I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don’t actually think everyone there is insane. I don’t care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides proving my point

Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It’s not going to scare me to take this down

  • scoobford@lemmy.zip
    7628·
    2 months ago

    Many of them, yes. They’re among the most radical of the leftist instances, which means that they attract a lot of propagandists and tankies. They have some perfectly reasonable people too, but you know, vocal minority. Its the main thing most people notice about those instances.

    Many people block hexbear, Lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad for these reasons.

      • TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3415·
        2 months ago

        the original origin of the term was a group british communists attacking anyone who supported the Soviet Union’s crushing of the hungarian uprising in 1956. it then morphed into a term used to attack anyone who supports the use of force and authority in general to suppress counter revolutionaries. it’s final degeneration is that it is now used to attack anyone to the left of an american democrat like facebones said.

        https://redsails.org/tankies/

        here is a good article about it. To be clear: this is written from the perspective of a marxist leninist, who are normally the number one target of being called a “tankie”. Still, it is very short, and redsails is a really cool website that has the footnotes with citations pop up as you read long

        • Urist@lemmy.mlEnglish
          121·
          2 months ago

          Did not know about this site. It was a nice read and their mission statement is cool. Thanks for sharing! :)

        • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1421·
          2 months ago

          It’s extremely unconvincing to say “Sure it was horrible last time, but next time it’ll be different.” Trotskyists and ultraleftists compensate by prettying up their picture of socialism and picking more obscure (usually short-lived) experiments to uphold as the real deal. But this just gives ammunition to those who say “Socialism doesn’t work” or “Socialism is a utopian fantasy.” And lurking behind the whole conversation is Stalin, who for the average Westerner represents the unadvisability of trying to radically change the world at all. No matter how much you insist that your thing isn’t Stalinist, the specter of Stalin is still going to affect how people think about (any form of) socialism — tankies have decided that there is no getting around the problem of addressing Stalin’s legacy. That legacy, as it stands, at least in Western public opinion (they feel differently about him in other parts of the world), is largely the product of Cold War propaganda.

          That’s the gist. Then he goes on with another paragraph of whataboutism but of course not a single mention of the tens of millions of dead both, Stalin and Mao, were responsible for.

          Of course he’s also an western armchair socialist. People that actually lived in the Sowjet Union (and not in today’s Russia) draw quite a different picture.

          • Facebones@reddthat.com
            2811·
            2 months ago

            It’s interesting how the only criticism anybody can drum up is “tens of millions dead,” but nobody bats an eye at the death toll of capitalism, capitalist countries, and their endless war machine/endless interference in other countries via funding coups or outright assassinations in support of harmful leaders who will play nice with the corporations.

            Your link describes discussion of labor camps as if it’s some long lost relic of a bygone era - but slavery of inmates is, right now, legal and prevalent in the US subsidizing private industries for pennies on the dollar. It references the conditions of the camps, but plenty of current US inmates face subhuman conditions and treatment. You imply that everybody suffered all the time under the Soviets, but a far from insignificant number (depending on how you do the numbers, with more support for the USSR than we have for our own government this past decade or so) remember the USSR fondly, or at least as better than their current governments.

            All the things y’all constantly belt about to argue socialism is the great evil of the world is shit we do now that you support as long as it benefits private entities instead of public. I’m not going to argue that everything was perfect, or that nobody was corrupt, but I WILL argue that y’all spend a lot of time defending those same imperfections and corruptions under capitalism with this lazy weak ass “but fixing it would be spooky scary socialism” argument. Per the common reasons people call socialism a failure, so is capitalism. That’s why leftists call for, as you call it, “prettied up” socialism - not to fool people, but because what we’re doing now is FAILING EVERYBODY and tripling down on funneling even more of our economy to 1-3% of the population hasn’t helped anything so it’s time for something different and realistic change is gradual, not “seizing the means of production” overnight. Practically, we find a functional balance like the rest of the “first” world.

            To co-opt my criticism of zionists defending genocide with the “1,200 dead” figure: If tens of millions dead under socialism makes you so mad, just wait til you hear about the hundreds of millions dead under capitalism.

            ((I don’t know anything about how to do the thing notating an image so in the off chance it helps someone: Drake No/Yes Meme DrakeNo - tyranny.gov DrakeYes - tyranny.com ))

              • Facebones@reddthat.com
                146·
                2 months ago

                Maybe you shouldn’t have defended your point with a link using these talking points then if you didn’t want them responded to.

                Thanks for proving my point though about liberals just saying shit then going “SeEeEe??!?!” no matter the response.

            • michaelmrose@lemmy.worldEnglish
              52·
              2 months ago

              Stalin and Mao both killed a hell of a lot of their own people that is what they are referring to

                • michaelmrose@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  34·
                  2 months ago

                  Mao was responsible for the deaths of 30-50M in famine. Estimates of Stalins score from famine, execution, forced relocation, labor camps is more difficult to ascertain. Estimates range from 3 -20M. Whether you disagree with this estimate it is incredibly likely that the prior poster was referencing the 33M–70M who died in intolerable conditions not the nazis.

                  The fact that you justify the state getting in the systemic murder business for any cause is a fundamental difference between our understanding of what can ever be morally acceptable.

          • TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.mlEnglish
            109·
            2 months ago

            The thing is, delinking socialism from Stalin also means delinking it from the Soviet Union, disavowing everything that’s been done under the name of socialism as “Stalinist.” The “socialism” that results from this procedure is defined as grassroots, bottom-up, democratic, non-bureaucratic, nonviolent, non-hierarchical… in other words, perfect. So whenever real revolutionaries (say, for example, the Naxals in India) do things imperfectly they are cast out of “socialism” and labeled “Stalinists.” This is clearly an example of respectability politics run amok. Tankies believe that this failure of solidarity, along with the utopian ideas that the revolution can win without any kind of serious conflict or without party discipline, are more significant problems for the left than is “authoritarianism” (see Engels for more on this last point). [5] We believe that understanding the problems faced by Stalin and Mao helps us understand problems generic to socialism, that any successful socialism will have to face sooner or later. This is much more instructive and useful than just painting nicer and nicer pictures of socialism while the world gets worse and worse.

            this is directly preceding it. Even if I accepted your frankly hilarious black book of communism death tolls, the argument here is that the soviet union and China still greatly improved the lives of the average citizen compared to what came before while facing huge problems that you would crumble upon immediately upon encountering, like imminent war from the west that they predicted and prepared for correctly. As far as your other claim, it’s not nearly so simple as you make it out to be:

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/21/why-do-so-many-people-miss-the-soviet-union/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ebrd-transition-survey-idUSKBN1422U2/

            edit: also, nia frome is a trans woman

            • Christian@lemmy.mlEnglish
              82·
              2 months ago

              This essay resonates with me, thanks for sharing, the author makes her points pretty effectively. I’m not a historian and I don’t know shit, but I think even if I give the critics the concession that everything is absolute rubbish, I still think there’s no convincing argument that the beliefs are dishonest or malicious or not genuine.

              There’s so much bullshit and conflicting views about literally every historical event that I find it really hard to penetrate the context of the discussion and feel confident in anything, but I think the fact that I keep seeing people who hold “tankie” opinions dismissed as malicious propagandists pushes me very strongly towards feeling that the critics have not made any attempt to seriously engage with the ideas they’re fighting against.

              I think the realization I’m coming to now is that when part of your ideology is that people who claim belief in a specific conflicting worldview can be dismissed as bots or propagandists, finding out that those people aren’t manufactured makes it a lot harder to take everything else you’ve said seriously.

              On the other hand, the guy you’re replying to is correct that the author’s points fall completely flat and are ridiculous once you hunt down that specific paragraph and remove the context immediately before and after. Then it becomes obvious to an unbiased reader that the author actually ignored communist death tolls because it was inconvenient for her argument.

      • Facebones@reddthat.com
        2314·
        2 months ago

        In theory, the things the other replies said.

        In practice, anything left of the average Lemmy.world liberal/democrat.

        I don’t Lemmy enough to say there are zero hexbear users who are pro China or pro wtfever people say, but I see almost none of the ridiculous shit the rest of Lemmy claim exclusively happens there. What I DO see is liberals (usually from lemmy.world if we’re swinging at instances) talking ridiculous trollish shit to hexbear users than using the silly trollish responses they get in response to justify these “all hexbears want to give America to Xi Jinping” posts.

        • expr@programming.dev
          145·
          2 months ago

          I dunno, I ended up blocking the instance way before I knew about their reputation (like, when I first joined Lemmy) because all of the users their kept posting the most unhinged shit.

          I have definitely seen blatant apologism for China/Russia from them.

          FWIW, I’m much further left than your average Democrat (I consider myself a leftist/anarchist). I personally don’t consider what I’ve seen from them to be very “left”, just authoritarian.

          • Facebones@reddthat.com
            79·
            2 months ago

            I was sure to not be an absolutist for a reason, I’m not always cruising Lemmy. Hexbear in particular absolutely has a sense of humor sometimes that I myself am a bit old for, but judging them for that is very much more “Old man yelling at clouds” than anything. If you don’t like it, sure, but that doesn’t say A or B about them.

            Maybe there’s blatant apologism, but in my experience it’s people taking whatever scraps they can find to claim “Apologism.” For example, discussing high speed rail development in China. Admiring a rail system isn’t “blatant apologism,” but most lemmy liberals would call it as such, because it was built by China. It’s like calling me a Putin apologist for discussing Dostoyevsky. Yes, I’m admiring a creation of the country or it’s culture, but I’m not saying that their current governments are the only way forward or really saying anything about governance at all.

            Again, I’m not claiming you haven’t seen something “blatant” before (I could name so many one off events I’ve witnessed that don’t hold to norms,) I’m just saying that people claiming it to be this widespread norm on every leftist instance are spreading disinformation.

            • expr@programming.dev
              64·
              2 months ago

              Sure, perhaps it’s possible that I saw an unusually high amount of apologists, but I’m saying that it happened enough times and consistently enough that it prompted me to block them before I even knew anything about them, which I think at least says something. I won’t claim to know what the majority opinion there is, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s an abnormal amount.

              • Facebones@reddthat.com
                66·
                2 months ago

                As I mentioned, I’d be inclined to wonder what you’re considering “apologism.” The fact that you didn’t address the points I made makes me think you fall into that camp of boiling an intentionally wide array of ideas, conversation, etc down to “apologism” to take up arms against instances you don’t like. I see discussion of those countries, and examples of things that are happening there, but not one time have I seen people celebrating violence or excusing it on either hexbear or .ml.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
        1712·
        2 months ago

        “Leftists” who are more interested in authoritarianism than leftism. At their very worst, they even ally with the far-right.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1112·
        2 months ago

        Apologists for authoritarian regimes that have either historically been communist or paint themselves as such currently.

        Or as far as most of .world is concerned, anyone to the left of Joe Manchin.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
        1819·
        2 months ago

        Pro-China sycophants. They’d be the ones driving the tanks at Tiananman Square.

        I’d also argue that these people only put up a facade of being leftist. I’ve never once seen a hexbear user actually make arguments for leftist policies, socialism, or communism. They just shitpost a bunch of anti-American memes and rally for the Russian and Chinese governments.

          • irreticent@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 months ago

            How do you know a tankie from a government paid shill like UniversalMonk?

            I’m not familiar with UniversalMonk. Why do you think they’re a government paid shill?

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
      2114·
      2 months ago

      I have yet to see any reasonableness from hexbear.

      Hell, I had a few members tell me that I was part of the evil capitalist elite because I had a job.

      They brigade like annoying unwanted fleas that you cannot get rid of.

      • Christian@lemmy.mlEnglish
        155·
        2 months ago

        I had a few members tell me that I was part of the evil capitalist elite because I had a job.

        Definitely a joke, I’m having trouble imagining a person who could believe this in earnest, let alone enough to say it out loud. I’m even having trouble accepting that you can imagine that a person would say this with no sarcasm. No one actually believes that.

        edit: just realized that maybe you’re trying to be funny and I’m slow on the uptake

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
        148·
        2 months ago

        Hell, I had a few members tell me that I was part of the evil capitalist elite because I had a job.

        Anytime a person claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link to it, they are lying or misrepresenting what happened literally 100% of the time.

    • foxontherocks@lemmy.world
      53·
      2 months ago

      Tankie is such a weird thing to call these communists. They are way way less violent than liberals and conservatives are. They don’t even support any on going genocides like the others do.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
        41·
        2 months ago

        The historical through-line is that the term originated from British Communists that supported the USSR putting down the Hungarian Counter-Revolution, which involved tanks and violent fighting.

        Nowadays, Tankie is used for everyone left of liberalism that agrees with the Marxist theory of the State, rather than the Anarchist, it’s muddled and has no meaning.