we need to get the moscow time back in the sidebar
Do not get fooled, Hexbear might seem like fascists pretending to be tankies, but it is actually all a ruse to hide that they are liberals
Except for me
Saying you’re the one true leftist is the 420th kind of liberalism.
i feel so called out
they will literally just say anything about us. like, if you go to the_donald or /pol/, you can tell they are bigoted because they are saying slurs or barely disguised slurs, calling people r***rded, gay, “low IQ”, groomer, etc., talking about defending The West or a future for white children.
here, somehow, the bigotry apparently exists in some kind of mysterious non-corporeal state that cannot be pointed to.
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if_those_kids_could_read.png
If you go on /pol/, you can tell they are bigoted because they are fascists. If you go on communist lemmy, you can instead tell they are communists.
Oh, it’s here, you just have to BELIEVE :spongebob-hands-waving:
We’re all doing a very elaborate and well-coordinated bit where we actually mean the completely opposite of what we’re saying. No one ever slips up, it’s very impressive
Middle one is how I started. Apparently lemmygrad was so “bad”, that two of the instances I joined defederated it by default before anything else. I was like “Tankies, huh? I wonder what kind of nonsense stuff they like to post.” So I lurked on the front page.
1 week later
Holy shit they’re right.
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Hey that’s similar to me. Except for me it was reddit and I heard r/latestagecapitalism talking about “Chapos” and the “Dirt bag left” in hushed whispers but never saying why they were bad, so I checked them out and my first though was “Oh finally, some leftists that don’t want to play nice with the right”
Lol same pipeline here.
Similar pipeline here. Hanging around in all the I suppose you could call them “utopian left” spaces and being patted on the head “you’ll wise up when you’re older” followed by a “refutation” of whatever I suggested that itself demonstrated that they hadn’t actually listened to a word I said. Even some ideas I explored by advocating for them and later decided were flawed, it still burns me that people who otherwise accepted me as a reasonably intelligent person would take an idea I shared with them so lightly as to not listen. That primed me for the “if you aren’t going to participate constructively in good faith then you can fuck off” space that was CTH
Neat! That’s why I’m not too worried that they spread these memes about us (it’s a meme in the original meaning, where they start believing what others tell them without checking for themselves) because people will still check us out. And there’s no risk of getting your instance taken down on Lemmy, not like Reddit where you always had to be super careful about what you said and walk on eggshells.
They can’t stop talking about us in hushed, dreaded tones that create curiosity.
you know what I’m thinking btw? I was browsing lemmy servers on join-lemmy the other day and noticed there’s an instance for the r/blind subreddit, and they will federate with everyone except Lemmygrad lol, probably someone told them something they heard from someone else about us. Hexbear should federate with that community and start politely interacting with them.
either that or they’re turbo libs because they’re even federated with exploding-heads, so maybe someone could just ask them why they specifically single out lemmygrad.
edit: instance is simply rblind
welcome!
Same, I even told a friend when telling them about Lemmy that “Lemmy has lots of… something called tankies? No clue what it means but I hear they have bad beliefs.”
The world didn’t make any sense to me. Browsing hexbear for a couple days was like finding the other half of the puzzle pieces inside
Who are you gonna believe, me, or your lying eyes?
I believe you, even though there is literally no evidence for your claims
I like what you are telling me and it agrees with my prejudices so it must be true
When have we ever been pro-putin?! Lmao these people are delusional
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If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.
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If you’re against us you’re a fascist.
.'. 😏
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If you admit that there has ever been a Nazi in the borders of Ukraine, or that NATO was involved in any way with the lead up to the war, your are pro-Putin.
Or if you even suggest that a few border regions in Ukraine, once a stalemate was basically reached, aren’t worth the displacement of millions of people, deaths of (ultimately) a few hundred thousand+ people, destruction of the built environment of huge swaths of Ukraine outside of those regions, and the probable failure of some UA refugees to integrate elsewhere ultimately leading to “terrorism” (probably just CIA) in mainland Europe as thin justification for future US occupation of somewhere.
There’s foreign aid in the face of an invasion, regardless of whether it was or to what degree it may have been provoked it’s still an aggressive invasion that reveals a tremendous lack of imagination and foresight amongst Russian leadership. There’s also such a thing as dumping fuel on a fire while knowing who gets to cut the loans to rebuild, and knowing who gets the friendly relations in the post-war government to secure Ukraine’s plant, mineral, and labour resources for pennies on the dollar whilst they’re under the heel of austerity…
Those regions were pro-separatists since the war started in 2014. All of this would have been avoided if Ukraine was less genocidal towards the ethnic Russian population, but no. They had to poke the bear and posture towards nato membership.
From a realist perspective Russia did not have a choice in this. It WAS provoked entirely by the ukraine and the western instigators who encouraged it and the coup.
Actually sweaty, if you don’t support a first strike on Moscow you’re a Russian bot.
Support Putin, the liberal who applied to join NATO? The one who can’t control his own central bank in wartime because he believes in the “rule of law” and “separation of powers”? Lmao. We support the people of Donbass.
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Well you see calling out blatant lies, untruths and demanding journalistic rigor is actually just a dastardly kremlin propagandatrick where we sow discord and mistrust by pointing out when we’re being lied to.
Just like how Washington Post and Financial Times are CLEARLY Russian propaganda…
hexbear is fascist, they’re pretending to be tankies
but i thought libs believed tankies = fascists…?
this is too confusingYou may laugh at them but these fine gentlepeople represent the current dominant economic system that managed to crush it’s opposition with sheer efficiency and might. Not so amused now, are you, fake tankies.
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We are “pro-Russia” as far as anti-Ukraine = pro-Russia. Which is to say not really, but libs see it that way.
Libs literally view the world in G.W. Bush “If you are not with us you are against us” style thinking you find in popular children’s fiction.
Liberalism = vibes-based politics.
It’s all about who I like or don’t like at the moment. Nothing to do with historical contexts, or having any material analysis about how the past leads to the present, and how the present shapes the future.
exactly.
if/when people ask “do you actually support ukraine or russia?” here and mean it in good faith, I swear most answers line up with “both are cappie fash shitholes, we only support the working class of both countries and want them to stop fucking dying”
yeah they love their thought-terminating cliches so much. most of them are so tied up in their self-congratulatory liberalism that they dont want an honest discussion with us. good faith “progressives” will eventually find their way to socialism, but the people of blahaj seem to be primarily middle class white liberals, so staying federated with them wouldnt be of much use to us. defederating probably brought more ppl here than months of federation would have.
it is a shame that these two large queer communities had to split. but, as a trans femme, my advocacy for liberation does not end with LGBTQ folks and women. we must fight for liberation of all workers, and that means we must fight for racial liberation, indigenous liberation, liberation of the neurodiverse and disabled, women’s liberation, LGBTQ liberation, national liberation, religious liberation etc.
one cannot support Ukraine in this conflict and be absolutely intersectional. hell, a queer instance should have plenty of criticism of Ukraine and NATO. but no, western media says Ukraine is heckin wholesome smol bean democracy, and they never lie! that is why we are incompatible w blahaj. they cant even manage to avoid supporting nazis who are killing us queer people and conducting several ethnic cleansing and genocide campaigns. they say “banderites arent nazis, bandera is all abt national pride” ignoring the historical fact that bandera was a nazi collaborator, while simultaneously spreading the Holocaust revisionist “double genocide theory” that was invented by nazis. they make excuses for Ukrainian soldiers sporting black suns, SS insignia, and swastika.
but we at hexbear are the real fascists! sure. i love my hexbear. we practice left unity and are legitimately safe for our trans members (i.e. NO CHASERS)
If being pro-Russia means that you think a Russian victory in Ukraine is preferable to an American one, both for the people living in the former Ukrainian SSR and in a wider geopolitical perspective then I’m pro-Russia.
If being pro-Russia means that you think Russia is an amazing place to live and that everything the Russian government does is good and based then no, I’m not pro-Russian by any stretch of the imagination. Those reactionary shitstains has little to be proud of.
Why are we feeling that a Russian victory in Ukraine is preferable? I had heard a Belarusian anarchist fighter reach the exact opposite conclusion:
If Russia wins here, there will be no independent trade unions, no human rights organizations, no grassroots structures for self-defense against the arbitrary rule of officials and the police. […] There are no other options but armed resistance to the fascist regime that attacked Ukraine today. And you have to understand that today’s war in Ukraine opens up a huge field of opportunity for anarchists which is important not to miss. For the first time in almost 100 years, we can now create a major political-military organization. […] We are well aware that after the war, we will have clashes with the ultra-right, and with the state, which will attack the freedom and rights of the people. We understand very well that in the future the experience we will gain here, these structures, which we have to create here now, will be useful to us in our further struggle for a free Ukraine. […] Another path awaits us - a dangerous path, full of compromise, full of pain in suffering and loss. But it is a path that can lead us to the emergence of a new, powerful, liberating movement, which can then change the whole picture in the region, later in Europe, and maybe in the whole world. […] The last thing I want to say is to appeal to our Western comrades: we don’t need your westsplaing, we need your solidarity.
Which seems like pretty persuasive reasoning to me.
Can you break down the reasoning for me? I just read the paragraph and all I can pull from it is they think Russia is fascist and that’s why they need to help their own fascists fight back, plus an acknowledgement that if they win they will be fighting Ukrainian fascists afterwards. Doesn’t seem like a very persuasive reason to help the fascists in the first place, particularly when Russia itself is extremely harsh on real fascists while Ukraine has never even attempted to do so and even today glorifies their fascist history.
edit: also I think it’s always important to remember that this war’s basic outcome has been clear from day one - Ukraine does not have the ability to prevent Russia from holding any territory they want. Fighting that inevitability doesn’t seem very good or humanitarian.
Russia itself is extremely harsh on real fascists
…They are? My impression was that Russia had a real problem with reactionaries. In any case, the core idea of the paragraph is that Russia is at least for now harder to resist in. That’s what I found persuasive, but I’m also realizing how ignorant I actually am about what leftist resistance in Russia is like, beyond what decades of yet-to-be-unlearned indoctrination have insisted it’s like.
Fighting that inevitability doesn’t seem very good or humanitarian.
So basically just, “give up already”? That doesn’t sound very… uhh… some sort of… relevant word.
[crickets]
Alright, just imagine whichever argument feels like something an ignoramus would put there. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about anything.
There really are only two major outcomes here: either NATO/Ukraine wins, which means fascism wins, or NATO/Ukraine loses (or a Russia win if you want to call that), which means the spread of fascism stops in Russia (temporarily).
Now, let’s examine what are the major features of a fascist state:
- Mass privatization
- Anti-communism and banning of socialist/communist parties
- Violent assault/murder of left wing and labor activists using fascist thugs
- Burning/tearing down/destruction of labor/communist symbols
Every single fascist state in history has exhibited all the above features, whether it was in Mussolini’s Italy in the 1920s, Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s, Sukarno’s Indonesia in the 1960s, or Pinochet’s Chile in the 1970s.
Not to mention, Ukraine since 2013 has fit perfectly into the description with their constant “de-communization” effort, banning left wing parties, burning and killing labor activists, as well as the mass privatization of state resources to foreign capital, if the Nazi symbolism was not the first alarm to be raised.
In other words, fascism is the most brutal form of labor suppression that developed out of liberalism, after seeing the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Churchill literally admitted that Mussolini’s fascism was necessary to crush Leninism in his speech in 1927.
Now, I’d argue that Russia of the 1990s under Yeltsin was very close to fascism (neo-Nazi gangs literally roamed the streets as the country fell to neoliberalism). Putin put a stop gap to the mass privatization (with the state regaining control of key industries over the years), but there is still massive corruption and Russia remains a very reactionary state in response to the looting by foreign capitalists while having no means of resisting against them.
So, back to the two major outcomes:
If NATO/Ukraine wins, then the Russian state will be destabilized and allowing Western imperialists to repeat what they had done to the post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s - shock therapy and the installing of pro-Western fascist puppet instituting similar treatment to what they have done in Ukraine. I guarantee you that left wing parties will be completely obliterated just as they are in Ukraine today. There will be no left wing and labor activism left in Russia (the Communist Party is still the second largest political party today in Russia, just FYI).
On the other hand, if NATO/Ukraine loses, then the spread of fascism will be temporarily halted. However, more importantly, the sanctions are now forcing Russia towards industrializing itself in order to become self-sufficient. This is where there is a chance for labor to fight back.
You see, Russia had been happy to be a neoliberal resource colony to the West by supplying minerals and raw materials, which did not require high level of industrialization and therefore there is less leverage for labor. However, NATO encroachment on Russia and especially the sanctions on Russia are now forcing Russia to industrialize, which means the power of labor can only grow from here, which will lead to growing labor activism demanding for their rights from a state that in turn requires their effort to “defeat the collective West”.
This was what happened in WWI - when a war that national capitalists thought would end by Christmas turned into a dragged out war of attrition, forcing state intervention in the economy which in turn shifted the power dynamics toward labor over the capitalists, as the warring European countries literally had to rely on their labor to win the war. There is a reason why socialist movements exploded during and in the wake of WWI, most prominently in Russia that led to the 1917 Revolution, and then in Italy, which was unfortunately crushed by fascism in 1922.
I feel like my third eye is being forced open like that one scene in A Clockwork Orange (positive intent)
Glad it provoked some thoughts. You don’t have to agree, of course, but over here we like to discuss present day conflicts along with their historical contexts and with material analysis to understand how it will affect socialist effort in the future.
I haven’t got the sources at hand but likely another hexbear user will be by soon to drop some sources on modern Russian anti-fascist prosecution in their country. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think being a leftist in Russia is a cakewalk, but they’re not black vanning communists like Ukraine is. They’re also not putting up statues and waxing poetic about explicit antisemitic fascists and nazis like the Banderite government of Ukraine does.
Just to comment on the “don’t fight Russia” point, consider the situation: Russia is invading with one of their goals being de-Nazification, and if you live in or near Ukraine and are a leftist you surely know that Ukraine is basically the beating heart of Europe’s neo-Nazi problem. A sober look at the Ukrainian military and performance as compared to Russia leads to the inevitable conclusion that if Russia really wants to take some land in Ukraine, they can and will. Does it really make sense to fight shoulder to shoulder with the nazis who hated you before, hate you now, and will kill you or push you into a minefield at the first opportunity? That land is going to be owned by foreign capitalists or Russia, there’s nothing you can do to stop that. If you have to pick up weapons, might as well aid Russia and help them remove the Nazi rot from your country - particularly when Russia’s never had any demonstrable interest in controlling all of Ukraine. All they ever wanted was no NATO membership and an end to the civil war.
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My impression was that Russia had a real problem with reactionaries
To be precise
Russia is extremly Reactionary & yes Russia has real Problems with specific "White supremacy Nazis ,
you have to see it with view on Russias Demographic composition reactionaries and “Bloodline Ethnic Nationalist” are therefore an inherent danger to the State , it cracks down on them … they dont wanna catch the Leprosy that is Ethnic Nationalism , you can look at Ukraine for a Demosntation on how you loose all your Minority Territories if you deciede that those living there are Subhuman and not deserving of Rights … Ethnic fascism is an inherent Realpolitical danger to the Russian state in a Way in which it just isnt in the more “Nationstaty” European States… thats why Russia has a Real Problem with “White Supremacy” , no problems with hunting down LGBTQ+ and this “ethnicity neutral” nazi shit…( and thats also why the West curts Navalny and other russian nazis … they know as well that white supremacy is a danger to to Russian statehood… why not amplify, you know they always post their “russia decolonized” maps …
How dare you talk to these pro-putin ruzzian tankie shill bot fascists??
@HellAwaits@lemm.ee can you link me to a single pro-Putin post please? Just one.
Serious question. I’m genuinely asking you for this in good faith, I want to understand what you’re talking about.
Pro-Putin posts are when you talk about the war without demanding the annihilation of all Ruzzian subhuman orcs.
I’ve seen several comments on hexbear (I can find links if you haven’t seen them) along the lines of “I’m not pro-Putin… BUT we should give him what he wants in order to end the war quicker”, and as an outsider, I think for sure these comments are actually seen as totally pro-Putin by non-hexbear users, due to how trying to appease dictators has ended for Europe in the past.
As someone who’s probably made one of the comments you’re referring to, it’s less “give Putin what he wants” and more “this war is unwinnable for Ukraine, it should cut its losses (territories that largely don’t want to stay in Ukraine anyway) and negotiate.”
Appeasement doesn’t factor in because Russia has already won what it wants, and continuing a bloody stalemate will be worse for Ukraine than for Russia. Ukraine’s position can only get weaker here.
Lol you got nothing
See what I don’t understand is even if this were true, how is this any different than how American liberals treat countries they illegally invade? Your literal only defense against criticism is “Whataboutism!”.
You will not treat America or Americans the same for occupying Afghanistan for 20 years as you treat Russia and Russians for doing something vaguely similar with far less casualties
I am personally against American invasions and am not trying to say the USA is somehow good or benevolent, I was just pointing out why outsiders may perceive some hexbear users as pro-Putin
I understand that but even you must recognize that English speakers outside communities like ours talk about Russia and China with such overwhelming vitriol they would never DREAM talking about western countries with, despite western countries doing all the things eastern countries are accused of but much worse
The whole ‘appeasement doesn’t work’ argument is understandable, but the only alternative is fighting and dying in the tens of millions in the vain hope that a global superpower will lose to a relatively small, fractional country plagued by instability, military incompetence, and corruption. It’s also not really applicable anyway, while Russia is far more interested in security and stability than global domination.
Either way, there is the short-term solution middle ground of “let’s negotiate on terms that help ensure everyone’s future security (including at least some degree of denazification) to prevent further wars”. Which I think is what most Hexbearians would want in terms of peace. Obviously the long-term issue is that nationstates as they exist are inherently warmongering and that cannot be stopped without fundamental change.
while Russia is far more interested in security and stability than global domination.
This is true, but a lot of libs are completely convinced that Putin is a megalomaniac who desires world domination and I dont think they can be shaken from that belief.
Let’s see those links, champ
If you search for Russia on hexbear, you find comments like this quite quickly, like:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3738463
Peace looks like guaranteeing Ukrainian neutrality by taking NATO membership off the table and likely ceding the DPR and LPR to the Russian federation at this point.
https://hexbear.net/comment/3765816
We also get a lot of shock at the fact that some of us think, in that situation, Ukraine would have to give independence and security guarantees to the Donbas & Crimea. Many of us think that given the realities of the civil war there over the last 8 years or so, plus this conflict, it’s probably the only way to prevent retributory ethnic cleansing in the region. It has nothing to do with ideas of fairness or sovereignty or any other nebulous concept; it’s about what’s least worst for the working class there.
I’ve seen many other such comments in the past week lurking here, so it definitely comes up every now and then. I can also see the logic behind these comments, even if I don’t agree with the logic myself.
The question was about pro-Putin. These are clearly anti-war posts. I don’t think you can reasonably describe these as being pro-Putin or even anti-Ukraine.
As others have said, the vast majority of us ARE anti-Ukraine and that might indeed sound like pro-Russia to outsiders, but these posts are not it. We just want fascists removed from power in Ukraine and peace returned to the Ukrainian people. There hasn’t been peace in Ukraine since 2014.
neither of these comments are pro-putin
This clearly isn’t pro-putin though it’s anti-war. Those people are intentionally conflating being pro-putin with any attempt to stop the war because they are bloodthirsty liberals detached from the horror this is causing and crucially - they want the war to continue.
None of us are happy this war is happening. The position of trying to get it to end as quickly as possible through any means isn’t pro-putin. It’s pro-human lives.
I’d like to point out some historical examples of how that argument has been used time and time again to push aside any attempts at diplomacy and justify what in hindsight were plainly needless wars of aggression, but which seemed quite justified to people at the time (at least when it started).
I think many of us have more complex views on the conflict, but most people aren’t interested in hearing us out or learning about this history of the conflict, so it’s easier to just say, “Look, practically speaking, Ukraine doesn’t have the capabilities to reclaim all their territories and it’s just going to cause a lot of pointless death if they tried.” And I do believe that’s true, but I’d still be calling for peace if I didn’t.
There’s solely using Umberto Eco’s work to understand fascism and then there’s this. The whole 2016 election didn’t ruin the definition of fascism, but it certainly ruined most spaces to have conversations about fascism.
I know a lot of this shit is deliberate from fascists who have a lot to gain from muddying the water, but it’s still frustrating as hell.
Like how are we supposed to have a conversation with people who think the conditions of the border camps are significantly better under Biden than Trump?
This is nothing new, I knew people IRL who believed this about the subreddit.
Including a friend who’d been one of the primary forces pulling me to the left. It was like watching them turn into a liberal in real time.
I saw a hexbear in the closet and it had a baby and it looked at me
guess they’re mad that we don’t care about being called tankies anymore
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For the record, I fully support the use of military force to subdue the Hungarian uprising and it should have happened before the uprising started murdering Jewish people in the street.
Which makes me a tankie.
Stalin was too timid. If he acted sooner then the pogroms wouldn’t have started.
