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  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Hexbear is fascist. They’re pretending to be tankies, but every single post on there is right-wing and bigoted. It’s so damn obvious.

    These people absolutely just make shit up relentlessly.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

      libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)

      e.g.

      unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”

      libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”

      unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”

      libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”

      leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”

      libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”

      • charlie [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The concept of a national deficit is so hard for me to grasp.

        So a deficit is when the government spends more money than they take in from taxes, cool. So government just raises taxes when they end up doing that, sort of like how I up my tax contribution if I end up owing at the end of the year. Wait, they only raise taxes on the working class? Because the capitalist class, through their money, is able to organize and consolidate power? That’s shit but surely it doesn’t get worse.

        Okay, so where do they get the money to spend if they’re spending more than they take in? It’s gotta come from somewhere, I’m sure they just print more and that can’t be bad. Oh, so when they print more money that makes the existing money worth less… Well that goes for the capitalists too, so at least that’s even. Oh, you mean that they get to park their money in appreciating assets while mine gets spent day to day and my wage stagnates so my purchasing power and meager savings just fucking declines… It surely can’t get worse.

        Yeah, I remember that appreciating assets thing. Get it over with, how does that fuck me over? So the government issues bonds, basically guaranteeing a set return on the money capitalists spend on them. How can the government guarantee that? Isn’t the market too volatile for that kind of guarantee? Ah, of course they would make up the difference with taxes, which I just learned are dis-proportionately paid by the working class.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.

        They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.

        And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?

        And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate.

          The bit where they had Bush giving candy to Michelle Obama six fucking years after the “end” of the Iraq War.

          “He has the presence of mind and the sense of humor to bring me a mint,” Obama said of the former president, per ABC7. “And he made it a point to give me that mint right then and there, and that’s the beauty of George Bush.”

          Actual quote from Michelle Obama.

          In October of this year, Obama discussed her close relationship with the former president while making an appearance on TODAY to interview with Bush’s daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.

          “I’d love if we as a country could get back to the place where we didn’t demonize people who disagreed with us. Because that’s essentially the difference between Republicans and Democrats,” she began. "That doesn’t make me evil. And that doesn’t make him, you know, stupid—it’s just a disagreement and that’s how I feel about your father. You know? He’s a beautiful, funny, kind, sweet man.”

          HE MURDERED A MILLION PEOPLE OBAMA!

          (I never know how to refer to the spouses of major political figures. First name, for women especially, seems demeaning but not in a useful way, while last name is confusing, and fuck me if I’m putting “Mrs”.)

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Hadn’t thought about Clinton bombing that pharma factory in Sudan for a while. : |

          Try telling them that there was no political reality where Russia would allow Ukraine to sieze control of Crimea and had it to NATO. Watch them seethe at you for denying the holiness of national sovereignty. Watch their minds bounce off the idea of strategic interest like a duck bouncing off a jetski. Oh, and try telling them that pretty much everyone in Crimea in some way worked for or worked to support the Russian Black Sea Fleet, so Russia didn’t have to invade because they already had a huge military base there. They just took the old flags down and put new ones up.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              You know that is one I haven’t seen any libs reckon with? Most of them are firmly convinced Russia invaded Ukraine because Putler is evil with no real analysis beyond that, but the fact that Ukraine has been yelling about joining NATO for years, while NATO has repeatedly said that will never happen, should have raised some kind of flag at some point.

      • yoink [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

        all the old putin tough-guy memes are plenty of proof of this - you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing that one picture of him on a horse

        • Sephitard9001 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          To defend Azov, I’ve had a lib send me a picture of Putin riding a horse where it’s reins had a metal swastika buckle and tried to imply that Putin is a nazi using the same logic but

          1. That wasn’t Putin’s horse, he was borrowing it on a visit.

          2. His visit was to Mongolia where Buddhism is the largest religion.

          I expect swastikas in Buddhist countries. Swastikas in Europe only mean one thing.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis.

        Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

        I honestly cannot remember how they talked about him in the before times. It certainly wasn’t with this level of mindlessness, but I’m also pretty certain they hated him back them too.

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          it depends whether you define the “before times” as pre-2022 or pre-2014. I think before 2014 he was just another world leader to some extent. he was initially hated a lot post-2014 I remember but because the invasion of Crimea was so quick (relative to this invasion) it was hard for a ton of self-reinforcing narratives to be set up in the media, and this was before the rise of calling everybody a tankie or calling out China on every political post, so within a couple years it was back to “strong-man Putin”. Russiagate obviously made his reputation tumble but if you weren’t really into that, you could still have been neutral on him leading up to 2022.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve spoken about this before, but they think that everything is a binary good/bad. Liberals = good and Conservatives = bad.

      We clearly aren’t liberals, so we can’t fit in that “good” box, so we must go in the “bad/conservative” box instead.

      That’s it. That’s their rationale behind this. “They aren’t liberals so they must be conservatives.” Words mean nothing to a liberal, it’s all about vibes.

      • FakeNewsForDogs [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It really is pretty much just this for a lot of them. Maybe the slightly more sophisticated among them will call us like “useful idiots in service of the right wing” or something along those lines. Not a lot of rigorous thought goes into this shit most of the time. It’s basically a disney understanding of politics.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          It’s fiction brain. They need the real world to be full of simple good guys and bad guys, because they’ve always been a “good guy” their whole life, and if being good or bad was based on actions and nuance and not just a simplistic “We are the good guy team” they might need to consider if they aren’t actually as wonderful a person as they think they are.

    • LaBellaLotta [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.

      I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.

      They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.

      All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.

        Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.

        I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Sankara’s constant reminder is great but I still don’t quite know what I should be focusing on to break through this. It’s like… What creates an internationalist? What stops someone from only caring about what’s within their own borders? If we figure it out we make this all much easier on ourselves.

            • grym [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Helping the person realising that the international approach makes a lot more sense and is much better at explaining their lives?

              So many topics now, if not basically all of them, are international in nature. Their origin, explanation and development is international in nature. Understanding why the economy is shit, why inflation, why war, why your national politics are dependant on international pressures , why ecological topics all require international understanding, etc etc. To me, the realisation that the international point of view was just better and easier to explain and understand the world forced me to learn because I wanted explanations, and on important topics (less aesthetic or cultural ones) the lazy reactionary narratives aren’t enough because they break down, don’t fit or don’t provide good solutions.

              Also, interacting with the rest of the world. Talking with non-westerners about politics has always been enlightening and better, in my case. Like, at work, all the colleagues I talk politics with all the time are immigrants in some way, they have an outside look on my country and once I start talking about geopolitics and how insane the westerners are they open up and the conversations are incredibly interesting. The western colleagues sitting next to us at the coffee break always learn a lot, they see people who know what they are talking about, confidently, they see colleagues who are usually superficially shy and not too talkative (gotta be careful what you talk about as an immigrant to westerners) open up and share things about their lives and they realize there is an entire world out there they know nothing about.

              I think the majority of people can be reached in some way, the difficult ones are people such as the ones on reddit or Lemmy, they are not casually reactionary, they have been deeply propagandised and have internalised those things, they defend them, they identify culturally and personally with them so its much harder.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          I saw one in here recently who hopefully had a bit of an epiphany moment. They were defending the US’s actions with a “doesn’t everyone just want their country to be strong?” kind of rhetoric. But they didn’t seem to be a conscious national chauvinist, they just seemed to assume that’s what everyone was and didn’t even know there were other options.

          I hope they’ve been lurking and learning since then.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            We should physically tell people to come lurk. Get people into a culture of visiting daily, learning. This was a successful tactic employed by the chan sites and it worked, “lurk more” turned into people learning site culture and adhering to it.

            Obviously for them it worked in getting people to adhere to nonsense ideas and behave in awful ways. But the same principle can be put to use for good instead. Personally I’d like to see something like a “7day liberal challenge”, where we challenge liberals to visit the site 7 days in a row consistently to “test their views” and surely, if their views are solid they will not waiver. For most people I think they’ll shift significantly on a lot of things through this, and many might become active users.

            • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Channer culture has become a staple of the internet because they use such successful tactics for getting people to adopt the behaviour.

              I think you’re absolutely onto something here.

            • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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              Great idea. I’ve taken to telling a few people to come over and see what we’re like, that we’re willing to answer questions, etc.

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          You know… I don’t know if it was the tipping point. That’s hard to say. But this was a major tipping point for me: knowing that all those great welfare programs in any liberal democracy would have to be funded by hyper-exploiting the global south… that shook some of the last remnants of liberalism out of me.

          It’s unacceptable. That conclusion only leaves revolution and the need for a coherent theory that has been shown to work. Marxism is the theory and, to put it simply, either we all get free or none of us do. Makes it a lot easier to empathise not only with other people but also with the socialist struggle in other places. It’s more of a bridge than a stepping stone to class consciousness.

          There are likely a lot of people susceptible to this view as it’s common in the west to e.g. tell kids not to waste food because there are starving people in poorer countries. It doesn’t fully make sense even as a kid. It’s well-meaning but ultimately it’s a liberal performance. It means that many, many people are hardwired to think about the damage caused by their consumption (or lack of it, here). All they need is a radical analysis to see why liberalism can’t solve the problem that they already accept and want to fix.

          Not an easy task, still. In pedagogical terms, revolutionaries need to identify this and other ‘threshold concepts’. Then make them visible and comprehensible for potential comrades.

      • ZapataCadabra [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        American high school books usually have a segment about “authoritarianism” which is basically just there to say Hitler and Stalin were the same.

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.

        If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:

        1. You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point

        2. You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov

          • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.

            It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.

            It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.

            I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.

          • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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            It’s ultimately fairly vague and more of a “vibes check” of fascism than a concrete understanding of how it festers in a country. It doesn’t let us stop fascism, it just gives libs ammo to say “(insert enemy country here) ticks 7 of 10 boxes, so they’re 70% fascist!”

            It is a good starting point to explain to people that fascism does have things you can look out for, but it really shouldn’t be someone’s only resource for understanding Fascism.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Hexbear is fascist. They’re pretending to be tankies, but every single post on there is right-wing and bigoted. It’s so damn obvious.

    You all have been found out.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Hexbear might actually be one of the most non-bigoted places on the internet. we are militantly against bigotry. no epic logical debates here, you just get smacked in the fucking face by a banhammer if you try that shit here

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          I’m not sure quite what to think about the Baltics. Obviously fuck their governments, and the numerous institutions pushing Holocaust revisionism and denial and re-writing 20th century history. But blanket-condemning little countries like that, no matter how shitty their government is, feels different from blanket condemning the US or UK. They’re under the NATO umbrella but despite being little pissant countries with fash governments they’re not exerting hegemonic power and are at most expendable speed bumps for Imperialism. I can’t imagine it’s fun or say being a dissident in the Baltics. hell, I don’t even think it’s legal, is it? Yeah, looks like they’ve got some blanket laws they use to hunt down Communists and, probably, anyone they think is communist

          Idk, I gotta think about it.

                • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah. The idea of a country that’s the size of a medium suburb having any role in global geopolitics is funny. Like yeah, guys, that’s great that you’re in NATO. By the way Dallas, Phoenix, and San Anton are all going to join too, and they’re going to have more clout than you by a silly margin.

          • The weirdest thing about the baltics is how they love to act as rabid dogs for nato/US same-picture but in the event of an actual war between nato and russia the only purpose they serve is to give the ghouls in DC and the pentagon a couple extra minutes to get to the bunker

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              I ran in to 1 (one) Baltic resident who was somehow convinced that their military would be a significant obstacle for Russia in the event of a war and I suspect that nationalism might have been involved in clouding their judgement. I honestly doubt NATO would even respond to a Russian invasion in the little fringe countries if they weren’t already interested in a hot war.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Eh. The Baltics are very small countries with… what’s the nice way to say this… Fascist collaborationist governments that have worked hard to control the narrative, erase the crimes of the 30s and 40s, and create a questionable view of 20th century history. It’s like any other country - Shitheads, none shitheads, and regular people in between. The official government line and the views of many citizens are hard right-wing, holocaust denial, and support for Nazi collaborators. You’re going to run in to a lot of fash and fash-adjacent assholes.

            Edited bc I realized I’ve been saying Balkans instead of Baltics all day.

            • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I think you mean Baltic.

              Just gonna also throw out that a ton of the world’s stateless people live in the Baltic countries because they denied ethnic minorities citizenship after the fall of the USSR unlike every other former Soviet country. IIRC Lithuania isn’t involved in that at least, I think just Estonia and Latvia.

                • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  I believe most countries have signed an agreement never to create a stateless person due to how vulnerable they are to abuse.

                  That’s a why, for example, the ukkk claims that Shamina Begum was a Bangladeshi citizen when they revoked her citizenship.

              • NoGodsNoMasters [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                Yeah it’s pretty bad. You could conceivably have had parents born in the country and been born in the country yourself and still be denied citizenship in 1991 because they refused to recognise anything Soviet

    • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      the fact they think so many trans people are out and about fascists is fucking wild. plus they talk about blahaj being ran by trans people, which is true, but also ignore that the trans community on lemmy is largely here, and for very obvious reasons

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Response 1 to that:

      “I believe you, but i honestly can’t find anything fascist on their front page right now”

      Lol maybe they shouldn’t believe a claim that has no evidence!

      Response to that:

      “Give it time. You’ll stumble across a pro-Putin post eventually.”

      Since when do leftists support a capitalist like Putin? This is what late-stage Russia Derangement Syndrome looks like.

      • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        It’s also a motte and bailey fallacy that the internet debate experts are mysteriously refraining from jumping on. “All posts are fascist” != “if you browse long enough you will eventually see a fascist post”.

        So mad I can’t post my mspaint graphic over there now rage-cry

    • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      I have literally never once seen a pro-Putin post.

      Really? I see so many anti-Clinton, anti-Biden and anti-Democrat posts here. You literally supported Russia’s illegal electoral interference to undermine our democracy. You were the reason we got Trump. You are pro-Putin, just admit it.

      • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Is this an actual bot? You got me if so.

        If not: USA does bad thing

        But they do bad thing

        USA bad thing is worse

        USA tries to be good

        USA kills millions and destabilizes the world

        You wouldn’t vote for harm reduction

        “Harm reduction”

        Conservative bad

        Oh here we go, it’s the most important election again, right?

        Putin’s puppet

        Ukraine should surrender the two pieces of land so they can stop fighting

        Not how it works

        I wouldn’t go to bat for a place that has no interest in helping a socialist project. It’s not my war

        Incrementslism

        We’re incrementing away with shit like abortion restrictions

        Conservatives

        It happened with democratic majority

        Not supermajority

        Lucy and the football

        If you voted for them-

        “If you voted for them 🙄”

        All Putin’s talking points, see, Hexbear be like

        See, not a single leftward consession. Do you think it was brunch losers who canvased for Biden? Professional losers

        I hate you

        Dumb lib

        • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          that’s not how it works line in regards to the Donbas leaving Ukraine really gets to me. They use it constantly whenever you you bring up what is the most likely outcome of that war. How do they think it works?

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            They genuinely refuse to acknowledge reality in that respect, here’s a quote from some lib in another thread:

            Ukraine is absolutely willing to talk about peace, thing is Russia has to leave the country first.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      “Pro-Putin” to them just means not being ok with the west sacrificing every last man women and child in Ukraine for profit. Because Putin Bad Man.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        It’s pretty wild watching some people go around in circles from “We need to end the war!” “So there should be a negotiated peace?” “No, you tankie fuck, we need to crush Putler!” “So… you want to keep throwing Ukrainians in to the grinder until you run out?” “No, we need to end the war!” “So, there should be a negotiated peace?” and on and on from there until they become frustrated by your inability to understand that if they just manifest it hard enough Putler will run out of missiles and the Russian army will collapse and Ukraine will counter offense or some bs like that.

        • Beaver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          To paraphrase a Daily Show quote: “You’ve confused a negotiated settlement with always getting everything you want"

          I don’t know how they think this war is going to end. Anything other than a complete Russian capitulation will seem unacceptably morally compromised appeasement.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Based on absolutely no solid information I assume that Ukraine has to collapse at some point. I didn’t get the impression they were doing very well, and news reports say they’ve been struggling to feed their guns for a long time. NATO is already losing interest and a trickle of a few tanks a year from now it’s going to change the course of the war.

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          Their favorite argument is “the war would end if Putler just gave up and pulled his troops out”

          And it’s just… Yeah sure, that would be fine I guess, but there’s like a zero percent chance of that happening. So if you actually want this shit to end you have to come up with a realistic solution. It’s almost as if the world doesn’t work on thoughts and prayers.

          • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            This is also incredibly naive.

            A strongly militarised contingent of ultranationalist groups has been in a state of war against Eastern Ukraine. They’re more powerful than before, they have the backing of the state, and they’ve got a taste for blood.

            If Putin pulled out tomorrow, the idea that they’d just demobilise and that they’re wouldn’t be any reprisal actions against the people in the Donbas region is just… unfathomably ignorant of recent history and the conditions in the Ukraine.

            Imo there’s zero chance that if Putin pulled out that we’d see an end to the war. It would simply morph back into a civil war situation again.

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              They’d be totally fine with that though. The media wouldn’t tell them to care about it, so they wouldn’t, just like they didn’t in the 8 years before the SMO started.

              They only care if the designated “villain of the week” is doing a bad thing, otherwise it might as well not exist to libs.

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            Their favorite argument is “the war would end if Putler just gave up and pulled his troops out”

            And it’s just… Yeah sure, that would be fine I guess, but there’s like a zero percent chance of that happening.

            And what’s the probability of a state just giving up territory?

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              Pretty high.
              They were negotiating a peacedeal that was so close Boris Johnson had to go immediately to Ukraine and stop Zelensky.

              Now tell me: If large parts of a country is occupied, and those parts have voted for separation from said country, and the country is unable to continue fighting, what do you think will happen?

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        It’s brain-melting that these people who care so deeply about the lives of Ukrainians and their right to self determination will about-face the moment that you raise the issue of the state of civil war in Eastern Ukraine was in since 2014 and the right to self-determination for people in the Donbas region.

        They’ll literally go out of their way to call you an apologist for Putin and shit. Like, bruh, Ukrainians have been dying for nearly a decade now and you only started giving a shit about it when the media told you to, and even then it’s only a curated, selective concern for the lives of Ukrainians.

        Free Hong Kong! Free Tibet! Free Hawaii! Free Puerto Rico!! Free Donetsk and Lugansk!

        • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
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          Not to mention that war with Russia could have easily been avoided if at any point in those 8 years of Ukraine killing civilians, it had lived up to the promise it made in Minsk and Minsk II of just giving the eastern regions autonomy and a vote on self-determination. That was always the only major demand from Russia.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          Yeah, the sheer hypocrisy of the position is just disgusting. Hell, I doubt most of them even knew anything about Ukraine before this war started, except for maybe some vague “Russia stole Crimea, that bad.”

    • ratboy [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      I really don’t get how people can’t understand that it’s possible for a person to support something and also admit it’s flaws. Like, people are really out here not understanding dialectical thinking. It IS possible for something to be two things at once.

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    Hexbear is fascist. They’re pretending to be tankies, but every single post on there is right-wing and bigoted. It’s so damn obvious.

    I thought the entire point of libs screeching “tankie” was to conflate principled communists and fascists as being the same thing.

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      “During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative.” -Michael Parenti

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Thought terminating cliches on the right - “Tankie!” “Putler!” “Genocide Denier!”

        “Thought has terminated” cliche on the left - This guy in 1986 succinctly explained why nothing you say will ever get through the reinforced liberal brain-pan

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    I thought lemmy.ca defederated from hexbear, why do they care about this lol. You’re living rent-free in their heads.

    One good thing this federation-stir has done is make the liberals on lemmy realize they’re not actually the majority and there’s a whole world out there. They really thought that if they blocked lemmygrad they were not going to see communist stuff anymore and as we all know, if I can’t see it then it doesn’t exist, and then bam, hexbear appears in their rear-view mirror.

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    holy fucking shit

    Yup, don’t know how that’s not obvious to everyone at this point. They just shit on anything western/American to be contrarians. China is good cuz MURICA bad. I’m not a fan of imperialistic western behavior either but that doesn’t make China a positive influence on the world stage.

    I really thought more liberals-leaning-left had become more aware after 2020. I guess if you can’t abide the anti-capitalist perspective, it’s quite impossible to fight against the propaganda currents.

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      shitting on the global hegemonic imperialist power into which the exploited labor of billions feeds is “contrarian”. of course.

      I’m not a fan of imperialistic western behavior either

      oh no, they better not follow it up with a b–

      but

      lmfao.

      doesn’t make China a positive influence on the world stage

      I’m a little confused by what metric China isn’t a positive influence on the world stage. sure, call them 1985 george ornell aminal farm authoritaritarians all you want inside their country, continue to make social credit score jokes like a dipshit, whatever, but China hasn’t declared war on a country in decades and they’ve actively pumped one trillion dollars into infrastructure projects in developing countries, forgiving debts as often as not. meanwhile, the US pumps trillions of dollars into murdering civilians into several of those same countries.

      • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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        they’ve actively pumped one trillion dollars into infrastructure projects in developing countries

        I think it’s important to point out it’s not the dogshit kind of infrastructure that Western dogs build, only building railroads from mines directly to ports to more easily steal the Global South’s resources, China’s actually helping build infrastructure that interconnects these countries economies so they can actually develop.

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        sure, call them 1985 george ornell aminal farm authoritaritarians all you want inside their country, continue to make social credit score jokes like a dipshit, whatever, but …

        I get your point but this isn’t a consistent expectation. They’re unserious people who haven’t got a coherent outlook on countries like China, they accept an aggregate of headlines and reddit comments or tweets they come across. MSM doesn’t portray China as a force for good on the foreign scene, in fact it uses vagueries to scaremonger, so it’s natural that somebody who’s fallen for CCP genocide, opression whatever narratives won’t look into the facts of the matter and see the good the PRC does.

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      Iraqi who saw the US turn their family, friends, and neighbors into bloody puddles and their homes into rubble: You know what, I’m thinking the US is kinda bad.

      Hexbears: I have solidarity for this person.

      Lemmy.shitlib: CONTRARIAN

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      They started to, then the US began spending billions on anti-China propaganda in around 2018, so they’ve swung back to believing everything bad the US says about China is automatically true.

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    The narcissism is strong here. Everything in the world revolves around them. We federated just to trick them. They are the main character of the universe and we are out to get them. Everything is about them.

    • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      Going into conversations with the staunch belief that you are correct and that evidence is ad hoc. You can either convert to my way of thinking or be foolish.

      Nuance that changed my mind could never change theirs when it’s spoken from my mouth. It’s actually deeply frustrating for me and makes me feel like I’m not being listened to no matter how much I try to validate them until the anger is pushed down in my mind. The incuriosity that they might be wrong, the ignorance that the world may not be as it seems to you, or the lack of awareness of what a persuasive argument looks like makes me want to detach from a person. I try with active listening to be able to see other points of view so when I don’t get it in return it sucks. It just so happens that’s also how libs talk to lefties on some “Bernie is my abusive grandpa” shit.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        Going into conversations with the staunch belief that you are correct and that evidence is ad hoc. You can either convert to my way of thinking or be foolish.

        Fantastic way to sum up their thought process. I’ve rambled inanely about it in the past, but there it is, just in two sentences. They refuse to consider that their position is an incorrect one. I wish I knew how to get people out of that mindset, because people like that are the prime target for grifters and con artists.

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    Honestly I think we could be a little bit more critical in our critical support to AES states but any support for them will be seen as supporting “authoritarianism” by libs. Propaganda runs deep.

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      Word. It’s hard to stay nuanced when you’re constantly beating back bad faith crap but the effort needs to be made. Sucks that it takes one sentence to scream “TANKIES” and like eight pages to explain anything real.

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        And bigoted and racist too, they like to say that one. Because that is what triggers liberals to censor stuff.

        Edit: And even when you prove it to them, they still think you’re wrong because “they saw it”.

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      It would also be easier to be more critical if the USSR hadn’t collapsed and we still had 2 major socialist powers instead of having to put all our current hope in China to give socialists worldwide breathing room to organize and actually have our own revolutions

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        WHY WON’T THEY SAY THE COUNTRY THAT HASN’T EXISTED IN 30 YEARS AND THE COUNTRY THAT HASN’T INVADED ANOTHER COUNTRY SINCE 1979 ARE BAD!?>!>>!!>>!>!?!@#L!@@!K$JL!@{#WKL:RJFwelk;’

        • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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          because they’re evil teenager tankies but don’t worry they’ll grow out of it one day smuglord

        • As a thigh high cat-girl, I really don’t appreciate that it’s turned us into a stereotype. It’s genuinely upsetting. Only my online friends and the folks I’m close to were supposed to know that about me and now it’s the first thing anyone assumes.

        • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          Sorry to be blunt here, but i find rejection of catgirl culture has mysogynist undertones waaaaayyy too often. That goes for anything that’s publicly considered to be too girly and i’m not having that. That’s not directed at you, but it absolutely is directed at people like ContraPoints who suffers from so much internalised transmysogyny that she can only live out her catgirl side ironically, and it is even moreso directed at r/196 and other cis liberals complaining about the issue because it makes them uncomfortable. Trans girls have a right to be saccharine and cutesy online, many of us need to go through a phase were we violently reject masculinity and that can’t always involve becoming a man-hating feminist like it did for me, it can also mean lots of uWu posting and that’s ok as well. It’s also worth considering that to demand from members of your community not to be a stereotype because it makes us look bad is a form of assimilationism, it is not compatible with approaches aiming for actual queer liberation.

          Like i said, i don’t intend this as an accusation towards you. I’m just saying that critique of catgirl culture has problematic aspects to it and that i have to reject it when it comes from certain people.

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            These are all very valid points, thank you.

            Assimilationism is bullshit pandering to people who’ll still hate us all at the end of the day. So, sorry if my previous comments gave that vibe.

            Love my trans comrades, simple as. trans-heart

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              Don’t get me wrong, i get your point and it’s honestly exhausting to chat with these girls if you’re like me and don’t have a folder full of anime gifs with an entire subfolder dedicated to headpats, i’m just saying that being queer should be about accepting the harmless weirdness of other people.

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      There is a lot of pot, kettle, and “through a lens darkly” going on. It’s just that, you know, we’re right, while they’re killing the planet.

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    For me, the point was to engage in other communities and talk to others outside of hexbear. I’ve done that and shared my opinions on things, from Android to homes to formula one to politics. If they disagree with my opinions that’s fine, but it was never to “fuck shit up”, I’ve always been genuine in my interactions.