chapotraphouse

1. We are officially a left-unity community. Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists etc. all welcome, but we don't tolerate right-wing/liberal ideology that contributes to the suffering of the exploited workers of the world.

2. It's more so a place for leftists to hang out and chat and spread news/content. A bit of both ig.

3. The people calling us tankies and nazis simultaneously are mostly doing so out of a disingenuous liberal attempt to position anybody to the left of them as being on the right of them, while they are the truly enlightened ones. The shitposting is only ever a response to people who are being disingenuous with their arguments and refusing to have genuine discourse.

Tankie has become a pretty useless word especially over the last 4 or 5 years.

1. Originally it meant people who supported the USSR in suppressing an attempted revolution in Hungary (which by the way was largely supported by Hungarian fascists who were literally fighting alongside the Nazis only 11 years prior, it was complicated)

2. Then it meant generally people who think socialist states should maintain their structure using violence when they see it as necessary to not collapse. As if every other type of state doesn't obviously do that

3. Then it started to just mean "marxist-leninists"

4. Then pretty recently it got misused even harder, until it split and started to mean three things:

• classic definition #2 up above
• anyone to the left of me! (Most common now)
• those weird "patsoc" grifters and/or fans of how capitalist Russia hates gay people (this is the stupidest version of all)

It's mainly "anyone to the left of me" which is just the word "woke" but for liberals.

Give it 2 or 3 years, and republicans will be calling Joe Biden a tankie.

Users on other instances say you guys are "tankies", and from what I understand, that's essentially the authoritarian version of the left; instead of being the more moderate-ish(?) lefties/communists. Which one do you guys identify under?

Hexbear is explicitly non-sectarian. There are leftists here from across the spectrum, and sometimes there are disagreements among us. There are Marxists-Leninists, anarchists, and people who simply believe that capitalism isn’t going to lead to good outcomes for people. The word ‘tankie’ has lost a lot of meaning in recent times, so it’s hard to say whether there are tankies here or not.

As an aside on this issue, the concept of “authoritarianism” is poorly defined and generally not that useful, imo. There are people in “free” countries being imprisoned, forced out of their homes, forced to work, forced to abandon their culture, forced to accept certain legal and cultural norms, prevented from organizing or protesting, etc. And there are people in “authoritarian” countries who have mechanisms other than representative democracy to engage in politics in ways that are materially more effective and representative of their interests. Authoritarianism, if only viewed from the lens of liberal democracy, is largely meaningless in a practical sense.

I see a lot of shitposts and edgy humor, which is fine; so I initially thought the instance was more of a shitposting community rather than a serious one advocating communism. Or is it?

I’m not trying to be clever when I say “it’s both.” Most people here are actually pretty well-studied in history, politcal theory, economics, etc., and they are also terminally irony poisoned and extremely online. It’s what it is.

Many comments I see from other instances are mainly complaining of you guys being the former (tankies) on the first bullet, saying you are basically just like the far-right, just on the opposite side.

Thinking that the far left and far right can be the same thing is called horseshoe theory, and it’s nonsense. There are numerous real, tangible, entirely understandable differences between the left and the right. Saying that they are both he same because both dislike the status quo is an example of a thought-terminating cliche. The left wants fundamentally the opposite of what the right wants, and the only way they’re similar is that there are people who believe that some amount of violence and coercion will be required to achieve those goals. But the goals are different. I can’t remember where I read it, but someone pointed out that an example of the difference between communism and fascism is that Stalin largely failed in achieving his stated goals, while Hitler largely succeeded. Way oversimplified, and my comrades will probably excoriate me for the clumsy analogy, but the point is that these are different things, and to say they aren’t is ignorant.

The other complaint is that all they see when they engage with you guys are memes and shitpost gifs, and that it doesn't contribute to the conversation.

There is a lot of shitposting. However, one of the things a lot of people here have learned first-hand time and again is that a lot of people don’t want to hear what we have to say, regardless if it has merit, or is thoughtfully researched, or is based on personal experience. We’ve all heard the same tired, poorly-understood, cliche arguments over and over again about China and Cuba and the USSR, etc., and at some point you get to a stage where it’s clear that engaging in good faith is useless. And so, rather than write a wall of text with links to credible sources, people post a picture of a pig with poop on its balls. Is it contributing to the conversation? Arguably no. Was there a conversation to contribute to in the first place if a well-researched but heterodox argument is met with knee jerk, canned responses that don’t address the issue? Again, arguably no.

The intention from most people here is to troll and dunk and shitpost at people who are obviously willfully ignorant or outright bigoted. Any genuine inquiry will likely be met by a genuine response, as I am trying to provide you here. However, if someone is going to make transphobic or antisemitic comments while getting pissy about how we’re criticizing institutions like NATO or the IMF, they’re going to get dogpiled with shitposts. Critical support for China or Russia or Cuba or whomever is not blanket support of those things, and nor is criticism of NATO or the West or the big multilateral financial institutions a declaration of support for Putin.

Leftists are, if they believe what they say they believe, aligned with the interests of real people everywhere, and when you’re on the side of actual people, large institutions with power tend to be a mixed bag, simultaneously doing good and bad things. What we’re concerned with is the understanding of these large systems of power, and the mechanisms by which they can be challenged for the betterment of everyone. That’s not the status quo position, and it’s not entirely clean and easy to describe, so it’s likely going to get some of us into arguments.

That said, most people here aren’t just stirring shit to cause drama. We’ve been here as a community for three years prior to federation with other instances, and we’d still be here if every other instance defederated us. We’re trying to engage in a constructive way, but there are a lot of us, we’re aligned in our purpose, and we never log off. We’re going to come on a little strong at times.

I hope that helps.

I know you've received a lot of proper responses, but i just want to let you know that this is what we like to see as a community.
This is how we want to engage with posters - people with legitimate willingness to learn, to ask, to speak with an open mind, and to look inwards and do self-crit when necessary. We have spent 3 years doing this internally, and that has forged a community.

Anyone who comes to hexbear with this in mind, and not pre-conceived notions borne from thought-terminating cliches, will soon find out that we're a lot kinder, more willing to have real meaningful discussions and more supportive that you'd think.

authoritarian version of the left

All political ideologies are authoritarian. People who don't acknowledge this are just liberals who grew up in the west and assume everything that happens is natural, and not something forced upon them.

basically just like the far-right, just on the opposite side

I mean, all politics is about advocating for your positions..? thats the point of doing politics. Our positions are obviously what differentiate us from conservatives/liberals. Hexbear tends to be a bit more acidic about politics because most of us have been abused in some way by the current global order under neoliberalism.

I see a lot of shitposts and edgy humor, which is fine; so I initially thought the instance was more of a shitposting community rather than a serious one advocating communism. Or is it?

This is a general purpose forum for communists, anarchists, and fellow travelers. Site culture encourages both serious political discussion and shit posting. We are very earnest about our politics. Having been locked in this website with only each other for three years, we have developed lingo, in-jokes, and a posting style that can be easily misunderstood by outsiders.

It's the only thing I've ever seen on the internet that feels like actually hanging out with friends. There are many users I recognize, but even the ones I don't, I still get that vibing-with-like-minded-folks vibe.

Which one do you guys identify under?

Most Hexbears support a state that works for the interests of the people, referred to as a Dictatorship of the Proletariat that would be established after a revolution, as described by Marx. Then there are some anarchists who also support a revolution but not a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The rest ideologies are far too minimal to notice

so I initially thought the instance was more of a shitposting community rather than a serious one advocating communism

It's a shitposting community. Probably the most well read and informed shitposting community you've ever come across though I bet (not that that bar is particularly high). lemmygrad.ml is the serious and educational instance though only for Marxism Leninism and no other ideology

but is the shitposting and trolling done on purpose to antagonize other instances

Many people have stated they only shitpost and troll response to people who are bigoted, or commenting in bad faith and not looking to have an honest discussion or learn, unlike you

We're a big-tent leftist instance, that means no sectarianism one way or another. We've anarchist, anarchobidenist and anarchostalinist comrades among us, though the site as a whole probably leans more ML. We don't throw each other under the bus in order to be the 'good leftists'.

It's both serious and shitposty, it's a safe space for trans people to just exist, we're staunchly anticapitalist and anti american hegemony. We also like jokes about throwing nazis into pits (see pt. 1: tankies, for more)

Horseshoe theory is some Turning Point/PragerU false equivalence that attempts to paint leftist action and thought as "just as bad (if not worse!)" as those we stand against. There's plenty of neolib talking points floating about, and once we've had our fun/you've stopped engaging in good faith, out come the pictures of a pig with shit on its testicles

This is my take, and thank you for asking these questions. I was initially against hexbear federation when .world was debating, but I’ve enjoyed ( though maybe not understood) most hexbear content since jumping to Midwest.social.

you've gotten some great responses already but wrt "tankies" please check out these two short essays

• https://redsails.org/tankies/
• https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

Many comments I see from other instances are mainly complaining of you guys being the former (tankies) on the first bullet, saying you are basically just like the far-right, just on the opposite side. The other complaint is that all they see when they engage with you guys are memes and shitpost gifs, and that it doesn't contribute to the conversation. I know that's not everything, as I do see serious discussions on my feed from time to time, but is the shitposting and trolling done on purpose to antagonize other instances?

many posts have been made on this forum as well about toning down the shitposting and trolling on other instances, and a few mods have made similar posts as well i believe. Usually the people who are complaining about it the most are bad faith posters or bigots that are getting dog pilled, but our mods are aware about the large amount of trolling and want our users to play nice, although moderation of our users on other instances is being left up to their mods.

"Tankie" doesn't really mean much in practice. Many of us are communists who think that places like the ussr, n korea, cuba, vietnam, and china aren't unremittingly evil, and we have exhaustive sources to back it up. We also know the history of events like the 1932 Soviet famine aka the "Holodomor", the June 4th incident aka " Tianamen Square Massacre" and a bunch of other anti-communist shibboleths. A whole lot of people who think they're leftists but aren't completely uncritically accept anti-communist propaganda with no awareness whatsoever that it's propaganda. And they hate being told that it's propaganda, that it doesn't relfect what happened and deliberately distorts history, often to the benefit of warmongers and fascists. So they call us tankies to indicate that we're evil genocide deniers and you shouldn't engage with us because we might start showing you well documented historical sources that contradict the propaganda and then you might become a genocide denier too! It's all very silly but most Americans and many Europeans think they're immune to propaganda and whatever the news and government says it 100% true.

"Authoritarians" is also mostly an empty accusation. There's no realy consistency about how it's used. People claim any government they don't like is "authoritarian" but generally can't explain how the features of the government they don't like differ from the governments they do like. They also often have very naive or just flat out wrong ideas about how governments they like work.

We're not trying to antagonize other instances specifically. We hate liberals and liberalism for making the world in to it's current miserable state, and there happen to be a lot of liberals in the lemmyverse. We also post far, far, far more than almost any other online community. No one needs to tell us to brigade an instance, we all decided to get stuck in and start arguing on our own, no coordination needed.

I remember you, both because of your dune comment in that thread and your Scytale nickname, it's one of my favourite characters in dune

I have little to add because other comrades already answered you better than I could (and I deeply encourage you to read what they linked), except I wanted to thank you for engaging honestly and curiously

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Edit: didn't like the wall of text, lets break it up by topic. Also of note: we are not a monolith. despite coming to a general consensus on a lot of topics over the years, there is plenty of disagreement, both politically and in behavior/optics as well.

The only thing I'd add to the other very good replies on here is to your last bulletpoint. Good faith and "civility" are not necessarily the same thing. Tensions run high around here sometimes because "downvote and move along" is not only against our ideology but our downvotes are also disabled for the same reason. In a lot of situations asking someone to "act civil" or "be nice" are akin to gaslighting. As MLK Jr. said "Peace is the presence of justice, not the absence of conflict".

That said "fuck off and read this book" is the worst of the "bad faith" you can expect here, whereas in an alt-right instance you can expect to be dismissed with a slur if you go against the grain.