Midwest social anarcho syndicalist here. I love the lib dunkin as well as the highly detailed and sourced responses. I dont know all the hate for the instance and not sure what ppb is supposed to mean but maybe one day I'll understand
PPB stands for "Pig Poop Balls". It's a picture of a pig with poop on its balls. It's an old joke from reddit days and was typically posted in response to reactionaries who wandered into the subreddit to cause trouble.
Also, welcome!
Not from midwest.social, but I did happen upon that thread that blew up. Is it ok if I ask some questions? I'd like to better understand the hexbear instance, so I understand how to consume the content that shows up in my feed. Before I go on, please note that I definitely do not mind seeing content from hexbear and you guys commenting on other instances. My instance is not planning on de-federating (AFAIK) and I am completely fine with that. I lean left myself.
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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(?) leftists/communists. Which one do you guys identify under?
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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?
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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?
I'm happy to be educated/enlightened. Thank you!
Edit: I'm getting a ton of well thought-out responses and I need time to process them before I can respond. Thanks again! And please feel free to continue commenting if you have something more to say.
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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.
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It's more so a place for leftists to hang out and chat and spread news/content. A bit of both ig.
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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.
I guess I'm gonna hang out a lot with you guys, sounds like you're "the actual cool kids" while I'm just a .ml normie :'(
Also, the lemmyverse is a much happier place (for me at least) with you guys around!
we're glad to have you!
Hexbear's a years-old instance, we've developed a solid culture and genuinely care for one another, pseudoanonymity notwithstanding. We're good people and better posters imo
If your free on friday, come to movie night
No idea what we're watching yet but it's usually pretty good
The is the magic of hexbear. We love our anarchist comrades
Tankie has become a pretty useless word especially over the last 4 or 5 years.
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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)
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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
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Then it started to just mean "marxist-leninists"
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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.
People in this country think they're the freest in the world. A couple of years ago, a cop was filmed murdering yet another black man. People protested and, all too frequently, cops initiated violence against peaceful protesters. Is that not authoritarian?
Its considered authoritarian for the state to take housing and distribute it to the people.
Its not considered authoritarian for banks to kick people out of their home.
I'm starting to think this "authoritarian" word is bullshit.
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 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.
this is possibly the wankiest thing i've ever written out, but that speaks volumes.
we love our comrades here, legitimately.
say it again for the folks in the back: cringe is based and emotionally aware!
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.
They defederated with the 'grad.
🥲
Any post from their admins explaining why ?
I still don't understand how we get more federated than lemmygrad despite you guys being far more chill lmao
Big fan of the gigantic emojis, I don't even have to check the poster's home instance to know its one of you.
It's funny because we don't even see those giant emojis. If anything they're often too small on our end.
I only finally realized the bug existed when, a few times, I saw users from other instances post their custom emoji (in like 500x200px) and then looked at the bug reports
Before that I had been using quite a few of them in comments, and that made me feel guilty lmao; the dunk threads must look like hell from another instance with all these emojis
I saw the post where someone mentions that lol, it's pretty obnoxiously huge for us.
Yeah it's a bug because we had the emoji before we had picture embeds, so our emojis work like emojis for us but like pictures for everyone else.
oh is that what's happening that makes much more sense now ty
so far they seem to be chill, though i wish the cool users had pronouns on so i know not to activate kill mode on them
The lack of pronouns from other instances has been bothering me too
I don't know if it's a federation/lemmy limitation, or users not picking one, or if other instances didn't enable a feature or something, mind you
chillin, bit worried about college finances but played some vr with the homie
And while you're here, think about going into settings and customising your displayname with pronouns. Makes the English lemmyverse a more welcoming and diverse place while also benefiting yourself in the form of extra upbears when people see you out and about!
I'm startled by the specific shout-out to the instance i'm on, since:
- I didn't think midwest.social was particularly big and,
- having grown up around a lot of liberal and extreme reactionary politics, I would not have expected there to be a lot of overlap between the midwest and an ML community
I am happy to be experiencing a little discomfort by all the "new" ideology, as I am well aware of the limited social and political bubble that is constructed around me. Specific political stances aside, I can say I do feel right at home with the somewhat irreverent tone of the comrades here. Hopefully midwest.social and lemmy/kbin at large can adopt the emoji implementation you have here so I can join the fun.
I just wanted to say that the Midwest is cool and not flyover country as some coastal liberals might believe. Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, all cool cities. The Midwest is the breadbasket (ok, cornbasket) of the country too, and keeps me full with cheap processed foods, so thank you.
Hello midwest.social folks!
I’m used to deer, geese, and squirrels but a woman at the bar last night told me she gets otters. Do otters reside in wisconsin?
chapotraphouse
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank
Dunk posts in general go in the_dunk_tank, not here
Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from the_dunk_tank