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.
Hexbear is actually one of the oldest Lemmy instances, been around for over three years. Due to technical issues around our high number of active users and having to rely on volunteer labour, we have only been able to federate within the last few weeks.
Because they are. This isn’t even a radical far left idea. Ever heard of “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky? That’s one of the main arguments, that the media is owned and controlled by the capitalist class.
Lemmy was built by communists and the audacity of these liberals to come here and demand shelter from exposure to communists is really something
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.
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?
All political systems are authoritarian.
Then you should have a problem with the term itself “authoritarian propaganda”
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.
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
I wonder who made that definition.
I didn’t say everything is authoritarian, I specifically stated your politics as being authoritarian.
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.
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!
Using wikipedia as a reference for political ideology is like asking W Bush which countries are good and bad
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.
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
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.
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
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.
That’d be nice. Unfortunately the bourgeoise have class solidarity with each other and not with us, they will prevent change from happening peacefully.
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.
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.
I am descending into madness.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t forget the stochastic violence they do to us with their control of media and culture
STATE AND REVOLUTION
Did you have the opportunity to see what the state does in the face of nonviolent resistance when the BLM protests were happening?
Propaganda is any alternative to the hegemony of Western corporate media
You have no idea what this word even means
looks at my own account age
Nah bro I think we’re all one month old bot accounts personally ran by the standing committee of the Politburo of the People’s Republic of China and the standing committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the People’s Republic of Korea
Seems like you’re missing a ton of nuance in manufacturing consent, and have turned from the frying pan into the fire in that sense.
Yes, Western media is biased towards corporations. This is most clearly seen in anything labeled “finance” or “money”, but is pervasive.
But the only time I can ever think of Western media doing anything on the scale of censoring the 1989 Tiananmin Square Massacre is the Iraq MWD debacle. And they’ve never done anything like the Great Firewall.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
And even if you’re 100% on board with every word Marx has written, I don’t understand how that leads one to defend modern day Russia and China.
The West absolutely has problems. And it’s good and right to point those out and try to fix them. But to try to paint the East as the answer to stand against the West is dangerous and dumb.
How do you know that? Did the US government tell you?
Reality is calling
They can’t even spell it right, of course they never took the initiative to question the massacre narrative
I’m always so paranoid about saying something wrong let alone spelling something wrong. It blows my mind when people just spout off without double checking themselves.
The great firewall is for your own protection, just look at how you guys react to a small group of users with different opinions!
Are people stupid enough to believe this?
That was clearly a joke
The Great Firewall was to protect their own citizens from being data mined from foreign companies and propagandized by hostile state actors that want to put the Chinese in mines to extract resources for dirt cheap like they’ve done to many other nations in Africa, South America, and Asia
Notably also to make room in the domestic market for the domestic bourgeoisie to fill the roles Facebook, YT, etc. fill elsewhere, since those companies collaborate with the US.
The real answer is it is, among other things, an economic tool
The alternative was having the big US techs invade china economically, along with the mass propaganda from capitalist entities (chief among them the US, always pursuing efforts to destabilize China) that would have followed
You don’t speak to actual Chinese citizens often, do you ? basically all young people there have VPNs, and nobody cares. Like, at all
No, the truth is the CCP is a violently authoritarian government that needs to control what it’s citizens think in order to stay in power.
lol, the great firewall is protecting you right now from getting bodied by millions of CPC members
I mean, visit any third world country where there’s no such thing as a “great firewall” and you’ll find western services and corporations embedded in everything to do with technology. WhatsApp has basically replaced text messaging to the point where even banks use it in my country, twitter is basically a PSA and tech support tool, and Facebook is everywhere. This is terrible for sovereignty. Meanwhile China has developed their own stuff such as WeChat and Weibo. So they’re not subject to relying on Zuckerberg and Musk for everything from texting to banking.
That’s the main economic purpose the great firewall served, it allowed China to develop their own tech industry instead of relying on silicon valley dorks. Not everything is some evil authoritarian communist scheme to oppress everyone. Chinese citizens could just get a VPN if they wanted to find out anything cordoned off.
The US Is the most violent police state in the world, not that you actually give a shit
Lol, you’re complaining about other people being propagandized while you say shit like this.
Do you think people don’t have VPNs?
The US state has spent the last three-quarter century sending their intelligence and military forces all over the world to violently snuff out any movement that went against it percieved interests.
China did not do that.
So why are you focusing on China? Who is the real “authoritarian” government here?
No I’m pretty sure they do that by increasing their citizens quality of life. I know, it’s a bizarre concept.
Be more direct. Who are you even replying to?
I’m not replying to anyone, I’m posting this for other people who come along and might be susceptible to Hexbear propaganda.
Well thank god they have you to tell them… what exactly? What counter-movement do you stand for?
It might shock you but you aren’t required to stand for an anti-establishment whatever and shove your opinions down other people’s throats.
Capitalism in it’s current form may be responsible for incredible suffering and truly horrific global environmental damage. That doesn’t mean the concept itself is 100% wrong, that Communism is compatible with human nature, or that it’s in humanities best interest to split of into a bunch of counter-movements.
You are ideologically incoherent.
Time to check the ”human nature tho” box on my bingo card.
So what i’m getting is, you’ll never do anything to make it better and just roll with the material conditions like a boxing dummy on a swivel. You lash out at our approach to the system bc you have none of your own.
Lmao, you did the meme.
You did the “muh human nature” meme.
Hilarious!
Why do you speak so confidently about subjects you clearly have spent almost exactly zero time investigating? There are over a hundred years of accumulated knowledge and study from a Marxist perspective on the nature and mechanics of capitalism (and that’s basically what Marxism is). You say that [single observation] isn’t proof that it’s inherently bad? Well big fucking whoop. The conclusion comes from a LOT more than that.
Hexbear doesn’t “defend modern day Russia”. I’m sure there are some users who do purely from a position of believing a multipolar world is preferable to one dominated unilaterally by the US, but even in those users think Putin is a piece of shit.
There’s a difference between understanding NATO’s role in provoking the war in Ukraine, not calling Russians orcs or comparing Putin to Hitler and defending modern-day Russia.