What is hexbear?
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?
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Hexbear.net is a Left-Unity instance populated mainly by Marxists and Anarchists. They generally don't get along with Lemmy.world, whose admins defederated from the major Marxist-aligned instances.
Whether you block Hexbear is up to you, I enjoy my time there a lot but it's also because I'm a Marxist. The ones saying they are "pretending" to be Leftist never seem to be able to explain why a large group of people would all ironically have theory reading groups and ironically support trans rights for years, even before federating with anyone else. What would they have to gain?
If I were you, I'd ask on an instance actually federated with them. You'll get different perspectives than you will here, which is always the case when it comes to controversial topics like Marxism, where opinion varies greatly from instance to instance.
The issue with hexbear isn’t Marxism or anarchism or communism, it’s apologism for violent authoritarian regimes to the point of insisting on an “alternative facts” version of “history”.
Alternative facts is when you refuse to admit you were wrong after carrying water for a single source white supremacist even when all the major media platforms that boosted the claim dropped it years ago.
So for years, as a 'good leftist', you continue repeating blood libel while you scream at people to support a capitalist committing genocide.
I really can’t tell what you are talking about.
Adrian Zenz
I really don't think they are a left-unity instance considering that they get very upset and unpleasant to talk to if you don't support authoritarianism or their alternative "facts."
Like I'm cool with all sorts of different leftist viewpoints and I think it's necessary that we support each other, but I draw the line at authoritarianism and rewriting history.
Anarchists are explicitly welcome, so authoritarianism is definitely not a requirement. And what "alternative facts"?
Things like the denial of the tiananmen square massacre or claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation, both of which I have seen with my own two eyes on hexbear.
While I am not an anarchist, generally I am cool with them. Who I am not cool with are Marxist-Leninists, which are authoritarian.
From the wikipedia article on Marxist-Leninists:
In the words of historians Silvio Pons and Robert Service, elections are "generally not competitive, with voters having no choice or only a strictly limited choice". Generally, when alternative candidates have been allowed to stand for election, they have not been allowed to promote very different political views.
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
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
??????
It says that anyone could propose a candidate, and that the person elected in that specific election wasn't part of the [Communist] Party, making it somewhat likely they weren't a communist.
But a better question, is why is it important that they can vote for non-communists? What else should they vote for? Fascists? Liberals that wish to destroy the Soviet system and institute capitalism, thereby making the lives of the vast majority of people worse? Chapter XVII goes over this to some extent, but I of course do recommend reading the entire book.
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.
Again, the Soviets valued labor and the working class over all else. Chalk that up to them being naiive or whatnot, but that was the reasoning. Foreign governments were anti-Communist, not supporting the Socialist system, so if anything that points towards legitimacy.
As for the Trade Unions, I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying you want them to not be allowed to be Communist? Genuinely confused here, I don't know what your point is.
I think Lumelore is starting of at anti-communism, and working her way from there. It leads to some weird stuff like this.
Generally yes, though she doesn't seem to be one of the endlessly bad-faith types, just a bit stuck with Red Scare notions.
So I'm cool with socialism, and I consider myself to be socialist, but I don't think communism and socialism are the same thing. I believe that communist countries have a communist system, not a socialist system. If they did have a socialist system, then they'd be socialists, not communists.
And what I'm saying about the trade unions is that I'm not against the existence of communist trade unions but I'd like there to be trade unions of other political ideologies as well, such as socialist ones, anarchist ones, etc.
I'd like to exist in a world where borders don't matter and there aren't any foreign governments trying to sabotage each other, but that's not the state of reality today and idk if it will ever be, but I base my position on non-citizens being unable to vote based on the reality of what the world is today and if the world changes, then I'll probably change my position as well, but I don't see change like that happening in my lifetime.
Okay, I'm going to clarify some things here. For reference, I am a Marxist, particularly a Marxist-Leninist. I used to consder myself more of an Anarchist, but reading more Marxist theory and history books generally led me towards Marxism-Leninism. As such, the explanations I am going to give in a second are from that perspective, a Marxist that at one point considered themselves to be an Anarchist.
All Communists are, first and foremost, Socialists. Socialism is categorized by an economic system where public ownership and planning is primary and thus dominant over markets. Communism refers to a post-Socialist economic system where all property has been collectivized in a world Socialist republic, the famous "Stateless, Classless, Moneyless Society." When I reference the ideology of AES states, I reference Marxism or Communism or a specific strain of Marxism, but when I reference the economic model of an AES state, it changes.
For example, the PRC is Marxist-Leninist, but practices "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," which appears as a form of a "Socialist Market Economy." This economic model looks different from, say, Cuba, even though both are guided by Marxism-Leninism and working towards Communism.
There are other forms of Socialism, however in the grand historical and theoretical context the overwhelming majority fall into the broad categories of Marxism and Anarchism.
Does this all make sense so far? If you're interested, I wrote an introductory Marxist reading list, the first section in particular is short and very helpful for just being familiar with general terminology and goals.
I don't really understand what you're getting at here, you're being very vague. I'm a Marxist, I enjoy my time there, I don't really think I can say I share your same views on it.
When the instance I'm on was still federated with hexbear I did go and check them out to see what they had to say and with my own two eyes I saw people there denying the tiananmen square massacre and claiming that North Korea is a free and prosperous nation. Not to mention that when visiting other instances, such as the one I'm on, many would be extremely rude, which is why they got defederated.
Hexbear's stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian'anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC's official stance on what it calls the "June 4th incident". This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat's cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.
I reiterate, Hexbear's stance isn't that the massacre didn't happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don't frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan's dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian'anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:
In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a "good friend" in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]
As for the DPRK, I'd have to see what you mean as an example. The common consensus is that the DPRK has a well-documented "defector storytelling industry" where defectors are paid for outlandish stories, and due to their unverifiability gets passed on as truth. A good documentary on this subject is Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul. Therefore, really, very little can be trusted on the subject. Brutal executions being reported such as one official being eaten to death by 120 dogs end up being reported uncritically, despite said official turning up alive later and the story originating from a Chinese satirical column, akin to the Onion.
This is where the joke of "Juche Necromancy" comes from, because supposedly executed officials regularly turn up alive.
The reason they got defederated from so many major instances is less to do with the politics and more to do with the spam, brigading, and bad faith interactions that had no intention of civility.
This is objectively untrue, Lemmy.world refused to ever federate, as, in their own words, a "pre-emptive last resort".
In their statement, the reasoning they explicitly highlighted was Hexbear's stances like being against western propaganda and disliking the mass overseas wars driven by the US. Don't believe me? You can read it here - https://lemmy.world/post/2498330
So no, Hexbear was very explicitly defederated because of politics.
The world mods also outright support Israel.
You can tell someone is terminally reddit brained when they're still accusing people from federated instances of "brigading".
Credit where credit is due, youre honest and youre correct. Have my upvote!
I try to be both, lol. Thanks!
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