This same dude came into a programming subreddit earlier and got dragged for their shitty uninformed opinions there too. I’d say they’re a troll, but they got big mad and deleted their comments after a while, so I think they’re just an edgy teenager or something.
Unless this happened in the last couple of days they’re not. There was a big discussion recently on one of the federations, and the admin who was from Latvia I believe stated that he was never against the CCCP. That thread was brigaded by hundreds of hex bear posters exclaiming how wonderful and helpful hexbear users were in explaining communism.
Edit - looks like I was wrong and some of the major federations of defederated with HB. Interesting.
It’s especially wack since deng initially encouraged the people’s communes. Only when he realized that the state would have to cede power did it suddenly become bad lol
May 13 – Mikhail Gorbachev visits China, the first Soviet leader to do so since the 1960s.
June 4 – Absolutely nothing happened on this day.
June 24 – Jiang Zemin becomes General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
5 December – Li Keran, a renowned contemporary Chinese painter, dies.
People keep going on about the painter’s death which is disrespectful to his work. It’s good of the government to censor mentions of the ‘1989 incident’ to protect his dignity.
Like, I have a buddy who’s a communist, and we agree on everything. I come on Lemmy and say I don’t agree with the most extreme forms of socialism and communism, though, and I get straight up shit on and banned as if I said something incredibly offensive.
Extreme left-wing ideology is indistinguishable from extreme right-wing ideology. They both want to kill lots of people, and if you aren’t on their side you’re on their shit list.
Oh I’m well aware. Hexbear seems to be the biggest hive of bastards I’ve encountered on all of the federated instances. Every hexbear post I see is either super right wing or just insanely cringe My Little Pony type stuff.
Hexbear users can be obnoxious, but they’re not “pedo right wing shit heads.” Ask them what they think about pedos and right wingers.
To clarify my tone, I’m not some scoffing, irony-poisoned debatelord, and when I say “it’s wild” I’m not rolling my eyes sarcastically, I’m genuinely surprised to see this shit.
I can’t keep track of this one-dimensional political spectrum people keep using. I thought tankies, socialists, communists, and liberals were all considered left wing, but I keep hearing things about some of these groups being on the right instead.
Hexbear is more or less a 4Chan equivalent, sharing the same memes and single image posting behavior. They exist to make left leaning people look bad.
Their supposed communism is equivalent to start an argument online with “as a black man”
Just a bunch of right wing trolls.
Tankies are right wing authoritarians, and don’t believe any of the left wing political they use as a vaneer. Its like how the Nazis were National "Socialists "
Theres a reason they support modern day Russia and China, two notoriously far right nations
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
I would be one thing to say, “I don’t understand that group”, but it’s quite remarkable to say, “I understand that group so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
Go ask them for their opinions about Russia and China. You’ll get unanimous agreement that Putin is a homophobic capitalist reactionary and Russia is not a socialist or left-wing state. For China, you’ll get disagreements, but most of the takes will be pretty nuanced either way. Some believe Deng’s reforms were necessary to avoid economic strangulation, others are deeply suspicious of the direction China is headed.
See, this is exactly what I mean by “I understand them so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
If you tried at all, youd understand that they’re position on “modern day Russia and China” is based on the idea of critical support. They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
I.e. on the Ukraine war, their position is basically “U.S. Involvement in any war is a net-negative to worker solidarity in the country of question”. None there support Russia’s invasion, but they think Americas involvement spells the end of any socialist coalition to begin with.
But again, “I understand them so little they must be a part of the opposition”. They have a different (definitively leftist) understanding of the war than you do. Doesn’t make them right-wing.
They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
When it comes to Russia bombing their cities and raping their women and children, is that positively or negatively influencing working class solidarity?
Yeah, well when Hexbear hears that wives and daughters are being raped and says “giving Ukrainians weapons to help them defend their families from being raped is bad for worker solidarity”, it makes Hexbear look like a bunch of rape apologizists.
Basically the only difference between ML and the alt-right is that the alt-right wants violence against “libtards”, and ML’s want violence against “shitlibs”, while being insufferably snobby about pretending to be morally superior because they didn’t use an abliest slur.
It’s like you just took a fascist and put them on a liberal’s moral high horse.
Nah, I think what you mean is that’s the only relevant difference to you. Nevermind that MLs have a body of economic theory, if the most important detail about them is their willingness to use force then I think it’s fair to suggest your prevailing ideology isn’t socialism at all, it’s liberalism. Not that you can’t be socialist-leaning, but if the only difference you see between MLs and far-right conservatism is violence, then you seem blind to the thing that you have in common with them.
** And take notice that while ML’s claim to not support Russia, they’ll often jump to Russia’s defense, despite Russia funding alt-right and neo-Nazi movements in America
Because to them, US/western capitalist hegemony is the global opposition to all socialist movements. That Russia is not a socialist state doesn’t change their desire to see western hegemony weakened to make possible broader socialist solidarity.
So it sounds like the plan is support fascism, for what? To sacrifice who knows how many women, trans people, genderqueer people, POC, just so after society falls there possibly might be a Hail Mary throw at achieving communism?
Certainly not “support”, no. But frankly, the US has repeatedly been the ones to arm the fascists. That the US is getting involved in this particular fight has probably more to do with their opposition to Russian influence than any stand for justice or protection of the innocent. To say there isn’t much trust in the US acting in anyone’s interest except their own would be a monumental understatement.
I would say (everything beyond this point is my own speculation, since they aren’t here to answer your question), they would rather a treaty be struck sooner rather than later, which would mean the US easing up on lethal aid. I think their general position is that not Russia, Ukraine, nor the US have the interests of the actual working class (or women or LGTBQ+ people) in mind, and the sooner the war ends the fewer people die and the sooner the real work of fighting for those rights can begin. But there will be nothing good about the reconstruction that happens after the war. Ukraine will be beholden to US interests and perpetually in the middle of a geopolitical conflict with Russia for the foreseeable future (no matter what the resolution of the war is). The whole situation is shit, but “let them fight until the bitter end” is probably the least empathetic take I could think of.
I really hate that anything less than “Russia will loose at all costs” will get you lambasted with accusations of simping for Russia. There are precious few here who are willing to acknowledge that there are no good options with this war. I guess it’s easier to let the anger drive decisions when there are no satisfactory solutions to the conflict.
I’m all for Marxism, but I haven’t observed the “body of economic theory” having any relevance, except as a snooby self-righteous justification for authoritarianism and violence.
Even if you were to strip all moral interpretation away, violence and authoritarianism is unstable and ineffective. ML’s in practice are fake progressives, because they don’t even care for finding a stable effective solution. The progression of society is no longer the point.
From their perspective, all states (especially western liberal states) use violence to enforce their capitalistic order. “Authority” is broadly interpreted as ubiquitous, and all successful revolutions have been to some degree violent.
Not to suggest all authority and violence is the same, but to them, the liberal apprehension to utilize violence is a self-imposed handicap that not even their opposition undertakes.
Similar to leftists frustration with establishment Democrats from using their majority to enact progressive reform.
To them, the only distinction left is the economic structuring that violence is utilized on behalf of.
Again, not my personal position, but this “auth communists are the same as right wing authoritarians” is just willfully ignorant.
On hexbear, geopolitics exists as whatever hexbears feel like owns the shitlibs the most at that particular moment.
Sometimes, Russia is just months away from a well planned and strategized victory, against an evil Nazi Ukraine.
Other times, everything is a mastermind NATO move that’s all benefiting NATO, and Ukraine is just the meatgrinder victim.
What feels most alt-right about hexbear isn’t any particular position, but the fact that there’s no particular position. No logical cohesiveness, no rooted in solid reality. It’s superfluid ever changing dream reality.
I think the parallel with right wing extremism is because they’re both pushed by the CCP. They use a divide and conquer approach via LLMs on social media to weaken political opponents.
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
Eh, only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists. All the fascists have to do is walk in and say “NATO is bad, Ukraine is bad, libs are bad, vote for Trump because he is a big lovable goofball” and the other hexbears are like aight let’s own the shitlibs.
only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them. Fascists also massacre socialists — often with American support, as in Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Ask them how they feel about this. Hexbear users do hold some complex views on topics like China and Russia, but they have reasons for this and would tell you if you asked. You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them.
Maybe I should ask Jessica Watkins, who explicitly supported fascists, and is now being misgendered and put in the wrong prison by fascists, for supporting fascists.
Trans and genderqueer people can be just as stupid as Cishet people and vote for the leapords eating faces party. It’s not like fascism actually benefits people, it’s predatory to vulnerable people.
You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice.
I have interacted quite a bit already. I got lots of animal poop pictures and a lot of people requesting that I post a picture of my genitalia.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
I’ve seen a number of comments from Hexbears supporting DJT and not a single comment expressing this.
You’re reaching for some “fascists always pretend to be joking until they’re not” thing, but the Hexbear community originally formed around a deeply irony poisoned socialist comedy podcast called Chapo Trap House, and hexbears themselves are unsurprisingly also very irony poisoned. On top of that they were an insular unfederated community for three years, with no reason to make their banter intelligible to outsiders. They have a rich set of in-jokes and an emoji list a mile long. Your exposure to them is probably one thread where you argued with them and ten threads of lemmy.world users making shit up about them in absentia.
The podcast Chapo Trap House basically disowned r/chapotraphouse, so pretty much for the poisoned irony getting out of hand.
It feels like r/the_donald, which was also irony, until it wasn’t, and suddenly the internet is swarmed with “ironic” Trump memes until he wins the actual presidency, stacks SCOTUS, which rolls back RvW.
Maybe 10 years ago I would be down with all this irony. But there are real life consequences harming women right now, that are not so ironic.
It’s time to wake up, grow up, pay attention to the consequences and decide if irony and chaos is worth incidentally supporting fascism.
Here, I grabbed one for you, full of sus-looking comments. Just pick one and I’ll ask the user what their sincere thoughts are. It’s a thread from three days ago about trump’s mugshot. hexbear.net/post/422814?scrollToComments=false
Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There’s a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.
That’d make sense, but there’s a good deal of stuff typically considered left wing (like antimisinformation and gun control) that is authoritarian too. Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it’s handled fairly, of course.
The troll in me kinda wants to see how people would react if I started calling them righties for wanting to stop hate speech, but I think I know better.
Society requires a socially agreed upon level of authoritarianism to enforce the socially agreed upon ruleset. No system of organisation or control is absent from authority, but trying to conflate functional social authority with forced authoritarianism has been something I’m seeing a lot more from fascist thinkers.
Authority: When the majority tell the government how they wish to be controlled.
Authoritarianism: When the government tells the majority how they will be controlled.
Huh… I see you set a bit of a rhetorical trap there, where disagreeing or countering would make me seem like one of these fascist thinkers. Nice. Might not have been intentional though.
Anyways, I see them as different steps along the same spectrum. Authority is a component of authoritarianism, but the presence of authority is not necessarily indicative of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is authority taken too far.
On that topic, non-authoritarian authority is not always a good thing, nor does good authority necessarily stem from the will of the people. Sometimes the masses really don’t know what’s best. That said, democracy is probably still the best paradigm humans can manage on a long term.
Whether the will of the masses is “right” or “wrong” is irrelevant, society as a construct is one of cooperation for mutual benefit and improved quality of life through cedeing control and authority to those who represent the will of the majority, so if the masses managed to corral themselves into society then the understanding of the benefit of cooperation is strong in the social consciousness.
A result of this is the understanding that anything that works against the will of the masses to benefit from cooperation is unsustainable because it involves exploitation of the least protected sections of society.
This means that anyone trying to abuse and mismanage social systems for their own selfish benefit (emotional, financial, or otherwise) are objectively harming society. Ergo, anything that restricts the will of the masses by allowing selfish minorities to exploit their way to wealth and power and to further let them diminish the capacity of the majority to benefit from social cooperation is forced without consent, we call these actions “fascist”.
Fascism was the default social structure, he who controls the resources controls the society, but instead of that being an elected government of the populace it was one guy and his family that abused their position to maintain that position however possible from the first time an ape stole another ape’s rock to a king stealing another king’s country.
Society has slowly been slowly wresting control from the selfish individual to support the masses as social consciousness grows, democracy was one of the biggest steps in that direction of taking the power out of the hands of fascists and putting it into the hands of the people. But it’s a work in progress, and those that are selfish and want to hold back the progress of social benefit are thusly called conservatives, because they wish to conserve the ability to abuse society for chance to gain more wealth and power than other people as opposed to contributing to society to increase the wealth and power of all the people.
Many of these fascist systems still exist and will take a significant about of time for society to claim more control away from fascist actors, there will always be an ebb and flow of fascism and selfishness in society but that lessens as time goes on. For example, the Democratic electoral system of the US government has been unable to avoid the influence of fascism over the years as evident by legal voter disenfranchisement through first past the post, non-preferential voting, gerrymandering, the electoral college, attempts to limit and remove citizens rights to engage with the electoral system by de-funding postal services and limiting mail voting, etc. These are all fascist claw backs attempting to regain selfish control over societies power structures for their percieved personal benefit.
Capitalism, a system integrated into almost all modern world cultures and societies is also a fascist concession that is a middle ground between kings owning everything in their kingdom to personal ownership and control, of course exploitation is still present under capitalism, because capitalism is just a stepping stone to a socially beneficial system not an end point of social development, it is also one of the last bastions of fascist control over wealth consolidation.
I could go on about how all these developments relate to issues in the social order and the inability for individuals to develop cognisance of the nuances of societies current place in human development but it’s starting to feel like rambling.
If anything I hope that something I said resonates and provides context and understanding of the complex weave that is human social development.
Kinda skimmed because that’s a really long essay, but:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Fascism is a fairly specific thing. It’s not just anything that’s not democracy. Overapplying the term is a tool that allows you to condemn reasonable stances as absolute evil. Note that reasonable, used here, does not mean ideal or without caveats. If you can condemn every stance other than your own as absolute evil, that is radicalization. Radicalization can have its use, but it’s a dangerous thing. It needs to be focused. What is “Punch a Nazi” when capitalists are fascists too?
I understand that definition of fascism, and you should read the rest of my post for a better understanding of how that fascism operates in modern society. Nothing I’ve stated goes against those definitions, they’ve just been tempered with the context of modern society.
And yes, capitalism is ‘fascism lite’ if you want an analogy. Profit as a concept is inherently exploitative for the purpose of building wealth and power to exploit more people; power that is used to exert authoritarian control over those who rely on that person’s willing distribution of their excess resources, and will eventually give way to systems that are better focused on social equality.
You talk about fascism as if it’s the pervasive force of evil. Fascism is a relatively recent phenomenon, a specific manifestation of evil. I believe what you’re talking about is greed, or hunger for power.
Nothing about fascism is recent, fascism is born of greed and hunger for power, but the act of engaging in self imposed authority through control of power and resources is fascism. I don’t think of it as good and evil, these are just the actions of people, selfish vs selfless. Society is humanity moving away from selfish towards selfless, movement in the other direction requires engaging in fascism.
and will eventually give way to systems that are better focused on social equality.
That’s one part that I’m not convinced about. I think it can and will happen in isolation, but whether it is stable in the long term and spreads to other countries is another.
One thing that I notice with the communist/socialism gang is that they often simultaneously have faith in the good of mankind and condemn all pro-capitalists and western politicians as evil. Reality is more nuanced, of course.
Anyway, I expect it will be the most robust political and economic systems that will survive and prosper. There are many big challenges (eg. climate change & competition for limited resources), as well as intentionally thrown spanners. Often it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, those who wield the biggest sticks that get to dictate or influence the rules.
My personal hope is that China walks peacefully forward toward a healthy form of socialism and is able to lead the world by example. I have my doubts, of course.
It’s already happening in other countries, other first world developed countries have universal healthcare, are looking at reducing full time working hours, implementing UBI not to mention more robust and fair electoral systems.
America still has a very strong Conservative grift slowing the country’s social progress, but the need for the masses to survive will always outweigh the need for the individual to be greedy so movement towards social benefit is slow but inevitable.
I’m in one of those countries (no UBI experiments yet). We have worker’s councils in large companies and unions, but there is still significant income and (more-so) wealth disparity. On the whole, this is one of those rare cases where the US has helped set-up a better and fairer system abroad than they have at home.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen to the world would be for the US to reform itself - healthcare first. I have bigger doubts here than China, though.
Until such time as they are truly working toward fair democracy and human rights at home and abroad, I think we need more bulkwards against US corporate interests (similar with other countries). Basing international trade purely on business interests and political whims doesn’t seem ideal - perhaps we need more principle based international trade, with incentives to improve.
“In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.”
in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.
That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.
in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.
I don’t think highlighting the disagreement between “leftists” and “liberals” is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me “liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted,” but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.
Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.
How does your definition differ?
Please don’t tell me it’s just “they’re not always progressive and don’t always promote welfare.” : )
Alright, this is probably gonna go in an endless cycle of “Are they this?” “Well, not necessarily…” that isn’t going to go anywhere. Thanks for trying, have a nice day.
I gave you one. “Liberals” support capitalism, but in America specifically “liberal” also implies that they trend toward supporting more safety nets than “conservatives” and being more “left wing on cultural issues,” but neither of those is consistent and it’s a spectrum. The main uniting trait of “liberals” in the world is support for capitalism.
*PS I have a meeting in 5 minutes so I can’t continue this
There’s not many all-in on authoritarianism that aren’t extreme left or right economically.
The political compass is better than a one-dimensional spectrum, but it’s literally twice as complicated.
You can pretty safely plot a symmetrical U shaped line running through the political compass and find almost everybody. That’s why one-axis works well for describing the political climate of the USA, it’s mostly in the right half of the political compass sitting on this line.
So tankies are very Communist (left) and necessarily very authoritarian to achieve their goals.
They represent the other half of the political compass that Americans usually do not see. So people on here frequently get confused when exposed to tankies.
And you also have the tankies talking about the Bernie-Sanders-style/social democrats (found at the vertex of our U shape) as “right” because if you follow the U line, they would be.
? your comment makes no fucking sense. Why do you people try SO HARD to have a dissenting but relevant opinion constantly? its tiring, go fuck yourself.
There were multiple perspectives represented among the protesters. Some waved slogans for democracy, others had framed paintings of Mao Zedong. The protests went on for months and were not a unified, centrally organized affair.
*I have pictures, mentioning this at the top because apparently no one reads this comment
I’m not the person you replied to earlier. I don’t know how the Soviets factor into this, and I don’t think it’s necessarily ideological to mention a concrete detail about an event. Established, western, non-communist, non-china-supporting media sources covered the protests in person for months, and their reports and pictures show a spread of perspectives among the protesters. Deng Xiaoping’s government had detractors from multiple directions.
Go on. What’s ironic about my statement and what you just brought up? Why do you think me saying that there are a lot of commies here, has anything to do with my view on what happened in Tiananmen Square?
man if the CCP catches you, just hope you have some condition that makes your organs undesirable.. at least that way you can starve in the mines for however long you hold out, instead of going straight to the organ farm..
It’s a bit different from the old one but I think you did it well and it was a bit of a heads up but I think you did the wrong thing for me to say that you are well and I hope you can come back with the rest in your favour ASAP
Oh sick, the first report was a frequent problem Only going on the verge of quitting Was a good analyst for a little cluck and then novels in a trenchcoat of the same night as the dominant ideology in my speed and the people who physically exist and have a totally different experience to do with the system.
It’s a bit different from the old one but I think you did it well and it was a bit of a heads up but I think you did the wrong thing for me to say that you are well and I hope you can come back with the rest in your favour ASAP
I can’t stop thinking about you at work now and then I will be there for you to be in the city of Rome I am a beautiful woman like you don’t have to be a good day to you and your family and friends with benefits of eating now I have a good day to you and your family and friends with benefits of eating now I know you are welcome dear how was it for the first time I will be there for you to be in the city
Yeah also I don’t think they are saying it’s a good idea 😔 I think it’s a lot to be a part but it is because of the navbar with the letter X SYNC and the people in my life are you and the kids 😭 the same reason 😭💔💔 and I don’t know how much memory of the navbar and not the same as you are always in the mood to be joking 😃 and I have to do that to use it to the right 👍 and the other UIs is a bit of an emotional 😭 and it was
I think it’s the only thing that you have 2 days ago I am not going anywhere else to say it in 3 hours to go out to the office now you can do that to me that everything will work out the shower now then I’ll come back from work now my dear sister and brother it was just checking on me for a few days probably be there in a while back but it is not working for me
Also I don’t know if you have any modals in the house or something else on the way home and I can make a new instance of this and I don’t know how to make a new one but I don’t know what to the right 👍 and not because of the navbar with a good way of being there to be joking 😃😃😃😃 I don’t know what the plans will do but we are all gonna be what we
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