My first months on Lemmy were spent on Lemmy.world, which was the biggest instance at the time. I had no experience with Hexbear because .world had defederated that instance. I sometimes saw it being described as a “tankie” instance, but it was nothing specific.
After I moved to .zip, I came across !games@hexbear.net, which seemed to be free from anything overtly political and reminded me of r/Gamingcirclejerk, so I subscribed to it and occasionally made comments related to gaming.
Today I made multiple comments to a post about an article on the STALKER game developers having removed the Soviet symbols and the Russian audio in the remastered edition of the game. I would argue that in the thread, there were no comments from me that could be construed by a reasonable person as defensive of Nazism, fascism, or even hinting at it. For example, in one of the comments, I linked a Ukrainian law that prohibits the use of Nazi symbols, though I highly advise looking through all my ten comments as to avoid any misunderstanding or false impressions.
Conversely, one comment posted by another user dismissed Holodomor as Nazi propaganda, which I reported, but a moderator of that community just ended up calling me out for that and taking no action, followed by them banning me.
The thread containing all of my untouched posts is still available via lemmy.zip. My comments are also available for viewing via my user page. They are not available on hexbear due to the ban.
…but tankies are fascists.
That’s why we add all tankie instances to our block lists.
What do you expect, it’s HexBear. They make ML look like neoliberals.
I align more closely with hexbear politics than almost all non-hexbear users. IMO, their politics is not the problem – they’re just an astoundingly toxic community.
That’s the honey trap.
They appear to be a progressive left wing community- very supportive of socialism, trans rights, big fat queer comm…then you interact and find out these are all just populist shoes they like to wear for kicking the shit out of people
Elaborate!
I don’t really know how to do that other than to dig through replies from hexbear users pointing out how much vitriol they use. But in general, there’s a lot of name-calling (e.g. since you disagree with me, you must be a “white cracker,” “minstrel,” etc. – wtf kind of problem these guys have with minstrels I don’t understand); a lot of posting of flippant reaction images instead of actual responses, and so on. They’re clearly very angry about politics, which I get, but also have no interest in actually debating politics with any level of subtlety; even when I agree with someone in broad strokes but disagree about a particular item because I think it’s counter-productive to their own cause, I just get harshly told off. As a result, I can only assume they imagine everyone else is disingenuous.
Ah yeah, even in that thread, there were people responding with images or immediately labeling me a liberal without explaining or knowing anything about my views except that I seemingly sided with Ukraine. One person was very angry and needlessly escalatory with their “go fuck yourself”. Another felt the need to comment on my post history and try to use me running an Epic Games community against me. There’s a lot of ad hominem and straw man type arguments, which is usually indicative of not having strong counterarguments on the main subject itself.
Yeah that’s basically my feelings too. I wonder why they are so defensive. (edit: /gen)
I don’t know if this is sarcasm. If it isn’t, it’s because they’re supposedly leftists, but they have also been told they need to support authoritarian regimes who often harm people they’re supposed to want to help, especially Russia invading another much smaller nation (and fighting them poorly). They can’t reconcile these two beliefs, so instead they can only attack others.
I get the same shit on world or other super lib instances claiming I’m a Tankie or fascist apologist or what the fuck ever if I at all question the msm narrative, point out democratic failings, etc.
There’s a lot of ad hominem and straw man type arguments, which is usually indicative of not having strong counterarguments on the main subject itself.
That’s every internet discussion. You skipped over the constructive arguments and effortposts, didn’t address any of their valid criticism, and focused solely on the shitposts. If you’re not engaging in constructive discussion, mods can remove you at their discretion.
Are you serious? If anything, I ignored the angry comment, the low effort image comments, and the one outright denying the mass killing of millions of Ukrainians (which was my reason for reporting it), but I engaged at length with the people who were making more or less proper arguments. I could have engaged with the top one about Ukrainians praising Bandera and remind the person that they should have a perfect understanding of how that works, given that tankies (which was that user’s self-description) too praise the adversaries of their countries despite Stalin and Putin’s track records making Bandera’s pale in comparison, but I thought that would be way too triggering, so I didn’t post that draft.
No, that’s not it. I am not denying that there is constructive and high-effort activity on the instance. But the moment-to-moment conversation is superlatively hostile, (at least when I show up lol), and I’m making pretty tame comments – it’s not because of me. I don’t anywhere near that amount of venom in other instances.
Start making leftist (i.e. anti transphobia, pro worker, pro environment etc) comments on .world or .shit and you’ll experience a lot more vitriol. At least that’s been my experience and the reason I stay away from these cesspools.
Yeah, they’re the worst part of the worst periods of 4chan. I don’t think that’s where most of them come from, but it’s the same type of people.
The fact that they always support authoritarianism is just the cherry on top that makes them totally unreasonable.
Funny, I would’ve thought “the worst part of the worst periods of 4chan” would be all the bigotry, racism, transphobia, and that sort of thing.
It is at least bigotry.
Bigotry gets you banned from Hexbear fast.
Unless you wanna play the, “Saying Palestinians should have rights is antisemitic” card or something similar.
Yah, that’s why people call them tankies. Any criticism of the USSR, or even acknowledging why people criticize it, is a banable offense.
The term tankie get’s thrown around a lot, to the point of dilution, but the origin of it comes from western communist who defended the Soviet Union putting down the 1956 Hungarian revolution, notably using T-54/55 tanks. It later came to mean western communist that would ignore or downplay any criticism of the USSR, as “propaganda”. These days it could even be applied more broadly to “People who call them selves left wing or communists but who will defend the actions of any authoritarian regime so long as it is notionally in opposition to the US and it’s allies” IE people who defended Assad and Putin.
I think hexbear fits even a fairly narrow older definition. Which is why most major instances are defederated from them.
IE people who defended Assad
I don’t think y’all get to use that talking point anymore after 1500 people upvoted a .world post calling the only realistic alternative to Assad, “a known terrorist.”
Seems like most people on here hold the position that the US shouldn’t have even lifted sanctions on al-Sharaa, let alone given him weapons and supplies. And not wanting to give al-Sharaa weapons and supplies is what you’re describing here as “supporting Assad,” is it not?
Fun fact, two people, in opposition to each other, can both be assholes.
And you don’t have to like one to criticize the other.
Like how you can criticize the actions of both the USSR and the USA in the Cold War.
More importantly, you don’t have to defend one ass hole just because you like the other less.
The world ain’t fucking a dialectic.
Oh, ok, so tell me, what’s your vision for Syria, exactly? Have Turkey and Israel annex the whole thing? Or maybe create a power vacuum in ISIS’s backyard? Practically speaking, one of those two assholes was going to end up in power, and if they didn’t, the situation was going to be even worse.
Your argument would be a lot stronger if our side was the one calling for active support of one side. You’ve got it completely backwards. My alleged “support” for Assad was always just, “I don’t think either side is worth supporting, so we should leave them alone.” Which is, you know, the proper “null” position when looking at any conflict. But the “null” position of anti-tankies seems to be, “Whatever the news says.” So rather than neutrality being the zero point, it’s seen as “supporting” the opposing side. So much so that you don’t even seem to realize how much your argument is shooting yourself in the foot.
Your side, the side that labels us as “tankies” and “Assadists” and so on and so forth every time we advocate non-interventionism, is the side that “defends one asshole because you like the other less.” In virtually every foreign policy debate, it’s not between which of two sides should be supported, it’s between supporting one side or not supporting either. If you want to convince me to adopt a position of interventionism when both sides are flawed, then you need to argue the exact opposite of what you just said.
Do not feed the sea lions.
This shit is much wider than just hexbear. The lemmy creator himself is leftist and has pro communist essays on his github
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/dessalines_marxism_study_plan.md
This is atrocious.
It’s more their support of authoritarian states and policies than the communist thought that I take issue with, personally.
Communism itself is broken as fuck and produces authoritarian governments at best, and totalitarian regimes at worst. All these states are universally impoverished and abusing basic human rights
Well, now you know why sensible admins defederate from this trash. I’d suggest using an app that allows you to block instances from your side and ignore them.
Post this over at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works they love this kind of content.
Never heard of that, but I’ll crosspost. Thanks! 😄
I mean, their name and description say it all. They appear to fuse two rather telling themes:
1- “Hex” : as in the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme launched by Richard Heart (real name: Richard James Schueler), a notorious spammer and lawbreaker who ultimately faced the consequences of his actions.
2- A shameful endorsement of communist-style authoritarianism : essentially, a system that violates basic human rights while promoting a fully centralised, stagnant, and corrupt regime devoid of meaningful technological progress.
Frankly, if I got banned from a place like that, I’d wear it as a badge of honour, LoL ❗😂
Hexbear is a septic tank of degenerates.
Oh hey, anti-communist uses nazi words. What a shocker. Screenshotted so you can’t delete this.
The word degenerate has a meaning.
Yes, popularized by Nazi Germany. You aren’t subtle.
You fake commies are so predictable, anyone who pushes back against your disgusting behaviour is a Nazi!
Keep at it, commie LARPer!
“No I just used the word that nazis used when talking about communists, when talking about communists. Yes, I have a record of using nazi dog whistles, and been told to stop and said I would. But I am not using Nazi dogwhistles.”
I’m certain it’s run by APT groups. It’s a front for Russian psyops, 100%.
