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.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show
That’s a pretty unhinged insult tbh.
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.
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.
Hexbear is a septic tank of degenerates.
I’m certain it’s run by APT groups. It’s a front for Russian psyops, 100%.
