Should Hexbear MLs tone down their admiration for AES so we’re not scaring potential leftists away?
Should Hexbear MLs tone down their admiration for AES so we’re not scaring potential leftists away?
Inspired by recent discussions, I think Hexbear has a lot of good information about socialism but I wonder if the relentless defense of AES on Hexbear means shooting ourselves in the foot, since many potential leftists have been thoroughly primed to react negatively to AES states?
We’re not getting our messages out when progressive instances have already pre-emptively blocked us and calling us “tankies”.
People are being turned away without even taking the opportunity to read some of the stuff here, because they already have a pre-conceived notion about Hexbear being filled with “crazy tankies who defend totalitarianism”.
I know there have been a lot of propaganda and fabrication being perpetuated about socialist countries, and it feels “right” to defend them against these false accusations, but I wonder if this is doing more harm than good for the present day nascent socialist movement, at least in the Western countries?
We can remain on the current course and feel indignant about the tankie accusations, but will forever remain as a niche “tankie” community.
Or, we can open ourselves up, by toning down the admiration for the socialist states so we are not being treated as hostile by the other instances, and thus opening up the opportunities to have productive interactions with users (and potential leftists) from other instances?
(I do have my own position, you probably know which one it is, but I’m willing to hear from others and reevaluate my own opinions if needed).
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who responded. All points are well taken. Thank you.
No. The western “left” has a huge problem with chauvinism and allowing newbies to hold onto what are, many times, frankly racist beliefs about AES will only exacerbate that
No, getting people to reevaluate their passively informed misconceptions is good
The "omg those awful Hexbears" attitude only served to make me curious, and as soon as I poked around at all, I fell in love with this place and ditched my other lemmy accounts.
You're not the first person I've seen express this genre of sentiment lately, and I don't understand why this idea of making this place more welcoming keeps coming up. This doesn't seem like an educational forum? A lot of "normies" still use phobic speech that's simply unacceptable here.
I think that if they're not already of the "stfu & Learn" bent, they don't really belong here. 🤷 get with the plan or get your ban.
My support of the Cuban revolution and Cuban people will never stop. Their based new constitution with LGBT rights means that we should, if anything, promote their model of AES more towards
Should Hexbear ML's tone down their Admiration...
No radlibs do this already and libs have yet to be convinced. Plus the whole "The Soviets were actually kinda good" can be a great entry-point to unlearning anti-communist propaganda.
If it wasn't hating AES, it would be something else. If we weren't being smeared for having correct opinions we would be smeared for outright lies.
Shitlibs are at fault for being shocked that Hexbears acknowledge the DPRK or Cuba as just regular countries where regular people live regular lives. There's not no value in slowly prying NATO anticommunist brainwashing out obviously, but again fuck the shitlibs for buying into that hook line & sinker.
When I discovered Hexbear via my wife I had not read an ounce of theory and thought that "communists" didn't exist anymore and were an artifact of the 20th century. Even I knew that western governments lied through their teeth about the USSR and China though, and I had the presence of mind to take in what was at the time an opposing viewpoint. As a result, I now know that North Korea is just a nation doing its best given the extreme trade sanctions it is under. Why compromise that for people who can't handle it?
"What if we just agree we're subhuman to the racists, surely they will treat us better". Lmao get your liberal civility politics out of here.
Fuuuuuck no.
Obviously I have personal and moral reasons not to, but I'll try and stick to the purely practical reasons this would be a terrible decision.
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People won't tone it down anyway. Short of enforcing bans that would make Hexbear any other shitlib site, people won't just put away their deeply held and pivotal beliefs in one of the few places they can actually express them openly without being constantly attacked and exhausted.
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If they were forced or pressured to they'd like leave and you'd been talking about a massive exodus of the Hexbear population, including most if not all of the most active and informative posters on the site.
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Lying (by omission) about your position does not win people over, it weakens it and your credibility. You simply cannot advocate for socialism while not advocating for or at least defending actually existing socialist states. So all you're doing by coddling that opinion and kicking the can down the road is inflating the certainly of Western chauvinists for when you finally have to address it. Or in the case of Hexbear, flooding the site with chauvinism and empowering that belief before trying to challenge it from a weaker position.
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Being upfront with people builds trust. Every person who has come around to re-looking at either communist politics or the AES States from talking to me in real life has done so because I didn't hmm-and-hah about it. Simply saying, 'yeah I'm a communist' or 'actually, China is pretty good' in a matter of fact way, as if it's a totally normal and acceptable opinion to have, has always gotten me at least respectful interest and I can elaborate from their without people feeling attacked, scared, or suspicious. In an online and cultural discourse where weaponised propaganda about misinformation and troll farms, paid shills etc is the norm, how do you think most libs would react to being lured in with lying (by omission) and then later feeling like they had the defense of 'totalitarian' states or whatever sprung on them, as they see it?
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Personally, short of some mass, catastrophic upheaval socially and economically in many western states like the US and UK (where I live), I think the chances of even moderate transformational changes towards socialism, never mind revolution, are slim to none. I still organise and advocate for my beliefs here, because we help feed people, find them housing, put clothes on their back, provide mental healthcare support, and try to stop asylum seekers being abused by a racist state. It's worthwhile. But realistically as communists in the imperial core, we should be focused on the biggest obstacle to building socialism globally: our imperialism. Weakening our reactionary states stranglehold on the rest of the world through genocide, indiscriminate bombing, terror and assassination is the most important thing we can do to allow socialism to not even flourish, but survive all over the world. And trying to do that without openly supporting the right of AES States not to be obliterated would be peak
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We're tankies no matter what, not like I give a fuck because it's a meaningless thought terminating cliche label for turbo-dorks and libs.
You have observed real problems but are interpreting them the wrong way. Should we take different positions? Absolutely not. Should we not always pick fights on this when there are (within a given conversation) sometimes more useful things to focus on? Sure.
Never, ever lie and agree that "reds killed trillions" "haircuts are banned in communist north korea" etc, and if that's all someone has to say, then leaping to find some conciliatory subject is not helpful, but realistically in a given conversation you can only discuss so many things at once, and you are unlikely to get to every point you could make, so it makes sense to prioritize relevant topics of practical importance and fundamentally the USSR is usually not the very highest on that list if you are discussing literally anything to do with the modern day.
But fundamentally we must support the DPRK in its historic struggle against American imperialism and people who don't understand why this is should eventually learn it, because there is a palpable difference between people who get this and those who don't. In the context of people on this dumb agglomeration of websites, there is no such thing as an anti-imperialist ideology that does not hold this position, just social chauvinism at best.
Our infamy remains to our advantage, because the neoliberal idiots at the core of other userbases make us out to be monsters even though our positions are much more humane. You are right that it can be a wedge, but it is often a wedge in our favor as well!
The genuflection doesn't seem to offer any upside for us. We should deny reality, and offer little defense of AES, in the face of relentless propaganda, in the hopes that libs will take us more seriously on other issues? They're not going to suddenly be more against capitalism if we suddenly stop offering counterarguments to capitalist propaganda.
Plus you already said they preemptively blocked us. How will toning it down work for people who are already not listening to us?
We also need to define productive. How is agreeing with people online productive? Productive to what? Achieving socialism? Getting more people "on our side", to do what? Vote or something? Do more mutual aid? You have to be careful to not confuse posting for achieving goals. It's such a counter-intuitive thing for most people that talking to other people online and convincing them of an argument isn't productive. It presupposes that the mechanism for achieving political power is having good-faith debates where we talk everyone into agreeing with us with the right tone and combination of words. That runs counter to actual history. Do you think communists can take over any country by having earnest discussions where they dial back their tone or stance on communism?
New Melina alt
"I like Cuba."
"But don't you know Cuba is bad?"
AES countries have made mistakes obviously, but the things they got right were genuine advancements in the human condition involving science, mathematics, literature, art, politics, healthcare etc and to not speak positively about it is to rob people of a piece of their humanity in my opinion. It should not be a bad thing to recognize that.
It literally doesn't matter, Reddit had to ban us because we kept growing despite having exactly the same reputation you're worried about. Libs are gonna lie about us no matter what and people who are genuinely open to the idea of communism won't be scared off by a few Stalin Did Nothing Wrong memes, and will make it long enough to hear some of the more critical support that people actually believe behind the shitposting.
no
People of all sorts, even those without poltical education, are attracted to confidence not appeasement
Downplaying facts for the sake of comfort and idealism has never once in the history of socialist development aided the socialists
Principles and convictions are there to be upheld, not bargained away for people who believe in a fantasy that's killing the planet
I see what you mean, but really AES is just a fundamental part of hexbear that trying to police it would just take away from the site as a whole.
I was a anti china lib once, the way I escaped was through AES and being berated for just following designated enemy state department propaganda.
There's pretty much no other place (excluding sites like lemmygrad) that AES is supported.
If you want to temper your support for AES with some criticism, that's fine. I don't think any of us here think that Stalin or Mao or whoever was an absolute perfect angel from heaven who did nothing wrong. But that doesn't mean we should be expected to write a dissertation on the shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution every time we post a Mao landlord meme.
If liberals come here asking questions in good faith, we should be willing to patiently educate them, or at least point them towards the relevant reading material. But if they're not willing to learn and just call us names, I say spam them with PPB and/or hit them with the ban hammer.
Should we betray international solidarity and become social-chauvinists to appeal to Liberal optics?
No. You should be ashamed for the tripe coming out of your fingertips
Hot take: yes, depending on who you're talking to, where, and why. Here on Hexbear we've pretty thoroughly decided that we're not trying to impress libs. I think that's a good thing. That said, I think if anyone is genuinely concerned about converting a lib, particularly if you're venturing on to other instances, I've had much better experiences trying to pull people to the left one step at a time. If you open with "Stalin was good actually", you have burned the bridge 100% of the way, you will not get a single thing through to them, they will dig in their heels and double down, and they think you're a genocide denier and you want to gas Ukrainians or something. Pull them one step leftwards and then let the next person pull them one more step than that.
No 👍 but thanks for asking
Honestly I did not expect so many responses and so overwhelmingly one sided. I am especially heartened to hear from the new users who joined because of the unapologetic stance of this site with regards to presenting an informed history of existing socialist states. I have read all the comments and all the points are well taken.
this is the same logic as 'toning down our support for LGBTQ to not scare the conservatives away', that red-brown alliance types do imo, and is just about equally as problematic.
no
Should we modify the way we present an unabashedly class-centric view of history, in order to cater to people who are neck-deep in propaganda and not about to deconstruct it?
I don't know, should we? ~
I certainly support anyone willing to put in the effort to do 101 posts, reading lists, and help guide baby leftists. However, I'm not willing to start admonishing/deleting/banning comments about how Stalin didn't go far enough or Mao landlord sentiment etc. just to make an imaginary person feel more comfortable. The jarring nature of the culture here may just as easily be weeding out losers as scaring away potential comrades.
I think the best way to bring people around on this site is to have good, insightful, useful, funny posts, to the extent that newcomers look past things that make them uncomfortable because the posts are just that good.
I think hammering the point that AES were/are real places full of real people who did many good things but also made mistakes is important, because it's true. The reflexive (i.e. uncritical) defending of AES states, in particular China, is understandable due to the uncritical attacking the MSM does constantly but it's not helpful. You can't win just by doing the same thing your enemy does but opposite/inverted.
This requires actually knowing what AES states did and are doing, which most here don't. Not saying I do either but I know enough to know that most here know even less. But it goes back to the purpose of this 'community', should it be for teaching theory and preaching socialism or should it just be a place for terminally online leftists (in the broadest possible definition) to shoot the shit and commiserate over the world falling apart? Obviously due to the nature of the internet, the latter is the most likely/possible.
No... this seems like pure revisionism and potential philistinism...
Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, if not DPRK should be critically supported at the very least...
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Not to be all "I called it", but I knew there was a post like this in your future.
No
What does “toning down” mean? Like lie about what we know to be true? Fuck that, they’re the ones that are misinformed and they’ll never learn if the only people that manage to have actually become informed despite all the propaganda are too afraid to speak truth.
no, lol
Is this a bit
this is sooooooooooo bad i hope anyone who looks at this reads the 10 billion comments explaining why
Nope
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No
[2nd] Samir Amin - EUROCENTRISM (2010, NYU Press) - libgen_1.li.epub 0.3 MB https://files.catbox.moe/7p7ty8.epub
A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any individual, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist.
OK I think I should elaborate on my own thoughts since I am asking others to do so.
I think this site is one of the rare instances on the internet where you can discuss openly about AES without immediately being overwhelmed by obnoxious anti-communist propaganda, so there is a good reason for Hexbear to stay the way it is.
At the same time, it is also limiting our interactions with others who may be more averse to think positively about AES. Unfortunately I think the two paths are mutually exclusive, you can’t tread both paths together, so it has to be one way or the other.
In terms of AES countries, it's fine, whatever. I do sometimes wish our critical support of some groups where a little more critical though.
you're in the right mindset, but unfortunately there's really no way to do this without just eliminating AES from our discussions, which would help libs on to our side, but wouldn't really make libs support AES either. this would be a good idea in like, an introduction to socialism type thing, but that's not really hexbear
You should admire The Good ThingsTM that they do, and not admire The Bad ThingsTM that they do, and not let the fact they did good things shroud them from any criticism of The Bad ThingsTM.
If you can reasonably and through a common framework show that The Bad ThingsTM are made up, go for that, but maybe leave the 1500 word justification for why the Katyn Massacre was actually based and a good thing unspoken.
The reason is people don't actually care about the historical details of the Holodomor or the Katyn massacre or the Cultural Revolution as such, they just want to make sure that you future political aspirations don't involve re-creations of the common portrayals of those events.
Lol.
Ouch.