I don’t just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of “legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community” 
takes.
I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we’re Russian/Chinese bots.
Sure they still do that but they’ve slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.
A lot of them encountered the very thing they’ve been conditioned to feel disgust towards, and for a lot of them maybe for the very first time in their lives in a conversational capacity. These are people who are inundated on a near-daily basis with propaganda designed to twist the socialist narrative into one of death and destruction that leads to the inevitable collapse of all civilizations unfortunate enough to let it take root.
I don’t think that the average liberal is totally apathetic towards everyone but themselves (I think a lot of us have probably identified as such before, be it as a child or long into adulthood,) but their ideas on human rights, social justice, and broader politics are incredibly underdeveloped. When you don’t have a considerable wealth of knowledge or experience to draw on, you’re a reactionary subject to the pull of your own gut feelings and the preconceived notions instilled in you by your peers.
What I’m getting at is that I think it’s important to realize that a lot of the libs pissing their pants at the sight of evil tankies have absolutely no idea what a tankie is or does, and everything they do know is buried under 10 layers of disinformation. This doesn’t absolve them of their crimes of grand dumbassery, but I think it’s worth considering that a lot of these people would probably agree with much of what we had to say were we to peel back the layers of their programming. Alas, that isn’t often realistic and frankly isn’t solely* our responsibility.
*edit
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to, and there has been some shit takes by our feddie comrades that were fun to laugh and dunk on, but i feel like we do have a responsibility to educate the other instances so long as they are willing to be educated. like im not at all against giving the other feds like blajah a second chance if they listen to us and understand why they suck.
I agree. I wouldn’t try to take the dunk culture out of Hexbear, and many people deserve to be dunked on, but sometimes if they don’t seem like a lost cause you gotta just teach them what you can and then leave them something to think on that they can hopefully look back on positively.
On the other hand I have a lot of sympathy for people who do try to have a good faith discussion and then after a dozen thousand word comments the lib just goes “don’t know why I bothered obviously none of you know how government works”
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to
I don’t think it’s really to the left of lemmygrad, though I wouldn’t say the reverse either
most of you libs are libs like lemmygrad but I, the one true leftist am certainly to lemmygrad’s left
Liberal here, sick to death or how condescending the democrats have become. I had a blast watching them froth at the mouths. It was beautiful.
What do you mean by liberal? What are your main views?
Liberal here
first mistake but youre here thats good
Liberal? Ew
One of us, one of us
I’ll be here all week.
You’ll fit right in, the secret is that we’re all liberals here. Except for the one of us each week chosen by lottery to be the leftist.
It’s me this week
deleted by creator
it was HER TURN!Why do we have no Maoist Hillary memes?
lotteryinvisible hand of the market
You’re either gonna leave and hate us or you’re gonna stay and also hate us
Be careful, we’ll try to make you read things.
Take a look
It’s in a book
Liberal here
Read Capital
Respectfully, Capital is probably the absolute worst starting point for socialist theory.
Something like the Manifesto, The State and Revolution, or even Blackshirts and Reds would be much better starting points IMO
Capital is a great starting point if the person is a big NERD
Totally with you on that. The Capital is a “colossal” starting point. And lot’s and lot’s of theory has been written since 1894.
On the other hand, Blackshirts and Reds is an awesome place to start.
is an eye opener for libs who want to read. At least in my experience.Daddy Lenin too. In my case, I started with “Imperialism…” at the University and it was the kicker to my freefall into becoming a
.the starting point is being poor and angry all the time tbh
The critique of the gotha program is very short and makes some good points about materialism.
I used to say the same thing, now i just point people to Graeber or Zinn and let them radicalize on their own, if they identify as liberal and want reading recommendations. Debt: The First 5000 Years did more to push me leftward than State and Revolution. I assume this would be true for most people who aren’t familiar with the context of the soviet revolution.
👑
Am I an anrchiddie if I say the conquest of bread is a good starting point?
Yes. I’m not sectarian to anarchists in general, but conquest of bread is basically a fantasy novel taking itself seriously. It isnt grounded in any research. If you like the ideas presented in conquest of bread, that’s fine, but it doesn’t actually go into how those ideas can be achieved, outside of mostly “people will just spontaneously do it”
CoB is based on economic research, not magic, but absolutely is utopian in basically eliding the problem of “how would this ever be established?”
My partner double checked a bunch of the numbers he cited and he plays very loosey goosey with it.
I don’t think this is a bad thing though. Books like the bread book or The Dispossessed can help open people up to a leftist POV by showing them that there are very realistic alternatives to a capitalist system that, while utopian, would be so cool to live under. I feel like we should push people less towards “gloom and doom” books as their first book.
I guess I would prefer books that laid out a realistic system that was better than laid out an unrealistic system that was better.
I’m ML and haven’t read Kropotkin, but i think his idea of mutual aid as a part of evolution is really valuabe, since social darwinism has so poisoned lib thought especially in the US that most USians don’t differentiate between Darwin’s actual scientific theory and social Darwinism, to the point of believing “survival of the fittest” is a Darwin quote.
The book to go for then would be “Mutual Aid: A Factor in Human Evolution”, right? As far as I know, Conquest is mainly a utopian socialist thought experiment about how production (using technology and figures of his time) could easily provide for everyone with much less work. I think it’s valuable, just has different subject matter.
Yeah that’s the one i was thinking about. Thanks.
It honestly really irritates me how influential social darwinism has been in the US and i really wanted to rant about it lol
I fully support it, just wanted to comment on book topics. Social darwinism is insidious and it is difficult to imagine criticizing it too much.
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is the text that persuaded me, on a proximate level, into Marxism. It’s very accessible so long as one is alright with the rambling historical anecdotes (which I generally quite enjoyed).
Listen to Teach Me Communism! It’s the podcast that turned me into a leftist.
It’s a nonbinary person and their brother basically doing a book club every week and explaining a different piece of socialist literature or socialist history. They start from square zero (the manifesto), work their way through stuff like The State and Revolution, and do a toooon of history. Also they’ve done the podcast for the past 3 years, do it entirely for free, and donate all of the money from their Patreon to a local Dallas mutual aid fund. I have such an unhealthy parasocial relationship with them but I’m an ML now and love them (though they do a lot of anarchist stuff too).
Really wish more people would suggest them more!!
Or The Principles of Communism, by Engels.
Why are you still a liberal as opposed to being a socialist like us?
Maybe they’re a liberal socialist.
I logged off for six weeks so I missed it all.
oh damn you missed some amazing shit lol.
Low energy. SAD!
“It is undeniable that all liberals are either pro-torture, or else not anti-torture”
Lemmitor:
No, must have missed that being posted on the front page for weeks
Them disliking us is a given. Them being surprised by Hexbear’s takes was novel to me.
“Let people enjoy things”
“Fuck you, because you said that stacking rocks hurts local ecosystems I’m going to stack rocks out of spite to stick it to the scolds.”
I’m curious, weren’t you once at least a little bit like them?
Being surprised by Hexbear’s takes?
Well at one point, yes, I did feel genuine surprise that people existed that didn’t like liberalism coming from the left, if that’s what you mean. I learned about that in my 20s.
Most of the people on lemmy probably are in their 20s.
Migration from the corporate walled garden internet to the fediverse is going to be an eternal september of culture shock.
Suddenly they’re not “as left as they come, but…” They’re just sniveling fascist with
deleted by creator
“I’m as left as they come but somebody’s really gotta do something about all these undesireab… I mean homeless cluttering up MY public spaces.”
i like when i talk to someone who is american and im also american and i come from the point of view that america is the greatest force for evil in the world today and they think somehow that makes me a trump supporter
I’ll have to admit I was also knocked down by seeing liberal takes that are so outside of my frame of reference I didn’t know anyone thought that way.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
What the fuck is left to be “progressive” about to that liberal, then?
RECRUIT - MORE - LGBTQIA+ - DRONE - OPERATORS?
¯\(•_•)/¯
I got the impression that they were English, in which case there’s a trend amongst liberals to be huge fans of austerity. Partly because that’s what Blair used to fund bailing out the banks during the financial crash, partly because there’s been a concerted push since then to propagandise everyone on benefits as lazy so that people are less bothered by further austerity.
removed by mod
Genuinely cannot tell if this is serious or not lol
What did they say-ish? Ballpark it if it was gross, idk what the removal reason was
I’m curious because I recognize the username from lemmy. This was the user who finally prompted me to make the “lemmy libs want to know if hexbear supports trump” thread on my lemmy account (which can’t see your comment or Fae’s, for some reason). I spent a while talking to them and it went nowhere. I dm’d them the trump thread, after the comm we were talking in got deleted mid-convo, but never heard back.
Normally it’d be findable on the modlog, but I can’t see it. Possibly because they got permabanned.
deleted by creator
One of the things that pushed me into leftism about seven years ago was the realization that there even WAS something to the left of me. I went my whole life believing that progressive liberalism was the left and therefore the correct path. Once I knew there was something further left I immediately followed it, as I will continue to do.
I will not stop until I am the leftmost motherfucker on this earth and then I will have everyone on this site executed for liberal revisionism.
One of the things that pushed me into leftism about seven years ago was the realization that there even WAS something to the left of me.
Yeah the same is true for me being anti-car. When I first heard of European congestion taxes when I was car-brained I was like “that is literally insane, how are you going to restrict poor people’s right to get into the city”. But after learning about other forms of transit and the fact that it’s affordable and cheap and objectively better than private vehicles, I realized that just realizing that other transit options exist makes me move further ‘left’ lol.
shipping you off to some peruvian jungle rn
I always dreamed of a united human race like in Star Trek or Mass Effect. I remember wishing there was an Anthem for mankind, and then I heard the lyrics to The Internationale…and found a Richard Wolff video explaining what Socialism actually is.
The Harry Potter limits of liberalism jpeg helped a lot too.
I realized in the space of a week that I was a Socialist, not a Liberal. I didn’t just want some people liberated, I want everybody liberated. A united human race, unshackled by nationalism or racism or sexism or economic inequality.
… and then I started to realize how many other people I admired had been Socialists, like MLK and Einstein, and then I started to realize how much we’ve been deliberately lied to about almost everything in the US…
… and then I started to realize how many other people I admired had been Socialists, like MLK and Einstein, and then I started to realize how much we’ve been deliberately lied to about almost everything in the US…
basically every time you learn about a historical figure who seems cool, it turns out they founded the US Communist Party or spent 6 months in revolutionary Moscow or aided peasant villages in Mao-era China
People have told me that Canada has forgotten 白求恩. Very sad.
Broke: Ultra-leftism
Woke: Hyper-leftism
Yo same. I was literally a liberal pretty much right up until I learned I could be a communist.
deleted by creator
no more half measures walter
That’s very similar to my experience albeit I was always a little further left than progressive liberalism. I just lacked the theory and vocabulary to articulate my politics. Ironically it was first breadtube, then chapo (the podcast), and finally the subreddit that helped galvanize my preexisting communist leanings.
Left does not equal good, more left does not equal more good. Left and right are rarely useful ways of analysing politics: it really only says something if you are talking about the left or the right broadly or talking about the left and right position to a particular position (and even then I try to avoid.) I know you’re doing a bit and its funny but I’m always surprised by how many people I organize with think this way, and it’s disorienting
It’s idealism. Mapping out the world according to some made up model in your brain
hi
Aren’t they pretending to believe we’re all Republicans doing a three year long larp as leftists?
YOU ARE A BOT
YOU ARE A BOT
YOU ARE ALL BOTS
None of you are free from Haskel! 🤖
putStrLn "help" >> putStrLn "me"
Sounds exactly like what a poorly programmed bot would say.
Everyone I don’t like is a bot, a bedtime story for Main Characters
They’ve got to finish their LitRPG harem audiobook first
:Oprah:
can’t believe I’ve been working this desk job for 3 years already - I need to talk to my manager about moving up a GS step
I knew it wasn’t going to be long before they started calling us MAGA Communists. They can’t fathom people who can laugh at Trump and not be completly deranged over him destroying DEMOCRACY ™ so we have to secretly be supporting him.
him destroying DEMOCRACY ™
How can Trump destroy what never existed? They treat the government and it’s institutions like some sacred cow, the world would be better off if the US balkanized and disintegrated into an impotent power.
It’s almost as if there was no democracy to begin with
We will see coping mechanisms in the coming days that we cannot even imagine now.
That’s their latest thing yeah. “Well see you both agree with Republican ideas of isolationism and therefore you must ACTUALLY be right wing.”
Libs plz. We believe in US isolationism because we want the US to stop fucking around with the rest of the world and leave the rest of the world alone to figure itself out without being bombed and coerced into doing what the US wants the world to do. The right believes in US isolationism because they’re nationalists who believe the US should only help ourselves and should never help anyone outside our borders. We’re literally polar opposites. There is no overlap in those 2 viewpoints.
This is charitable to the right and left of US politics. Neither the dems and the GOP leadership are isolationist in any sense, they only pretend to be when they are not currently in power. They pretend to be isolationist in different ways to appeal to their base - see Obama’s smart wars/dumb wars and the current GOP talking points about pulling out of ukraine in order to go to war with china/mexico. Some parts of the electorate are actually isolationist for different reasons, but the opinions of the American electorate don’t matter at all in the context of foreign policy. The opinions of the electorate of America’s various vassal states matter even less for foreign policy issues.
I don’t disagree with you, I’m saying that the liberal conception of left/right is even fucking stupider than what you’ve said because these libs live in an imaginary world where there is actually a foreign policy difference between the dems and republicans. in actuality, the next time there is a GOP president/congress then these same libs will be the ones on the side of isolationism while the GOP are actively advocating for poking other countries in the eye.
Is it isolationism if you want to isolate the US to a place outside of this mortal coil?
im not so much a us isolationist but more so i want the usa to stop doing things overseas on account that it stops existing altogether
Republicans, famous isolationists who opposed the Iraq War
The paleocons did and still do favor isolationism. There are multiple tendencies on the right as on the left
When we say “isolationism” we mean “quarantine”…
removed by mod
Lies. There’s nothing in the modlog.
removed by mod
Report the comments to complete the bit.
I’m excited for another wave of this as the 2024 election heats up and we start talking about domestic politics again instead of just dunking on NATO
Locked and loaded.remember when the US let over 2 million people die from covid because the only thing they did in the face of a pandemic was lower interest rates? I’m so ready to talk domestic issues, haha.
Hey they also increased the money supply by 50% and gave it all away to boat dealership owners and podcasters
The eternal cycle of CTH subreddit. The Leninists and tankies seemed to dominate in the off years and during election years the succs came out to play
when people live in an echo chamber, the outside is scary and confusing
Sure, Hexbear was its own kind of echo chamber, but I think it got a weird sense of solidarity overall and the internal struggle sessions were mitigated somewhat by just how sheer fucking liberal the federated communities were revealed to be next door.
Especially programming.dev. What the fuck is up with those cryptofascists?
I was expecting large struggle sessions with lemmygrad over sectarianism and left bashing (we are a ML space), but everyone saw the libs and went full Workers United Front
like I knew in theory we were closer to each other than to the libs but the sheer magnitude has been surprising. we used to have AES struggle sessions every couple of months but virtually everyone closed ranks once federation hit. we’ve spent so much time arguing over how critical our “critical support” is and it’s small potatoes in comparison to “DAE winnie the pooh??”
Its full of dudes who make a fuckton of money, lack self awareness, and chase early retirement, they fully think there is a meritocracy. That makes them treat poorer people accordingly.
Unfortunately they don’t realize that they are closer to being homeless than they are to being at their daddy Elon or Zuck’s level of wealth. One cancer diagnosis and it’s over
It’s hilarious to see people call this place an echo chamber.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more divided group on literally any given topic.
I can say the word cats and start an argument where I’m taking shit from three different sides, pretty sure thats not an echo chamber.
cats
Gulag!
you should submit this to [email protected]
I think it might very well already be submitted. Someone at hexbear used it as an emoji so I saved it (because it’s awesome) and I used it now by simply uploading it because I don’t know how people get the emojis to appear in the line.
Do I have to be registered on hexbear to get emojis like walter-breakdown to pop up? Or is there a command I’m not entering right? I know I’m doing something wrong.
not seeing it but there’s well more than 1200 so it’s entirely possible I missed it.
and yeah, emotes are instance specific. feature got upstreamed from hexbear but not a lot of instances are using it atm.
Tragic.
Thanks though!
What kind of cats?
😠
Outside ones
😠
No! Stop!
Unironically have outdoor cats bcs I missed the struggle session and honestly I’d feel mean trapping them indoors all the time
I love when we go for a walk in the neighborhood and random kitties come up to us and vibe. That’s why I adopt cats and set them free in our back yard.
What, are there people against outdoor cats here?
😠
not sure if your serious, but in case; they decimate indigenous fauna such as birds etc
What’s wrong with outdoor cats, I wuv kitties
😠
You get plenty of good folks in programming, but you also get high volumes of:
- Stemlords
- Bazingas
- Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
- Labor aristocrats
- Misogynists
Lots of underlying drivers of reactionary thought.
Desperately pushing aside the fascist and libertarian programmers to reach the hot trans stalinist in the back row
hey guys im just hanging out here with all the good folks in programming they are just out of frame
deleted by creator
