Inspired by recent discussions, I think Hexbear has a lot of good information about socialism but I wonder if the relentless defense of AES on Hexbear means shooting ourselves in the foot, since many potential leftists have been thoroughly primed to react negatively to AES states?
We’re not getting our messages out when progressive instances have already pre-emptively blocked us and calling us “tankies”.
People are being turned away without even taking the opportunity to read some of the stuff here, because they already have a pre-conceived notion about Hexbear being filled with “crazy tankies who defend totalitarianism”.
I know there have been a lot of propaganda and fabrication being perpetuated about socialist countries, and it feels “right” to defend them against these false accusations, but I wonder if this is doing more harm than good for the present day nascent socialist movement, at least in the Western countries?
We can remain on the current course and feel indignant about the tankie accusations, but will forever remain as a niche “tankie” community.
Or, we can open ourselves up, by toning down the admiration for the socialist states so we are not being treated as hostile by the other instances, and thus opening up the opportunities to have productive interactions with users (and potential leftists) from other instances?
(I do have my own position, you probably know which one it is, but I’m willing to hear from others and reevaluate my own opinions if needed).
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who responded. All points are well taken. Thank you.
No. The western “left” has a huge problem with chauvinism and allowing newbies to hold onto what are, many times, frankly racist beliefs about AES will only exacerbate that
This is a weird bit and that’s coming from me.
Lying to libs doesn’t bring them to your side it just waters down your position and gives them strength. So no.
entire time reading this, waiting for the punchline that never came
this joke sucks
No
but as 
Would you like to clarify on your position? This is optional by the way so feel free to ignore if you’re not comfortable answering, but I really like to hear thoughts from others about this.
I think compromising with those to the right of us is a liberal move that will only serve to push us right.
That, and people who have a problem with AES countries are usually doing so out of racism and ignorance. I have no interest in catering to such people.
I think compromising with those to the right of us is a liberal move that will only serve to push us right.
The Hexbear perestroika
No, getting people to reevaluate their passively informed misconceptions is good
The “omg those awful Hexbears” attitude only served to make me curious, and as soon as I poked around at all, I fell in love with this place and ditched my other lemmy accounts.
You’re not the first person I’ve seen express this genre of sentiment lately, and I don’t understand why this idea of making this place more welcoming keeps coming up. This doesn’t seem like an educational forum? A lot of “normies” still use phobic speech that’s simply unacceptable here.
I think that if they’re not already of the “stfu & Learn” bent, they don’t really belong here. 🤷 get with the plan or get your ban.
The “omg those awful Hexbears” attitude only served to make me curious, and as soon as I poked around at all, I fell in love with this place and ditched my other lemmy accounts.
Same, actually. I originally had a lemmy.ml account, and I joined because I heard it was ran by Communists, but I heard a lot of shit talking about Hexbear tankies so I checked it out thinking I wouldn’t like it and before I knew it I was spending all my time on Hexbear so I just made this Hexbear account. If it had been toned down, I don’t know if I would’ve joined. Would probably figure you’re all progressive libs.
Also, you’re pretty funny people here so that helped.
Based and discipline-pilled
My support of the Cuban revolution and Cuban people will never stop. Their based new constitution with LGBT rights means that we should, if anything, promote their model of AES more towards
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I FUCKING LOVE PEOPLE WITH AN OPEN MIND THAT DON’T IMMEDIATELY SHUT DOWN WHEN THEY ARE EXPOSED TO IDEAS THAT CONTRADICT THEIR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS ABOUT HOW THE WORLD WORKSYeah, this was me but back in the r/cth days
One of the absolute most fundamental things about this community is rejecting liberal compromise, has been since the very beginning. If someone comes in talking how we need to slow down with the trans rights or something because it’s scaring the voters, you don’t dignify that horrible shit take with a civil debate, you point out to their face that they’re asking us to compromise with fascists and demand they post pics of their hog until they either go away or learn why they were wrong.
Ship has sailed both in terms of how Hexbear is perceived and how it’s moderated. Pointless to talk about now.
this is sorta where my mind is at right now; mostly based on vibes not hard data
I agree with the first comment too and specifically I think the “data” is there, you can look back at the past struggle sessions on China(China is a police state because it handled Xinjiang like the US post 9/11 was a particularly stupid one) and the first few news megathreads of the Ukraine war. We had a lot of “feel good” leftists that were not ready to pick sides and for which the only comment on these issues was “war bad” and “Russia bad because war bad”.
They eventually all left on their own or they’ve accepted the mainstream discourse we have now.
Or they got banned.
No, but not necessarily because you’re wrong about Hexbear scaring people off. In the way I see the “leftist pipeline” hexbear is pretty much for people who are already fully on board. It’s less of a platform for “radicalizing normies” and more of a place for leftists to talk to each other.
yeah, i was pretty much just in denial that communism was right until i encountered hexbear via the stupid ass lemmy dot world defederation. i was the biggest trot/demsoc weird theoryless combo in the world, until lemmy dot world was just basically like
“HEY EVERYONE! HERE’S A FORUM OF PEOPLE WHO REALLY HATE NATO AND LOVE COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM!!!”
and as someone living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in the u.s. empire i was yearning for a community of people who hated NATO and were communists and socialists, to the point where i was willing to look past the tankie-ness. then, through sheer osmosis, i realised how stupid i was and picked up a book
I was about to post same sentiment. Lemmyverse is small to begin with. There are plenty of other areas for people to begin the pipeline like
or 
What other space exists for this type of community? I was engaging with some comrades in r/Collapse on a recent post until it got nuked for ‘inciting violence’ because it was a NYT article interviewing Andreas Malm about his positions on property destruction. There’s no other online place for us if we always stoop to not scaring away libs where it’s dubious if they’ll ever come around
If I had the urge to argue with people on reddit for some reason (which apparently some people here do as evidenced by screenies) I’d be looking for reddit communities to try to shave off into the fediverse, at least u can get stragglers later 🥳
Yeah it’s a bad habit I’m hoping to kick once I’ve gotten over this bout of COVID. For all I said, it doesn’t really change any irl minds more than just shutting them up. Plenty of more productive things I could be doing with that time
The people on reddit have already gone through a particular process of elimination that makes arguing with many of them generally pointless on like, every level.
No argument from me there, I’ll go at it with them to pull out all the arguments I might hear from people I know in the real world then just stop. I’m under no illusion the people I’m engaging with will come around haha
But there are useful communities. Imagine if we stole AskHistorians
Should Hexbear ML’s tone down their Admiration…
No radlibs do this already and libs have yet to be convinced. Plus the whole “The Soviets were actually kinda good” can be a great entry-point to unlearning anti-communist propaganda.
If it wasn’t hating AES, it would be something else. If we weren’t being smeared for having correct opinions we would be smeared for outright lies.
“But what about the corrupt unions?!”
We’re already scaring people away by sharing and cheering clips of Al-Qassam killing Zionist goons in 4K. There’s no point in compromising.
🔻
Yeah I wouldn’t even assume people who tolerate videos of Hamas are willing to let go of the defeatist framing that victory waits for the rumoured existence of Zionists with a conscience to be confirmed
“What if we just agree we’re subhuman to the racists, surely they will treat us better”. Lmao get your liberal civility politics out of here.
They’ll think you support and defend AES states whether you do or don’t. May as well have cogent arguments to back such positions because centrists won’t accept that you don’t (secretly) support AES states.
If these people think they can get away with “enough about the Holodomor, which probably happened, who cares, Walmart does central planning, it’s time for no nonsense socialism” I hope they look forward to being asked to condemn China and the DPRK and hearing about Cuba’s threats to Florida and having zero counterarguments because they forgot to take anything without the veneer of the western academy seriously
Fuuuuuck no.
Obviously I have personal and moral reasons not to, but I’ll try and stick to the purely practical reasons this would be a terrible decision.
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People won’t tone it down anyway. Short of enforcing bans that would make Hexbear any other shitlib site, people won’t just put away their deeply held and pivotal beliefs in one of the few places they can actually express them openly without being constantly attacked and exhausted.
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If they were forced or pressured to they’d like leave and you’d been talking about a massive exodus of the Hexbear population, including most if not all of the most active and informative posters on the site.
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Lying (by omission) about your position does not win people over, it weakens it and your credibility. You simply cannot advocate for socialism while not advocating for or at least defending actually existing socialist states. So all you’re doing by coddling that opinion and kicking the can down the road is inflating the certainly of Western chauvinists for when you finally have to address it. Or in the case of Hexbear, flooding the site with chauvinism and empowering that belief before trying to challenge it from a weaker position.
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Being upfront with people builds trust. Every person who has come around to re-looking at either communist politics or the AES States from talking to me in real life has done so because I didn’t hmm-and-hah about it. Simply saying, ‘yeah I’m a communist’ or ‘actually, China is pretty good’ in a matter of fact way, as if it’s a totally normal and acceptable opinion to have, has always gotten me at least respectful interest and I can elaborate from their without people feeling attacked, scared, or suspicious. In an online and cultural discourse where weaponised propaganda about misinformation and troll farms, paid shills etc is the norm, how do you think most libs would react to being lured in with lying (by omission) and then later feeling like they had the defense of ‘totalitarian’ states or whatever sprung on them, as they see it?
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Personally, short of some mass, catastrophic upheaval socially and economically in many western states like the US and UK (where I live), I think the chances of even moderate transformational changes towards socialism, never mind revolution, are slim to none. I still organise and advocate for my beliefs here, because we help feed people, find them housing, put clothes on their back, provide mental healthcare support, and try to stop asylum seekers being abused by a racist state. It’s worthwhile. But realistically as communists in the imperial core, we should be focused on the biggest obstacle to building socialism globally: our imperialism. Weakening our reactionary states stranglehold on the rest of the world through genocide, indiscriminate bombing, terror and assassination is the most important thing we can do to allow socialism to not even flourish, but survive all over the world. And trying to do that without openly supporting the right of AES States not to be obliterated would be peak
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