Honestly the one that came to mind involves the same user from the same thread which is unfortunately buried in a morass of text block. But a comrade was explaining to them why they disagree with common mischaracterizations of Stalin, and the lemm.ee person responded approvingly, saying they appreciated the nuance in the comrade's representation of Stalin.

I lol'd when comrade replied that it was jarring too hear a self-declared conservative approve of their explanation of Stalin's legacy.

Also, other comrades did great work in politely suggesting further reading, and the .ee poster was open to it and thankful.

I keep thinking about how "Lib" r/cth was back when it started. How the struggle sessions and the desire for learning led us to refine our understandings, filtering out the nonsense, and how long this took, how many of us straight left the community, some to return and some not. It was and can be painful to have your held beliefs challenged and to be negatively implicated in harboring reactionary tendencies. I read another user from on of the defederated instances talking about how the comments that they received from hexbear pushing back against their received wisdom obsessed their thoughts for days (relatable) before they moved on (no you didn't). It's easy and advisable to "not get mad online" but I would be lying if I said I hadn't. I have grown from the uncomfortable interactions I have had in this community over the years (uncomfortable in the sense of challenging my preconceived notions and reflecting poorly on my thinking) even though I have been overwhelmed at times by the intensity the community can sometimes operate on during tumult and struggle sessions, but I come back because we have the best posters, the most caring online community I have encountered (our mutual aid community speaks volumes), and we are by and large willing to challenge our own thinking. The growth of the community (in the intellectual, political, "spiritual" sense) is obvious when you look how far we've come from like 2016 or whatever (I joined r/cth mid 2017). That growth has been hard fought, and while the culture is still that of the "overly online irony poisoned" variety, little remains of the political tenor that characterized r/cth. If the posters from r/cth were transported here by time machine, they would be dunked on as succ dems by their future selves or something. If anything, hexbear seems a closer cousin to r/cth2, which was itself controversial among some users of the original sub.

I am rambling, but it is funny that we went to an online hidey hole and emerged this striking figure which is unfathomable and highly foreign to the reddit brain after only 3 years of breaking away. Reddit cut off the potential of r/cth and it appears what they were thinking about our presence there and it's effect on the broader community were at least partially true. Our engagement was a threat to the western anglosphere thinking that dominates the site, and when they took the sub away many of us fled and stopped posting there. Since r/cth was nuked I have commented only a few times, and it's for stuff like "how do you do this in minecraft?" or something. When the sub was alive I was all over the site engaging with others in political discussions etc. The sub being nuked left a rhetorical and philosophical void, the fallout of which we are now seeing as we attempt to reintegrate.

These other instances have not gone through the same kind of community building and education that defines ours, and I hope that federation is at least successful enough too see the lemmy verse grow, and to have our presence a relevant force in that space as new users are exposed to new ideas. I can already see fellow travelers from other instances who were unaware of our existence previous to federation cautiously dipping their toes in and I for one am here for it.