Don't get me wrong. This site's dunking culture is good and it serves an important purpose. It's an immune system that stops bad-faith trolls and fascists from getting a foot in the door. Just like a biological immune system, though, it can get overactive and start attacking its own body. This is called an autoimmune disease and it can severely damage or even kill its host body.
What's appropriate for a lib or a fascist who refuses to even consider whether they might be wrong about our fundamental ideas isn't appropriate for a comrade who, in good faith, is voicing an opinion you happen to disagree with. This is very similar to something Mao talks about in his essay "On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People." Mao's essay splits contradictions into two types:
- Antagonistic contradictions are those between class and political opponents with irreconcilable interests. There's no real debate to be had here. They're enemies. You don't engage in dialog with them. You defeat them.
- Non-antagonistic contradictions are those that occur within a class or movement. The interests of all involved are fundamentally aligned, but there's disagreement on how to advance those interests. These disagreements are resolved through discussion that improves mutual understanding and allows for arrival at a consensus.
Applying the analogy to posting on Hexbear:
- Antagonistic contradiction: A chud wanders in to lecture the site about how Stalin killed 50 quintillion people / Hamas is an evil terrorist group / the transes are corrupting the youth. You can't convince these people and it's not worth trying. Post dunks, express hostility, drive them off. That's community hygiene.
- Non-antagonistic contradiction: A comrade who's been on this site for years voices a concern that you posted something bigoted / disagrees with your interpretation of a work of media / advocates engaging with people politically in a way you don't consider effective. You both want communism, you are both anti-imperialist, you both want Hexbear to be a welcoming space for marginalized people. Good-faith dialogue is a way to share information and enhance mutual understanding. Responding to these people with insults and dunks just pisses them off and discourages them or anyone watching from engaging with the site except to post their own insults and dunks. The site becomes more toxic and hostile.
I don't think I'm really in a state to give the full proper argument right now, but while your title is right I don't think your account really helps, for several reasons depending on what one believes the purpose of the site is. Sticking to more popular ones, part of the issue with your framing is that it basically question-begs the knowledge of someone's status as a "chud" versus a "comrade" (and also ignores that most people are neither), when that is something people have different opinions on and the designated status might change from a single comment. Fundamentally, I think that if you are serious about having a less absurd community, the only thing to do is dismiss the notion that "bullying works" or is even particularly relevant in terms of the internal affairs of a forum where admins can simply ban people, and the rules should be oriented around users either engaging with each other in good faith or, if someone cannot do that or is otherwise judged to not be worth the effort, to simply ban them. The idea of "driving off" is almost completely irrelevant in a space where we have admins with basically absolute control, unlike in a real space or even an online space where the admins aren't part of our ranks.
By this I don't mean to say that we should be nice to whichever fascist pops in tomorrow, but that we should regard any participant as either someone we need to treat in good faith or someone who the mods need to ban at their earliest convenience, rather than have people kept around as punching bags or given abusive motivation in order to "do better," because that's just not a good model for improving people's outlooks.
I should mention that I don't think my criticism of the assessment is very particular to you because I see it almost every time that this problem gets mentioned and it has barely helped at all in all the time this site has existed.
The whole “bullying works” ethos was a wrong conclusion from an accidentally correct attitude from the Chapo podcast: that you should not compromise on principle. Compromise is a practical concern that should never apply to the theoretical. Western leftists emerge out of a hostile environment saturated with counterrevolutionary propaganda. Most of them have to unlearn a ton of stuff and start to see the backwardness in their neighbors. In that environment it’s very important to stay principled and not to give up the correct line.
One thing about bullies is they insist upon their stance. We just need to find more effective ways to do this that don’t alienate a ton of people.
I broadly agree and I appreciate the articulation of this point. Perhaps bullying had some utility with attacking reactionaries while brigading, but I think in internet terms that sort of thing is the only use case.
I think this is an excellent way to look at it.