A summary of what happened between Blahaj.Zone and Hexbear.Net

Draegur, 10 months ago

I like hexbear, but i suppose it comes down to a rather … “abnormal” type of “liking”.

There is definitely a pattern of asshole behavior from hexbear users, but they’re fun to verbally spar with and they make Lemmy feel lively.

In the same way that capsaicin causes spicy food to be spicy by stimulating nerves that are intended to warn us of pain and injury while in fact it’s actually harmless, I find hexbear’s vociferous users to be endearingly abrasive.

Because turnabout is fair play, they’re fair game to be rude to. By choosing to interact in a hostile nature, they are consenting to receive hostility. It’s only fair. If they can’t handle it, then they shouldn’t be dishing it out. However, the exchange must be proportional and bigotry can not be allowed.

“Tankie” is not a slur any more than “Lib” is. If they honestly believe that it’s socially acceptable to use “Lib” as an insult, then it’s sheer hypocrisy to object to “Tankie”. But all other known slurs, ableist slurs, sexist slurs, racial and ethnic slurs, are out of bounds and should be reported, and offenders ignored.

If they don’t like this arrangement, then they have no business acting like they do outside of their instance and defederation may in fact be necessary.

Tabitha99, 10 months ago

“Liberal” is the name that supporters of liberal capitalism use to refer to themselves. It has a precise and accepted meaning.
“Tankie” has no defined meaning, which is why it is not used by communists. In its vagueness it is used to associate Marxists with crypto-fascists and non-Marxist ideas, and to obfuscate the meaning of Marxism. And in so far as it associates the kind of people who died to liberate Auschwitz with the kind of people who built that place, it is offensive.
If there is no malign intent behind the term ‘tankie’, then why does anyone use that term instead of communist? Why doesn’t 196 have “fuck communists” in their banner instead of “fuck tankies”?

oatscoop, 10 months ago

Tankie has a defined meaning, there’s even a Wikipedia article explaining the origin of the name:

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

Draegur, 10 months ago

The term Tankie has a clear usage pattern, and it refers to both the action and defending of the action of authoritarian regimes using military assets (such as tanks) to systematically inflict violence upon civilian populations.

It first came into use after an authoritarian government sent troops and tanks to overturn the election of a candidate they didn’t like (in Prague 1968) and the vapid simps of that authoritarian government clapped like seals in mindless automatic support of it.

Other events that follow this pattern:

• When the Communist Party of Kampuchea purged over a million people between 1975 and 1979 because “reasons” (usually paranoia),
• When on 1989-06-04 the Chinese government declared martial law, deployed troops and tanks to occupy Tiananmen Square and slaughter the hundreds of student protestors there (that figure according to the Chinese government; other parties allege higher casualty numbers),
• When Petro Poroshenko shelled his own cities in 2014 and bragged that he intentionally wanted to maim and terrorize the civilians there for the mere “crime” of living in the same municipality where rebels allegedly lived, while not commonly associated with the term, definitely fits the bill

If you don’t LIKE that people refer to these recurring patterns of state-actualized brutality (and the rhetorical support and defense thereof) as “Tankie”, WELL that sounds like a skill issue. GIT GUD.

aperson, 10 months ago

Makes me happy to be on beehaw where we never had to deal with hexbear in the first place.

Notnotmike, 10 months ago

Is that why I haven’t heard of them before? I switch between Beehaw and Programming.dev and I just noticed them everywhere on the latter

Politics aside, I find their comments to be callous, elitist, and rude. And I heard “a few bad apples” arguments but honestly it doesn’t seem to be a few. All of their posts in my feed are aggressive. And have huge “look what this idiot dolt said before I owned him” energy

If admins aren’t willing to defederate then I’m happy Sync has an instance-wide block

Rhabuko, 10 months ago

My best wishes to the Admins, the whole thing must have been exhausting and depressing. I purposefully stayed out of the entire discussion since I’m not a member of Blahaj. I think it’s for the better, because I have read a lot in hexbear and the people there are absolute toxic and unhinged. The mentioned Lemm.ee thread was absolutely swarmed with people from hexbear. Like, 3/4 of the comments must have been them. Anyway, wish you all the best.

xuxebiko, 10 months ago

Reminds me of the often-told story of the punk bar bartender and nazis

based on @iamragesparkle;s tweets

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, oh,ok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

Entertainmeonly, 10 months ago

That may be the best story I read all week. Thanks. Ha “and then he went back to ignoring me.”

SgtSilverLining, 10 months ago

I’ve had two major issues with these guys. While not necessarily worth defederating everyone, I really don’t want to deal with hexbear because:

1. ALL of their content is political. When they first showed up on my feed, I watched what posts/communities came up and how their users interacted on non hexbear posts. I’ve done my best to remove all politics from my social media. These guys only talked about politics and would go to other communities to turn a normal conversation political.
2. Everything was extreme and obnoxious. I don’t understand why everyone keeps calling them polite. There was a constant “you’re with us or you’re against us”/“my beliefs are always right” behavior that was really annoying, especially in a public space that wasn’t polarized before they got there. It reminded me of this one girl from middle school who would walk into a room and loudly talk about whatever she wanted until all the other conversations petered out.

They’re more than welcome to behave like that in their home, but they can’t go to a public space and expect everyone to cater to their beliefs.

Eccitaze, 10 months ago

Not a part of blahaj, but the impression I’ve gotten from what I’ve seen (primarily in the lemm.ee megathread) is that for better or worse hexbear takes the concept of radical transparency and debate to its fullest extreme. For the better, it can produce some intensely thought provoking discussions–I’ve had to reevaluate and reconsider my own personal ethics more in the past week or so than I have in the past few years.

But the downside is that it’s Just. So. Exhausting. I fully agree that everything they discuss has a political undertone to it in some way. It feels like they just cannot turn off, and I always have to be on my guard when they get involved in any discussion, even if it’s nominally about a completely non-political topic. Even when they’re making high effort posts instead of spamming emojis and pig poop balls, every discussion feels like a minefield, where the slightest misstep gets you punished with a “here’s a response that implies/outright states you’re woefully misinformed at best and a protofascist nazi at worst, here’s a link to an obscure book written by a communist scholar 50 years ago that you should read before even trying to discuss this topic.” Hexbear getting involved in a discussion is the discourse equivalent of a group playing 4-player FFA Smash Bros. with items on and someone rolls up and demands 1v1, no items, tournament ruleset only.

I feel like I just cannot relax when hexbear is active in a discussion, and it’s not even like I really disagree with their points–yes, the US is too powerful, yes, capitalism is bad–but I strongly disagree with their conclusions (supporting China and Russia because it weakens the US is the equivalent of voting for Trump because Biden/Hillary isn’t liberal enough.) It’s just that they are so laser-focused on debate and so ready to believe the worst in everyone (they called using “top kek” a holocaust denier dogwhistle FFS, that shit originated from freaking world of warcraft, and was popularized on 4chan back when it was just a shithole instead of a racist shithole! I occasionally use it because I’m an elder millennial and I like making dated references!) that even if you support their overall goals and philosophy, you still walk away mentally exhausted because of how carefully you had to parse your words to avoid stepping on a landmine.

Rozauhtuno, 10 months ago

Not entirely true, before the defederation I browsed their communities and I’ve seen casual threads about manga, recovery from Alcoholism, talking about insects… and everyone was polite there.

It’s just that when it comes to politics they get EXTREMELY loud, and everything else is drown out.

lone_faerie, 10 months ago

Honestly, where I’ve seen the flooding of politics is outside of their own communities. Their instance is already an echo chamber, so there’s no need to spread propaganda. But as soon as they venture to other instances, they need to make sure everyone knows how they feel, and if you disagree or just don’t want to talk about it, they instantly turn to personal attacks

photonic_sorcerer, 10 months ago

Haha… They can deal out the punishment but they can’t take it themselves… Thought so. Never in my life have I been called a slavery apologist, but 10 mins in hexbear was all I needed.