I saw a post that talked about racism towards people and when I talked about it the response I got was very heated and a person even called lemmy.world a community of ‘hitlerites’
I have been around for a week or so and this is my first time seeing such explicit vulgar reaction towards another community, is this a one-off or should I block hexbear?
Its a leftist space that sometimes has trolls
“Sometimes” is an understatement. Their entire purpose for federating with other instances is to attack and “dunk” on anyone who remotely disagrees with them.
Do not interact with them destroy it with fire
Honestly, if you’re not a communist, the less you know the better.
It’s not even about being a communist. It’s about being a tankie.
Would you be willing to explain the difference? I don’t know and I did do a google on it awhile back and I guess if I learned anything it didn’t stick…
Signed: idiot on the internet who wants to know these things.
As far as I am aware, the primary difference is that tankies are authoritarian. They got their name from denying the tiananmen square massacre, saying either it was “peaceful” or “non-existent.” I’ve seen many express positive opinions towards China and North Korea while ignoring or denying things like mass censorship in both countries, China’s concentration camps of Uyghur Muslims or the fact that people and their families risk death if they try to flee North Korea.
I typically add a user note to all tankies I encounter or I just block them.
I continue to say: Wikipedia itself states that between 0 and 1 people died in Tienanmen Square. Nobody denies protests happened elsewhere.
That’s not even remotely true.
Here is what wikipedia actually says
The number of deaths and the extent of bloodshed in the square itself have been in dispute since the events. The government actively suppressed discussion of casualty figures immediately after the events, and estimates rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, hospital records, and organised efforts by victims’ relatives. As a result, large discrepancies exist among various casualty estimates. Initial estimates ranged from the official figure of a few hundred to several thousand.
0·4 months agoThe name actually came from British communists that supported the USSR sending tanks into Hungary in '56.
Ok that does seem correct. I’ve just always heard from others that it was the tainanmen square massacre that gave them their name.
How unsurprising that someone going around calling people tankies doesn’t actually know anything
Tankie was initially someone who didn’t have an issue with running over protestors in a tank in support of their beliefs, and has grown to include anyone willing to use violent means in support of communist ideals.
Current examples include supporting Russia or blaming Ukraine for the conflict, or supporting China invading Taiwan.
I don’t think it has grown to include that (or I don’t think it should have grown, if it actually has and I didn’t notice).
Any revolution will require violent means. That doesn’t inherently make it bad, just sad. It depends who is the target of the violence.
There aren’t many Americans who condemn the American revolution for it’s violence against the British, for example.You can have non violent revolutions.
I’m skeptical of that claim, but it’s not really important.
To say that any communist that supports violence as a means is a tankie is to say all communists are tankies.
But given that violence alone doesn’t make a revolution bad, and that tankie is a perjorative, then that definition isn’t fair or even really meaningful.Revolution varies in the quantity of violence required, but requires at minimum threat of violence. You can’t have a revolution by asking politiely and tying your hands behind your back.
Of course not, you do it sneakily in the shadows gradually until it’s too late.
You see the beauty of my proposal is It needn’t wait on general revolution. I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming.
you don’t seem to have an issue when it comes to running over Palestinians with tanks, most ‘tankies’ seem to actually be opposed to sending in the tanks.
I’m not sure how you got running people over with tanks from that, but OK.
It’s pretty clear from your moderation and post history that you’re some form of noxious centrist extremist.
Centrist extremist is a new label for me.
For the record, I don’t support either party in that nightmare.
“Tankie” is a derogatory term for Marxist-Leninists. We support AES or “actually existing socialist” states, in contrast to left idealists who support every revolution except the ones that actually succeed, which can always be imagined as perfect because the never had to confront practical reality. We’re known for our opposition to war (except class war) and belief in multipolarity, which is the idea that one nation shouldn’t be the lone superpower with hegemony around the world, and we treat the media with reasonable skepticism when it tries to tell us who to hate - ironically, these traits cause us to be characterized as militaristic, authoritarian, and blindly gullible.
People who have never read any communist theory beyond the Manifesto (if that) don’t think we’re real communists because they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Someone else already commented how tankies got their name.
Tankies in the comments can generally be recognized by:
- Anything that a liberal democratic country does is bad.
- Authoritarian regimes such as China, Venezuela, Russia, North-Korea, … are somehow the good guys, no matter how well documented their transgressions against human rights are. Tankies defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for example.
- Because tankies want to present some atrocious regimes and people as the good guys, they have to twist the truth a lot. So they constantly lie and misrepresent/omit facts to push their false narrative.
- Since they’re not interested in an actual discussion or non tankie viewpoints, they employ non-constructive discussion techniques to score points and “win” arguments. And this last bullet point is mostly why everyone else hates them.
The last point especially for Hexbear. Holy shit you have to see it. It’s like walking into 4chan if it were a highschool with their endless meme train circlejerk and single image replies all the while being shitheads in bad faith.
It’s a bear with six legs
It’s a tankie instance. You’re not missing anything important or reality-based by blocking it. You should also block lemmy.ml.
A place with a high amount of queer and trans socialists that all the cishets on the fediverse mald about. The instance is something like 66% queer / queer adjacent and 51% are trans / trans adjacent. Essentially, a lot of people are very aggro about the fact that they have carved a safe space out for themselves prior to lemmy becoming popular recently. Tldr:
Here’s some of their demographic surveys.
Hexbear is the only community i have blocked, they call anyone with a different opinion nazis, they are either trolling or mentally ill
I’m sorry if I sound tone deaf I am new to Lemmy .~.
Welcome to
City 17Lemmy!Welcome and there is zero need to apologize. Some people (and group of them) can be a real pain. Once you have learned how to filter them out, it’s a nice place with nice people. There is no shame in blocking them, a bit like I would not let someone enter my home so they shout their nonsense into my ears, or make their mess on the carpet.
Once again, welcome ;)
Welcome to lemmy! For the most part lemmy is nice place to be. You will still we the occasional crazy though. Defiantly not something you see all the time. If you find a user, community or instance popping off a bunch of crazy the best thing to do is block them. You won’t be missing anything without them.
Howdy! Can confirm that most people and places I’ve seen on the Fediverse are lovely… Except Hexbear. They’re one wall of cognitive dissonance away from being right wingers and constantly complaining that liberals are all lying to themselves about their liberalism. That THEY are the TRUE left wingers.
Weird, because I find them also lovely.
You likely have never been a target of their vitriol. Consider yourself lucky.
I nearly left lemmy because of Hexbear. Learning they could be blocked salvaged the platform for me. It’s not just you - they are pretty widely reviled.
Welcome !
Hexbear is cool. I’ve learned a lot from them. the thing is, some of the people there can be a little brash at first. I recommend looking around the instance a bit before you decide on blocking it. some of them can be a little brash but they mean well.
This is an extremely reasonable take, not sure why anyone would downvote you for it other than tribalism.
Hexbear has proven so many times to be completely unreasonable that it isn’t worth wading through that much toxicity to find the good parts.
I have not had that experience, at all. If anything I’ve had that experience on .world.
if anything, they are just proving them right about their instance. but it is what it is, there will always be tribalism on the internet and in the world.
You found it, the answer is tribalism.
Hexbear.net is a Left-Unity instance populated mainly by Marxists and Anarchists. They generally don’t get along with Lemmy.world, whose admins defederated from the major Marxist-aligned instances.
Whether you block Hexbear is up to you, I enjoy my time there a lot but it’s also because I’m a Marxist.
I really don’t think they are a left-unity instance considering that they get very upset and unpleasant to talk to if you don’t support authoritarianism or their alternative “facts.”
Like I’m cool with all sorts of different leftist viewpoints and I think it’s necessary that we support each other, but I draw the line at authoritarianism and rewriting history.
Anarchists are explicitly welcome, so authoritarianism is definitely not a requirement. And what “alternative facts”?
Things like the denial of the tiananmen square massacre or claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation, both of which I have seen with my own two eyes on hexbear.
While I am not an anarchist, generally I am cool with them. Who I am not cool with are Marxist-Leninists, which are authoritarian.
From the wikipedia article on Marxist-Leninists:
In the words of historians Silvio Pons and Robert Service, elections are “generally not competitive, with voters having no choice or only a strictly limited choice”. Generally, when alternative candidates have been allowed to stand for election, they have not been allowed to promote very different political views.
The people of the soviet union, at least as far as Pat Sloan experienced in ~1937, had the most limited choice: any person
I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship is no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organization was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet?
As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organization or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organizations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters.https://comlib.encryptionin.space/lib/html/soviet-democracy/soviet-democracy_files/chapter13.xhtml (EPUB)
Several things in there I dislike:
Raising hands does not seem like an accurate way vote. Peasants who employed labor couldn’t vote. People could vote even if they weren’t citizens. No mention of being able to vote for non-communists. There are trade-unions and other candidates but it doesn’t mention their political alignment
To defend non-citizens voting, the Soviets valued labor over nationalism and anyone could vote despite not being citizens if they worked there. Kinda like if the US allowed immigrants to vote who weren’t yet citizens.
Trade Unions were often independent as well. Really, the book itself is fascinating.
I support immigration but allowing non-citizens to vote seems like an easy way for foreign governments to swing elections in their favor.
Yes, I get that the trade unions were their own thing but that doesn’t mean they can’t also be communist.
No mention of being able to vote for non-communists
???
Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party
???
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here, you’re being very vague. I’m a Marxist, I enjoy my time there, I don’t really think I can say I share your same views on it.
When the instance I’m on was still federated with hexbear I did go and check them out to see what they had to say and with my own two eyes I saw people there denying the tiananmen square massacre and claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation. Not to mention that when visiting other instances, such as the one I’m on, many would be extremely rude, which is why they got defederated.
Hexbear’s stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacrfully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.
I reiterate, Hexbear’s stance isn’t that the massacre didn’t happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:
In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]
As for the DPRK, I’d have to see what you mean as an example. The common consensus is that the DPRK has a well-documented “defector storytelling industry” where defectors are paid for outlandish stories, and due to their unverifiability gets passed on as truth. A good documentary on this subject is Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul. Therefore, really, very little can be trusted on the subject.
The issue with hexbear isn’t Marxism or anarchism or communism, it’s apologism for violent authoritarian regimes to the point of insisting on an “alternative facts” version of “history”.
Alternative facts is when you refuse to admit you were wrong after carrying water for a single source white supremacist even when all the major media platforms that boosted the claim dropped it years ago.
So for years, as a ‘good leftist’, you continue repeating blood libel while you scream at people to support a capitalist committing genocide.
I really can’t tell what you are talking about.
Adrian Zenz
Credit where credit is due, youre honest and youre correct. Have my upvote!
I try to be both, lol. Thanks!
The reason they got defederated from so many major instances is less to do with the politics and more to do with the spam, brigading, and bad faith interactions that had no intention of civility.
You can tell someone is terminally reddit brained when they’re still accusing people from federated instances of “brigading”.
This is objectively untrue, Lemmy.world refused to ever federate, as, in their own words, a “pre-emptive last resort”.
In their statement, the reasoning they explicitly highlighted was Hexbear’s stances like being against western propaganda and disliking the mass overseas wars driven by the US. Don’t believe me? You can read it here - https://lemmy.world/post/2498330
So no, Hexbear was very explicitly defederated because of politics.
The world mods also outright support Israel.
Left-Unity instance
I doubt it or I’d be over there. Instead, I got attacked and mocked by a circlejerking mob of angsty teens from Hexbear operating in bad faith for remotely questioning something about communism and then got permabanned from Lemmy.ml. I didn’t even attack it! 😂
Do you have a link? Would be interested to see.
Remember that they don’t consider liberals to be leftists
A self help group for people who struggle with solvent abuse.
They’re straight up delusional morons.
For transparency, you were banned not only from Hexbear but from other instances for racism, misogyny, transphobia, and COVID denial.
Mostly for pointing out you people are retards, if we wanna be honest, not for filling out your fucking bingo card.
Mind clarifying which part you are using ableist attacks on?
God you people are dumb.
Who do you mean by “you people?” Which category are you specifically targeting here? Which box am I in?
yawn
From what I’ve seen in this thread? The "good people "box.
Oh look, it’s propaganda susceptible
❤️
I’ll do you one better, why is Hexbear??
Yes block hexbear. It’s one of the first things I did on Lenny. Save yourself the toxicity of dealing with them.
Hexbear is a different instance where its users are basically a group of hard communism supporters. If you disliked their behavior, feel free to block their instance.
They are not only hard communists, they have 0 interest in propagating their ideas, they only insult and despise everyone who is not 100% in agreement with them. In the best case, and I don’t think it is, it is an endogamous community only for themselves, the opposite of what a federated social network is
“tankie” here, dont really support them, they are the reason the left cant unify and are constantly infighting
Their entire stated purpose of federating is to “dunk” on people and “dismantle Western propaganda”. They’re not interested in participating in good faith and never have been. They don’t see anyone who disagrees with them as a person, just something to yell at and harass.
