Has anyone else noticed how prevalent Hexbear posters have suddenly become? Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda. That or getting all excited about trolled libs. The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Not to mention, their info on the Fediverse observer is either straight up wrong or there’s some serious botting going on. According to that, the instance is less than a month old, yet somehow they already have one of the largest, most active userbases, along with far and away the most comments of any instance.
Seems to me like Lemmygrad on steroids. Considering we defederated from them, seems like a no-brainer to block Hexbear as well.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
I have no problem with communism, I have a problem with authoritarian propaganda.
Which political system do you suggest is more authoritarian than the owner of the largest military in the world, the largest police force in the world, and the largest intelligence (espionage) agency in the world?
Don’t forget the largest prison population.
name your favourite anti-authoritarian system. you wanna have a revolution to create it? whoopsie doopsie, you’re literally forcing people (maybe at gunpoint!!!) to do something that they don’t want to do, you fucking authoritarian tankie monster. next you’ll be saying you want to get rid of corporations (extremely authoritarian over those business owners)
No I don’t want a revolution, I want people to try to work together instead of fighting.
Yeah, us too. Unfortuntely society is currently managed by a bunch of literal sociopaths who are more than willing to throw their stolen wealth into militarized police, private deathsquads, and good ol’ normal armies.
We dont get to dictate the escalation of force, the bourgeoisie have and will do that for us.
STATE AND REVOLUTION
You know, I am reading Rabinowitch’s book on the July-October 1917 period and what really strikes me is how all the leading Bolsheviks-including Lenin-really wanted the transfer of power to the soviets to be peaceful. They pretty much exhausted every option until the right-SRs/right-Mensheviks and Kerensky types gave them no possible alternative to violent insurrection. There were differences over the timing and tactics of this insurrection (on one hand, those like Lenin and later Bubnov and Sverdlov who wanted insurrection immediately, those in the ‘centre’ like Stalin, Trotsky, Volodarsky who supported insurrection soon but wanted to shore up support in the provinces + at the front more, and those on the party right like Zinoviev and Kamenev who wanted to create a democratic worker’s republic with the SRs and Menshevik internationalists before beginning any violence to ensure full peasant support).
I didn’t know that at all. It shows how these guys-especially in 1917-did not like violence, did not glorify it, and did not fetishise it. They tried to avoid it and were all scared of unleashing the horrific civil war that eventually did come to pass. It’s something to remember.
Violence is bad and scary and should be only be wielded with immense caution and respect, but at the same time, when the time comes, you have to be ready for the decisive confrontation. Maybe Kamenev or Zinoviev, or maybe Volodarsky and Podvoisky, were actually right and it would have been better to wait longer until the correlation of forces was more on their side and the civil war could have been lessened at the very least. Maybe they were wrong and the revolutionary moment would have passed and the ProvGov would’ve re-gathered its strength. I don’t know. I’m still reading the book!
Very interesting write up. I’ll have to put that book on my to-read list. Thank you for sharing this kernel of knowledge!
Don’t forget the stochastic violence they do to us with their control of media and culture
That’d be nice. Unfortunately the bourgeoise have class solidarity with each other and not with us, they will prevent change from happening peacefully.
A smooth, voluntary, nonviolent transition to peace and harmony would be every leftist’s dream, but there are institutions with power who have used, are using, and will continue to use violence to prevent it from happening in order to maintain their material interests. Call it whatever you want, but the process of transitioning from our status quo to something better will require dismantling institutions that are capable of defending their existence with violence. It sucks.
Do you think the capitalists will work with you? Do you believe that their sense of fraternity and human decency will lead them to throw down arms and accept more radical change to the system than the strikes, protests, and abolition movements that the capitalists have met with mass murder for centuries?
The capitalists are not your friends. Their power will not be voted away, it won’t be argued away, it won’t be negotiated away. It can only be removed by force, and removing it is the only way to keep them from using it to sculpt society into an ever-crueler engine of profiteering.
Please tell me how you’re imagining getting people like Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk to “work together instead of fighting” and give up their hoarded wealth. What short of sheer force would compel them to do that?
Utopian socialism would be nice if it worked but it patently does not. The bourgeoisie have a very fine time controlling the wealth of the world and they have nothing to gain by accepting democracy. Socialism, like any economic order, is only going to be a reality if it is enforced with violence. If somebody tries to undo the collective ownership to the means of production they will have to be stopped by force, just as force is applied today to stop people from violating bourgeois property rights.
Did you have the opportunity to see what the state does in the face of nonviolent resistance when the BLM protests were happening?
our literal entire platform is that the people should work together as much as possible and efforts to divide the people should be met with the harshest punishment
hundreds of thousands of volumes of literature spread across every nation, every language, every race, every gender, every sexuality, spanning centuries, and this is like the one thing we agree on the most
so you gonna work with us or
I think this response is really necessary for this type of person. Work with us and we will try our best to avoid any violence, just like Lenin or most of the historical socialist revolutionaries. We figure out how to less-violently or even non-violently remove the power of the bourgeoisie and we will gladly do it. But the fact is that for libs the discussion of possible needs for strategic violence is itself proof of the impossibility of working together, and for some it’s because they know that this removes all possibility of actually winning and for others it’s because they’re blinded by their ideology and think that reformism hasn’t been tried hard enough.
Bring some new ideas not based in self-defeating liberalism about how we can avoid violence. I’ll listen and try to apply them. But don’t tell us we’re dumb for realizing it hasn’t worked yet, no matter how many people claim it’s the best
I think a lot of post-Bernie socialists started out at the same thought and aspiration: “*I just wanted some help starting my life. I don’t want to worry about increasing costs of living, rent, food, clothes, food, healthcare, education and job training. I want my opinion and voice to matter to my company, my community, my society.”
Some people went further with it, deciding in their mind: *And I’m willing to fight for it through political activism, protesting, mutual aid".
Then others also think in a lateral but not perpendicular way: *But I don’t want to fight for it, risk prison, or give up my comforts. I’ll stick to canvassing for Berniecrats".
I can appreciate being averse to the fetishization and valorization of political violence as form of entertainment or coping mechanism, but eventually society’s dysfunction becomes untenable and unmalleable that a catharsis must come to pass: revolution or fascism.
Not all revolutions are violent. They don’t have to be repeats of the revolutions of a century ago. Revolutions manifest when the administrators of the state - not necessarily it’s enforcers - just lose faith in the state and start defecting. These types of non-violent revolutions can happen.
If thinking about the process of revolution is unpleasant, then imagine a society after a revolution.
Who would you be and what would you do when you are free?
Yeah that would be great, unfortunately the world we live in doesn’t work like that. Asking for cooperation when the other side is perfectly fine using violence and manipulation then you are effectively just advocating for subservience to the bourgeoisie.
I am descending into madness.
We’re trained not to see the violence all around us, because we’re swimming in it all the time. Here’s a quote about the topic from Mark Twain that got me thinking years ago when I was starting to move left. Maybe it’ll speak to you too:
I love Monty Python, but I’ll never forgive them for turning “Come and see the violence inherent in the system” into a joke. Dennis was spitting FACTS.
That sounds great but how do you purpose we get there?
People who use violence for their own benefit can not be stopped without violence or a credible threat of violence.
On the 3rd of November 1970, Salvador Allende peacefully and by popular consent established a socialist government in Chile. By the 11th of September 1973 he had been overthrown and killed, his democratic government replaced with the fascist regime of Augustus Pinochet.
The revolution is necessary because the ruling class will fight to the last human to defend their unequal distribution of wealth.
Call it authoritarian if you will, but this is the struggle that must occur if you want to build a better world.
If you have no problem with communists and you have a problem with authoritarianism you may wish to read this short essay by Friedrich Engels, one of the most important communists in history, on the matter: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Damn this was actually successful. Nice work.
We’re out here winning hearts and minds bay-beee
I’d say he’s the second most important communist in history… bookmarked to read later.
all political systems require authoritarian principles until class can be abolished after communism, do you know anything about the words you are using?
Police are authoritarian, for instance. Do you think your “democracy” is peaceful? Do you think it is nonviolent?
Let’s not pretend that your politics aren’t inherently authoritarian as well.
Either you support capitalism (or worse), which is grossly authoritarian as it inflicts massive violence not only via warfare but through mass starvation and deprivation, or you support socialism, in which case you have two options:
The violent overthrow of the current system (spoiler alert: that’s a very authoritarian thing to do!)
The gradual reform of the current system, meaning maintaining the status quo for an exceptionally long time as we ever so slowly creep our way to a more just economic system while countless people starve, go homeless, die without healthcare, end up in yet-another war and so on (which is a very authoritarian proposition, just throwing away the lives of the poor in your own country-not to mention those in the developing world-just so you can have a neat and tidy reformist approach that doesn’t rock the boat.)
Ok…
Leaving this here for anyone else who got this far and feels confused:
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.
Hey America (and Canada, UK, Australia, etc.), how ya doing?
✅ Rejection of political plurality (See: Range of acceptable thought among mainstream political parties; Also, consider some self-reflection)
✅ Strong central power to preserve the political status quo (See: Mainstream media apparatus, spanning news, movies, tv, etc.)
✅ Reductions in the rule of law (See: Absolute failure to hold politicians or corporations accountable)
✅ Reductions in the separation of powers (See: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests)
✅ Reductions in democratic Voting (See again: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests + absolute failure to hold politicians accountable; Also see: Rampant gerrymandering, erosion of voters’ right, zero democracy in the workplace or outside of political elections)
No see you’re allowed to decide if the guy with the blue tie or the guy with the red tie is your representative (uh… if you live in one of the handful of districts that are competitive anyway) so that means it cant be authoritarian. God I love our illusion of democracy. It makes me feel so nice.
authoritarianism is characterized by reductions in the rule of law?? what???
Here, “rule of law” means roughly “all people are equal before the law” (that is, you don’t have a group of people who are above it).
Emojis unrelated
So we have to pretend political plurality is inherently and self evidently good now?
Hey! The guy in the red tie and the guy in the blue tie disagree slightly on one issue! The ability to decide between them is true freedom!
Check out the cool political plurality in the USA
Has anything changed in 70 years? The legacy of the suppression of the left wing in the United States is still with us today!
The cold war ended, the USSR collapsed, and china shifted to being a semi-capitalist autocracy… I could go on but you’re just trying to dunk on the libs (like MAGA, big surprise) and I’m not one anyway.
You’re living proof that the Cold War mentality is alive and well lmao
Cool let’s just insult each other, Hexbear is great 👍💯
You understand the fact that the content of the dunks, and what we’re dunking ON, being different materially matters right? That just the mere fact that we both dislike liberalism doesn’t make us the same when we dislike it for entirely different reasons?
Like, even on the few points where we agree, its almost always different reasons and logic behind taking those positions.
Similar because a good portion of the propaganda in both extremist groups is coming from places like the CCP and Kremlin that want to destabilize the US and other powerful countries (like India).
Divide and conquer isn’t anything new, but it’s implementation on social media is.
lmaoooooo
Impossible that the social institutions we built back then could still be in use when the fucking water pipes we built back then still are
And we live in a gerontocracy, like the children of the people responsible for the stuff that happened 70 years ago are still in power right now. It’s not like 70 years is a world away, the current US president has firmly established memories of 1954, the guy was 12.
Very true. In fact I would like to elaborate on your point to say the very same individuals in charge during all the heinous shit during the cold war are still in place, of whom Biden is one.
Using wikipedia as a reference for political ideology is like asking W Bush which countries are good and bad
I didn’t say everything is authoritarian, I specifically stated your politics as being authoritarian.
wanna explain how that definition applies to us??? it’s really easy to just point at a wikipedia article but you’re not really proving anything by just stating an extremely loaded definition.
I wonder who made that definition.
Then you should have a problem with the term itself “authoritarian propaganda”
Propaganda is any alternative to the hegemony of Western corporate media
All political systems are authoritarian.
You have no idea what this word even means