I’ve felt this way for a while. The lack of ideological diversity is what creates the illusion of “left unity” over here. One example:
Imagine if we had a sizeable chunk of people who are anti-Dengist. Then nearly every post about China, every use of Xi emotes, would be filled with replies criticising China, Xi, and the OP.
And you couldn’t call all these people libs and just ban them because there are a lot of leftists, from Maoists to anarchists to ultras to even non-Dengist MLs who genuinely oppose the modern Chinese state based on their ideological convictions.
And if the mods banned them, that would be pure bias, and could lead to an exodus of those other leftist users, which would mean we are not actually left-unity.
But if the mods didn’t, then it would be a severe restriction on the kinds of content that can be posted on the “main” communities. You couldn’t say things like “China is moving towards socialism or that it is in the primary stage of socialist construction” because these are controversial opinions not held by other leftists. Allowing these, would mean allowing the opposites, which would mean a war in the replies every time you post something like this.
As an example, see what happened with vegan posting. In this “left unity” Hexbear, anarchists would have to confine their controversial opinions to the anarchist comm, MLs to the ML comm etc.
Right now, we have an extremely small minority of people who are against the majority opinion in some way. And those people are tolerated in their dissent as long as they frame it in very careful ways and never outright go against the majority. I mean, we have left unity emotes and anarchist emotes and that’s all cool.
But what happens if there are a 100+ anarchists who start posting and commenting about their analysis/opinion on the USSR? Would that be allowed? Would anarchists, if they existed in sizeable numbers be allowed to not just criticise the Soviet Union in the narrow ways in which is allowed currently but to state the full breadth of their opinions on it from the start? Even more controversial, what if Trots started talking about Stalin? How long would that be tolerated?
Now, I’m not saying the way Hexbear operates is wrong. Maybe left unity is a pipe dream and that there are just too many controversial positions and opposing visions for it to be real. Maybe, if there were other tendencies here, the mods would figure out a way to balance things out. Be calm on main, go wild on specific comms. But I think that is the point - Hexbear’s claim to left unity needs to be properly tested. The users and the mods need to face these challenges and come up with proper solutions that doesn’t end in purges of other communities. We cannot claim to be this big tent when we’ve only been in this tiny sandbox with a handful of small rocks.
If you want to criticize the PRC or the USSR, go ahead I guess. But your audience would be better served through substantial effort post instead of posting memes (e.g, posting a wikipedia pic of PRC vs USA billionaires) of how bad the ML AES states were.
If you're just looking for social catharsis and reassurance that your politics are correct and just, and if you're exercising political aesthetics and absolution from participating in capitalism, welcome to Hexbear or the niche forums of anti-capitalist communities on the internet.
To what end? Posting as praxis? Have you seen the front page of these sites? We're all here for solidarity in comfort, shared outrage, and digital-social connection. And entertainment.
What catharsis is needed beyond that, that this plea for testing leftist unity on hexbear could provide? Testing will turn to taunting. And taunting people's principles - to which most of us are aligned with - will just be an exercise in spite and frustration.
This post seems to just be a public declaration of contempt and disdain for sharing this site with MLs.
This is a real problem. There is definitely dogpiling and people who will not listen to anything, but for myself and others also it is not fun to hear the same bad-faith things regurgitated and recycled over and over. Most of these things are not even relevant to today. Discussion that rejects a western imperialist framing and understands pragmatism I am very open to.
It is remarkably similar to trying to discuss indigenous issues with white people. Many will agree with most key points but can not divorce themselves from their broken settler brains, and there is a seething racist inside waiting to tell me about all the things the Spanish said my ancestors did.
It's not a coincidence that we're having this discussion while the capitalists just declared that business owners can voice their contempt for others through the market.
Leftists of all stripes are unwittingly craving the same declaration. You can be shitty to others and that is the ultimate sign of freedom and what it means to wield power. Dunking is the only praxis. The set of all tools and means to change society are gone except for posting and arguing with each other.
Capitalism is out of answers so it's final solution is "fight amongst yourselves, don't even bother with anything else." The leftist movements that exist under capitalism will adopt the same character.
The real cure here isn't curbing ML so that Anarchists can safely dunk without bans. The cure is to get some non-Western leftists in here to set everyone straight. We need perspectives outside of Western/Northern leftism because it's taking the character of capitalism since it exists under that capitalism.
We need actually existing tendencies from places under a different character to give us perspective so that we can see how silly we are.