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.
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 👍💯
Genius strategy to never allow yourself to grow as a person. Any time anyone points out something negative you’re doing, close your mind to it with a reactionary “I’m being insulted!!” and shut down in a huff
You said:
Glass houses and stones
that’s not an insult. it’s quite literally a statement of fact.
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.
Question for you, why would the destabilization of the US be a bad thing? For me it would be an objectively good thing considering all the evil in this world it has wrought. While I will continue to deny that I’m a paid shill for China and ESPECIALLY Russia, I won’t deny that the end of western neoliberal hegemony is a desirable goal for me.
The idea that American right wingers are taking their ideological cues from a communist government is probably the most galaxybrain take I’ve ever heard
And by the way, it’s the Communist Party of China (CPC). You just come off as ignorant and possibly racist when you deliberately use the wrong name for them.
And are you actually saying that destabilizing the hegemonic global empire is a BAD thing? Let alone the fucking genocidal religious fascist government that’s running India right now??
It’s very easy to never question your own world view if you think everyone you engage with that disagrees with you is getting talking points from another government. Have you considered that your thinking that our ideas come from government talking points IS an actual talking point from western politicians?
According to who? People defending the narrative that they are contradicting? Yeah man. What a totally unbiased and reliable source for that information.
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.