLOCKED … like you are now BLOCKED because you are a tankie

    bye

    regalia,

    This has that fox news energy of “everything I don’t like is socialism and communism!”

    XiaoHei,

    oh wow another wokie cannot say i am suprised

    regalia,

    Did u just call me a Chewbacca

    planish,

    This is what is known as the “Chewbacca Offense”

    XiaoHei,

    ???

    regalia,

    ur uncultured brother

    PorkrollPosadist, (edited )

    Liberalism has an actual definition, and it is not the colloquial definition used in mass-media to refer to “the left half of what is acceptable.”

    Liberalism is an idealist (another word which has a very specific definition) political philosophy which champions private property, constitutionalism, republicanism, rule of law, and free trade. It has a philosophical canon, flowing through writers like Locke, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, etc. Further economic works, like Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” are built on this philosophical underpinning.

    Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.

    Liberals find themselves banging their heads against the walls of the institutions time and time again, because from their perspective, these institutions are just a reflection of ideas, and as long as the justification for an institution on paper is sound, there is no reason to think it cannot be reformed. An institution like the US Congress, or the Executive Branch is never at fault. It is simply a good institution simply being run by bad people. Marxists (and Anarchists) reject this quite simply, by looking at the material incentives involved, and the long ghastly history surrounding these institutions.

    “Combating liberalism” does not mean being a piece of shit to anybody to the right of Bernie Sanders or Jeromy Corbin. There is a genuine struggle to ensure the new crop of social media platforms don’t simply end up defending the legitimacy of the established institutions at the expense of genuine radicals who find themselves at odds with the actual longstanding policy and practices of these institutions. To avoid situations like when mastodon.lol banned CODEPINK, a prominent anti-war organization, for being “Tankies.” This is Liberalism, and it should be combated.

    bennieandthez,
    @bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    least studied marxist

    SmoothIsFast,

    Liberalism: a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

    I think you are conflating the free enterprise to mean endorsement of late stage capitalism instead of a system of actual market competition. Please don’t base this on the complete market capture demonstrated in the US currently. If anything the US is more like an authoritarian oligarchy with the illusion of democracy peddled through conflicting culture wars in the media. While there are great ideologies in play in something like socialism the reality is unless you could end the idea of money tomorrow their will always be inducements and incentives to hoard and leverage outsized resources outside of which ever community produced them in the first place. It’s why US resource capture on smaller nations works effectively, and it’s why Russian oligarchs have most of their wealth outside of Russia, etc.

    Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.

    Liberal vs Marxist has nothing to do with being a materialist or idealist, and trying to conflate them like they are is very disingenuous and misleading. Not to mention that is not what a materialist even is. A materialist is someone who values possessions for comfort, think a hyper consumer, where as an idealist is routed in ideals, like equality for all, regardless of the difficulties in trying to accomplish such a task. If anything by your definitions a Marxist would be an idealist fueled by an ideal (communism) , and a liberal would be someone on either side as they value personal freedoms and ones ability to choose either ideology.

    Either you are trying to be intentionally misleading or you need to take a step back from your own propaganda as you are parroting off information that is completely ill informed at best or intentionally misleading at worst. There are definitely issues in US institutions, but a liberal is not going to defend the shortcomings, they would be proposing ranked choice voting, imposing age limits, redefining our checks and balances, and making sure these systems are inherently democratic. We don’t even have a true left in the US, we have a moderate center and then people like Bernie who are just barely into the left political territory in the global scale of things. A conservative would be someone who values conserving existing systems and institutions or leaving them as initially intended as they aim to conserve status quo. Seriously take a step back my friend, seems like you have been lost in an echo chamber for a while.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

    Tankies gonna tanky.

    I am a Liberal with very leftist leanings (a lot of online quizzes call me “progressive left” but I think that is mostly because of one or two issues that skew the quiz). Liberals… we suck. We are inherently a position of compromise and need constant pushback to ensure we keep what is important in mind while still making sure we get anything at all.

    But, the thing with tankies is that they focus all of their hatred on Liberals. Often to the point of outright defending fascism so long as it is vaguely “communist”. There are a lot of theories as to why (not like certain governments aren’t known for running psyops to co-opt movements…) but it results in pretty much destroying all discussion and turning what remains of said discourse into a laughing stock.

    MolochAlter,

    Tankies are just fascists with a different coat of paint. Everything about their ideology and policy positions would be endorsed by Mussolini if you dressed it up in sorelian terminology and viceversa.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever, (edited )

    As an end result? Yeah.

    But, mostly, I think they are just ignorant. They know that Capitalism and The West is not working. They hear very persuasive people who “Read Literature” who are spewing aphorisms and concepts that sound really good. But they don’t read it themselves. So they see the nice things Chairman Mao said and… not the horrific things Mao said and did and all the suffering it caused. We have less of that with Stalin (because the US cared about Russia before 2010 or so) , but still a lot.

    And it is a self perpetuating cycle. Because people LOVE to talk about how they read up on their theory and literature. But, just like with right wing christians, “read(ing) up” often means “reading a facebook post”. Well, reddit posts are more common for left wing, but same idea. And their preachers similarly ignore aspects.

    We more or less saw the exact same thing with libertarianism in the 90s. It is well documented, but the 80s and 90s resulted in media being INFESTED with libertarian talking points and figureheads and ideology. And a lot of people decided “I like personal freedom. I am a Libertarian!”. And, over the 00s, they pretty much became bog standard republicans because they were indoctrinated into all the hate and bigotry while being taught “Stupid liberals are going to steal your tax money and give it to Others”

    And much like with the average Tankie having no idea about just how hellish the Soviet Union and… basically every single communist regime actually was. Most Libertarians won’t even know Grafton (briefly) existed or even think about things like “So how do orphanages work?”

    It sucks because I think Leftist ideology is objectively good. It is about egalitarianism and social justice (even if not all Leftists accept that…). But it is the deranged tankies who scream the loudest and make people think everyone wants to live in a house run by Mao and Stalin.

    redtea,

    That’s partly because ‘tankies’ read theory. Liberal theory, Marxist theory, all of it that they can get their hands on. According to both liberal and Marxist theory, liberalism is the main ideology of capitalism. When ‘tankies’ oppose ‘liberals’, they are talking about the ‘progressive’ left of the Anlgo-European empire and what that ‘left’ calls ‘conservatives’. So if conservatives laugh when ‘tankies’ make fun of liberals, the joke’s on them because the ‘tankie’ means them, too.

    There is absolutely no defence of fascism from ‘tankies’. That term usually refers to Marxist-Leninists, who praise Stalin and Mao for their stances against fascism, colonialism, and imperialism. If nothing else (and there is a lot ‘else’), anti-fascism is a central tenet of ‘tankie’ ideology and practice. Anti-fascism is/was a core tenet of all Marxist parties. If you think that a ‘tankie’ is ‘defending fascism’, you have misunderstood what they are saying and/or have inferred something from their words that they did not intend. Horseshoe theory is an intellectually bankrupt ‘theory’.

    You are right about this:

    We are inherently a position of compromise[.]

    As Mao said:

    … liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration[.]

    This and the other types of liberalism are often what ‘tankies’ are challenging when they criticise ‘liberals’—not what counts as ‘liberal’ in the extremely narrow US electoral politics sense of the term.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever, (edited )

    Leftists are not tankies. If all you are doing is criticizing liberal institutions and capitalism, you are… a leftist.

    If you are going above and beyond to treat “liberalism” as the greatest threat to humanity while simultaneously ignoring, or outright endorsing, the actions of demonstrably horrifying “communist” regimes? You are a tankie and you are a problem and… kind of a fascist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie is a good breakdown

    Being a Lefitst or even an outright worshipper of Marxism-Leninism is not a bad thing (I would argue being a Leftist is an objectively good thing since that tends to be very heavily based on social justice and egalitarianism). But a refusal to acknowledge where past efforts went wrong (if only to learn from them) and an active defense of where it went wrong is bad.

    And while you can have one without the other, saying nonsense like… basically every single quote in the OP is a real big red flag. If only because… a lot of countries should PROBABLY be dismantled if we want to actually make the world a better place. US is definitely up there. So is Russia and China. And arguably large parts of the EU (since they find good ways to still exploit the global south in the name of profits).

    Its just like how people can support aspects of Capitalism without thinking we need full on US/China levels of horror on that front. Or how people can think Communism is a good form of government while still being able to condemn the horrifying abominations that the Soviet Union and the like were (which, honestly, a lot of that boils down to actually being capitalist at its core due to the resource scarcity and bribes).

    To put an intentionally provocative invocation of Godwin’s Law into play. It is very much possible to discuss Nazi technology and praise it (even if that mostly just indicates that you don’t understand logistics or what makes sense during a war versus peace time…). But if you start talking about how the STG-44 was a work of art rifle and amazing and don’t even say “But, just to be clear. Nazis are bad. Shouldn’t have to say it but…” then… that raises some HUGE red flags.

    Which, again, same for Communism. You can praise the good and even argue about how the bad could have been avoided. But you kind of have to acknowledge the bad because of how many people suffered horribly under those regimes.

    deweydecibel,

    Curious to me how when I look at this post on other instances, other comments seem to be on top. Not sure if that’s a side effect of the DDOS shit or if it’s a really great example of the version of Lemmy you see from one instance is different than you see from another.

    XiaoHei,

    woke lemmies dev have put more tankie code in that we realized

    A_Very_Big_Fan,

    Cringe

    XiaoHei,

    another tankie blocked

    A_Very_Big_Fan,

    🤓

    Faresh,

    I’m from lemmy.ml, so I shouldn’t really have a say in this matter, but I just wanted to give some of my thoughts.

    There’s no problem in defederating from instances. However, I’m a bit confused by the reasoning given for the defederation. The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas, and I fail to see how it signifies intent to violate the rules of the lemmy.world instance (besides maybe point 7, if we were to consider supporting governments deemed “authoritarian” by the west as also being the same as calling for the opression for the people those governments are accused of oppressing (Which I don’t believe is valid reason since that’s simply not the case. For example, people who reject the idea that there is a campaign against the uyghur ethnic group in China, generally don’t do so because they hate that ethnic group, but because they believe the claims are false)).

    If leftist instances such as hexbear are problematic, I don’t see why instances like lemmy.ml aren’t, whose description some time ago was the following:

    A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

    Some time ago they removed the word «leftist» in the description, but very much still allow people who hold similar beliefs as the ones you highlighted to use the instance and to express themselves.

    MrShankles,

    Now that’s a discussion, and I appreciate your pragmatic response. The issue seems to be the flaming that is currently happening. Hopefully it cools down, and we can all resume our daily beliefs in a rational way. Right now, it looks like a clear brigade. A fear response to opposing views is common; but you don’t get people listening by asserting that what you believe is correct.

    Better to defederate until an understanding can be established about code of conduct. Currently, it looks like a heap of comments that aren’t helping the matter.

    From hexbears own announcement, they’re trying to tell their users that defederation can happen if they don’t play nice. And here we are with users creating discourse because of pre-emptive defederation… and it isn’t helping their cause. Defederate and let it bump, it’s not their instance to moderate. They won’t even allow federation to other instances themselves, without admin approval. How is that fair? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.

    This looks like and sounds like targeted ideology, that isn’t receptive to opposing views. Show good-faith to actual discussion and it wouldn’t be a problem. But just look at the comments and see for yourself that this isn’t good-faith, it’s a thinly veiled attempt at a brigade. And you can ignore the comments and look at the announcement itself: they’re trying to keep their users in-check (from the get-go) for polite discussion, but have already failed

    If you don’t like my opinion, good! Let’s talk about it, cause there’s plenty of ways to do so, outside of lemmy.world. That’s how it works, and people being mad is not going to change it. Kindness and logic will

    We all know the world’s fucked up, we don’t need another “saint” telling us they have the solution. We’re all pretty freaking over any final solution that anyone has to offer

    XiaoHei,

    i hope that the admins decide to BLOCK you as well sad to see so many woke instances here but after lemmy.world blocks hexbear and lemmygrad and lemmy.ml (MARKIST LENINIST) we can have a productive safe space

    Deftdrummer,

    Gold right here 🥇

    woelkchen,
    @woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

    The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas

    Repeating Putin’s BS is neither leftist nor anti-imperialist. If anything it’s the far-right that wants to dismantle international cooperation and it’s “western” international cooperation under the umbrellas of NATO and EU that’s currently helping to fend off an imperialist and fascist Russian crusade. It’s not a coincidence that the right-wing and far-right politicians such as US’s Trumpists or Hungary’s Victor Orban are the opposing helping Ukraine.

    C4RCOSA, (edited )

    It is because they didn’t think about it, they have a single power admin, Antik, who enforces his ideology on the rest of the team who just nod along. Look at the time between @XiaoHei post and this one.

    He is even in this post arguing with @Lenins2ndCat and getting bodied, hilarious as fuck.

    Real authoritarian ruler hours, makes a decree, tries to argue, gets demolished by facts and rhetoric, abuses admin power to remove posts and ban users.

    The mods of !politics had to make a post in !moderators here lemmy.ml/post/1582975 to get Antik to stop abusing his power in their community

    XiaoHei,

    keep my name out of your mouth wokie you will be banned soon and sent back to the caves you came from

    Cassilda,

    This is the best bit I’ve seen today.

    antik,
    @antik@lemmy.world avatar

    So I’m the power admin and XiaoHei is my alt? What the hell are you people on. Just check the modlog, it’s all public.

    It’s not because you post a wall of text that you are right. Lenins2ndcat asked me to hand over a community to her that was registered by someone else. And you guys back her up on this? That it would be fine to just take it from someone else and give it to her? neat.

    Oh and Yobuckstopshere and I talked that one out straight away. That’s a post from a month ago. It wasn’t even that he disagreed with that user being banned. But we’ve since set up a channel to better coordinate with the communities.

    YoBuckStopsHere,
    @YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

    Just FYI, the link you posted has long been solved and was from the first few days of the surge. Antik wasn’t abusing his power in our community in the slightest. That discussion actually led to some great cooperation between the mods and admins that have made LW even better, how we would moderate our communities, and the means to create a fantastic service for all of you.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Completely own fucking goal too.

    Like, what has he achieved here?

    Hexbear was going to cause no problems. This has caused no problems for Hexbear - on the contrary it’s REALLY FUNNY. All it has achieved is pissing off half this userbase, splitting the community and making a mockery of everything this instance pretended it stood for.

    Complete own goal, entirely for egotism and ideology.

    C4RCOSA,

    Antiks

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Lmao https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/133c0467-1f79-478f-a435-a01c748fea93.png

    Sphere, (edited )

    Stopping by this thread to offer a window into the Hexbear response to this statement. This thread is all serious and miserable, but we’re having a great time over there laughing about all of this and dunking on the worst of the comments.

    Edit: Oh and also here and here.

    PS: I am absolutely loving the downvoting, it’s hilariously cute; I legit can’t stop giggling right now

    XiaoHei,

    you tankies won’t be giggling when your woke mind virus is quarantined from the rest of the free speech loving fediverse

    zombuey,

    They simultaneously love and hate communists, socialists, fascists, “the left”, “The FAR Left”, nationalist, and liberals. While simultaneously seeming to not know what any of those things actually are. They do seem to be steadfast in their unity as far as using America as a scapegoat for all the worlds problems including all of Americas problems as though all of America is a single entity running the world both with ruthless efficiency and complete incompetence at the same time.

    Sphere,

    lmao you seem to have built a bizarre caricature in your head.

    Just so you know, we like communists (mostly, we are communists), we’re generally OK with socialists (if they’re actually socialists and not just adherents of welfare-state capitalism, aka social democrats), we despise fascists and want to see their ideology eradicated from the world, the “far left” isn’t really a coherent concept to us (unless you mean ultraleftists, but it’s pretty clear that you don’t, and that’s a whole ball of wax), we are almost entirely opposed to nationalism, though there would likely be disagreement on its value in the context of a liberatory struggle (like what’s been going on in Africa lately), and we don’t like liberals because they support capitalism. Also we probably know better than you do what those things actually mean. And yes, we hate the US, because it’s an evil empire.

    Aux,

    There’s no difference between the likes of you and fascists. Totalitarian ideologies must be eradicated, that’s the one thing I agree with you.

    Sphere,

    There’s no difference between the likes of you and fascists.

    Pretty sure literally every marginalized group would disagree with you on that, but ok lol

    OurToothbrush,

    No, you see, trans people in Cuba who have more rights than US trans people would agree that communists hate marginalized people equally as much.

    Aleric,

    We’d take your comments a lot more seriously if it wasn’t so obvious that you barely know anything about what you’re criticizing.

    It’s like going into a sports car forum and telling everyone that because BMX is shit and Tony Hawk is an asshole, Dodge Neons sucks. Those things all have wheels but you demonstrably don’t understand a single thing you’re talking about.

    You don’t even have cogent criticisms. You’re just angry about something you don’t understand, and you probably don’t even know why.

    zombuey,

    This is prime example of my point.

    Just so you know, we like communists (mostly, we are communists), we’re generally OK with socialists

    Your statement reveals you have no knowledge of the subject or ideals you claim to believe in. Communism is a process in which to establish a Socialist utopia. It was conceived by Marx based on the Machiavellian quote “The ends justify the means.” and was laid out in the Communist Manifesto. It is a militant process in which to implement SOCIALISM by force. I am guessing you are a fan of how things worked out in China?

    Sphere,

    It was conceived by Marx based on the Machiavellian quote “The ends justify the means.”

    rofl tell me more about my own ideology please, this is absolute gold

    (And here I thought it probably wasn’t worth engaging with you lmao)

    zombuey,

    Why don’t you tell me what communism means to you. You can’t really communicate ideas if you don’t speak a common language.

    Sphere,

    When I refer to communists, I mean people whose goal is to reach the stateless, classless, moneyless end-goal society known as communism, in which workers own and control the means of production and receive the full value of their labor. This includes tendencies such as classical Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, as well as some others, like Trotskyism or Posadism, which are a bit different but still definitely communist. Just about all communists today are Marxists of some form, but Marx and Engels did not invent the idea when they wrote the Manifesto, nor does the Manifesto lay out any sort of path to reach the goal of communism (it’s more a statement of purpose for a movement than a set of instructions).

    Socialism is a more nebulous term, encompassing everyone from reformists who seek to use electoral means to achieve their ends (something I and most other Hexbears believe is a non-starter, though many of us fell into this category not so long ago) to revolutionaries who are simply trying to escape the “negative branding” of Communism. There are also people who claim to be Socialist but are actually capitalists who support a welfare state, generally known as Social Democrats (we at Hexbear view social democrats as liberals, and generally don’t like them very much; there is some disagreement on the use of politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC to the leftist movement, but we mostly aren’t super fond of them). To further confuse the matter, communists frequently refer to revolutionary states (e.g. the USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, and others) as “socialist,” positioning the concept as essentially the middle ground between capitalism and the end-goal of communism.

    And since you asked about China: views on China vary on Hexbear, but are almost universally more positive than you’ll see in a liberal space like this. Not everyone trusts that the CPC will seek to “hit the communism button” by 2050 as they claim they will do, but basically everyone recognizes that the US state department, and the US media who walk in lockstep with it, is constantly lying and otherwise obfuscating the truth to cast the country in a negative light, as they have been doing for decades. We do not believe that China was committing a “cultural genocide” against Muslims, as those claims rely almost entire on a single, deeply anti-China source named Adrian Zenz, and we also don’t believe that China is the authoritarian hellscape the US media and state department portray (people in China do vote for their local officials, the government officials with whom they have the most contact, and over 90% of Chinese people approve of the central government’s policies and actions, per a Harvard University poll of the Chinese public).

    Color me dubious that this comment was worth typing out, to be honest, but since you seem to be engaging in good faith at the moment, I have done the same.

    odbol,

    I have no idea who Hexbear is, but it’s well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US’s corporate rule and then steal all their resources… Are we… Not allowed to talk about that here?

    XiaoHei,

    wrong that is typical tankie talking points the IMF and World Bank are bastions of freedom like lemmy.world there are plenty of woke instances to choose from go there

    ClamDrinker,

    Of course you are. There’s nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don’t see any indication why that wouldn’t be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)

    But pushing your beliefs is different. It’s about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is. (Not saying your opinion necessarily is, by the way.)

    MachineTeaching,

    You mean the conspiracy theory that somehow the World Bank isn’t there to do it’s real job, provide loans to poor countries to aid their development, but instead part of some grand scheme to rob poor countries of their resources?

    Because what you claim to be well documented isn’t actually objective fact. It’s more construing mistakes these institutions definitely did make to be something they very much aren’t.

    mycorrhiza,

    “We’ll give you this money if you cut all your social safety nets, depress wages, and hand your resources over to foreign companies.”

    “Fuck, who could have predicted that our stipulations would stunt your economy and impoverish your workers? Welp… guess you’ll have to stay poor and keep offering cheap sweatshop labor so we can sell the products at 10x the price overseas. Oh woe is us! Next time, we’d better do the exact same thing over again, proving that we learned from our innocent mistake!”

    I’m heading out to meet friends. Don’t take my silence for defeat lol. Hopefully someone picks this up where I leave off.

    raspberriesareyummy,

    I would like to second this. The OP reeks of opinionated bullshit. Being against NATO and a western hegemony in the world is absolutely a legitimate political opinion, whether you agree with it or not.

    XiaoHei,

    a legtimate tankie opinion only broke wokeists are against NATO

    masterairmagic,

    go away troll.

    XiaoHei,

    another tankie blocked

    Aikawa, (edited )

    It’s quite funny to see your well-adjusted self going around calling others “woke tankies” when I still remember you defending lemmygrad not so long ago, and being a CPC shill…

    Laffytaffer,

    Try not to feed the trolls

    Aikawa,

    That wasn’t my intent; I wanted to point for bystanders that this person’s speech was not so long ago the opposite of what they spout now, further signaling them as the troll they are.

    OurToothbrush,

    Theyre doing a pretty obvious bit and CPC or Communist Party of China doesn’t have the racist baggage the use of CCP does.

    Aikawa,

    Noted, I’ll edit my comment. English isn’t my first language, I used this colloquial term without thinking much about it.

    GuyDudeman,
    @GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

    Ahhh… And so the reddit bullshit begins on Lemmy. When will everyone just agree not to be dicks to each other?

    Cabrio,

    When people stop being stupid morons that inflict their idiocy on the world like a miasma of ignorance. So, never.

    GuyDudeman,
    @GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

    Good to know.

    Aikawa,

    Must I understand that you think I’m a dick for pointing out the hypocrisy of someone going around insulting people?

    GuyDudeman,
    @GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

    We’re all being dicks.

    ClamDrinker,

    The opinion of Hexbear doesn’t seem to be the problem, and because of certain ideological overlap to users here that should be quite obvious in my opinion. You seem to have focused on the wrong part of the OP.

    The problem is that they are presenting themselves as an ideological army. And especially that the admins of Hexbear seem to support this position, rather than it just being some rogue users.

    Imagine if a Lemmy instance opened up for a specific religion and their whole point was to inject themselves into as many discussions as possible to push information favorable to their religion. The problem isn’t that they believe in their religion, or even that they want to make the best case possible for it. It’s the fact that they are trying to wield open discussions as a sword to convert people regardless of relevance or appropriateness.

    BarrelAgedBoredom,

    Gotta say, pre-emptive defederation seems like a bit of an over reaction. There’s plenty of leftists in other instances, not just hexbear and lemmygrad. Hell, I’m an anarchist that regularly comments on political/social threads in this instance, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Lemmy in general is pretty obviously far left leaning. I don’t see the harm in federating with hexbear, unless they show themselves to be actively harassing or trolling. But you’d have to federate first to find out if they will

    XiaoHei,

    yet another woke tankie trying to act as if they are a good faith user when the reality is they are a trickster who only goal is to spread propraganda

    BarrelAgedBoredom,

    You’ve been all over this thread calling people woke, globalist tankies. And a quick glance at your profile history shows that the only one here that has trouble operating in good faith is you. I’d add more but you’re clearly not worth the time. Go fuck yourself, bye

    XiaoHei,

    another tankie blocked

    Neopergoss,

    Watch out or these reactionary nutjobs will ban you

    MolochAlter,

    That’s cause that’s not the problem.

    A variety of opinions is great, an army of zealots coming in to shit up the place but assuredly not tolerating the same behaviour towards them? Nope.

    This is simply an attitude issue, not a political issue, and we wouldn’t even be discussing this if the instance were far right instead of far left, despite stalinists and fascists being functionally identical.

    BarrelAgedBoredom,

    Look at my comment thread. I have a guy calling me a woke tankie for a simple disagreement. The shit slinging is already present in and among lemmy.world users. Having (potentially) more shit slinging is not going to change much. I’ve browsed hexbear a handful of times and was looking forward to their federation. By and large, conversation on there is pleasant to neutral. It’s a bit cringe at times and occasionally hostile to non-leftists. You see the same from the right and centrists as well. That’s just how online political discourse goes. If anything, I’d say the online right is a lot more hostile, bigoted and prone to harassment than the left. But I could be biased.

    The way I see it, the admins are basically saying that political arguments are fine among our users and those from other instances, just not hexbear and lemmygrad. Which is pretty silly and a tad dramatic

    MolochAlter,

    deleted_by_moderator

    •
    BarrelAgedBoredom,

    Fair enough! For what it’s worth I think the admins statement was self righteous and pretty fucking stupid as well. But it is what it is, communities are more than their admins and I think they’d make a good addition to Lemmy. And at the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping me from making a hexbear account or one on an instance that federates with them

    dimspace,

    honestly, when reading comments like this i think maybe pre-emptive is a good idea.

    Lemmyworld is forever going to be referred to as the instance full of pedos, transphobes and fascists that tried its hardest not to defederate an explicitly nazi instance while pulling this shit with a soft dirtbag left instance that spawned from the chapo podcast of all things.

    Like, what a fucking reputation to give yourselves so early on.

    www.hexbear.net/comment/3655725

    and most of the comments are in that vein

    rist097,

    You guys really just want people who think the same way as you on your instance. You should clearly state that instead of letting people waste their time here.

    XiaoHei,

    wrong it is the wokies that are trying to force their way of thinking on everyone else they have all the other social media places good on the admins for standing up for free speech soon it will be lemmy.world and X

    rist097,

    I have no idea who are wokies. How exactly are admins standing for free speech when they are defederating, banning religious communities or anyone who disagrees with them.

    XiaoHei,

    tankies + woke = wokies they are professional spreaders of the woke mind virus organized in tankie bunkers like hexbear

    rist097,

    You speak a different language. I dont follow these terms

    ulu_mulu,
    @ulu_mulu@lemmy.world avatar

    I don’t have any idea of who they are, but I don’t get it: we’re not preemptively defederating from Meta because it would be closed minded to do so (as per your admin decision), while Meta bad behavior is well documented (they’ve been fined by EU several times already), and we want to preemptively defederate from these people without even knowing how they will actually behave? Why? Shouldn’t they be “innocent until proven guilty”?

    XiaoHei,

    no dont let tankies in the door they will take it off and let more woke propragandists in

    wahming,

    Tankies = woke? Huh?

    Cornelius_Wangenheim,

    It’s the same group of people who got banned from reddit for being obnoxious tankies. They’re not an unknown quantity. Go search Ukraine on their instance and look at all the vile shit they post.

    d4rknusw1ld,

    Hexbear servers gonna see some Ukrainian drones into the window soon.

    Shinhoshi,

    Why would they do that? Ukraine’s military is so desperate that they’re literally using cluster munitions

    kmkz_ninja,

    What does that make the Russian military for using them first?

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