• Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I can’t keep track of this one-dimensional political spectrum people keep using. I thought tankies, socialists, communists, and liberals were all considered left wing, but I keep hearing things about some of these groups being on the right instead.

    When can we upgrade to the political tesseract?

    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Hexbear is more or less a 4Chan equivalent, sharing the same memes and single image posting behavior. They exist to make left leaning people look bad.

      Their supposed communism is equivalent to start an argument online with “as a black man”

      Just a bunch of right wing trolls.

      Tankies are right wing authoritarians, and don’t believe any of the left wing political they use as a vaneer. Its like how the Nazis were National "Socialists "

      Theres a reason they support modern day Russia and China, two notoriously far right nations

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.

        I would be one thing to say, “I don’t understand that group”, but it’s quite remarkable to say, “I understand that group so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”

        • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.

          Eh, only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists. All the fascists have to do is walk in and say “NATO is bad, Ukraine is bad, libs are bad, vote for Trump because he is a big lovable goofball” and the other hexbears are like aight let’s own the shitlibs.

          • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists

            A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them. Fascists also massacre socialists — often with American support, as in Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Ask them how they feel about this. Hexbear users do hold some complex views on topics like China and Russia, but they have reasons for this and would tell you if you asked. You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.

            • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them.

              Maybe I should ask Jessica Watkins, who explicitly supported fascists, and is now being misgendered and put in the wrong prison by fascists, for supporting fascists.

              Trans and genderqueer people can be just as stupid as Cishet people and vote for the leapords eating faces party. It’s not like fascism actually benefits people, it’s predatory to vulnerable people.

              You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice.

              I have interacted quite a bit already. I got lots of animal poop pictures and a lot of people requesting that I post a picture of my genitalia.

              You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.

              I’ve seen a number of comments from Hexbears supporting DJT and not a single comment expressing this.

              • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                comments from Hexbears supporting DJT

                show me one

                *make sure it’s sincere though, because I’m gonna go over there and ask the user what they think of donald trump and why

                  • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    defederated

                    Go to the actual URL, hexbear.net

                    Ick

                    You’re reaching for some “fascists always pretend to be joking until they’re not” thing, but the Hexbear community originally formed around a deeply irony poisoned socialist comedy podcast called Chapo Trap House, and hexbears themselves are unsurprisingly also very irony poisoned. On top of that they were an insular unfederated community for three years, with no reason to make their banter intelligible to outsiders. They have a rich set of in-jokes and an emoji list a mile long. Your exposure to them is probably one thread where you argued with them and ten threads of lemmy.world users making shit up about them in absentia.

        • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s blatant though? They use right wing talking points for everything and it’s all dog whistles?

          • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            “Geopolitics exists as a binary, and on some issues they agree with the opposite binary from me”.

            Worse actually, “they might agree with me on one issue but they disagree on another, so they must be pretending to agree with me to begin with”

            • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              On hexbear, geopolitics exists as whatever hexbears feel like owns the shitlibs the most at that particular moment.

              Sometimes, Russia is just months away from a well planned and strategized victory, against an evil Nazi Ukraine.

              Other times, everything is a mastermind NATO move that’s all benefiting NATO, and Ukraine is just the meatgrinder victim.

              What feels most alt-right about hexbear isn’t any particular position, but the fact that there’s no particular position. No logical cohesiveness, no rooted in solid reality. It’s superfluid ever changing dream reality.

              • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I think the parallel with right wing extremism is because they’re both pushed by the CCP. They use a divide and conquer approach via LLMs on social media to weaken political opponents.

        • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Again, they are “left wingers” supporting far right regimes. Its bit that big a consipracy

            • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              No? Where on earth did i suggest they were.

              Modern Russia and China, however, are incredibly right wing, which hexbear users support full throatedly

              • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Go ask them for their opinions about Russia and China. You’ll get unanimous agreement that Putin is a homophobic capitalist reactionary and Russia is not a socialist or left-wing state. For China, you’ll get disagreements, but most of the takes will be pretty nuanced either way. Some believe Deng’s reforms were necessary to avoid economic strangulation, others are deeply suspicious of the direction China is headed.

              • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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                1 year ago

                See, this is exactly what I mean by “I understand them so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”

                If you tried at all, youd understand that they’re position on “modern day Russia and China” is based on the idea of critical support. They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.

                I.e. on the Ukraine war, their position is basically “U.S. Involvement in any war is a net-negative to worker solidarity in the country of question”. None there support Russia’s invasion, but they think Americas involvement spells the end of any socialist coalition to begin with.

                But again, “I understand them so little they must be a part of the opposition”. They have a different (definitively leftist) understanding of the war than you do. Doesn’t make them right-wing.

                • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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                  1 year ago

                  They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.

                  When it comes to Russia bombing their cities and raping their women and children, is that positively or negatively influencing working class solidarity?

                  • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Negatively.

                    When it comes to supplying lethal aid to Ukraine to continue the war, though, they’d also say negatively.

                    For the record I don’t agree, but that is their position and I understand it.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.”

      From Wikipedia

    • s_s@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      There’s not many all-in on authoritarianism that aren’t extreme left or right economically.

      The political compass is better than a one-dimensional spectrum, but it’s literally twice as complicated.

      You can pretty safely plot a symmetrical U shaped line running through the political compass and find almost everybody. That’s why one-axis works well for describing the political climate of the USA, it’s mostly in the right half of the political compass sitting on this line.

      So tankies are very Communist (left) and necessarily very authoritarian to achieve their goals.

      They represent the other half of the political compass that Americans usually do not see. So people on here frequently get confused when exposed to tankies.

      And you also have the tankies talking about the Bernie-Sanders-style/social democrats (found at the vertex of our U shape) as “right” because if you follow the U line, they would be.

      • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, political compass is more precise, but I like splitting social and economics too, which makes a cube. Then I said tesseract as a joke.

        But “us vs them” doesn’t work as well when “them” has so much nuance.

      • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Can you tell me what liberalism is, then? Because to me it’s always meant “left wing on cultural issues.”

        • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.

          • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.

            • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.

              • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I don’t think highlighting the disagreement between “leftists” and “liberals” is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me “liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted,” but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.

                Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.

                How does your definition differ?

                Please don’t tell me it’s just “they’re not always progressive and don’t always promote welfare.” : )

        • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Asking a Lemmygrad user to explain something political won’t work out well

          • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Maybe, but you have to know the definitions they’re using to understand what they’re saying.