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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
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.
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.
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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
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 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?
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.
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.
They won't just roll with it, awwwyissss thinks there's an immutable "human nature" and that communism is not "compatible" with it. They think communism is anti-human, while they do not judge the current system as anti-human: it's easy to see the little they would do of any political impact will only serve to keep the current barbarity going.
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.
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.
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.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
USians are literally the most propagandized pop on the planet.
USians are the only dipshits who think their state will just do the right thing with zero pressure.
Imagine thinking the people living in a system where bribery and corruption have literally been legalized and (somehow) still believe is the least corrupt system on earth, have not been propagandized into a pulp of absolute impotence and servility.
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.
You know back in school years ago (the small amount I actually remember) I had a history teacher show us the tankman video and it just cut off with him standing there and my teacher said "the Chinese cut the film before it could leave the country" or something like that. Only more recently did I learn that was bullshit.
Good thing I had already figured most of the history classes were bullshit before that. Oh and having a school designed by someone who designs prisons really didn't help my motivation.
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.
then you should try to do some more thinking. maybe even some reading
If we used non-western (or even independent western) outlets to talk about something that major western outlets don't, you'd dismiss it as propaganda and conspiracy theory
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.
First of all, multiple western sources agree with us on Tiananmin Square
Second Iraq is definitly not the only time. Vietnam is another huge example. Literally every post-WWII military conflict has involved the press lying about it to manufacture consent. Some of the things are things you probably haven't realized you're being lied to about it yet though, so if I use them as examples it won't help. But still.
Manufacturing Consent wasn't just about the media being on the side of the corporations, its also about them being on the side of Western imperlialist motivations. And they will lie to you about "enemy countries" over, and over, and over again.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
You think this because you don't see the misleading happening and believing the things the western sources tell you about the "bad countries".
Also Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq the first time and through the sanctions... You know, Ukraine... North Korea, the US government definitely tries to pull the wool over our eyes on that one. Venezuela, Cuba, on and on
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.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered for no reason to accomplish nothing but to line the pockets of Raytheon shareholders. And you write it off as if it doesn't even matter.
No one, neither the politicians nor the journalists who knowingly lied to you faced any repercussions. Not only that, but in many cases, it's the same people in the same positions with no reason not to do it again.
Even if you ignore all the other times that the media has lied, how many people do you believe died at Tiananmen Square to think that the two are remotely comparable?
The US government doesn’t have to (but still does anyway) mislead its own citizens because it works hand in glove with the class it represents (not you) which does all the misleading via the private “free press” that it owns and operates for it’s own benefit.
For the life of me I will never understand why liberals think something bad is less bad when it is a private actor doing it instead of the government, but the private actors actually control more of your daily life than the government does because you live in a neoliberal hellscape.
You have no control over anything the government OR the corporate overlords do. Does it really matter which one is screwing you when they’re basically all the same people anyway?
With regard to China, please just try to ask yourself why the standard of living has been improving there for decades while it continues to decline in the US. It’s not fucking rocket science, but you can’t rely on western corporate media to explain it to you.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
I think most of users on hexbear and lemmygrad are not from US, so internal US politics is not so important to them, foreign policy is and that's where US made a lot of haters.
It is not even that surprising, every country that was in war with US involved is not liking it, no one likes other nation's army on their teritory, whatever the reason.
lol what? hexbear is largely amerikan. we just have a lot of international users bc we arent racist. US internal politics are horrific as well. Biden wrote the bill responsible for the massive increase in policing and the war on drugs in 1994
no problem. ik theres a lot of inside jokes so it can be confusing at first, but we are very welcoming as long as ur receptive to left-wing politics and act in good faith
It's not a matter of liking the US but how it affects my country, that's how I know about American politics.
Their Internal politics influence foreign policy and economic exchange tied to the dollar.
On the contrary, Americans tend to be myopic about foreign policy because it doesn't affect them.
That's why I don't care about the Democratic-Republican political theater, they have the same foreign policy anyway (neoliberal imperialism).
Biden claims to be pro-LGBT for example, yet upholds the same US military that brutally abuses and kills transpeople, women and children abroad. Do you still think that it's as simple as
It is not even that surprising, every country that was in war with US involved is not liking it, no one likes other nation's army on their teritory, whatever the reason.
whatever the reason.
liking or disliking on a whim, like a high school crush? PSY faced so much backlash when it was revealed that he made an Anti-American song a decade before Gangnam Style, but the American press conviniently all forgot about the events that influenced it.
An American tank crushed two Korean teens walking on public road to go to a party.
no one likes other nation's army on their teritory, whatever the reason.
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.
Aside from the incredible irony of this statement that others have mentioned
the only time I can ever think of Western media doing anything on the scale of
the only time I can ever think of
What leads you to being able to think of examples in China? Was it because you were there and experienced it yourself? Or did you hear about it from people who were there? Did you look through archives in China? Did you see modern reporting from (to pick an arbitrary state) India on this topic?
Or did you hear about it from western media themselves?
Can you see a conflict of interest in that conception of things? Perhaps especially when it comes to reporting on media fabrications in the west?
Edit: Russiagate is a fun example because I don't give a shit either way, but the Dem-aligned media did an excellent job of convincing their base that Russia first hacked the election and then somehow flipped the election with Facebook ads, and had QAnon-level lore with Igor Fuckstyvich and Boris Shitov in a great web of conspiracy theories to draw connections between people. It was all so tedious that I stopped following it pretty early, but a lot of people still genuinely believe that shit even as it was shown that Russia did very, very little.
Also it keeps evading the notice of liberals that if Russia bought the election, that means Facebook sold it! I think that second one would be much more of a concern, especially since it should be more actionable for the US to control one of its own companies. Whoops.
Edit 2: Consider that most of what you believe about the DPRK is false because the media in the west is just a constant churn of comically bullshit stories. haircuts, anyone?
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.
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