I’ve felt this way for a while. The lack of ideological diversity is what creates the illusion of “left unity” over here. One example:
Imagine if we had a sizeable chunk of people who are anti-Dengist. Then nearly every post about China, every use of Xi emotes, would be filled with replies criticising China, Xi, and the OP.
And you couldn’t call all these people libs and just ban them because there are a lot of leftists, from Maoists to anarchists to ultras to even non-Dengist MLs who genuinely oppose the modern Chinese state based on their ideological convictions.
And if the mods banned them, that would be pure bias, and could lead to an exodus of those other leftist users, which would mean we are not actually left-unity.
But if the mods didn’t, then it would be a severe restriction on the kinds of content that can be posted on the “main” communities. You couldn’t say things like “China is moving towards socialism or that it is in the primary stage of socialist construction” because these are controversial opinions not held by other leftists. Allowing these, would mean allowing the opposites, which would mean a war in the replies every time you post something like this.
As an example, see what happened with vegan posting. In this “left unity” Hexbear, anarchists would have to confine their controversial opinions to the anarchist comm, MLs to the ML comm etc.
Right now, we have an extremely small minority of people who are against the majority opinion in some way. And those people are tolerated in their dissent as long as they frame it in very careful ways and never outright go against the majority. I mean, we have left unity emotes and anarchist emotes and that’s all cool.
But what happens if there are a 100+ anarchists who start posting and commenting about their analysis/opinion on the USSR? Would that be allowed? Would anarchists, if they existed in sizeable numbers be allowed to not just criticise the Soviet Union in the narrow ways in which is allowed currently but to state the full breadth of their opinions on it from the start? Even more controversial, what if Trots started talking about Stalin? How long would that be tolerated?
Now, I’m not saying the way Hexbear operates is wrong. Maybe left unity is a pipe dream and that there are just too many controversial positions and opposing visions for it to be real. Maybe, if there were other tendencies here, the mods would figure out a way to balance things out. Be calm on main, go wild on specific comms. But I think that is the point - Hexbear’s claim to left unity needs to be properly tested. The users and the mods need to face these challenges and come up with proper solutions that doesn’t end in purges of other communities. We cannot claim to be this big tent when we’ve only been in this tiny sandbox with a handful of small rocks.
Digging into 100+ year old historical controversies is rarely useful for organizing
I’d go even further and say it’s frequently detrimental for organizing
This is how I view things, based on coming from a community that is very anti-anarchist and anti-Maoist:
For a long time, I thought that we do need ideological diversity and different opinions, imho.
But, before I came here, that was to be ideological diversity and different thinking among fellow MLs, not anarchists and Maoists.
Where I come from, we ban anarchists and Maoists on sight as much as we ban PatSocs.
PatSocs for being right deviationist; Maoists for being left deviationist.
And anarchists because we’re just not the same thing and, contrary to popular belief, we technically do not want the same thing.
There are many, many places out there that have “left unity” so you can go to there… but there are few places that have places for MLs where we can discuss things that pertain mainly to us, places that cater exclusively to MLs.
It makes everyone have to force themselves to be “nice” to each other.
There should be spaces that cater solely to MLs and then places that have a sense of “left unity.”
As it stands: there is barely any of what I described on the Internet (other than the place I hang out on when I’m not here on my free time).
we technically do not want the same thing.
How would you say they differ?
because our definitions of the “state” are different from each other and anarchists want “no hierarchy”
“No unjust hierarchy”. There is a place for mentor/apprentice and similar relationships.
No, authority and hierarchy are good
Authority and hierarchy are tools that can be used for good and bad and have no innate moral character on their own, kind of like violence or bureaucracy or a screwdriver
I’m not a Marxist-Leninist. While dissenting opinions/ideologies are allowed, Hexbear’s party line seems to be pretty clearly Marxist-Leninist to me. However, that isn’t a problem for me since my dream is the destruction of the USA and ending neoliberal hegemony, which most Hexbear users are on board with.
most
if i fucking find anyone here who doesn’t dream of the destruction of the usa and the ending of neoliberal hegemony they are going straight to the
People who disliked china already were banned or left tho
I mean I don’t like China, but I also
- don’t know anything about China
- don’t interact with China in my daily life.
- don’t care enough to get angry when people do like China as a combination of the above two things.
- don’t think anyone’s views on China are terribly important for anything. A prochinese western leftist is as useless and powerless as antichinese one for all intents and purposes.
Counterpoint: china good
An anti-Chinese “leftist” in the west actively contributes to imperialist intrigue and are traitors to the global proletariat at worst and useless at best. Stop attacking the enemies of the empire you live in!
See when I hear stuff like this it just comes off as rhetoric divorced from any sort of pragmatic or material reality. A ‘pro-Chinese’ leftist in the west materially contributes to the US in all the same ways an ‘anti-Chinese’ one does, and I don’t see how posting pro-Chinese content on niche webforums like this and having the ‘right views’ on the matter absolves them of any material complicity.
Anti-China sentiment is how America drums up public support for economic warfare against China, like this ongoing effort to starve China of semiconductors
Do the technocrats require public support to engage in economic warfare against China? The Cuban embargo is opposed by a super-majority of Americans and a majority across all political affiliations, and yet it continues unabated.
There seems to be a double standard on the left where
is regarded as a meme that won’t change anything but “TALK” is incredibly important for influencing state actions.If TALK doesn’t matter, why are you here doing it? Why do it in such a nothinglord nihilist manner and at least have fun with it?
tbh i’m confused is this like a sitewide strawman or just spitballing?
I often see anarchists self-identifying in posts and while [email protected] may not be as active as [email protected] its not like you can mosey over to raddle.me and say “hey come populate our anarchism comm” hexbear is going to get what hexbear is going to get.
Ive seen people try and put out the hexbear name in some reddit communities, like r/anarchism and you’ll get the usually folks spouting about the evils of hexbear and the tankie coding of lemmy itself.
As much as any aspect of the code of conduct the mods ebb and flow in their effective removal of “sectarian” content. I’m personally not an anarchist but if you are be the change you wanna see post shit in the anarchism community and I know there are [email protected] mods that are active and will remove any comments in that community shitting on someone for voicing criticism of marxism and etc. there.
Suppose I’m rambling at this point but unless you’ve got specific examples of what you are saying is occurring I’m here to say that I don’t see it.
Raddle is the tankie-baiting shithole with that one dude ziq posting his screeds like they’re theory, right?
Lurker here who made an account to post. As a Marxist who isn’t a “Dengist”, I genuinely thought it was bannable not to be a dengist. If you want people with other opinions like me to post it needs to be at least somewhat clear that if I post here disagreeing with some of the “Xi Pilled” stuff that I won’t get banned.
I think reasoned critiques that are open to reasoned responses ought to be ok. What grinds my gears is when leftists trade shallow dunks and neither side gives any convincing reasoning or information
That said, I’d argue shallow dunking on dengism is worse than shallow dunking to defend dengism. Leading a socialist state is a huge trolley problem with massive stakes, and until we’ve taken the time to understand the complexities of the problem we should cut socialist nations some slack. Capitalist encirclement can create lose-lose situations.
