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.
People who disliked china already were banned or left tho
I mean I don't like China, but I also
Genuinely curious, I'm not going to debate you or try to change your mind
Why do you dislike something you don't know anything about? I find this is so common for people to have opinions on things they themselves admit they know nothing about and I'm trying to figure out why
All the grad students from China that graduated with me would take pretty much any job that would sponsor them to avoid going back to China.
In the US corruption is institutionalized into profit and rent-seeking and given a patina of legitimacy that way, but from what they told me about China, it seemed to have it's more bureaucratized, heavy-handed state controlled form there. They all found that so onerous that they'd rather take a 75k job in Nebraska where they don't know anyone than head back home.
As someone who generally wants to be left alone I don't imagine I'd enjoy living there as a citizen either. So when I say "I don't like China", that's typically what I mean.
An anti-Chinese “leftist” in the west actively contributes to imperialist intrigue and are traitors to the global proletariat at worst and useless at best. Stop attacking the enemies of the empire you live in!
See when I hear stuff like this it just comes off as rhetoric divorced from any sort of pragmatic or material reality. A 'pro-Chinese' leftist in the west materially contributes to the US in all the same ways an 'anti-Chinese' one does, and I don't see how posting pro-Chinese content on niche webforums like this and having the 'right views' on the matter absolves them of any material complicity.
Anti-China sentiment is how America drums up public support for economic warfare against China, like this ongoing effort to starve China of semiconductors
Do the technocrats require public support to engage in economic warfare against China? The Cuban embargo is opposed by a super-majority of Americans and a majority across all political affiliations, and yet it continues unabated.
There seems to be a double standard on the left where
is regarded as a meme that won't change anything but "TALK" is incredibly important for influencing state actions.
If TALK doesn’t matter, why are you here doing it? Why do it in such a nothinglord nihilist manner and at least have fun with it?
I'm 'avin a fuckin' ball. They just made me a comm on here where I can post about not posting.
this seems needlessly antagonistic toward blanqui
TALK doesn’t matter after all, being antagonistic or not is just meaningless rhetoric!
You might have a point there, but a counterpoint might be that China’s economy affects Americans a lot more than Cuba’s does. Economic warfare against China might require more public support if it can be perceived as hurting Americans’ pocketbooks.
As for voting, it can still have consequences, just not fundamental ones. I think we meme on voting because delusional libs treat it like a cure-all and because elections are potentially a huge time and energy sink.
Anti-China rhetoric is the ambient background narrative of all westerners, left or not. Actively fighting that is as important as combatting the Islamophobia that was used to escalate the Iraq war and destroying the Middle East. You are essentially just being a guy in 2002 going “Hey what does it matter if I go around saying all Muslims are intrinsically evil”?
If nothing we say or post matters at all, you have fallen so far off into nihilism that I don’t even get why you are posting here. If posting in an anti-imperialist way is identical to posting in an imperialist way, it also follows that posting in a reactionary or hateful way is identical to posting as a communist or in a respectful way. Nothing we say matters right!
I'd draw a distinction between the moral weight of speech regarding the shared humanity of minority groups present within a community and intellectual positions regarding state-level foreign policy positions. In short, we have a responsibility to speak out against Islamophobia because Islamophobia is morally wrong, not because my opposition has foreign policy implications, because
All the opposition to the war and Islamophobia by the left didn't do squat to prevent any of that.
I mean putting aside that this is a misreading of nihilism, we need to be very careful about what we mean by matters. I am not a state actor. I am not Anthony Blinken. My views on China, are from a material perspective, irrelevant. If I were to suddenly become 'based and Xi-pilled', nothing about my day to day existence would change except the words I type on niche internet forums. We have a responsibility to a degree of metaphysical humility about how important we are in the scheme of events.
My intellectual responsibility as a leftist and a human being extends exactly as far as my sphere of material influence, which means my intellectual responsibility to have the 'right' opinion about specific Chinese government policies and actions is nil.
It may matter to the other people on the forum, but it dosen't matter to Xi Jinping or Colin Powell. They don't care if I post Pepes or pictures of John Kerry.
You have a responsibility to speak about islamophobia because it’s wrong, but curiously you have no responsibility to speak about imperialism or sinophobia. Interesting. Surely this double standard has nothing to do with the same chauvinistic bias that has plagued the organized western left since its inception.
I have a responsibility to speak out against those as well, but, as I'm certain you know, the devil is in the details in how we construe those concepts.
Somehow those devilish details always align themselves with western chauvinist patterns that are centuries old
We're back to the whole rhetoric thing again where we say things without saying anything.
You haven’t addressed your double standards, merely sidestepped the conversation.
Well if I saw a double-standard in my position I'd address it.
You say that you have a moral responsibility to speak out about Islamophobia when you see it, but you don’t believe you have a moral responsibility to speak in an anti-imperialist manner, or avoid feeding into the imperialist intrigue of your nation. That’s a double standard. Either both matter or neither do. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that you don’t really care about imperialism very much.
Sure I do, it's just that you construe anti-imperialism as 'pro-Chinese government' position and I construe anti-imperialism as a 'US government leave everyone else the fuck alone for christs-sake' position. Like I said, the devil is in the details.
Except that you are here defending “anti-China rhetoric” which is an offensive, pro-imperialist rhetoric not just “leaving everyone alone”
I don't have to pretend to like China to think we should leave them the fuck alone.
Saddam Hussein: Terrible, should not have been bombed into oblivion. Putin: Bad, don't need to expand NATO to his borders to piss him off and egg him into a Eurasian land war.
Really not that difficult.
Why is it so important to you that you need to have “nuanced” TALK? You are full of contradictions. Why is it so hard to stick to an anti-imperialist hardline? Why do you implicitly demand the right to judge the victims of your nations from a throne in the heavens instead of realizing your place and your role with humility?
Criticize your own empire, stick to that. Really not that difficult.
Isn't Mao on the record saying literally everything arises from an internal contradiction?
Why would I do that?
What right? Someone said "we drove everyone who doesn't the Chinese goverment away" and I just helpfully chimed in "nah".
I mean I'm not assigning outsized role to my thoughts and actions in affecting the course of historical events.
Aside from conversations on niche internet forums about why everyone doesn't have to pretend to like China, my day to day conversations about China always take a hardline "the US has a responsibility to leave them the fuck alone given that we amble from one intentionally manufactured crime against humanity to next".
Removed by mod
You mean I'm insisting that I can, and in fact, will have an ill-informed ad-hoc opinions on a variety of topics that my day-to-day existence only vaguely impinges upon. This high-falutin talk of 'rights' just clouds the issue that all people are going to develop contingent systems of belief as they navigate their day-to-day lives. Do they have a right to that or not? That question is nonsensical idealism, they will do so anyway.
No investigation, no right to speak. I can tell you aren’t in a party because you have no discipline or direction
You've done it again! Sheer idealism.
It’s not idealism, I am telling you very indirectly (to reduce the chance of a ban) I think you should really take your “not posting” motto more seriously! Hope this was helpful, and I hope to never see another word from you!
Trust me, I take it deadly seriously. Block button is down to right. Cheers.
Counterpoint: china good