Skip Navigation

A summary of what happened between Blahaj.Zone and Hexbear.Net

Lots of people who are seeing top-level postings about Hexbear. Net are probably confused about what has been going on and I want to give an SRD-style overview of the whole thing.
Note: As a user of Blahaj.Zone, I am not a neutral party in this and I do not pretend to be. This is how the whole thing has played out from my perspective.

Hexbear. Net is another Lemmy instance that had relatively recently started to federate with Blahaj.Zone and other Lemmy instances. It had previously been known as Chapo.Chat because it began as an instance for fans of the podcast ChapoTrapHouse.
Recently users from Blahaj.Zone (as well as other Lemmy instances) began to complain about the behavior of Hexbear users. The complaints were about rude, obnoxious behavior: Hexbear users calling people "libs" as an insult, denying crimes of Russia and China, denying the crimes of Stalin,...
Such behavior was not necessarily forbidden on Blahaj.Zone, but certain sub-Lemmys had their own rules on these subjects.
One of the threads about Hexbear: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795?scrollToComments=true

After an ever increasing number of users calling for defederating from Hexbear. Net, Ada (admin of Blahaj.Zone) opened a thread to talk about it. The thread was quickly inundated with Hexbear users, complaining in turn about being called out in this way. Though many of their comments exploited a current bug in the Lemmy code which resulted in emoji's being embedded as pictures which results in lots of image spam.
Ada responded by removing top-level comments in the thread which were not from Blahaj.Zone's users, because she wanted to get the feedback of her own community, not from anybody else.
This happened originally in this thread: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1959801

The discussion on Blahaj.Zone was a back and forth: Lots of people calling for "leftist and queer unity", others complaining about getting harassed by Hexbear users.

Meanwhile, elsewhere: Lemm.ee, a Lemmy instance operated and managed by someone from Estonia, also opened a discussion about Hexbear - at least partially motivated by the admin's increasing unease of the rampant denial of soviet atrocities and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Russian propaganda in regards to the war in Ukraine was also an issue.
Lemm.ee was largely encountering similar problems as Blahaj.Zone, though the Lemme.ee admin admitted that the Hexbear admin was generally responsive to reports and complaints.
The thread on Lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536

The thread was also flooded with comments from Hexbear users. The admin of Lemm.ee also responded by hiding most of the comments from Hexbear.
https://mastodon.social/@brooklynman/110911292961470110

Back on Blahaj.Zone, a tangent opens up: A Hexbear user complains about c/196, the new home of Reddit's r/196 which had relocated to Blahaj.Zone and has been its biggest community ever since. The Hexbear user complains about their comments being removed, comments that called out the use of the r-word and other call-outs. The user posts pictures of the removal notices.
Blahaj.Zone's admin Ada steps in and intervenes on behalf of the Hexbear user, having a stern word with the c/196 mod responsible for the removal of the comments.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2136643

A Hexbear admin also gets involved and sends a message to the mods of c/196 demanding the removal of the sub-Lemmy's banner, because it contains "fuck tankies²", arguing that tankies is a slur. The c/196 mod refuses and publishes their message.
[²"Tankies" is a pejorative term for authoritarian socialists in the vein of Stalin and/or Mao.]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1961004

While the discussion if Blahaj.Zone should defederate from Hexbear is still ongoing, the Hexbear admins defederated from Blahaj.Zone without warning from their side, because of...

unaddressed ableist removals from the /c/196 moderators, defense of chasers, no-quarter rules regarding our users, leakage of good-faith DMs from our admin team, and a general lack of initiative to punish these behavior

In her a response to these events, Ada points out in a comment that she never had the chance to adress the ableist incident (she was in bed) while other issues had happened in the past and had been adressed at the time. Thus she could not react before Hexbear defederated.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135406

TL;dr: Blahaj.Zone's users complain about ill behavior of users on Hexbear. Net. A discussion about defederation begins on Blahaj.Zone. Meanwhile Hexbear users complain about Blahaj.Zone in turn and Hexbear. Net defederates instantly and without warning.

185

You're viewing a single thread.

185 comments
  • I like hexbear, but i suppose it comes down to a rather ... "abnormal" type of "liking".

    There is definitely a pattern of asshole behavior from hexbear users, but they're fun to verbally spar with and they make Lemmy feel lively.

    In the same way that capsaicin causes spicy food to be spicy by stimulating nerves that are intended to warn us of pain and injury while in fact it's actually harmless, I find hexbear's vociferous users to be endearingly abrasive.

    Because turnabout is fair play, they're fair game to be rude to. By choosing to interact in a hostile nature, they are consenting to receive hostility. It's only fair. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't be dishing it out. However, the exchange must be proportional and bigotry can not be allowed.

    "Tankie" is not a slur any more than "Lib" is. If they honestly believe that it's socially acceptable to use "Lib" as an insult, then it's sheer hypocrisy to object to "Tankie". But all other known slurs, ableist slurs, sexist slurs, racial and ethnic slurs, are out of bounds and should be reported, and offenders ignored.

    If they don't like this arrangement, then they have no business acting like they do outside of their instance and defederation may in fact be necessary.

    • “Liberal” is the name that supporters of liberal capitalism use to refer to themselves. It has a precise and accepted meaning.
      “Tankie” has no defined meaning, which is why it is not used by communists. In its vagueness it is used to associate Marxists with crypto-fascists and non-Marxist ideas, and to obfuscate the meaning of Marxism. And in so far as it associates the kind of people who died to liberate Auschwitz with the kind of people who built that place, it is offensive.
      If there is no malign intent behind the term ‘tankie’, then why does anyone use that term instead of communist? Why doesn’t 196 have “fuck communists” in their banner instead of “fuck tankies”?

      • Tankie has a defined meaning, there's even a Wikipedia article explaining the origin of the name:

        The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

      • "Liberal" is also the term that westerners who oppose authoritarianism have adopted in response to right wing authoritarians who claim to support liberal capitalist policies applying the label "liberal" to anti authoritarians. It has multiple accepted meanings.

        I've only ever seen "tankie" used to refer to a pro authoritarian communist. Someone who thinks the actions of Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Erich Hoenecker were reasonable and justified.

        Why doesn't 196 have fuck communists? Because a lot of the people posting there are communists. But they hate authoritarian communism. And Lemmy has some prominent tankists (including the lead devs). Putting "authoritarian communist apologists not welcome here" front and center is a very intentional choice.

        As far "tankies" is a slur goes, I find that laughable. Slurs are about things you can't control. What's the color of your skin? Where were you born? Do you have any mental or physical disabilities you have to work through to get through your day ("Everyone is disabled. My disability is just a little more visible than everyone else's " - Jim Abbott)? Who are you or aren't you sexually attracted to? Your political beliefs are not, and cannot, be part of a protected class. They are something you have come to believe over time, and which you are motivated to share and cultivate with others. If your political beliefs are particularly heinous, such as denying the Holodomor, the deaths of the great leap forward, or the genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, other people have every right to tell you to fuck right off

        • honestly as someone whos a communist (like the ones mentioned in this comment) ive never liked the term "authoritarian communism" because by definition, actual textbook communism cannot be authoritarian. as soon as you add that in, you might as well remove the communism part altogether.

        • I would argue with the point of it not being a slur. Anything can be a slur. Slurs are just words used to describe minority groups (or any groups really), in a hateful way. Queer people exist, yet of i said it with enough stink, queer is a slur.

          Just like how nazi is a slur. However, if this group isnt merely trying to exist, and is instead trying to spread hate and hurt, is it okay to call them out in hateful and offensive tones? Im not sure. It's a question you have to ask yourself.

          I think tankie is a slur for sure. But i dont think whether or not it should be used should be part of the discussion. I think the discussion should instead be, Is it fair for this group to use tankie, when that group uses lib(which, they say it with such a negative connotation, I would say they use it as a slur) ? Should one take the high road, and ignore the other? Should they bother wallow in the mud together? Honestly idk.

          But i come from punk roots, so fuck Nazis and fuck any sort of authoritarist. If you side with the oppression of people for the "greater good" then you have no room to speak when we oppress you for our greater good.

      • The term Tankie has a clear usage pattern, and it refers to both the action and defending of the action of authoritarian regimes using military assets (such as tanks) to systematically inflict violence upon civilian populations.

        It first came into use after an authoritarian government sent troops and tanks to overturn the election of a candidate they didn't like (in Prague 1968) and the vapid simps of that authoritarian government clapped like seals in mindless automatic support of it.

        Other events that follow this pattern:

        • When the Communist Party of Kampuchea purged over a million people between 1975 and 1979 because "reasons" (usually paranoia),

        • When on 1989-06-04 the Chinese government declared martial law, deployed troops and tanks to occupy Tiananmen Square and slaughter the hundreds of student protestors there (that figure according to the Chinese government; other parties allege higher casualty numbers),

        • When Petro Poroshenko shelled his own cities in 2014 and bragged that he intentionally wanted to maim and terrorize the civilians there for the mere "crime" of living in the same municipality where rebels allegedly lived, while not commonly associated with the term, definitely fits the bill

        If you don't LIKE that people refer to these recurring patterns of state-actualized brutality (and the rhetorical support and defense thereof) as "Tankie", WELL that sounds like a skill issue. GIT GUD.

      • “Tankie” has no defined meaning

        Sure it does: support of authoritarian pseudocommunism, such as was practiced by Stalin and Mao.

        If there is no malign intent behind the term ‘tankie’, then why does anyone use that term instead of communist?

        Because tankies are pseudocommunists. They don't care about the interests of the proletariat, which makes them the opposite of genuine communists.

      • because tankies arent communists..? they arent communists in the same way that china isnt a communist a country. sure china is run by the chinese communist party, but theyre fascists. sure the nazis were called the national socialist party, but that doesnt mean they were socialists. they were fascists. its almost like governments are capable of lying about being progressive to get into power or muddy the name of actual progressive systems to further their own agenda.

      • "Liberal" does not have a precise and accepted meaning. If you ask three people on the street to define liberal, you'll get three different definitions and none of them will be how hexbear users use it. It also varies wildly across the globe.

You've viewed 185 comments.