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.

  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Look, everyone here needs to recognize they're wrong about 95% of everything (including myself), and that despite their best efforts the contingent circumstances of their upbringing and daily lives is going to keep them wrong on about 95% of everything, and not take it too seriously when they get clowned on for being wrong about everything and instead just clown on the other person for also being wrong about everything.

    That's how the old sub worked and by golly it can work here too.

      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        On the old sub we didn't ban nazis or anything until everyone had a chance to have their fun with them. It's way more wholesome and fun to see the community come together and absolutely clobber them than to have the liberal discourse policing mods roll-on and shuffle them off.

    • Bjork_shhh [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      they're wrong about 95% of everything

      I have never seen a millennial leftist talk about farming, maybe they're clueless because they have never bothered to become acquainted with the material conditions in which they live?

      • D61 [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        millennial leftist talk about farming

        I mean, whaddya want to talk about neighbor.

        chews on stalk of grass

      • KnilAdlez [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I can do farmer talk.

        Raining? Good for the crops

        Sunny? Good for the crops

        Ground still frozen? It's ok because the U.S. government subsidizes corn, a crop that is made into the worst of everything and caused the dust bowl, and doesn't regulate it to the point that farmers usually lie about the amount they're actually growing