It just feels difficult to have meaningful conversations on here sometimes. Like yes I dislike America, but I don't need to act like nothing good has ever come out of it. Maybe China is better than America, but I don't want Xi nuking American cities. I don't think war is suddenly cool and good because Ukraine has some nazis in it. Not everyone I disagree with is some bumbling mass of idiocy, a lot of times we just differ on certain core values.
Yeah, I can't even go on Reddit right now because of the actual bloodlust. Happy one year, btw.
:xi-plz:
But honestly tho, are we edgy? Yes, but we're leftists in a world in rapid decay with very few tools to change it. There aren't many places where we can be critical of all aspects of this world without massive push back or being outright banned. This is like the only place I've had meaningful discussions about Ukraine. Anywhere else devolves into fervent uncritical support, with the slightest critique being shut down. As others have said here, sometimes we really just need to let off some steam (and Xi, if you're listening, those nukes too pls)
I've been here since the beginning and like it, so I'm a bit biased... but I think this site has a nice mix of edgy, detatched posting and meaningful discussion. There could probably be an effort on everyone's part to add to the discussion side of things. I do wonder what this site is like when visiting for the first time. We probably seem like a bunch of fucking weirdos lol
Having tried to introduce a couple people to it, we are essentially incoherent to people who aren't at least past some aspect of 'Social Democracy is a moderate form of Fascism' which is deep in the leftist theoretical weeds. But then again, so are most online spaces at first. I'm just happy that cat-posting doesn't devolve into online baby talk like most places on the internet, its really one of my largest pet-peeves.
On the flipside, I've introduced a couple trans comrades to it who aren't very politically aware, but are very wary of online spaces generally. And they were so happy and relieved that we go hard, basically. It make it an obviously safe and welcoming space for them.
Fuck this. Radical inclusion means not fucking tolerating “earnest posts” from uneducated bigots. If they genuinely want to learn, they’ll read through the site and self-crit. Fuck ‘em.
:anarchy-trans:
. I’m just happy that cat-posting doesn’t devolve into online baby talk like most places on the internet, its really one of my largest pet-peeves.
I hope you never find out about the outdoor cats struggle session, the first one on Hexbear I think.
I have seen it referenced and referenced it myself, but I have never read the actual thread.
Keep it that way lmao. It was something else. Nice to joke about it now
Or the pitbull struggle session I accidentally started with what I thought would be a lukewarm take in an effort post.
Pitbulls good. Hating pit bulls based in racism.
Look at this good doggo, I love him:
:walter:
Beware effort posting, lest you be classified 'debate-bro'. Which is a great posting tendency to combat, btw. Didn't realize how much I liked it until I tried to go back to Reddit for abit.
God dammit how did nobody do this one until just now? And it was accidental?!
:kitty-cri-screm:
I appreciate you taking the long walk around to get there. Makes it even better.
Ironic, he wanted to see sincere-posting but he wasn't around long enough to see it.
That’s fine. The rest of the western internet is full of chauvinists, transphobes, liberals, misogynists, and racists.
It's not really that deep. The first book I read - Blackshirts and Reds - goes into that idea and I understood it perfectly fine.
Idk where you are at, or all this sincere posting has fried my sarcasm-o-meter, but Micheal Parenti is incredibly obscure literature where I live.
You're right about that yeah, I've never heard it referenced outside of online stuff.
In terms of theory though it's very digestible. That's what I meant by how deep it is in the leftist weeds. No previous Marxist reading required to understand that book.
Oh yeah, I agree but I can't get people to read the fucking thing. Mostly because I can't get them to read at all, outside of fiction.
Definitely true. Most sorta left brained people I know watch Hasan and that's about as deep as they'll go.
Yeah, that's my point. Just reading a book puts me deep in theoretical weeds. We are at a point in time where it doesn't really matter if alot of the working class can read, and it's bad opsec to just, hold classes on this stuff if you attract any attention. Scary stuff. Hence the, you know, irony.
First they came for the jokes, and I said nothing because you all are cringe
Then they came for the irony, and I was shot
I don't understand how "not acting like nothing good came from America" is edgy. I think that's a pretty decent historical point that has nothing to do with aesthetics. What good has come from America? Freedom? treats? your family? Surely you can see how just because you have a good family that you love, it doesn't impart goodness onto America as a world actor. In this case, unless you have some really good reason for thinking this, it sounds like you don't understand leftist philosophy. Instead you interpret it through online culture where people post mean things and that's bad. It's not really a useful way to do analysis.
Also nobody thinks war is good and cool because Ukraine has Nazis. This is such a troll take. No way you are to be taken seriously.
Edit: Digging into your post history, you started posting two weeks ago after a 5mo hiatus. Your old posts are shit like "Isn't turning our back on police actually bad?", "Are the mods going too far?" A bunch of JAQing off shit. We don't need a moderate voice of reason to balance us out. The whole world is moderate liberalism. Coming here to teach us a lesson about our bad behavior because we aren't moderates is gross. Post on your main you coward.
So what you're saying is that any good thing that has come from america exists in spite of America and not because of it
To be fair, America's oldest cities do have some amazingly beautiful cathedrals, parks, and museums that have not (yet) been torn out for chain restaurant strip malls
Unspoiled natural beauty is the best thing about America. Had some out of county folks stay with us and they were fascinated by the variety of birds and thought squirrels were super cute and interesting. 🐿️
As jank-ass as America is a country, truly the best thing they ever did was declare vast swathes of the country as national parks which would not be developed. They haven't been too good at not leasing over chunks of that unspoiled land to oil interests as neoliberalism has proceeded but still. Most other countries just don't have that much national park acreage unless the land is literally impossible to develop (thinking of Arctic Circle land here).
As jank-ass as America is a country, truly the best thing they ever did was declare vast swathes of the country as national parks which would not be developed.
I already feel like that in my own city - I walk around and see all this beautiful architecture and infrastructure and social investment from 80-100 years ago and it's like, damn, the 1930s is really the last time we did anything other than build disposable buildings for chain restaurants and spend the profits on war. Everything since then rests, unsustainably, on the back of that era.
That's the part I feel most acutely aware of haha, every time I'm in a tunnel I'm like "wow they dug this without computers I sure hope someone from some criminally underfunded agency has looked at it since then and someone is listening to their recommendations :oh-shit: "
It’s just that anything of value that originated in the US wasn’t created by the ruling class, but by the poor and minorities in opposition to the ruling class.
Which would be something that isn't America. I don't think it's unreasonable to define America by its ruling class. Its history was certainly shaped by it as well as the culture. The dominating contradiction of America has been that of the ruling class vs the poor. If the ruling class ceases to exist, or is driven out of power, then you have created something that is no longer America. It may be called America and be labeled as such on map, but it won't be the same country.
You might as well say that Imperial China had good things like creating Mao. You can say that, it just doesn't make sense, or is at least a specious statement. You're trying to attribute good to something that wholly opposes what is good, because the good exists in opposition to the bad. You can just say it's bad and move on. If you need further convincing, do this with slavery. The great thing about America is the Civil Rights movement. Sure but it wouldn't have existed had America not been horrible. And the problems it sought to solve were never truly solved. So why hold that up as an example of America being good?
Why do we need to be proud to be Americans? Why do we need patriotic socialism? I know why it exists, I'm asking why it needs to exist in the movement. After 9/11 there is no sense in trying to capture a leftist sense of patriotism in America. Context matters. We're in a different environment than we were back then. One where patriotism has been completely appropriated and owned by liberals/reactionaries. We simply can't carve out any of that space because the space itself is reactionary. Patriotism is not caring for your fellow citizens. At least not in the US as it exists. If we create socialism then we can talk about patriotism because it would be a different country. You can have patriotism for something that isn't America, but you shouldn't have patriotism for America.
i have used irony to cope with despair for literally decades now, but please know that i still love you all and this is my favorite place on the internet
you filthy animals
are you kidding? This is like the only place on the internet you can have a meaningful conversation without 80 libs jumping down your throat trying to get some snark comment in
I think it's one of the better places on the internet. My only criticisms are that (1) leaning into being "extremely online" rots your brain and leads to pretty whacky behaviors and takes, and (2) people seem to be evaluating and adopting a lot of their positions based entirely on vibes rather than doing their homework. Vibes are useful for detecting possible sus political sympathies but no more than that. There's a bit of weird anti-intellectualism here sometimes, honestly.
Considering all the libs calling for thermonuclear war and the genocide of anyone named Boris
I’d unironically consider this site the least edgy political space on the internet right now
genocide of anyone named Boris
:bojo: :I-was-saying:
No one here actually wants Xi to nuke America...even if we might want the United States to not be a thing.
Similarly, aside from one or two, no one here supports Russia. We might acknowledge that the invasion was materially caused by NATO, and would eventually have happened even if Russia was under a liberal leader. We might weep for the children of the Donbass that have spent 8 years being shelled. We might condemn the fact the NATO sanctions will condemn tens of thousands to die in what will be a very harsh winter next year.
But nothing changes the fact that Putin and his National Bourgeoisie are killing the Ukrainian working class and impoverishing the Russian Working Class, and those are always the people we stand with. No war but class war, ever.
One thing to remember is that we all have axes of one kind or another to grind, and so there will always be one fucking edgelord in every struggle session. I know I've been it occasionally. But I also know I've come back and posted the next day knowing the people on this site I've disagreed with are comrades.
And that's kind of the strength of the Left. The ability to say "Fuck you and your opinions, I'll see you tomorrow."
If theres going to be a cataclysm, I'd prefer it be america being nuked out of existance than 200 more years of destroying and consuming the planet until theres nothing left,
But uh, I'd much rather do a revolution haha
This is about the only place on the internet where sincere posting is well received and matched with more sincere posting.
I think most of the takes you view as "edgy" are only edgy in the context of the mainstream American Overton window. I think anything good that has come from america has done so in spite of america and not because of it, and I don't think that any of it is worth the horrors america has inflicted on the world at any point since its conception. Other than some cultural creations (primarily those created by the most oppressed groups in America) I do not believe that anything about America as in institution is worth preserving.
This is one of the few places on the internet where meaningful conversations can be had — you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who analyzes events via a materialist framework, who knows and understands history, and who doesn't uncritically regurgitate imperialist propaganda while having those discussions. I don't think people I can't have meaningful conversations with are idiots, i think they have been heavily propagandized for the entire lives and I can't fully deprogram them of it in a single conversation, and we cannot have any discussions that are meaningful to both of us until they've caught up to me.
I think the world is incredibly fucked right now and that it's nice to have some things to cheer for, especially when the greater context is fucked up and bleak. I will always cheer when nazis get killed and I won't apologize for that. I also think the US speedrunnung dismantling western hegemony with its pathetic attempts to sanction Russia is good, and that the US realizing they did an oopsie since they made Russia cut off some of its gas exports and has started lifting sanctions on Venezuela is good. I think NATO getting owned is good. You'll find that that's about the extent that people here are rooting for Russia. Much less unhinged than your average American lib has been while rooting for the Ukraine.
I don’t think people I can’t have meaningful conversations with are idiots, i think they have been heavily propagandized for the entire lives and I can’t fully deprogram them of it in a single conversation…
Key take away here
Clarification: I'm kidding when I ask Xi to nuke my house.
I do think Xi is a great leader who is accomplishing great things, and I think Communism with Chinese Characteristics would be a substantial improvement on American Capitalism.
Synthesis: "Xi plz" is a humorous prayer for someone to disrupt the American Capitalist Hegemony, but not a literal call for a nuclear apocalypse.
I actually feel like this is one of the few sites out there you can be honest and open on without any judgement. The irony makes the jokes we tell fantastic, so I have zero issues with it. Scratching my head over what's edgy on here, hell if anything this site is rather wholesome.
I really don't get the point to OP's thread or why it's got so many upbears :shrug-outta-hecks:
Maybe China is better than America, but I don’t want Xi nuking American cities.
The likelihood of America nuking China is exponentially higher.
Hasn't China explicitly said they wouldn't do a first strike? I know the US has refused to make such a commitment.
I would rather have China come and liberate American cities with high speed rail infrastructure and get rid of shitty politicians
I think most of the problems with Hexbear are pretty much just unavoidable features of the internet, in particular, the fact that every person is reduced to whatever their last take was. If you say anything negative about a person, group, or nation, then you hate them, and if you say anything positive then you love them. So for example, I asked if people were on board with saying that Russia is bad and I got called a lib, and I'm pretty sure most people here are critical of Russia, but there was nothing in my specific post to communicate a more nuanced understanding of the issue.
Generally when I get frustrated with Hexbear I take a break and look at what the rest of the world is doing, and sometimes that perspective makes me appreciate Hexbear's perspective a bit more. Like, I had the feeling that the site was making too many justifications for Putin and downplaying or laughing at the tragedy of what's happening, and then I realized that there is basically zero interest in understanding the Russian perspective at all in the mainstream, and attempting to do so will get you branded as a Russian bot spreading misinformation, and if I start thinking about how I would be inclined to respond to that, I end up sounding a lot like the people on Hexbear I was previously frustrated with.
I think there's a lot of stuff that you could say to people irl that would be pretty innocuous, but if you say it online, then the community's "antibodies" will kick into action. Due to a higher degree of anonymity and the ease of coming-and-going compared to irl, those antibodies are debatably more necessary. So it's annoying if I, say, criticize China on LGBT rights see a bunch of people justify or downplay the issue, but I do also understand that if the conversation was happening irl then they probably wouldn't do that, because they would be talking to a flesh-and-blood human, instead of just trying to have the appropriate reaction to a section of text.
Btw, y'all know Michael Parenti took the position of patriotic socialism, right? Gave a whole speech on how his position was "Real patriotism" compared to "Superpatriotism." I'm not saying that that position is good or correct or that we should welcome it here, but I'm saying that we should understand the difference between an online community's "antibody" reaction, vs what it actually means when a flesh-and-blood human says it irl.
I think there’s a lot of stuff that you could say to people irl that would be pretty innocuous, but if you say it online, then the community’s “antibodies” will kick into action. Due to a higher degree of anonymity and the ease of coming-and-going compared to irl, those antibodies are debatably more necessary.
Fuck this is such a good way to describe it. It’s not just more necessary its like the only way this site works and doesn’t turn into :reddit-logo: with stupidpol honkies.
My take on the matter as someone who's been on hexbear for ages and was on r/cth is this:
Hexbear is a radicalization chamber, and what you'll see in places like those is people egging each other on to say more and more "radical" things. It's just how we are wired as people in groups, when you say something that would be seen as outrageous anywhere else, like "Haha I want Xi to nuke New York", but instead of outrage you get people cheering, that's something our monkey brains enjoy. And the naysayers who go "Actually nuking New York would be bad" are just kinda raining on that parade. Of course, nobody here actually wants New York to be nuked, but people like saying it because of in-group dynamics.
This is something I've been concerned about for a long time, honestly. I'm not doing horseshoe theory here, but this is how people go off the deep end. It's important to keep in mind that people who become radicalized are often not in a good place mentally, and while 99% of us just say these things for laughs, we have to consider that eventually, there will be people who take it seriously, for whom being part of the in-group becomes part of their core identity.
I know this is not a fun take, but please keep this in mind: Hexbear is not only an echo chamber, it is very much a place of radicalization and extremism, for better and for worse. For a lot of people, places like this give us something to believe in as well as a community to belong, which are generally good things. But on the other hand, there will be people here who are very unstable, who will get too invested, and if we're not careful eventually someone on here will murder their landlord because of what they read on this site, and for all the Maoposting we do on here I don't think being responsible for that will be a nice feeling.
Edit: tl;dr post responsibly, in some aspects it's better to stick to minecraft
This is something I’ve been concerned about for a long time, honestly. I’m not doing horseshoe theory here, but this is how people go off the deep end. It’s important to keep in mind that people who become radicalized are often not in a good place mentally, and while 99% of us just say these things for laughs, we have to consider that eventually, there will be people who take it seriously, for whom being part of the in-group becomes part of their core identity
This is what I have been intuitively feeling for a while and you articulated it perfectly. I saw the same thing happening on 4chan when GamerGate took off. I was like "hey these people keep saying more openly fucked up shit" and by 2019 people who split off on 8chan were going on mass shootings. Like, when I was still new I didn't really understand how or why some of the more fucked up shit like how the Japanese Red Army killed a shitload of their own people or
Pol Potbut I kinda get it now. Maybe this is wrong but I sometimes thinking taking theory too seriously is a bad thing. Even Mao said so. Like, you have to open your eyes every now and then or you're going to wind up in a Peruvian village boiling babies.As others have said. Praxis without theory is Pol Pot, theory without Praxis is Shining Path. Don't be them.
What theory is it where it says you should boil babies and murder entire villages of working people to own the bourgeoisie?
Gonzalo doesn’t count, that guy had ghostwriters from the :cia:
I have United Red Army downloaded and ready to watch when I get the time. It's three hours though. sigh
An additional effect of the based takes arms race is that people wind up with a lot of takes they can't back up, which makes people defensive and kind of hostile towards anyone who is putting them on the spot by trying to start a real discussion.
Well said, comrade. Thank you for bringing this up. It's a good reminder to us all.
I would support this being its own post and getting pinned on the homepage for a bit. @CARCOSA can we do that, or refine the message and post something similar, like "reminder: adventurism is bad, solidarity is good. praxis is good, extremism is bad. irony is fine, but sincerity is even cooler. we're here for you AND you should touch grass every day."
No please no fucking mod statements. Extremism is good when the system wants to murder you. It has to be organized extremism with a fuckin purpose.
yeah, fair enough. I didn't say it nearly as well as the person I was replying to.
there will be people here who are very unstable, who will get too invested, and if we’re not careful eventually someone on here will murder their landlord because of what they read on this site, and for all the Maoposting we do on here I don’t think being responsible for that will be a nice feeling.
This site and the people won’t be responsible for that shit. Adventurism is always bad. I think a lot of people who are too fucking comfortable can come on here and be shocked about things like trans people wanting to see Greg Abott murdered.
Pacifism is fucking privilege. Those of us who are already getting attacked by the state and nice “well-intentioned and earnest” Cishet WASP families know this. When I walk alone at night I’m fucking strapped for a reason. If I kill a fucking chud who tries to turn me into a statistic then it won’t be hexbear’s fault.
Yeah I think as long as we consistently tell fedposters to fuck off and try to get people to educate themselves about adventurism, the culture is fine. The whole “stochastic terrorism” thing is prevalent in the right because they’re larger numbers on the more fringe sites and those sites have nothing to temper indignant rage with. You just keep upping the ante until people burn out or, in some cases, snap. There are definitely people here who get too worked up relative to the amount of danger they’re in and the tactics they understand and we’ve always done a good job of talking those people down or removing them from these spaces
This puts words to something I've been concerned about for a while now, too. Thanks.
