Fun fact : it’s my first ever post on any lemmy instance/community blob-no-thoughts …which is messed up…

Okay tbh I don’t know if I should have posted this some place else or if here is just fine oh-shit

So I’m brand new here, I’ve joined as lemm.ee was going to shut down. I only chose Hexbear because of how big and active it is, and of course for all its shade of leftism (being far left myself) but tbh that part was just a plus for me, what I wanted more was an opened enough instance, an inclusive one with enough peace of mind (not having to deal with unhinged/oppressing posts/comments daily).

But I started noticing that actually Hexbear had been defederated from some big instances like lemmy.world, upon trying to understand why I stumbled upon lemmy.world BS post explaining they did it for preemptive reasons (wtf 💀), obviously I just dismissed lemmy.world entirely and continued enjoying my time here. But then I noticed other instances like Blahaj blocked Hexbear as well and a bunch of others, I never found out why.

Then, while trying to understand what’s with all the defederating I stumbled upon a lot of negative noise against Hexbear, claiming you lot are doing some horrid stuff like war crimes denial, trolling, hate speech, spreading pro-Russian propaganda (like anti Ukrainian stuff don’t misinterpret me here, I’m fine with anti-western views or western propaganda skepticism), so much so I don’t really know if what I read was some kind of fascists trying to slander this place, or people confused about Hexbear political views, or if it’s linked to some Hexbear history I’m not aware of… It’s just weird because so far I haven’t encountered anything I could hold against this instance, for all I’ve seen you’re all sweet and making nice content, haven’t seen anything unhinged, but what makes me uneasy is this defederating thing, I can’t help but wonder why.

I’m really confused. Can someone explain to me what this is all about ? Is it just some right wing noise, some unknown drama or what ?

Edit (in case any of you see it): Thanks a lot everyone for all your answers, kind words, jokes, emojis and for being so welcoming. What you all said was very informative, and most of it I sadly expected. Having taken a liking to lemmy I knew that whatever I’d learn it’d be a cause for concern, it saddens me that several instances, big ones at that, would just make more room for the far right by suppressing leftists and spreading hate. As always in any such case I can’t say I’m surprised but it worries and disgust me nonetheless. Anyway I’m glad I found this place :)

  • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Hexbear existed pre-federation as its own little isolated forum that developed a relatively-active userbase with relatively shared ideals. When federation came around, Hexbear was different enough that we couldn’t enable it right away and it took much effort from the dev team here to “unfork” us. When federation was finally enabled, our culture clashed with other instances in several major ways:

    1. emojis were bugged and were enormous when viewed on any other instance
    2. our high activity and commonality of opinion made other instances think we were constantly botting or “brigading” (its legacy has been preserved in emoji form: brigading ), when in reality it was simply our users posting as they always have
    3. we have a whitelist of instances, and the mod team demands compliance with certain standards. Of particular note due to the current internet culture, for an instance to remain federated with us, they must not be willing to tolerate transphobia by their own userbase. This is a bar that most instances fail to pass.
    4. we really hate Biden, Harris, and the democrats more broadly for various valid reasons (currently the hot button topic is them carrying out a genocide in occupied Palestine), and libs really hate to hear how the “good guys” are themselves monsters, or seeing “Death to America” regularly.
            • insurgentrat [she/her, it/its]@hexbear.net
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              I fucking hate that so hard. If you think they’re petty weak men then just say that, draw your propaganda or whatever. If you draw them in drag you’re showing what you really think about gay men.

              But nah, when you’re le epic owning your political oponents it’s fine to use homophobia :| I sure do feel included by the liberal establishment. Defs not just feeling like a tolerated pet freak.

              It’s like that Karen stuff just being mask off misogyny but it’s ok because sometimes a woman is completely horrible and now we can all vent about how much we really hate women who dare to be loud and abrasive.

              • Luke@lemmy.ml
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                Homophobia, fatphobia, penis size shaming, ageism, ableism…

                Just a list of the things I’ve seen liberals employ when talking about Trump this week alone.

  • larrikin99 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    we have an ideology which is incompatible with and hostile to liberalism, and their socialization on the internet has left them unable to deal with that fact in a healthy way. they usually love dunking on ideological opponents, often by pretending to have conversations with news headlines in an aloof and dismissive tone. (you’ll notice Reddit has a surprisingly frequent number of front page stories where the headline simply a quote or declaration from an adversary like Putin, usually abridged or summarized in such a way to suggest weakness, hypocrisy, or frustration). unfortunately, they’re out of their depth when it comes beyond flat earthers, creationists, and anti-vax. On reddit, they manage to fill the gap with moderation power and downvotes. here, they just seethe. it’s hard to believe, but these people have such poor coping skills, I literally see them routinely invent quotes that don’t exist in the source or imagine historical events on the spot which they will then assert happened without investigation.

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    It’s mostly just liberals and fascists and their natural hatred for socialists.

    I will say that the anti-Ukraine thing is kind of real. Nobody here thinks Russia is secretly communist or anything, but Ukraine was overthrown in 2014 by a neo-nazi aligned, US backed coup. They then spent the better part of a decade persecuting ethnic minorities in Eastern Ukraine, which overwhelmingly supported the overthrown government. The stuff they were doing would have gotten a non-US aligned government branded as cultural genocidaire, but they kept escalating and eventually were firing artillery at civilian centers regularly and sending neo-nazi death squads into the East to harass and murder civilians.

    Nobody here wants the war there to keep going and causing all this suffering, but the idea that this is a black and white conflict and Russia invaded for no reason at all, or because he just wants to expand Russia, is not common here.

    • Aelis [any]@hexbear.netOP
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      Yeah I was uncomfortable bringing up the «pro-Russia propaganda» thing, I am aware what’s going on in Ukraine is no simple topic, in the context of my post it was more about war propaganda which in some cases I can be fearful of. I’m not gonna lie though as much as I’m quite open to pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine sentiment I’m not pro-Russia myself, I’m just distrustful or at the very least careful, but it has to do with the financial ties Russia has with the far right in my country, the fact that in the past they managed to make a media outlet in my country that spread misinformation benefiting far right views, and lastly because in the political history of my country being blindly pro-Russia contributed to the death of our communist party (by crumbling the confidence of its members and the trust of their voters), which was one of the biggest and beneficial party we’ve ever had (not like Russia is to blame in this case though).

  • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Complaints about hexbear: almost exclusively liberals and reactionaries looking for excuses for why they always lose arguments with us. “Spreading pro-Russia propaganda” is a go-to liberal excuse for left criticism of Ukraine or pushing back on racist liberal criticisms of Russia. Liberals want to believe asiatic hordes mythologies about a revanchist Russia rather than acknowledge history or material conditions before 2022. Mention Minsk II and they start namecalling. Mention NATO and they cannot handle the of NATO being worse than Russia.

    Defederation and hexbear: when hexbear has defederated from other instances, to my knowledge it has always been about the admins of another instance tolerating transphobia, including chasers. Other instances defederating from us is always supposedly high-minded liberals having a breakdown when they fail to have an echo chamber for left punching. Or in the case of lemmy.world, preemptively defederating “as a last resort” to entirely avoid having to think about this.

    Of course, in all of these cases don’t forget that these same people and instances tolerate neo-Nazi posting and reverence, e.g. Azov. They are simply being protective of the worldviews handed down to them by their patron saints (talking heads and Reddit admins). Also keep in mind that site admins have a habit of being thin skinned nerds, so even if their users disagree with their logic (like the lemmy.world defederation post comments), it makes no real difference because site admins are basically petty lords over their sites. Imagine being a person that wants to make or be Reddit 3.0 and whose only real complaint about Reddit is a lack of third party apps.

  • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    Hexbear is explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-liberal. We’re a bunch of Marxists and anarchists, and we aren’t apologetic about it. That’s the crux of the matter, really, those who oppose communism tend to oppose Hexbear.

    A lot of the hate against Hexbear relies on deliberate misinterpretation, but a lot of it is as simple as the anti-Hexbear crowd being right-wing. There’s also the “leftists” that oppose Hexbear because of a lack of correct understanding of theory and leftist history. There are also the people that don’t vibe with Hexbear’s more shitposty vibes.

    Lemmy.world’s admins and many moderators are anti-Marxist, so that’s why they defederated here and Lemmygrad.

    If you consider yourself a Marxist or an anarchist, there’s a good chance you’ll fit in! If not, and you’re interested in learning about Marxism or anarchism, then you’ll also fit in! Welcome!

    howdy-skull

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    I haven’t been here as long as many but it seriously is like an oasis of kindness for a queer leftist compared to any other online group I’ve seen. People here aren’t kind to Nazis or nazi-adjacent posters though, as it should be.

    People who complain about hexbear on other instances are nearly always liberal or further right trolls who come and post some obvious bullshit, get berated for sharing reactionary propaganda, then often get banned because they get mad and show their true racist or transphobic colors and start using slurs or generally become toxic.

    Pretty much anyone I’ve ever seen come and argue in good faith, with a real misunderstanding or false info, or just something that they disagree with here will be met with reasonable clarification.

      • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
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        And for once this isn’t even an exaggerated position. Moderation log backs it up in at least 90% of .world “Hexbear bad” posts. Almost murderous homophobia, nazi apologism, gleeful support of genocide, you can see it all in the logs from the banned posters who go to cry about how we’re mean :(

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    You have to keep in mind that many of those users haven’t interacted with Hexbear at all, especially not the ones on lemmy.world since they defederated pre-emptively as a last resort, so what they know about us is some second hand purple monkey dishwasher bullshit. I’ve seen some truly baffling takes like that we’re just pretending to be inclusive to trans people.

  • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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    I think the thing that makes other comms the angriest is that hexbear generally views Russia’s actions in Ukraine as anti-imperialist and therefore worthy of support.

    Other things that make them mad include full-throated support for modern-day China and Cuba, skepticism of the western narrative about North Korea and Venezuela, and support of the historical USSR, GDR, Yugoslavia, etc.

    • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
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      To be honest I’d love if libs were politically learned enough to actually comprehend our position on the Russo-Ukrainian war, but the exact same takes were being had pre-war too.

      I’d argue it’s got nothing to do with our position, and more just that anything less than 100% accepting the US State Department narrative means you’re seen as a fact denier, and soon declared a foreign agent KGB troll ‘fake queer’.

  • WIIHAPPYFEW [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    I think a part of it is bc our culture was founded on being Merry Tricksters who spam pics of a pig whose shit landed on his balls when someone has a bad take that doesn’t deserve the dignity of an actual response, while the rest of lemmy is comprised of hardcore Reddit fundamentalists who expect everyone to take everything seriously at all times (unless they’re sharing a meme from like 9 yrs ago)