Ask Lemmy

TLDR: they are right-wingers pretending to be left wing

I would block hexbear. I've done it server-wide. They are mostly very loud trolls pretending to be communists. Some could be actual communists, but I don't buy anyone actually wanting to be in such a toxic environment and believe what they claim to believe.

Hexbear, lemmygrad and (in great part) lemmy.ml are tankie instances.

They basically deny any crimes of Stalin, Mao etc…

Hexbear, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the "Tankie Triad".

Hexbear is the worst most extreme of them and lemmy.ml is the least which is why they've managed to avoid getting defederated from world (either that or because they're like the third largest instance behind only .world and SJW)

Hexbear is pretty widely defederated

block hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml. And any user named "UniversalMonk" on any instance. You'll thank me later.

Hexbear.net is a Left-Unity instance populated mainly by Marxists and Anarchists. They generally don't get along with Lemmy.world, whose admins defederated from the major Marxist-aligned instances.

Whether you block Hexbear is up to you, I enjoy my time there a lot but it's also because I'm a Marxist. The ones saying they are "pretending" to be Leftist never seem to be able to explain why a large group of people would all ironically have theory reading groups and ironically support trans rights for years, even before federating with anyone else. What would they have to gain?

If I were you, I'd ask on an instance actually federated with them. You'll get different perspectives than you will here, which is always the case when it comes to controversial topics like Marxism, where opinion varies greatly from instance to instance.

You should block hexbear

I'm sorry if I sound tone deaf I am new to Lemmy .~.

It's a tankie instance. You're not missing anything important or reality-based by blocking it. You should also block lemmy.ml.

Oh another one of these

Short answer:

"What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi"

Similar level of assholety and low post quality. Better politics. Overall don't bother, not worth it.

Note: being on Lemmy for about a year, I didn't live through the early days of this place. Here's what I can recollect, as neutrally given as possible.

TL;DR The recent conflicts between two politically different groups on Lemmy have radicalized many people, and many Hexbear residents in particular. Unless you are to discuss the far-left ideas and are very radical about disadvantaged groups, you are safe to block it.

Hexbear is a far-left (as in actually communist) anti-discrimination community, initially more of a safe haven to promote equality and foster a healthy and welcoming place for leftists to come together.

With core developers of Lemmy also being far-left, Hexbear naturally fitted the landscape along with the official Lemmy.ml, heavy far-left Lemmygrad.ml and others.

As time went on, however, all sorts of left-leaning and apolitical folks, not just far-left, came to the platform, filling other instances like Lemmy.world (now the most populated of them all), sh.itjust.works and many others.

As a result, Lemmy has two groups of people with radically different political views: one is a group of more or less organized far-left, and the other is everyone else, most commonly liberals. This distinction has caused a lot of conflicts and heated discussions based on political adherence.

Most notable case is latest US elections. The far left side generally called not to vote Democrat as Biden has failed to deliver on many of his promises and empowered Israel to commit war crimes in Palestine, while the liberal audience called to vote Democrat to not let Republicans take the lead, which may arguably lead to an even worse outcome than unaccountable Dems can make.

This divide has raised a lot of mutual hostility, brigading, and uncivil behavior, which has radicalized many on both sides of the conflict, the consequences of which you have got to experience.

What to do with that is up to you to decide. Hexbear is very politically uniform and very political overall, so if you're not here to discuss communism, you won't lose much and will gain additional peace of mind.

Wow, I was wondering why I hadn't blocked a single hexbear or lemmy.ml user here: my instance did it for me! I've had multiple accounts on multiple servers and consistently had to block hexbear users until finally blocking hexbear outright. It's been a much better experience then.

Tankies, mostly. They're on my blocklist,but managed to avoid it for a disgustingly long time; they do have some good content from time to time, but in the end seeing the repeated vitriol and genocide denialism simply wasn't worth it.

I'll do you one better, why is Hexbear??

I’ve had more issues with .world mods then any of the communist ones.

"Anyone right of me is Hitler" sounds pretty on point for them. Instance block and move on with your day.

Hexbear, together with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml are left wing, communist instances here on Lemmy.

A lot of (new) users of Lemmy have very strong - as in negative - feelings about them because of their ideas. Which to me makes sense because a lot of these users tend to be more centrist in their views and have never read Marxist literature before.

I will be honest with you and tell you my experience: they can be dickish and straight up trollish in their behavior, but not anymore than your average online trolls. The actual main reason people dislike them, is because they stick together and sometimes "brigade" post which nominates them and talk shit about them.

I personally was on the receiving end of their trolling when I first joined Lemmy too. But among the trolls, there were also very nice users who gave me friendly replies. And I had great conversations with them.

Eventually I even decided to open an alt account in one of those instances to learn more about their views and engage with them on their political knowledge. I really enjoy learning from them and having open conversations about politics with them. Even when sometimes I see their more extreme opinions, I still try to always be open minded at first. More often than not, I will learn that something I used to think on a subject, was the result of historical misconceptions or straight up propaganda. That is not to say that they can't be wrong of course. But it pays off to be receptive about new points of view.

There are some elements that can be considered extreme, especially to someone from the general public who has never engaged in political conversations with someone who is very much to the left. It takes a little adjustment if you want to try and engage because so much of the media and literature we consume reinforce our views on the system while they specifically try to be critical of it.

Bur FOR SURE you will never see that instance be racist or bigoted. I have lost counts how many times I've seen that in other instances, but with them, you know exactly where they stand on that. As in, they do NOT tolerate that.

Tldr: Hexbear (with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml) are openly communist instances on Lemmy. They are very vocals because they have a large userbase. They can be trolls that stick together sometimes. If you are politically interested/involved, I instead recommend joining one of their instances to see for yourself.

Edit: you can also tell how much people here have a negative feeling about those instances by the reactions in this post. Everything remotely critical is upvoted, while anything that even hints a positive opinion of them, will be downvoted. And then more and more users will start downvoting without even reading the comments. And they will start attacking users because they disagree and feel the need to attack them because "that instance bad"...in a way not too dissimilar from the brigading I mentioned before for some of the users from those instances. Showing you a real life example of how there are extreme users in every online community

I'm sorry u had to experience these extremists. Block the instance and forget about them.

Yes, you should definitely block Hexbear. They're a toxic, angry group of people, who have no intention of ever engaging in good faith.

Seems this post is being brigaded by hexbear alts fyi

Tankies

It's an instance meant to seem attractive to western youths while explicitly only serving the needs of the Chinese Dictatorship.

Most of their users are bots, human decency is their kryptonite. If ever you are convinced that any of them are your friends, you're just another mark they intend to make full use of and throw away: you are not a human being in the eyes of Hexbear.

Hexbear.net, lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad.ml have a lot of extreme leftists who have very wild takes that could be mistaken for right wing takes.

I personally don't recommend blocking them because outside of political threads they make up a lot of the content/memes/discussions, but up to you if you want to try that out.

Hexbear users will bully you to hell the very second you say something they disagree with. In my case, I said South Park is a funny show. They also think Putin is a good guy and at the same time they pretend 90% of their users are trans. Basically it's a bunch of douche kids playing revolutionaries and intimating anyone they disagree with. My 2 cents.

I just took a look at your participation in the hexbear thread you are referencing, and I'm confused about the issue. Seems like you got mostly thoughtful and positive replies. There was some .world bashing at the end including the bit you quoted. It seems strange to me that rather than ask questions about hexbear to the actual users there, you came over here to ask on an instance that has daily threads complaining about leftist instances.

Hexbear is cool. I've learned a lot from them. the thing is, some of the people there can be a little brash at first. I recommend looking around the instance a bit before you decide on blocking it. some of them can be a little brash but they mean well.

Hexbear is pretty overwhelmingly queer/trans and anarchist/communist.

If you've never run into a transfem communist IRL it's probably because you're not in many queer or left wing organizing spaces.

I'm actually pretty new to Lemmy in the last year and in that time I've seen way more .world posters being toxic about .ml/hexbear and making vague posts about how bad they are. I have to imagine that's why you're now seeing backlash to .world. Also most of the time I see people complaining about these instances and I dig into the modlog it's overwhelmingly because they got banned at some point for being reactionary and are bent out of shape about it.

Hexbear is a different instance where its users are basically a group of hard communism supporters. If you disliked their behavior, feel free to block their instance.

ITT: everyone says they're bad without giving any examples, telling you what to think instead of letting you form your own conclusions.