I figured since their admin has asked them to stop participating over here it may be worthwhile to get a new discussion going that is primarily blahaj. I'm almost certain they'll still be upvoting so keep that in mind as that may skew things. Worthwhile to check in from instances that have already defederated them. The previous thread definitely left a bad taste in my mouth but what do y'all think?
I shared what I learned about Hexbear in the previous thread. As far as interacting with Hexbear goes, if we keep our interactions to sharing memes and support for trans people then I think we will be fine. I like the idea of getting along with them, but they have to meet us in the middle. If they continue to be disingenuous about their political views then I think we will have problems.
What do you mean by disingenuous? I feel like they've been very upfront with their political views, to the point of causing problems with how upfront they are.
I told them upfront that we moderate tankies. I told them I thought the best way for us to get along would be for them to be honest. I said I don't mind communists, but I do have a problem with authoritarian communists. They insisted they were just communists. One of them seemed to imply I was being presumptuous by putting "authoritarian" in quotes.
Then after about three days of talking, they started giving me authoritarian communist talking points. You can check my comment history. But it's all in the I Love Twitter Rule post. When I gave them my opinion that they were defending authoritarian government's like North Korea and the Taliban the two people in question suddenly stopped talking.
Then I posted what I found in the previous meta thread. The same person who had defended the Taliban came on and tried to safe face. I suddenly got a bunch of other replies on the I Love Twitter Rule thread too. One person started defending North Korea and China, and reciting Russian propaganda all in one comment.
The problem I had with it, is those people could have just admitted that they agreed with these authoritarian communist talking points from the get go. Rather than doing that, they tried to gaslight me. If a group of people don't want to outright admit what they believe when prompted, then that's an indicator that there is something wrong with those views and that those people know it.
Do you really think they identify as authoritarians? I'm guessing from their perspective, it is often a matter of a lesser of two evils question or trying to separate and acknowledge the good in some governments in addition to decrying the bad. Many of them are proponents of critical support of existing socialist movements—meaning support plus criticism. It is a practice of empathy and materialism rather than idealistic good vs. evil thinking.
Side note, how is anyone supposed to know what people mean by Russian/Chinese propaganda when US liberals label anything that isn't on the official US Democratic Party approved list of acceptable thought as Russian/Chinese propaganda?
It's not about what they identify as. It's about if they agree with authoritarian views.
Tankies aren't arguing one side is less bad than the other. They claim authoritarian regimes have done no wrong. That oppression is preferable to freedom.
Side note, how is anyone supposed to know what people mean by Russian/Chinese propaganda when US liberals label anything that isn’t on the official US Democratic Party approved list of acceptable thought as Russian/Chinese propaganda?
Please explain what you mean by this. I do not want to guess. What is the official US Democratic Party approved list of acceptable thoughts?
It's not about what they identify as. It's about if they agree with authoritarian views.
If you ask a communist whether they are authoritarian and they don't identify as such, they are going to say no whether or not you would later determine them to be authoritarian. I was trying to explain the difference in worldviews causing that disconnect
Please explain what you mean by this. I do not want to guess. What is the official US Democratic Party approved list of acceptable thoughts?
There is a loud subset of hyper-liberal-types on lemmy and especially reddit that will see any criticism of US foreign policy, the CIA, the OAS, NATO, and many clearly biased and Western capital-aligned NGOs, or any acknowledgement of positive aspects/accomplishments of post-revolution China or the former Soviet Union and declare that the person making that criticism is a Russian/Chinese bot. It's as if some people think that the US and its allies can do no wrong, and China and other socialist states or movements can do no right