What is hexbear?

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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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I'm sorry if I sound tone deaf I am new to Lemmy .~.

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.

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 ;)

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.

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.

TLDR: they are right-wingers pretending to be left wing

What does the Y axis represent here?

Technically, the X-axis doesn't represent anything either, as the far-right plot point curves upward, rather than continuing.

"Y" is the name of one of the major meme/shitpost contributors on lemmy.ml

The amount of mental gymnastics being done to justify their ideology

Mental gymnastics is the term given to people who read books by the mental couch and potato chip crowd.

Separation from reality, maybe?

It looks like another way of drawing the political compass left/right (collective vs individual rights) on the x axis and authoritarian/libertarian (obedience to centralized authority hierarchy vs distributed political pluralism) on the y axis. Tankies and far right would be in auth q1 and q2, far left q3, and not representing q4 labeling the quadrants from top left clockwise.

If we read it as a political compass

Auth+

Lib-

I love this image. Something that always confused me is that they are communist, but support russia? An extremely far right government?

Authoritarians like authoritarian regimes. They'll perform extreme mental gymnastics to reconcile their preconceived notions with reality, like the tankies that declare China to be socialist. Also, most of them see the US as the Great Satan that is responsible for any and all evil in the world. Therefore anybody who opposes the Great Satan must be good.

I can't help but wonder if tankies are the political equivalent of flat-earthers. I should probably ask that on NSQ some time, when I can figure out a way of asking that won't get me banned.

I can’t help but wonder if tankies are the political equivalent of flat-earthers.

One way forward is to ask them for evidence for their viewpoints and investigate their sources for errors. The problem of the flat-earther is that there is objective evidence of a 3D rounded Earth that they can't adequately counter with objective evidence.

"Tankie" here, russia sucks

What makes you a "tankie" if you don't share their beliefs?

If you agree that "russia sucks" make someone not a tankie, then you'll conclude that 99% of Hexbear are not tankies.

There's no support for the Russian Federation. Support for the USSR? Absolutely, but not the RF. There's critical support, as in the RF currently takes an antagonistic stance towards the United States, which many Leftists see as the greater global evil, but no leftist genuinely thinks the RF is doing that out of "good intentions" or has any model that Leftists should replicate.

That sums it up.

I’ve spoken to plenty who were way too sympathetic to Putins ‘Ukrainians are Nazis’ chat with complete disregard of the nuances.

Support for the USSR? Absolutely

Wait, really? The ones responsible for, among other things, the Holodomor? Those guys? Why?!

Marxists support the USSR as the world's first Socialist State. They don't believe it was some perfect wonderland free from troubles, issues, problems, etc, rather, they acknowledge that the USSR was real Socialism with real victories, like free healthcare and education, an elimination of famine in a country where starvation was regular, doubled life expectancies, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages, and over tripled literacy rates to near 100%.

Hexbear aren't unique in general support for the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Marxists see it as far better than Tsarist Russia and the modern Russian Federation.

They don’t believe it was some perfect wonderland free from troubles, issues, problems, etc, rather, they acknowledge that the USSR was real Socialism with real victories, like free healthcare and education, an elimination of famine in a country where starvation was regular, doubled life expectancies, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages,

"doubling" the life expectancy? Life expectancy was 30 years old prior to the USSR forming in 1922, so yes "doubling" to 67 took until 1967, and before they doubled it, they dropped it to 23.6 years old. Tens of millions of Soviet citizens died early deaths to get there. Starvation didn't end for many and rationing was commonplace. I suppose killing off a sizable portion of your population would mean less mouths to feed, but what a horrible approach to try to solve that problem.

Perhaps a better measure would be infant mortality. The USA, with its "worse" healthcare, has had consistently less than half infant mortality (or even lower) for every year the Soviet Union existed.

and over tripled literacy rates to near 100%.

...in *Russian*. If you spoke a different language, like Ukrainian, it was forbidden by USSR law from teaching it in schools. This happened to dozens of languages in other Oblasts.

dramatically lowered wealth inequality while dramatically raising wages,

On the surface this looks good, but that would be with a Western view of what earned wages could buy. Even with money there was limited food to buy for decades at a time during the Soviet Union. Further, you couldn't just do something like go a buy a car. You had to get on a wait list for years to even have an option to buy one.

Hexbear aren’t unique in general support for the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Marxists see it as far better than Tsarist Russia and the modern Russian Federation.

Better than the final Tsar or Putin, probably, but those are both really low bars to gauge a win by.

I'm not saying everything about the Soviet Union was bad, but holding it up as an example to aspire to would be rejected by most folks that would be forced to live that life (or die an early death under its heel as a consequence of actions of the state). Do the Marxists you're referring to really pine to live in 1940s or 1950s Soviet Union?

A bit dishonest to point to the drops in life expectancy and the general 1940s and 1950s period without mentioning World War II, where the Nazis waged a war of extermination and genocide on those they considered genetically inferior, don't you think? Same with comparing a highly developed country that saw no land fighting in World War II to the country devastated the most by it that was a feudal backwater only a couple decades prior when it comes to infant mortality. The bit on literacy is also misleading, the vast majority of all SSRs pre-Socialism were illiterate.

Outside of curiously leaving out World War 2 and the massive devastation it brought (80% of combat in World War 2 was on the Eastern Front), as well as comparing directly to the United States that never saw the same destruction and started the century several laps ahead, your only real criticism was a lack of consumer goods. This is true, light industry was lacking and being closed off from the Global Economy was indeed a contributing factor to its dissolution, but you could have pointed to that honestly.

No, most Marxists don't want to go back in time to the first Socialist state, they would rather learn from what worked and what didn't and be part of building a Communist future.

we don't, we just hate the us more.

It's obvious you hate yourselves most.

how so?

See, this is why capitalization matters.

im not a native speaker but wouldnt the word for this in this context be "ourselves"?

Why would supposed right-wingers be holding Leftist theory reading groups, hosting mutual aid comms, donating to Palestinian gofundmes, and supporting trans rights to some of the highest degrees on the fediverse? Irony? Seems like a silly hypothesis.

hosting mutual aid comms

I've seen those posts (I have no filter).... "I need money for rent" 🦗 🦗 🦗

*posted from lemmy.ml*

I don't see how that discounts anything, why would right wingers create a relatively isolated community to read Marxist and Anarchist theory, protect and advocate for trans rights, and frequently pin donation threads for Palestinians? Seems like *way* too much effort to be ironic, and defederating from other instances would *hurt* their supposed goal of "trolling."

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I like horseshoe theory. Basically far-left and far-right come to be same extremistic pieces of shit that are more alike than not, e.g. Hitler(right) and Stalin(left).

The left-right spectrum itself just isn't a useful model, but the mere existence of anarchists contradicts horseshoe theory.

I'll do you one better, why is Hexbear??

Hexbear, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the "Tankie Triad".

Hexbear is the worst most extreme of them and lemmy.ml is the least which is why they've managed to avoid getting defederated from world (either that or because they're like the third largest instance behind only .world and SJW)

Hexbear is pretty widely defederated

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yeah the other two I definately agree with, but lemmy.ml is mostly tame.

It's all under the surface, the admins, mods and a good portion of users have just as extreme viewpoints, but tend to walk the line quite carefully to avoid being defederated by .world

That's just not true. They don't give a shit about .world. They don't even have to give a shit about .world. They've got plenty of traffic to manage without .world. It's just stupid to do so over some squabbles

Plus, everyone secretly loves the animosity. Like how the Dutch are always making fun of Belgians, but if anyone else ever says anything bad about Belgians, they'll get a kick in the nuts from the Dutch.

That's just not true. They don't give a shit about .world. They don't even have to give a shit about .world. They've got plenty of traffic to manage without .world.

You must not have spent much time over there, go into any .ml threads where .world gets brought up and they'll shit all over us for being a CIA front, US State Department Mouthpiece, nothin but bots, "Reddit 2.0", "fake leftist", front for the US military, to stupid to realize we're just digesting propaganda and on and on and on

But yet, they won't defederate and they get awfully mad whenever someone does bring up .world defederating from them.

So I ask you, if they're so full with traffic to manage, then why do they not defederate from .world?

My guess is as good as any, maybe it's because tankies need someone to tank against. Can't be a racist without other races around. Can't be a misogynist with women around. Can't be a transphobe without trans people around. Can't be a .ml tankie without .world people around.

About the traffic, they (used to be or are they still?) the default instance on join-lemmy.org . Thats how a lot of people joined that instance and that's how they have gained a lot of users and general communities. Maybe that has changed though, I really don't care enough to actually check current metrics.

All I heard of before is that lemmygrad is more "extreme" than hexbear? My instance defederates from lemmygrad, but federates with hexbear, I don't know the exact reason for this though.

I was in an instance that was like that, but since they even made a post justifying their stance on keeping the federation with hex, I just jumped ship.
Not having to deal with ml, grad and hex is so much better.

Huh yea that's kinda weird, but it's also fairly subjective or perhaps your instance admins "straw that broke the camels back" just happened to be coming from lemmygrad at the time. But still weird to defederate from one and not the other regardless of which one was first lol

It's been a while since my instance was federated with either of them, but I remember grad being more extreme in their beliefs and hb being more... annoying. The hb folks did a ton of brigading and picking fights. Maybe they chilled out since then, but the .world threads were exhausting to read with hbs being assholes in every single one, including things that had absolutely nothing to do with politics.

I think it's the other way round. They share similiar politics but lemmygrad users don't have the same abrasive commenting style.

Note: being on Lemmy for about a year, I didn't live through the early days of this place. Here's what I can recollect, as neutrally given as possible.

TL;DR The recent conflicts between two politically different groups on Lemmy have radicalized many people, and many Hexbear residents in particular. Unless you are to discuss the far-left ideas and are very radical about disadvantaged groups, you are safe to block it.

Hexbear is a far-left (as in actually communist) anti-discrimination community, initially more of a safe haven to promote equality and foster a healthy and welcoming place for leftists to come together.

With core developers of Lemmy also being far-left, Hexbear naturally fitted the landscape along with the official Lemmy.ml, heavy far-left Lemmygrad.ml and others.

As time went on, however, all sorts of left-leaning and apolitical folks, not just far-left, came to the platform, filling other instances like Lemmy.world (now the most populated of them all), sh.itjust.works and many others.

As a result, Lemmy has two groups of people with radically different political views: one is a group of more or less organized far-left, and the other is everyone else, most commonly liberals. This distinction has caused a lot of conflicts and heated discussions based on political adherence.

Most notable case is latest US elections. The far left side generally called not to vote Democrat as Biden has failed to deliver on many of his promises and empowered Israel to commit war crimes in Palestine, while the liberal audience called to vote Democrat to not let Republicans take the lead, which may arguably lead to an even worse outcome than unaccountable Dems can make.

This divide has raised a lot of mutual hostility, brigading, and uncivil behavior, which has radicalized many on both sides of the conflict, the consequences of which you have got to experience.

What to do with that is up to you to decide. Hexbear is very politically uniform and very political overall, so if you're not here to discuss communism, you won't lose much and will gain additional peace of mind.

I'm being a little pedantic here, but "far left (as in actually communist)" wasn't a thing until these recent online debates and forming groups started putting labels on groups and putting them into boxes. Communists are not necessarily left, nor far left. It feels a bit weird to 'put' them anywhere.
That said, I know nothing about hexbear or this little group on Lemmy and how they identify..

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

I would block hexbear. I've done it server-wide. They are mostly very loud trolls pretending to be communists. Some could be actual communists, but I don't buy anyone actually wanting to be in such a toxic environment and believe what they claim to believe.

To add to your comment: Blocking the instance at user level is pointless, it only blocks their posts,not their users, so you still have to deal with their bullshit and they post their propaganda at every instance that tolerates them so it makes its way to those who blocked it anyway.
The only solution is to defederate.

Here's my take...

They're more cohesive and insular than most groups you'll find on social media.

They've brewed their own strongly held culture and ideology.

Many are also used to being ostracised by other communities due to sexual preferences or other personal attributes.

The result is, if you naively post in a thread in which they are active your opinion will get stomped on if it does not directly align with theirs.

Hexbear, lemmygrad and (in great part) lemmy.ml are tankie instances.

They basically deny any crimes of Stalin, Mao etc…

I mean Mao greatly regretted his plans and was very sad they didnt work, he went onto become a vegan and grow his own food as to not get the food meant for the workers

Responsible for estimated 40 million deaths on the low end.

"Oopsie, my b."

All is forgiven.

Mao introduced some terrible measures, for sure, but it's a long shot to say he's "Responsible for" for every death. Famines in China were more widespread and frequent pre-Mao.

It shows he tried his best and was sad when he failed, he cared for his people

So all hitler had to do was say he regretted his plans and all would be fine?

Hitler killed them on purpose

Hitler was a vegetarian, so half as good as Mao who was vegan, obviously.

Wow, I was wondering why I hadn't blocked a single hexbear or lemmy.ml user here: my instance did it for me! I've had multiple accounts on multiple servers and consistently had to block hexbear users until finally blocking hexbear outright. It's been a much better experience then.

I'm sorry u had to experience these extremists. Block the instance and forget about them.

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 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 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.

Credit where credit is due, youre honest and youre correct.
Have my upvote!

I try to be both, lol. Thanks!

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"?

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! 😂

It's a tankie instance. You're not missing anything important or reality-based by blocking it. You should also block lemmy.ml.

ITT: everyone says they're bad without giving any examples, telling you what to think instead of letting you form your own conclusions.

They're decent people as long as you don't argue politics with them... I think

ITT: the example is in the past and OP is asking why they're bad.

If there's no link it's not an example it's an anecdote.

Worse moderation than Reddit subs. Will ban any views that don’t fit their narratives. Just got a server wide ban for giving links showing how the ceasefire was reached by promising the right wing factions more of the West Bank as Trumps largest donor intended.

You know mod logs on Hexbear are public, right? It's very, very clear that "giving links" is not why you were banned.

Yes I’m aware. Please quote or link whatever you think is ban worthy. Nice alt btw.

Oh another one of these

Short answer:

"What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi"

Similar level of assholety and low post quality. Better politics. Overall don't bother, not worth it.

“What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi”

Not quite, that would be /leftypol/

wiki page / KnowYourMeme


Better politics.

This reminds me of one of their site banners:

screenshot of a chan imageboard post with the text "What the fuck? Why does /pol/ have one or two reading lists and /leftypol/ has tons?"

Hexbear has its origins on Reddit's ChapoTrapHouse which I'm pretty sure has a connection to leftypol in its history.

But sure

My point is:

Hexbear = Jerkoffs, except class conscious

Would be nice if they weren't jerkoffs but hey, at least they have class consciousness.

This analysis isn't quite accurate. On the whole, Hexbear is actually one of the kindest and coolest and community-minded places I've ever been on the internet. But I'd agree there's an issue of some users getting overly aggro if you annoy them (and being allowed to get away with it).

Better politics.

The same way getting stabbed is better than taking a round of buckshot.

Flashback three months and you were supporting a genocide

lmao the blatant transphobia "disengage with the largest trans safe space on lemmy"

you're so obvious

even if one assumes your trollish comment was in good faith, it only takes a single glance at hexbears front page to see it's filled with kindness and reason. just people having fun online while still making space for serious discussion. and again, making sure marginalized people are safe and welcome. I wonder what your real issue with the site is?

seriously, what other site allows trans people to safely and comfortably be ourselves like this? https://hexbear.net/post/4271750

Nobody mentioned blahaj broski

when i used blahaj i was harassed by transphobic chasers. it is NOT a safe space.

Good. It's for allies, so I hope you'd be criticized if you went there.

Defending chasers attacking someone is transphobic, and you need to do some serious self-crit if you consider yourself an ally. However, elsewhere in this thread you are attacking transgender individuals and accusing them of "faking it," so this is a pattern and not a one-off.

There is literally nothing transphohic about their comment, what the hell are you on about? People don't like Hexbear because it's trans-friendly, people dislike it because of their tankie politics and users that act like edgy 14 year olds.

Tank goes vroooooommm.

If you think Hexbear is trans-friendly, then you're transphobic.

This is a very bad take. It is well-documented that Hexbear's userbase is around 50% trans, and has a well-developed moderation team in order to protect their userbase. Discounting trans people because they disagree with you politically is in fact transphobia.

That's a bold claim. A quick look at their top communities list (one of the top 15 being explicitly a '*community for transgender and gender diverse people*') and the first two rules of their CoC make it seem especially trans friendly.

one of the top 15 being explicitly a 'community for transgender and gender diverse people'

And as we all know if someone says they're a certain way that makes it so!

This level of naivete seems to be a requirement for being on .ml

If only there was a way to verify their claim so you weren't forced to take their word for it.

Look, maybe you're right. But this was one of the lamest responses to someone bringing receipts that I've ever seen.

MLs are incredibly good at hypocrisy.

Transphobia is when you disagree with a liberal about anything, regardless of how much you support and respect trans people, apparently.

There's 7 featured posts, which I assume are stickies made by the moderators. The 3rd post after that, so the 3rd actual popular post, is "fucking libs are still making excuses in the comments". Such kindness and reason ...

Funny how you don't say anything about what that post is actually about - it's about redditors excusing Kamala's support for Israel. They aren't kind to you if you defend the mass slaughter of civilians, no.

It seems to me that showing equal kindness to oppressor and oppressed would be supporting the oppressor.

Deragotory language, generalization & stigmatization. It is hate speech against all liberal minded people, there is nothing kind or reasonable about it.

Hate speech? Is "lib" a slur now? Are liberals a protected class? It's not "hate speech" it's just criticism of a political position.

"A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something.[1] It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative

So yes, it's a slur.

block hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml. And any user named "UniversalMonk" on any instance. You'll thank me later.

I'd probably be more selective about blocking users from lemmy.ml, but I'm a bit biased in the question given the server I chose when I joined Lemmy

my first account was on lemmy.ml because it was one of the top options on one of the apps I used. it stopped working with jerboa which why I switched to lemmy.world...

Yeah, I'm an .ml user because it was one of the top instances when I first joined and idk how to switch it??

You would just create a new account. Take it as a chance to prevent too much personal info from piling up under one pseudonym.

"Oh no, block the people that want everyone's needs to be met"

fun fact: you can want everyone's needs to be met *while also* being allowed to criticize China, Russia, and while not acting like an insufferable twat. Wild, I know.

It's true. And all those things happen on Hexbear all the time. So I don't know what you're talking about.

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.

https://hexbear.net/post/2687582

https://hexbear.net/post/3635039

I don't think that's why I find them so unpleasant though?

I don't come here to talk about sexual preferences.

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"Anyone right of me is Hitler" sounds pretty on point for them. Instance block and move on with your day.

Tankies, mostly. They're on my blocklist,but managed to avoid it for a disgustingly long time; they do have some good content from time to time, but in the end seeing the repeated vitriol and genocide denialism simply wasn't worth it.

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Hmm, I obviously know it's not cool to use the R-word, but the M-word is also out of bounds now? I will rephrase my comment out of respect for persons of intellectual disability who might happen to come across my comment on Lemmy, while still attempting to convey my feelings about hexbear in an attempt to answer the question posed by OP.

Yeah I think a lot of Lemmings tried to give them a chance when we first joined, because we are pretty left leaning already so we figured communists couldn't be that bad. Unfortunately, they're actually far more stupid and toxic than anyone could possibly imagine.

I used to recommend for people to make up their own mind whether to block them, but I now feel it's better to block them immediately, because they're really just the worst kind of people who will do anything to bring others down to their level of misery.

If the S-word is also problematic, please provide me some guidance as to how I might describe persons of a certain type without offending anybody. I assume the D-word could be construed as offensive towards certain groups as well. I am asking genuinely, because I have no interest in causing anyone undue distress, but there surely must be a way of using the English language to express meaning precisely, otherwise it wouldn't be a very useful language.

It's a bear with six legs

I’ve had more issues with .world mods then any of the communist ones.

Its a leftist space that sometimes has trolls

Have you ever heard of a drop bear?

Yes, you should definitely block Hexbear. They're a toxic, angry group of people, who have no intention of ever engaging in good faith.

this user was banned from hexbear for saying

cw: genocide denial

"When Israel kills civilians, it's collateral damage from them going after Hamas. Hamas, however, launched an operation where the entire point was to kill civilians. The two are not comparable."

And? They murdered around a thousand people in a military attack.

There are no good guys in that conflict.

Equal condemnation for unequal sin minimizes the greater and exaggerates the lesser. That ceases to be an answer and becomes a cover for genocidal fascists against a national liberation movement.

Your username reads like someone making fun of trans people. My guess is you're transphobic and actively discouraged people from supporting Biden because you wanted Trump to win.

Deliberately discounting a transgender person's identity and *accusing* them of being transphobic is *wildly* transphobic. With a moderation history like yours though, it seems this is a pattern, where you pretend to be an ally for xyz group and then accuse people from said group of "faking it" if they disagree with you.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216

not surprising you're doubling down on your support of israels genocide, but hopefully others won't be fooled by the same propaganda as you.

The Supernova deaths

The rave is often reported to be the largest single site of deaths that took place on 7 October. The UN report said that 364 out of the 3,000 total ravers were “killed either at the site, near Kibbutz Re’im or in adjacent locations.”

But a detailed breakdown of the deaths recently published by The Times of Israel (based on an Israeli TV channel’s investigation) shows that more than 60 percent of this figure actually died outside of the designated grounds of the rave.

Is that saying 364 out of 3,000 were killed, or 3,000 total were killed? It's not a very well written article.

this is very easy to parse. go back to high school.

Wow, not only are you transphobic you're also ablist too. Infantilizing people for not understanding something right away. Cool, nothing problematic with that at all.

You're a real ray of sunshine today, aren't you?

Seems this post is being brigaded by hexbear alts fyi

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what really

Yep lots of pro hex comments appeared as I was posting from accounts with little comment history but aged accounts. Probably some loser with a dozen

Hexbear.net, lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad.ml have a lot of extreme leftists who have very wild takes that could be mistaken for right wing takes.

I personally don't recommend blocking them because outside of political threads they make up a lot of the content/memes/discussions, but up to you if you want to try that out.

they make up a lot of the content/memes/discussions

Shouldn't be "rewarding" them with content/activity, they only have like 2 or 3 communities that crack the top 20 in MAUs these days anyways. And they're all .ml

Why would you tell others to block lemmy.ml from your lemmy.ml account?

God forbid any of these genocidal white supremacists calling themselves leftists and parroting 1950's red scare propaganda self select themselves out of our hair

I mean I think I gave a pretty balanced overview of the information

I've blocked all 3, I see comments from them but not posts.

Most of the communities are are slowly moving away anyway, given how many users don't want to engage with the instance at all.

There's honestly a lot of high quality posts on lemmy.ml. Maybe some from Hexbear if you're into leftist niches like veganism

Sure, but that content could go elsewhere where you can actually criticize China without catching a ban. And if those communities choose not to, that's their problem when more and more people decide to block their instance as not worth dealing with.

Fuck stop appearing in my frontpage

Hexbear, together with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml are left wing, communist instances here on Lemmy.

A lot of (new) users of Lemmy have very strong - as in negative - feelings about them because of their ideas. Which to me makes sense because a lot of these users tend to be more centrist in their views and have never read Marxist literature before.

I will be honest with you and tell you my experience: they can be dickish and straight up trollish in their behavior, but not anymore than your average online trolls. The actual main reason people dislike them, is because they stick together and sometimes "brigade" post which nominates them and talk shit about them.

I personally was on the receiving end of their trolling when I first joined Lemmy too. But among the trolls, there were also very nice users who gave me friendly replies. And I had great conversations with them.

Eventually I even decided to open an alt account in one of those instances to learn more about their views and engage with them on their political knowledge. I really enjoy learning from them and having open conversations about politics with them. Even when sometimes I see their more extreme opinions, I still try to always be open minded at first. More often than not, I will learn that something I used to think on a subject, was the result of historical misconceptions or straight up propaganda. That is not to say that they can't be wrong of course. But it pays off to be receptive about new points of view.

There are some elements that can be considered extreme, especially to someone from the general public who has never engaged in political conversations with someone who is very much to the left. It takes a little adjustment if you want to try and engage because so much of the media and literature we consume reinforce our views on the system while they specifically try to be critical of it.

Bur FOR SURE you will never see that instance be racist or bigoted. I have lost counts how many times I've seen that in other instances, but with them, you know exactly where they stand on that. As in, they do NOT tolerate that.

Tldr: Hexbear (with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml) are openly communist instances on Lemmy. They are very vocals because they have a large userbase. They can be trolls that stick together sometimes. If you are politically interested/involved, I instead recommend joining one of their instances to see for yourself.

Edit: you can also tell how much people here have a negative feeling about those instances by the reactions in this post. Everything remotely critical is upvoted, while anything that even hints a positive opinion of them, will be downvoted. And then more and more users will start downvoting without even reading the comments. And they will start attacking users because they disagree and feel the need to attack them because "that instance bad"...in a way not too dissimilar from the brigading I mentioned before for some of the users from those instances. Showing you a real life example of how there are extreme users in every online community

I think this is probably the fairest description. Hexbearians are dickish trolls sometimes. Unfortunately, because Hexbear was the biggest Lemmy instance for the longest time, a lot of communities found this initially overwhelming, plus the big jump in political perspective is too jarring and can seem nonsensical.

But I believe anyone who takes a moment to engage in good faith with the cool users, and ignore the trollish ones, will see you can have constructive, interesting and caring discussions and realise what the attraction of the community is.

Sorry this is not true. They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly when it disagrees with their very radical beliefs. The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation. Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation.

You ever see the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise is about to get ripped apart by an energy wave that responds more and more violently the more power they put into their shields?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_Worship_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

There's an analogy for your disparate experiences in the context of your dickish attitude.

Sorry this is not true.

It is true. That's MY experience with them

They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly

And? I do too when I'm heated about a topic. If your viewpoint is to defend fascism, why not attack it? And I'm not talking specifically about you here. But if we're debating, I expect someone to bring a good debate.

The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation

Sorry this is not true.

And I already gave my explanation as to why in my original comment.

Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation

So just like your comment? Lol jokes aside, I already addressed everything you said before. But I'm happy you were able to disagree and get it out of your system. I've noticed a lot of Lemmy users have this weird obsession with those instances, when in reality they are just instances. They have both shitty and normal users. It's always more nuanced than that.

Just cleaning up after your whitewashing. Good try though. Their community is just a bunch of trolls like you said. I'm glad the instance I use block overtly toxic ones.

Just cleaning up after your whitewashing

What crimes exactly has any of those communities committed? I must have missed those posts.

Also...I admitted some views can be extreme/incorrect. I never said they are the perfect instance. None is. And that's not how you use that term by the way, my friend

Their community is just a bunch of trolls like you said

That's not what I said :) you are very obviously misquoting my comments

I'm glad the instance I use block overtly toxic ones

Neat. Good for you then, that's the beauty of the fediverse

The amount of pride these people take in their ignorance is astounding... anything that conflicts with their worldview, well it must be fake and you must be lying!!

Note to OP: probably not best to take advice on a topic from people that, in having explicitly blocked that topic from their feeds, have sheltered themselves from it in its entirety and aren't going to have in-depth knowledge aside from their own worst experience with it or some rumor they heard of someone else's experience.

Actual leftists mostly, with a few crazies.

Actual crazies with a few leftists.

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For transparency, you were banned not only from Hexbear but from other instances for racism, misogyny, transphobia, and COVID denial.

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Mind clarifying which part you are using ableist attacks on?

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Who do you mean by "you people?" Which category are you specifically targeting here? Which box am I in?

From what I've seen in this thread? The "good people "box.

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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.

You found it, the answer is tribalism.

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.

Hexbear is pretty overwhelmingly queer/trans and anarchist/communist.

If you've never run into a transfem communist IRL it's probably because you're not in many queer or left wing organizing spaces.

I'm actually pretty new to Lemmy in the last year and in that time I've seen way more .world posters being toxic about .ml/hexbear and making vague posts about how bad they are. I have to imagine that's why you're now seeing backlash to .world. Also most of the time I see people complaining about these instances and I dig into the modlog it's overwhelmingly because they got banned at some point for being reactionary and are bent out of shape about it.

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 because they supported the USSR sending tanks into Hungary in 1956. 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.

Edit: I originally incorrectly cited that they got their name because they deny the tiananmen square massacre (which they claim was either peaceful or non-existent). It is still true that they deny it, but it is not the origin of their name.

The 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.

I continue to say: Wikipedia itself states that between 0 and 1 people died in Tienanmen Square. Nobody denies protests happened elsewhere.

"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 they 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.

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.

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It's gross.

is it possible for lemmy user to "federate them in"/include in single feed?

Not that I'm aware of, though OP could ask on Lemm.ee or Lemmy.ml where more instances are federated.

From what I gather - a group of assholes. They're an asshole instance, just like lemm.ee (from experience) and sh.it.just.works (from experience).

I am not typically an asshole. I picked this instance because I thought the name was amusing. I know nothing about the ethos here. Or if there even is one.

Should I block them too?

Do you like/care for politics?

You could literally just go to their community and have a look for yourself too and decide whether or not it's your vibe

Why should I or anyone tell you what to do? The other commentator gave you an idea.

They are two of the larger instances so you will be negatively impacting your own experience.

To answer original question, it’s my understanding that hexbear was a refuge place for elchapotraphouse when it was banned from Reddit for harassment. So many users are trolls that intentionally antagonize anyone outside their instance that isn’t left enough. Lemmy.world almost immediately defederated from them so I haven’t seen a hexbear user in like year and a half. You won’t miss them.

Some people also don’t like lemmy.ml because of the admins and some of the more antagonistic users but for the most part, I find most people on .ml perfectly agreeable of the topic isn’t politics. I would just block users and communities from that instance as they come up if you don’t like them