I’m trans and I really don’t want to federated with these people if their mods are defending the -tard suffix and they aren’t getting de-modded and banned. I also don’t want to be federated with them if they ban critiquing western chauvinism.

Someone who is an admin and with more of a level head than me RN please talk to their admins about it.

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    125
    ·
    1 year ago

    Anybody else think all these lib instances that are shidding and farding because they’re outnumbered by our powerful posters won’t be here in a year? These people are all just temporarily annoyed redditors and they’ll be back on reddit before Christmas.

      • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        47
        ·
        1 year ago

        Definitely possible, but I suspect the admins of instances that stall out will shut them down due to cost and management time required to keep them alive. Of course, they could also go the raddle direction and their admins could just make a bunch of sockpuppet accounts to talk to themselves with, so…

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      1 year ago

      100%. The only reason to stick with a shitty Reddit clone instead of just going back to Reddit is because you can’t use Reddit. “Can’t use Reddit” isn’t a technical limitation but a social and political one. The main people who will actually stick with Lemmy are:

      1. Socialists

      2. Unhinged fascists (cryptofascists are okay on Reddit)

      3. People who engage in illegal shit (piracy, shoplifting, drug dealing, pedo shit)

      You can use this to predict whether an instance will completely stagnate and how fast an instance will become fascist. Beehaw are shriveling into irrelevance because they shut the door for all three. Lemmy.world will become fascist because they defed from 1 and 3. And once Blahaj shut the door on us, the chaser infestation in their community will only grow stronger, and their instance will eventually fall to unhinged fascists as their instance rots from within.

      • CriticalResist8 [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        I see the critical point somewhere else. It’s just not very fun managing an instance that gets bigger without getting anything in return. Especially once you establish values like freedom of speech and opinion and claim everyone is welcome to make an account, until people you don’t want on your instance start joining. And that’s when it spirals out of control, you start banning them because they make your experience as an admin worse, but then your users are not actually beholden to your relatively tiny instance and can go anywhere else. You’re not Reddit where all the stuff happens, you’re a lemmy instance and there’s others right there.

        Places like beehaw and lemmy world are now getting a lot of donations and maybe they’ll start paying themselves with it as a side hustle, so we’ll see. The reason places like lemmygrad and hexbear are fun to browse is because we’re generally all in agreement. I don’t mean that we don’t disagree and form an echo chamber, but that we don’t have to explain basic etiquette and generally don’t flame and troll each other over nothing.

        If you’ve been on Reddit you’ll remember the dread you felt when receiving that little orange notification in your inbox.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think Beehaw will start to be far more ok with the second type once their numbers start to dwindle…

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think this will draw lots of people to Hexbear. After all it’s me the head anarchist mod calling them out for this shit which makes it a little more difficult to just dismiss us as Tankies. Which they probably will anyway.

      • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        Would people who are just genuinely interested in FOSS and federated social media mainly just fall into the other groups?

        I really would like for the fediverse to become mainstream if not the dominant form of social media, even if that means a lot of liberals. At the same time, I feel like people need to approach the fediverse with a certain mindset that you’re not likely to find in consumer-brained liberals. That’s probably the main appeal of the fediverse for me: feeling like I’m actually contributing to something as an active participant. So I wouldn’t describe Lemmy as shitty by any means, especially when I’m browsing through Alexandrite — it’s just something that appeals to a different type of person than Reddit.

        I guess what I’m saying is that I want the fediverse to become the predominant form of social media not necessarily by making it emulate centralized, proprietary social media as much as possible, but by making more people into “fediverse people”. I think that making people feel like competent actors capable of taking control of their own lives is vital to building a revolution, even in people who haven’t yet taken to leftist ideas, and part of that is going to be small things like using a social media platform that has a bit of a learning curve and asks a bit more of its users.

        I dunno if this makes any sense. This is barely even relevant to the comment I’m replying to, I just wanted to say it.

        • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          Would people who are just genuinely interested in FOSS and federated social media mainly just fall into the other groups?

          IMO, no because FOSS stuff is already covered by Reddit. You’ll have ideologically committed people who will use Fediverse stuff just like how some people use Linux/BSD for ideological reasons, but they’re a small minority.

          And as for the rest of your comment, there’s more to the fediverse than Lemmy. When people say, “Fuck Reddit, I’m going to use X instead,” X by no means has to be Lemmy. It could be Discord, Mastodon, Twitter, Tumblr, Threads, and so on. Musk is running Twitter to the ground but people still use it, and no matter how terrible spez is, he is nowhere near as incompetent as Musk, which means most people will stick with Reddit. People who use Lemmy are essentially people who want to use Reddit but can’t use Reddit for ideological reasons or because what they want to discuss would break Reddit ToS.

          • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, I was thinking of the ideologically committed people, as well as just enthusiasts who might use Lemmy occasionally just to support the project. I figured they would represent a larger share of the user base. What makes you say they’d be a small minority?

            I think you misunderstood what I meant by the other paragraphs. I was just trying to say that I want to see a migration from all centralized platforms to all fediverse platforms — I wasn’t trying to say anything about the how and why of the Reddit migration as it actually happened.

            You’re completely right about what you’ve written, but it wasn’t really what I was thinking about.

            • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yeah, I was thinking of the ideologically committed people, as well as just enthusiasts who might use Lemmy occasionally just to support the project. I figured they would represent a larger share of the user base. What makes you say they’d be a small minority?

              I’m just basing it on my experience with Linux. Most people install Linux on a particular machine for technical reasons (not wanting to put up with Windows, wanting to install a modern OS on an old machine with XP, wanting an OS that’s more suitable for servers than what Microsoft has to offer) or for hobbyist reasons (wanting something to tinker with, wanting to see if they can get away with running a certain DE on a certain physical device, distrohopping in general). The ideological reason is there, but it’s rarely the main focus. If ideological reasons were that strong, Firefox wouldn’t be losing this badly to Chrome.

              You’re completely right about what you’ve written, but it wasn’t really what I was thinking about.

              Point taken.

              • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                ·
                1 year ago

                If ideological reasons were that strong, Firefox wouldn’t be losing this badly to Chrome.

                Oh, just wait until Chrome gets rid of adblockers, then you’ll see! :P

                So far my only real experience with Linux has been in a virtual machine. I’d been planning on switching my laptop over to Linux in 2025 with the end-of-service of Windows 10, but with the amount of obnoxious ad notifications I’m already getting on Windows these past few months, I just might push the switch to be by the end of this year… So anyways, how’s your experience with using Linux been? Let me live vicariously through you!

                • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I’d been planning on switching my laptop over to Linux in 2025 with the end-of-service of Windows 10, but with the amount of obnoxious ad notifications I’m already getting on Windows these past few months, I just might push the switch to be by the end of this year.

                  This is one of the differences between Linux and Windows (and MacOS). Linux doesn’t go out of its way to constantly remind you that you’re running Linux.

                  So anyways, how’s your experience with using Linux been? Let me live vicariously through you!

                  I have been using Linux for around a decade although I’m no expert. There are people here who definitely know their Linux more than me. For me, I switched over to Linux because of the fiasco with Windows 8 not having a start menu.

                  I would say if you want to switch over to Linux, you shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the many distros and should distinguish between a distro and a desktop environment (DE). Pick something based on Ubuntu or Debian because that’s what guides are tailored towards.

                • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I’ve been on Linux for like 17 years so I can’t really share an “I switched” experience that will be comparable to yours - I was a teenager and wanted a fully 64 bit OS when those were brand new and windows didn’t yet support it. my only option at the time was gentoo and I had to do a full install by hand - it took two weeks of work cause I had no clue what I was doing and building toolchains takes forever.

                  luckily, that’s all in the past now and you can just install a distro that’s ready to go with a nice graphical installer. just pick something reasonably popular like Ubuntu or Mint and you’ll be good to go.

                • sicklemode [they/them]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  So anyways, how’s your experience with using Linux been? Let me live vicariously through you!

                  Well, Windows just became harder and harder to use over time with Microsoft increasingly fucking with the workflow and layout to get things done, not to mention the fact that the OS itself is spyware and massively bloated. I just got tired of fighting an endless uphill battle that trended steeper and steeper the longer it went on, so I backed up any files I needed and nuked the hard drives of Windows.

                  I installed a Linux distro in its place and found joy in being the upstream decision maker for 100% of what’s going on with my OS. To use Windows meant I had to fight with it constantly, yet Linux did exactly what I told it to do without a fuss. I was so over Windows and proprietary software that I set out to rebuild my entire workflow from scratch, opting to use FOSS (preferably GPL-based) equivalents. My resolve was so strong that I accepted going cold turkey on something if there wasn’t a FOSS competitor available (gaming shit, mostly).

                  It’s been over 4 years since I did this, and I’ve never missed Windows. Linux and FOSS in general is basically free real-estate and has proven to be highly resistant to rug-pulls. I did like a lot of the proprietary software I used to use, but let’s be honest here, the TOS of all that shit increasingly required a one-sided, arbitrarily abusive marriage to the company itself. You can only take so much of an abusive relationship before the pain of transition becomes more worthwhile than staying in it. So, I divorced Microsoft and every other company I depended on Windows to run properly, and life’s been good ever since.

                  Having full access to what’s under the hood and tinkering around, shaping and tuning things up to suit your needs and your personality is an art. Quite satisfying expressing yourself in that regard, and having it all work for you.

                  Think about it this way: Minecraft is what Microsoft wants it to be. Minetest is whatever you want Minecraft to be. The latter is far more flexible, far more optimized, and offers a vastly superior experience and set of packages (mods) to suit your specific needs. The actual userbase itself is the upstream, not a company. Thus, power scales horizontally (among the working class, you might say), resulting in a stable upward trend in Quality of Life improvements.

    • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      mastodon.lol, an instance with something like ten thousand users, cracked under the pressure and shut down. I’d be surprised if one of the large-ish instances on lemmy doesn’t explode within the next couple of months.

        • Pisha [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          The way I understood it, the admin of mastodon.lol got into a fight with trans users over whether discussion of the Harry Potter game falls under transphobia, he got some pushback, flew totally off the handle and decided to shut down everything. With thousands of users, heated discussions like that are basically inevitable and administrators have to be able to withstand that or they’ll flame out like mastodon.lol did.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    89
    ·
    1 year ago

    Their reason for removing your post was really “imagine being this braindead?”

    They’re certainly not encouraging us to act in good faith.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      ·
      1 year ago

      How do even respond in good faith? I’ve tried in my other comment in this thread, but it’s a position that’s to the right of the current US Secretary Of State, Antony Blinken. Even Blinken acknowledged the history of communist movements in the third world.

      “The Soviet Union was supportive of the freedom forces in South Africa, and of course unfortunately, more than unfortunately, the United States was much too sympathetic to the apartheid regime, so that history also doesn’t get erased, you know, overnight, it’s a process,” Blinken said.

  • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    85
    ·
    1 year ago

    That’s a yikes from me.

    Also, I have a family member with an intellectual disability, so it sticks in my craw when someone tries to defend it as innocent. It’s fine if someone throws it out and then gets corrected (think of the Chapos, they quit using it after all), since for a long time it was “acceptable.” But to try and defend yourself after correction… lenin-rage

    • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      69
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Not just people with intellectual disabilities either, plenty of nuerospicy people and people with mental illnesses are also called the R slur.

      Given how many trans people are autistic(as am I) they really should know better.

      • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        52
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah it’s really fucked up. I love the mod, after they drop it, is like “(I am a vocal socialist and very far left).” WHERES YOUR SENSE OF HUMANITY TOWARDS THOSE WHO ARE DISABLED/NEUROATYPICAL MFER. Really enrages me. Like, the idea that you shouldn’t apologize and do better about this, that’s fascist thinking rather than leftist.

      • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        Is there any argument to using **tard and *spie in a reclamatory sense? I have a few autistic friends and I have absolutely heard them calling each other such terms.

        • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean, what’s the project there, I think, is the question. In the same way that the f-slur can be used in person by people who are LGBTQ, I suppose people who are neurodivergent/disabled might use that term amongst themselves.

          The issue is that you have people with intellectual disabilities under that umbrella along with the nerudivergent. So while the neurodivergent person has the agency, perhaps, to be reclamatory like your friends, I feel like the intellectually disabled don’t really have the same agency. Like, there’s diminished capacity there that I think makes it a lot more complicated than other oppressed groups. I’m being somewhat paternalistic here, perhaps (in part because I have a family member who is disabled and I have a paternalistic role to a degree due to their capacities), and obviously there’s a huge spectrum. But I think that’s actually an important distinction between it and other slurs that can be reclaimed.

          Again though, I say this as someone who isn’t disabled/neurodivergent, so I’ll say that all of this is very much just my personal take and not programmatic.

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          17
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I don’t think this is what’s happening here though, it’s not just ND people using it (if the mod’s saying it, I assume it’s considered acceptable language there), and that would be pretty impossible to enforce in an anonymous online space. Plus they didn’t just use it but removed criticism with no explanation beyond calling our guy “braindead.”

        • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          My question here is:

          How are these terms being reclaimed?

          If we looked at the reclamation of the word “queer”, we have a perfect example. Queer used to mean bad, perverted, unacceptable, and too feminine/too masculine for the hegemonic gender norms etc. It still gets used as a slur in this sort of way, although much less frequently.

          Nowadays, queer has been reclaimed as a term that is used as a positive description and it’s used with pride to define individuals by their sexual and/or gender identities and to foster solidarity.

          With that in context, how are these so-called “reclaimers” of the R-slur reclaiming this term?

          When someone like Keffals (🤢🤮) uses the word or a portmanteau of -tard, is she using this term to create solidarity and as a term of pride?

          Or is she using it to regurgitate the current discourse which uses the term to perpetuate stereotypes, as a way to use the term to denigrate and dehumanize, in just the way that the R-slur became a slur in the first place when it was originally taken from medical discourse and brought into mainstream slang usage?

          If it the latter case, and it is in Keffals’ case, then there is no reclamation of the term taking place and the person doing it is misusing the term “reclamation” as a rhetorical shield to hide behind, like the intellectual coward they are, by draping their bigotry in some self-aggrandizing notion of activism while they are simply perpetuating the prevailing hateful discourse of the term’s usage.

          Your friends may be using it differently however and I can’t say because I’m not privy to the context in which they are using those terms, although I’m extremely skeptical about people who do not have intellectual disability using the R-slur and claiming that it’s used in a reclamatory fashion. That’s a bit like myself, being a white person, and having had people use the N-word against me (rarely, but still…) and then deciding that it’s my prerogative to reclaim the term since I’ve been on the receiving end of it being used as a slur against me; it’s not my term to reclaim.

          So I’d need a pretty damn good justification for why a person without intellectual disability is reclaiming the R-slur and tbh I haven’t come across it yet.

          • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            14
            ·
            1 year ago

            these are exactly my feelings about femboys trying to reclaim trap. it’s a slur denigrating trans women - you don’t get to make the call that it’s a positive term applied to you that means exactly the thing it was used to brutalize us with.

        • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          1 year ago

          [as a neurospicy person] I’ve certainly heard other neurospicy people use it to refer to themselves. It still hurts me when they say it and I see nothing of value to be “reclaimed” by saying it but if they really want to I’m not going to stop them

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      51
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yeahhh I’m generally pro-federation but going so far as to not only use ableist language but to remove criticism of it is a big yikes. I think blahaj’s admin and our admins are trying to work together and make it work, but 196’s mods are actively opposed and trying to burn the bridge. Blahaj was there before and accepted a 196 lifeboat, possibly without knowing too much about them.

      I’m still in favor of federation but if we’re expected to tone it down then we need it to go both ways. Otherwise we’re not losing much.

      • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        46
        ·
        1 year ago

        accepted a 196 lifeboat, possibly without knowing too much about them.

        I’m really hoping this is the case

        I’m sick of feeling like I need to tiptoe around people who are acting like shitheads lest I offend them and ruin it for everyone

        • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          31
          ·
          1 year ago

          I do find it unsurprising that despite all the bluster about how Hexbear is the one ruining everyone’s community we have largely been the nicest and most restrained.

          • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            27
            ·
            1 year ago

            Amazing how we get shit for calling out class positions and calling for some hot ranmao action. That’s authoritarian, but dehumanizing people with disabilities/neurodivergent is somehow

            totes OK, LOL, just internet grow up tankies.

            stalin-gun-1 mao-aggro-shining

          • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            13
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ah but you forget, you guys don’t tolerate their bigotry, which means that you’re just as bad bothsides horseshoe.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      1 year ago

      It really just boils down to “this instance makes me uncomfortable, so it is exactly like this other thing that makes me uncomfortable.”

      They really just live in a world of empty reaction to things, no analysis.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        37
        ·
        1 year ago

        The whole thought terminating “tankie” cliche is incredibly effective at shutting down any critical understanding of politics outside the overton window.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          29
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m just glad I became a “tankie” before that particular thought terminating cliche became commonplace. A lot of the more recent anti-communist stuff probably would’ve worked on me really well back when I was a shitlib.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The weirdest part about people calling us fascists is that a core component of fascism is anti-communism

      Calling tankies fash is right out of the Nazi playbook and just comes across as the same dumb shit as right-wingers saying “Antifa are the real fascists!”

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Tankies are bad / Woke are bad

        Antifa are fascists / Communists are fascists

        Both groups of liberals use exactly the same tactics of thought-terminating cliches when attacking leftwards. The conservative liberals do it to the democrat liberals and they then do it to us.

          • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            I do believe that there is a large swath of Western anarchists who aren’t active. By active I mean antifascist action in terms of memories or protests, squatting places, food not bombs, creating autonomous or communal spaces, helping labour fights, supporting our 2SLQTBAG allies or alike. This means they are objectively and effectively passive.

            If however they start a couple of those things and get theory they often get better, but then they often switch alignments and become anarcho-communist, communalist or alike or different. Or they get good skills. At least some of that was true for me at some point in time.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Liberals and their political analysis not extending past the point of crafting similes, name a more iconic duo. I’ll wait.

      Honestly, so much lib bullshit is just “Donald Trump is like Voldemort and Hillary Clinton is like Hermione…” and then they list what they like/dislike about those characters in a comparative fashion and that’s all the analysis they can muster.

      Or they say shit like Putin is like Hitler because Hitler Lebensraum and Putin also expanded Russia via imperialism. Plus here’s a picture of Putin with a Hitler moustache to make my argument more compelling.

      As if there aren’t countless examples of countries engaging in imperialism and expansionism and as if that isn’t low-key Nazi apologism to reduce the primary characteristic of Nazi Germany to just “expansionism” at the expense of ignoring all the other, far more egregious, things that characterised Nazi Germany.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 year ago

        All this while they downplay concerns people have about actual Nazism in Ukraine. I wonder how long it will take before they expand this thought-terminating stuff to encompass any anti-nazi sentiment.

        • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          "Bro, the OUN, Right Sector, C14, Azov Battalion, Patriot of Ukraine, Svoboda, Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, National Corps, People’s Front, and Batkivshchyna Battalion aren’t actually fascists though.

          They’re just conservative nationalists, bro. It’s completely different. Trust me bro - I read the news!"

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    72
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That’s all I have to say for that second comment being removed. These people think leaders like Nelson Mandela are “tankies”. Like even most libs can recognise why people in Africa have aligned with communists. Holy hell, even the current US Secretary Of State, Antony Blinken, can recognise that history.

    The African National Congress party, which has governed South Africa since white minority rule ended in 1994, had strong ties to the former Soviet Union, which trained and supported anti-apartheid activists during the Cold War. Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero, who died in 2013 and was a global icon, was regarded with suspicion by Washington during the Cold War and was even on the U.S. terrorism watch list in that era.

    “The Soviet Union was supportive of the freedom forces in South Africa, and of course unfortunately, more than unfortunately, the United States was much too sympathetic to the apartheid regime, so that history also doesn’t get erased, you know, overnight, it’s a process,” Blinken said.

    Imagine being to the right of Antony Blinken and the journalists at Reuters.

    Can’t wait for some liberal to say that Mandela made the wrong decision and should have aligned with the US and NATO during apartheid. Or that Mandela was wrong to look up to Fidel, Mao and Che. I’ll just leave you with some quotes from Mandela:

    “I read works by and about Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro. In Edgar Snow’s brilliant Red Star Over China I saw that it was Mao’s determination and non-traditional thinking that had led him to victory.”

    “The revolution in China was a masterpiece, a real masterpiece. If you read how they fought that revolution, you believe in the impossible. It’s just miraculous.”

    “From its earliest days, the Cuban Revolution has also been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of the vicious imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gain made in the Cuban Revolution.”

    “Within that international support for our struggle the Soviet Union and other socialist countries stood out. The governments and peoples of the socialist bloc gave material, moral and political support to our struggle in a manner and on a scale that we will never be able to repay.”

    mandela

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    71
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Nelson Mandela was a communist. Was the final recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. And (re)wrote a book titled “How to be a Good Communist” while in prison where the first lines of the book reads:

    A Communist is a member of the Communist Party who understands and accepts the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism as explained by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin , and who subjects himself to the discipline of the Party.

    His remarks on receiving the Lenin Peace Prize after finally getting out of prison are here: http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/2002/021028_lenin.htm

    I think this part is relevant:

    As we remember the support from the Soviet Union and the socialist states, it is fitting that we also pay tribute to our historic partnership with the South African Communist Party.

    We remember how South African communists came to the material support of the ANC at a time when the police were raiding our offices almost on a daily basis, depleting us of our resources to pay our full-time officials. We can never forget those concrete acts of solidarity.

    The SACP has been trustworthy and dependable allies over decades as part of our movement in all its formations. Our relationship with the Soviet Union and the socialist world had much to do with their presence in our ranks.

    Of course, liberals leave all of this out when praising Mandela.

  • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    66
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Banning comments critical of ableism is way beyond anything that a hexbear has ever done. This is absolutely damning stuff. This isn’t a random user or something. It’s an admin a mod over there.

    • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      Because deep down they see the groups they want people to not be bigoted against as they’re lessers. The difference is where the reactionaries see them as to subjugated the libs want to speak for the poor unfortunate souls so they can feel good about themselves.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      49
      ·
      1 year ago

      I try to be polite when I’m on Hexbear, because I know there are a few anarchist comrades around.

      But this particular type of western “anarchist” is my absolute least favourite type of lib. Ignorant, smug, drunk on the tiniest bit of power they can get, projecting their own faults and character flaws onto the rest of humanity. Assuming everyone else is even more vile and shallow than they are. Absolute scumbags.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        41
        ·
        1 year ago

        As our resident anarchist mod, trust me I agree with you. These people are not anarchists, they are liberals or outright fascists, they just don’t know it or are acting in bad faith.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          28
          ·
          1 year ago

          Seeing how many people firmly ensconsed in liberal politics have appropriated anarchism in name only is very upsetting. It creates bad blood on the left, and diverts potential comrades from reaching actual leftist information and politics.

          • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            24
            ·
            1 year ago

            I agree and it’s the same as how more recently the whole maga communist/patriotic socialist thing has come about.

            These people are not our comrades, though I have a bit more sympathy toward the misguided anarchists because I think their reactionary views are at least a bit more organic and just due to being immersed in a century of anti-communist propaganda.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          25
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think it’s very much an online thing. Comrades I’ve met on the ground don’t care about this aggressively online stuff. They’re worried about feeding homeless neighbors, undermining the cops, and other pro-social community work.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh for sure, way too many people in the west think anarchism is just “chaos” or “nihilism” or something.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        As a former anarchist, this kind of ‘anarchist’ would have pissed me off when I was one myself, so don’t worry.

        It’s the anarchist equiv of people who think they’re leftists becase they voted for Obama

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          1 year ago

          Anarchism can be “trendy” sometimes. It can be a way to “fight the system” without directly threatening it, so it can be presented as a kind of false leftist idea, that is just liberalism with the little A symbol on it. These people will sincerely call themselves anarchists, and probably believe it too, then will talk about how important it is to “save democracy” by voting for Biden. Capitalism will try to commodify everything, including leftist tendencies. When they do this, they strip it of all meaning and reduce it to a simple “image” for profit.

          • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            There’s anarchism, a real political ideology with a rich tradition of struggle and thought and then there’s “anarchism” which is an aesthetic that will make you look cool and piss off your dad at the same time.

      • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        As an anarchist (specifically an anarcho communist), there are a lot of liberals who wear the label of anarchist but have fuck all idea what it means beyond some idea of edgy rebellion.

        This isn’t a new thing that’s come about with the internet, gestures wildly at The Sex Pistols. But I feel that it has become more numerous in recent years.

        On the plus side in all my years organising, the only times I’ve run into anyone IRL that acts like that, they’ve not been the sorts to directly interfere with how an org is run and thus don’t do much to bog down movements in their crusade against socialists.

        There was one that stood up during a BLM protest to make a speech that was a rattling tirade about “tankies”, and I think that gives a cross section on these types.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      Anti-oppression policy/anti-oppressive speech is a safeword for most anarchists, if anyone wants to take up the charge and drive critical consciousness in that mod team.

  • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    58
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The mod team on blahaj are absolutely atrocious. Other than Ada, who seems to actually engage in good faith and tries to foster at least some level understanding, their mods respond to our mods wanting to talk by leaking DMs and general bad-faith attitude. When Ada requested that direct DMs from our mods not be shared, there was some shitty scribbling and effective refusal to comply, and now also this modlog?

    Everyone’s a lib, that’s fine. But the blahaj mods are just actively playing troublemaker at this point and don’t seem interested in any kind of actual good faith interaction. They never have seemed it.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      I disagree. The admin is part of the problem as well. They’re just playing some good cop bad cop routine, with her being the good cop. If she really cared, those mods would be long gone. That’s her prerogative as admin. Like, she could just completely shut down the Lemmy site and focus more on the Blahaj Mastodon, which is the actual flagship Blahaj website.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        1 year ago

        Beat me to it. Ada really just seems to be there to make it seem like they can be talked to, negotiated with, but Ada never does anything but wring their hands and complain about working things out being “too hard.”

        What do you call someone who sits down at a table full of fascists?

        A fascist.

        I’m being hyperbolic of course, but the same sentiment still applies. They have the power to get rid of the problem mods, but choose not to, because having those mods be the “bad guy” means they can do what Ada secretly wishes they could get away with.

      • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        28
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Maybe so, who knows about the modlog, but either way their actions not being held to account by admins, even after blatantly defying their requests, isn’t great.

    • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Is this engaging in good faith?

      I’m naive to the complexities of tankies and their beliefs, and was unwilling to defederate over political issues that I am only familiar with at a surface level. Doubly so, given that no queer folk were highlighting them as a source of ongoing queerphobia

      However, I did a deep dive in to some of the content on lemmygrad, and it crossed the line to more than political differences. (Which to be fair is what people had been telling me)

      • SootyChimney [any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 year ago

        I can’t claim to be aware of all posts they ever made, I suppose I just meant in the Hexbear-Blahaj discussions I’ve seen, Ada seemed to consistently be the one trying to make for productive relations. I very much agree that isn’t a great take.

          • CriticalResist8 [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            18
            ·
            1 year ago

            Reminds me of when we ran a demos survey on lemmygrad we found out 50% of our users are LGBT and overall 10% of our users are trans. Meanwhile when Beehaw ran theirs, they didn’t even dare to separate cis and trans identities on the survey.

            Blahaj, I await your demographics survey results.

            • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              ·
              1 year ago

              hexbear was 70% LGBT+ and something like 1/3 trans, from a demographic survey we did a year ago. I’m still livid that users on blahaj were accusing us of not being queer without copping bans.

              • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Hexbear is the only online community I’ve ever been a part of where I sometimes feel like the odd one out as a straight cis dude, and it’s done me all sorts of good.

                The blue stuffed shark can fuck right off.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      1 year ago

      The “tankie” cliche is a powerful information weapon. It preps people to dismiss everything they encounter from mls, at minimum, but likely a lot of other left politics gets caught in the cross fire. I really wonder how the anti-tankie crowd encounters revolutionary Anarchism. Many of them seem extremely hostile to any form of revolution and any use of force to achieve political goals, and to the admittedly very limited degree I’ve talked to them seem to think anarchism is when you let everyone do whatever they want, without a lot of theory beyond that. It seems, and I hope this is just my limited experience with them, that their politics begins and ends at “you cannot force anyone to do anything for any reason”.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 year ago

    (disclaimer, I’m not trans) yeah, my general attitude on blahaj at this point is “fuck 'em.” I understand that there’s a desire to bolster and grow the trans space on lemmy, but these people suck, and frankly I feel like the cool ones that we’d want community with would just make accounts here anyway if the two were de-federated.

    I understand also that most of the problem originates specifically from their 196 community, but if the broader blahaj instance chooses to allow them to act like this unchecked, then there’s no reason for hexbear to go out of our way to appeal to their instance.

    • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’m trans, and I completely agree that those people suck. I’m not sorry that they defederated us, and I honestly have no idea why you guys are trying so hard to make it work. Even when the admins claim that they’re trying to smooth things over, they’re still downright hostile to hexbear.

      Appeasing these people will not work.

      Edit: this is the justification for defederating us. Absolute dogshit. Just a random claim that we were saying horrible things:

      https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/501598

        • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m usually not a fan of defederation. But those people honestly just make me sick. They sound like feds in a rainbow overcoat. I’m glad you guys were here to bring the issue to light again though, and seem to have brought some of their users with you.

          • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            1 year ago

            same. I really wanted to stick it out in the name of trans solidarity but we can’t subject our vulnerable members to it. reading the posts there is bizzare – they’re to the right of every reddit trans community, and that’s saying something.

  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is a good example for why we need more tea and less “we’re working with their admins”. Obviously their admins don’t care.