If you’ve heard of Chapo Trap House that’s them. If not, most of those kids/idiots/trolls are the type of terminally online fake leftists that give other leftist a bad image in general. They were so ridiculous Reddit got tired of their shit and banned them a couple years back.
Yeah they immediately took over Conspiracy and consolidated the hold on Conservative. Made me really sad as conspiracy used to have some incredible rabbit hole posts. Then one day it was just TD all over again.
When the sub was put on probation, the post Reddit cited was justifying violence against slave owners. As far as I can tell, you just made up that they threatened Reddit admins.
There were other things that went down to get them on probation. I can tell you’re gladly defending them though. Which is ridiculous so have a nice day.
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” (Among survivalists, or “preppers,” as some call themselves, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stands for “Foolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.”) Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Spez pretty openly fantasizes about owwning slaves
The_Donald was dead amd had migrated to a non-reddit forum a month before the ban. It was typical “both sides” bullshit from a dude who always uses the kiddy gloves with fascists while throwing the book at any leftists
Seeing the ban coming, they financed and suffered alpha and beta of the Lemmy platform we all enjoy. Then, they chose to become the most GLBTQ+ friendly destination on the internet.
As it’s always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
Their shit isn’t convenient or comfortable. It’s not easy to understand. And, I fucking love them for it.
edit: Lazy coders need choose a randomized target value and timing or be a moderator to avoid detection by the user. Perceiving is easy when your code is trash. Ask for help from an industrial engineer.
That’s the whole point of an echo chamber yes. You can say whatever you want without being challenged by other viewpoints and make anything seem plausible.
but they are linking a lot of outside sources. That’s what I mean by “backing their claims up”, studies about covid, about the ukraine war, about Israel, it’s not just someone making a claim and then everyone is nodding along.
What I am saying is they were able to completely upend the way I see the world and you just can’t do that by claiming thengs and linking to some other claims you make.
You seem to have lost the thread of this conversation, but this is how it started. Hexbear admins and mods definitely control who is allowed to post in Chapo Trap House, and related communities such as the_dunk_tank, even from instances other than Hexbear.net.
I was on lemm.ee when I got radicalized, all my life Ive been exposed to people claiming all sorts of things. I was a pro-NATO pro-Ukraine anti-ussr anti-china average reddit lib that they were able to convince otherwise.
It’s surprisingly easy to backup horrible ideas, but that shouldn’t be your only concern. You also need to think about the morals and what happened last time it was tried.
The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.
There’s much to learn from Stalin. But, advocating his authoritarian means is a bannable offense there just as they are in any meritable leftist forum. They tolerate a minority of revolutionaries ideologically leading the lumpen as it’s a historically very well-supoorted position. But, that doesn’t extend to physical force as that’s also a historically very well supported position.
It’s much easier, convenient, and comfortable to demonized them than understand them. They even provided proactive assistance when many were deciding if they should defederate. They voted internally for defederation to defend their community from the medicrity of the masses.
If not enjoying the image posts of young Stalin as some sort of brilliant maverick is mediocrity, well, so be it. They are clowns, and their beliefs structure is just like trump claiming he “loves the gays”
Young Stalin is where the good stuff is. It’s his implementation of those idealistic principles that’s unethical.
The rest of what you’ve said is strawman. Most important is the implying that they’re all of one mind. Diversity of ideology is perhaps their greatest strength.
As it’s always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
Oh yes, they are so funny, misunderstood, thoughtful and nuanced thinkers.
The comrade in it actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for your moment!
Yes, please read what the .ee admin says about where the bigoted users originate and the actions of the hexbear mods in response. It certainly speaks for itself.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
I’ve never seen this - not just from that instance, but literally anywhere on the internet, even back in the forum or bb days. But I’ve been looking for something like that for years, and I’d be interested. Do you know of any specific examples of this happening?
The best example I’ve experienced online is hexbear’s process to derive forum ruleset with respect to their minority of GLBTQ+. The consensus was that many understood and that those that did not would follow in faith, assuming that they would soon understand. The second best online example was the GME subreddits’ cultural response to initial scaling. The consensus was that each should individually choose and the collective’s purpose was to educate, this strengthening individual wisdom.
But, my guidance would be to first pursue such things in real life. A leftist’s best work is almost always grassroots local.
Many people playing “leftist” are this way, sadly. And <insert religion here>, and <insert country name here> as well, but my favorite example is “conservatives”… who despite both the name itself and the claim to want to return to “traditional” values, instead want to radically overthrow everything that has arisen for the past several hundreds of years.
It turns out that it is really, really, really hard to be truly honest with oneself, about whatever it is that we choose to believe.
That would work for some - hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml - but not for others, like lemmy.ml and maybe Midwest.social. At some point users need to start blocking on their own.
That depends on your client. Connect for lemmy shows a placeholder for comments from blocked instances. You can click to show the comment anyway or just blissfully ignore the high probability rage bait.
I actually like that implementation, because the obnoxiousness of hexbear users is context dependent. On posts about gardening and nolawns I’ll usually see what they have to say. On political posts, I usually regret reading their comments. So it’s somewhat nice to opt-in to comments on a case by case basis.
There are three relevant things to say about hexbear.
It is not a serious instance. Or at least not completely serious; they’re mostly there for memes, funposting, “I know that feel” etc.
So they’re less like the meeting room of a communist party than like the bar where those communists hang out and drink beer, after the meeting is over.
I feel like this is often misinterpreted, as HB users say something that is mostly a taunt and others interpret as actual argumentation. And it also tends to attract younger users, who… well, behave like young people?
Even if not a serious instance, they’re serious about their views. Your typical HB user is communist, antifa, vegan, anti-cop, and interprets things in a very specific way. They’re rather transparent about it.
And, because of #1, they aren’t really willing to spend their time entertaining anyone’s counterpoints. It’ll be interpreted as sealioning or similar.
Hexbear was already its own thing before federation. As such it developed social norms that often conflict with the norms typically found in the rest of the Threadiverse (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed etc.)
For example, even if Lemmy as a whole is prone to intrusive political discussions, HB users tend to do it far more. Because they’re used to an environment where this is typically taken as OK.
When it comes to dealing with HB users here, my advice is the exact same as dealing with other users:
if you don’t like what someone is saying (because it’s idiotic, obstrusive, or whatever), block the person for some peace of mind.
if you’re consistently uninterested on the content coming from an instance, block the instance.
Is there something in the name requiring people to support fascism if it wears the right color?
Do some people fighting fascism (aka antifa) go overboard? Yes, certainly; that’s bound to happen with any movement, group, or cohort.
For example, someone might miss the target due to witch hunting, or adopt an “ends always justify means” mindset, or even conflate “non-suporter = enemy”.
However. By implying that “antifa is fascism wearing a different colour”, like you are doing, you’re showing to not understand the obvious difference between
individuals following an ideology grounded on xenophobia, nationalism, racism, militarism, censorship, suppression of your individuality by force, more often than not sexism, homophobia and transphobia; and
individuals who don’t want the shit above to transform their lives into living hells, including some willing to use force to fight back.
This conflation between both groups is not just immoral. It’s worse - it stinks stupidity and similar filth from a distance. As such I’m not wasting my time further with you, go chew some grass.
Plenty HB users are authoritarian. I disagree with them in this; however I don’t think that both things cancel out, given the fascism is orders of magnitude worse than authoritarianism alone.
A lot of people here have long since made up their mind about hexbear based both on repeated meta posting on the topic and possibly a bad experience or two with them on a topic they assumed was uncontested but is a landmine topic for communists of a particular bent
I’ve personally never had a bad experience with hexbears, possibly because I’m more empathetic to their perspective, but more likely because I know when it’s time to disengage. There are users on lemmy who feel strongly about a certain topic that’s abrasive to hexbear users and dig in their heels when jeered at (or maybe feel a personal responsibility to stand them down) and are usually the users here who have the most complaints, because the standard reaction from hexbear users is irreverence (both the users and the mods).
Unlike a lot of liberals coming from reddit, communists often don’t have delusions about the neutrality of moderation and so they’ll ban you on a whim if they think you’re there to stir shit. They use the ban hammer judiciously even with users on their own instance. That’s often the biggest complaint both with hexbear and with lemmy.ml.
No need to delete posts here - it’s okay to be wrong occasionally, and anyway the wording here was ambiguous, and I had the same take as you at first until the explanation was delivered separately.
Lmao, they sure are insane. But if you listen closely they will tell you that sanity is a western psyop and you should enjoy the simple truths of life, like shitting in your own pants and bragging about it online.
No, I find socialism and markets to be a capitalist compromise that still breeds wasteful middlemen. More regulated middlemen, but still. Communism is an economic framework, not a governmental one.
For sure socialism is a step up from cpaitalism, but I don’t think it’s enough.
Thats… kind of the opposite of socialism. Socialism, at least the ideal form, is when the ‘workers hold the means of production’, with no figure heads. This is closer to authoritarianism, with a charismatic leader commanding people to do things.
See this just reads as a complete misunderstanding of what communism is. The word Communism is derived from the word Commune, in which there is traditionally no standard power structure. Too much red scare propaganda. To me of the most prevalent feelings of authoritarianism in my life has been the boss/underling dynamic in the workplace under capitalism.
I’m pro communist economics and pro democratic governance. There is a reason the movement here in the US is towards “democratic socialism”, because they are two separate facets of a country. The governance (democratic) and the economic (socialism).
I’m not sure if you are saying what i said (that someone in charge sending his minions to harass someone is closer to authoritarianism), or him is a misunderstanding of communism.
I definitely should have used the word “communism” in my sentence, but since he used socialism, I didn’t want to change the subject from socialism to communism.
Being from Canada, and a huge proponent of social services and crown corporations, I’m definitely a socialist myself.
Nothing you’ve said seems objectionable, I can’t imagine what set them off.
Do you consider the party apparatus of say, Cuba, where every position is elected and has instant recall, and their last constitutional referendum passed with 90%+ approval, to be democratic?
I would definitely want more parties in Cuba on the governance side. One party is ripe for abuse. Generally the more the marrier.
Right now I think thier government is too large. Large isn’t necessarily bad, but a government should only IMO be as large as it needs to be to help its population. Of course on a political compass, I’m more on the libertarian end in terms of governance.
I think the economics of Cuba would be better if the US would stop senseless embargo.
Again, ideally we want strong communist economic and social fabric AND a thriving democracy to pick leadership. I think they are struggling on the latter.
Of course my perspective is the strict embargos are in place solely because the US really doesn’t want communism to work. If it worked somewhere, then it makes US capitalism look quite bad.
idk, I’ve seen all the hype around hexbear users being obnoxious around Lemmy (including our own instance debating blocking the instance, followed by several of their members brigading the thread true to form)… but I’ve explored the communities on the instance itself and even subscribed to some of them like mutual aid, gaming etc, and those that I’m watching are actually just normal people doing normal things if more left than some other similar groups. In my experience it isn’t “all” hexbear users, because that would be a dumb generalization.
There are some assholes on that instance to be sure. Show me one that this isn’t true of. I’m glad our instance didn’t block them because I now get to decide for myself. I block communities and/or users if they’re a problem for me. I think that’s a good way.
Yeah it was, but it was only a few individuals. It wasn’t the entire population of the instance. I do sort by All quite a bit and honestly I don’t see much of note from any one instance other than weird porn or niche meme communities that I block individually as needed. I just nuke communities and individuals that annoy me.
Obviously you can’t lump them all into one category, but the majority of them seem to be willing to cause chaos on other instances for a laugh. Doesn’t sit right with me, so i blocked them
Basic mental health config for a non tankist user of Lemmy is to block hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml instances first. Then, any user from there that you will see calling nazis anyone who don’t think like them.
I almost left Lemmy thinking it was a tankist shithole before understanding the pattern.
Then it gets back to the average former-Reddit techie activist, which is still pretty left.
I normally search search by “all” when scrolling and I’ll see one or two posts from there. I haven’t really figured out all the technicals, but I see posts from all instances
It might vary from app to app, but there are usually options to toggle between Local and Everywhere for “All” content, if you want to see just what is on your own instance versus all other instances yours is federated with.