Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.
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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.
Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.
The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:
- “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
- “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
- “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”
The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.
In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.
Here are some examples:
“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”
“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.
We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.
On the one hand defederating from an instance based on their ideology is probably not the best precedent to set,
On the other, they’re tankies who’ve ate up the state capitalist and red fascist propaganda hook, line, and sinker and are trying to associate themselves with leftism, making the rest of us look bad. (If I were more conspiracy minded I’d say that this is an intentional attempt to discredit leftist politics.) So really I think it balances out. Personally I’d rather users be able to block whole instances, instead of having admins make that decision, but seeing as that’s not available this is the next best thing.
Removed by mod
You should read Jewish scholars writing about the double genocide myth. Equating communists to fascists was used to excuse complicity in the holocaust, it isnt fucking cool.
Genocide denial is not the winning move you think it is. Edit: More importantly I never said anything about genocide, though since you brought it up, the soviets did in fact commit genocide, see: Holodomor. This in no way dilutes or mitigates the Nazis’ genocide of Jews, etc. in the Holocaust.
Good thing I’m not doing either of those then! I’m equating tankies to fascists, which is not only cool, but more importantly it’s correct.
This is honestly like watching a conservative be like “wokism and fascism are the same thing” and its embarrassing.
No socialist society ever did the equivalent of the holocaust. They did some lesser atrocities with a much smaller total body count than capitalism or monarchism. Socialists have historically raised people out of poverty, increased literacy and political rights and engagement, and fought against the worst of capitalist reaction (including the fascists, often while liberals stood back and watched or funded the fascists). Nazis scapegoated so they could have a sizeable slave workforce, crush any form of workers solidarity, and destroy the domestic standard of living, all in order to keep the money flowing to people the luxemburgists would have killed or reformed if they weren’t stopped by the social democrats.
Less embarrassing than defending authoritarian colonialist empires.
Look, capitalism, etc. are awful, but that doesn’t excuse defending authoritarian regimes. It is perfectly possible improve the lives of everyone without atrocities, and defending the people who commit those atrocities severely damages efforts to actually improve society.
Cuba? Vietnam? Laos? All these countries are firmly marxist leninist. I’d also like your definition of colonialist if you think that the USSR did colonial extractivism, or China for that matter given how often Africa prefers their loans (and how often they are forgiven instead of being exploited by debt bondage like the IMF does)
Socialist countries generally have more robust democracies than the global North does. Look at the democratic process that it took to get Cuba’s new family code on the ballot. Watch some of the Vietnamese assembly sessions.
I dont defend the atrocities committed(except against actual nazi soldiers and others who carried out the holocaust, that was cool and good), I just defend the projects as they have been a net good for the world and given plenty of lessons to be learned from.
Socialist states commit less atrocities than capitalism ever will because under socialism, atrocities are failures of the system that can be avoided. Under capitalism, atrocities are a normal part of the way systems operate. Accumulation by dispossession is an integral and continuous aspect of capitalism, as is poverty caused by the necessity of a desperate surplus army of labor. To compare them to Nazis, which committed even more atrocities than normal capitalist states, is disingenuous and carries water for Nazis.