I felt the need to share something personal about myself to one of the most welcoming, great communities I've ever had the honor to call myself a part of. You can make posts lamenting my radicalisation all you want, but seriously that shit is none of your business and the fact that you decided to deride me for being "tricked" or something makes me really mad. Do you think some internet strangers can automatically re-write 10 years of the US school system's imprint on my brain? The people on hexbear were everything the people on your instance claimed to be and more, these "genocidal tankies" showed patience, compassion, and empathy to me, and you think you can just condesendingly harp on about how i've been brainwashed? seeing hexbear made me decide to take a second look at my worldview, and really research who i was, what i believed, and what i stood for. If you think you can reduce that to me being brainwashed, you can go to hell.

fuck you and never post about me again.

(what community do i post this to? cth should be fine right? just delete it and dm me if i have to move it :P )

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    and you think you can just condesendingly harp on about how i've been brainwashed? seeing hexbear made me decide to take a second look at my worldview, and really research who i was, what i believed, and what i stood for. If you think you can reduce that to me being brainwashed, you can go to hell.

    Ironically you're experiencing a very old slander here comrade. The term "brainwashing" originated to explain the behavior of downed US pilots during the Korean Genocide. It turns out that once those shot-down American pilots actually met the people they had been killing and found out they weren't what they had been told, they tended to change their tune about the war. They had to be discredited somehow, so it was decided that the tiny rural nation of Korea possessed scary oriental mind-altering techniques that they were using on POWs to make them anti-war.

    Pretty similar story to "Stockhopm Syndrome" actually, and the discrediting of returned "israeli" prisoners who had good things to say about Hamas. Any non-sanctioned accounting of the facts that refutes core propaganda narratives must be pathologized. Right now you're being given the immune system treatment by hegemonic cultural liberalism. That's good, that means it perceives you as a threat.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Minor quibbling for the sake of post engagement clarity: The term "brainwash" is a literal translation of a term coined by Mao, itself a pun on a ritualistic "heartwashing" that was customary to spiritually "clean" yourself (before? after?) entering a temple. Mao was using it as basically a jocular way to refer to political reeducation. The literal translation itself was first produced by some niche orientalist author who was making theories about chicom mind control powers. It was then adopted by the establishment after those soldiers in the Korean War were, in fact, rehabilitated by China* and renounced the war, confessed to using chemical and biological weapons (which never happened according to the notoriously honest US State Department), and in some cases even fully refusing to be brought back to America, instead choosing to live in the PRC or DPRK.

      Another "fun" one is "Ostalgie," a German portmanteau of "Ost" (east) and "Nostalgie" (nostalgia), which is the way that German popular culture characterizes the feelings of the former East Germans who preferred East Germany. It's another instance of pathologizing popular sentiments by treating them as some bizarre and peculiar psychological phenomenon rather than accepting that people have reason to think what they think.

      *I think it was mostly by China, since China had a pretty dominant role late in the war, but that's not to say there was no Korean involvement or that every case with every supposedly-brainwashed prisoner was the same.

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]M
    ·
    3 months ago

    I was not radicalized by Hexbear. I was radicalized by living in the United States of America. By doing my civic duty for 14 years, voting in every election, going to every protest and demonstration I can practically attend, writing letters to my representatives and signing petitions, all for naught. I helped make this place what it is today because my efforts on conventional platforms were met with state censorship.

  • RiotDoll [she/her, she/her]
    ·
    3 months ago

    man i lived with my mother who was like the epitome of the ideal of upward mobility, only to watch her body disintegrate and the systems nominally meant to help her shit all over her, i watched the deteriorating political situation cause once-loving family to turn on her as some kind of pariah parasite, i ended up falling far enough i began just being around people much worse off than me at the time, watching friends of color get harassed by police and their lives ruined by the 'justice' system - watched my dad's mental health collapse - my grandfather lose all non-familial support as his mind left his body - i've seen what bootstrapping does for someone on the fringes (it destroys your body and mind) - i've been desperate for more years than i've been comfortable in the shadow of all of that - and hexbear isn't even the first community of leftists i found that assured me that no, my experience wasn't unique, in these ways i wasn't actually going crazy - and the idea this place is somewhere that mostly radicalizes instead of being a place where the radicalized aggregate to in lieu of support from the major corporations that dictate most of the modern internet - it's insulting yeah, but it's also really funny. You have to be kinda derranged to think a federated reddit offshoot is causative rather than symptomatic

    • blakeus12 [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      absolutely. i'm very sorry to hear that, i hope at some point things can turn out for you

  • Mindfury [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    don't think much of it - the fact is, one single absolutely obsessed, self admitted alt-right gamergater continuously monitors hexbear for anything they can pretend to be offended about and post it to their audience of two other obsessed losers. And in true-to-form fashion, the self-admitted alt-right gamergater used your post about enjoying a community as a flimsy pretext to accuse a community where cisgendered posters are a minority of grooming. Hmmm, we can all guess what comes next can't we projection

    after this vent, the only time you even give these redditors a fleeting thought will be to laugh at them. meanwhile, they will engage in mental landlordism forever. you've already won.

    • UlyssesT
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      deleted by creator

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        My little self enjoyed videogames, and hearing that someone wanted to take that away got me mad

        So mad that they never bothered to find out if that was what was actually happening before helping ruin a bunch of women's lives.

        • UlyssesT
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        They used to have career feds monitoring ML and Anarchist groups, this capital G Gamer is doing it for free.

        Was COINTELPRO also affected by enshittification? This guy who's unironically a walking Ctrl+Alt+Del comic character whose only identity is apparently "Gamer" just full on believed one of the Baldwins that video games were under attack by milqoaste liberal Anita Sarkeesian and he turned alt right??? Was she going to break into your house and take your copy of Call of Duty Modern Warfare and delete your Oblivion horse armour DLC? Room temperature IQ with no critical thinking, I'm assuming his gullible ass just went all in on a different online movement like Destiny or Asmongold or Vaush.

        • UlyssesT
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

      • anaesidemus [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        I was repeatedly told that the revolution will happen any time soon

        revolutions don't just happen

        • UlyssesT
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

          • anaesidemus [he/him]
            ·
            2 months ago

            chairman "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I don't get it, are we as Hexbears Putinist Xibots pretending to be leftists and trans, or are we woke transes? Lemmy is very confused

      • heggs_bayer
        ·
        3 months ago

        I've seen libs frame it in the incredibly patronizing "chickens for KFC" kind of way.

    • heggs_bayer
      ·
      3 months ago

      TBF they're a former gamergater. From what I saw in that thread they've left that behind a long time ago.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Do you think some internet strangers can automatically re-write 10 years of the US school system's imprint on my brain?

    This is something I think a lot of annoying-ass liberals miss: the only way commie propaganda wins anybody over when they're otherwise inundated with pro-capitalist and anti-communist perspectives, is if it resonates with existing experiences and attitudes. It has to click with something already there.

    They have to think you just haven't seen what they're offering, because they can't stomach that you've seen and compared both, and their shit just comes up short for more and more people.

  • FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    3 months ago

    back in 2023 I had this instance blocked until a nice bear had replied to me on some thread earlier this year. I don't remember what it was, but I remember in the moment looking through their posts and deciding to unblock hexbear to look around, and over time you all really taught me a lot. not just about American politics, but about a lot of things in the world. everyone here has always been nice to me too. I spend more time on here now than a lot of other places. you all on the bear have helped me start seeing things for what they really are elsewhere too.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]M
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      The anarcho-tankies of hexbear continue to be vindicated. Glad you took the time to examine the ocean of propaganda in which we in the west swim and came around. We need every comrade we can get.

      Now goat seems to be trying to insinuate we are pedos and also all men.

      https://lemmy.world/post/20691433?scrollToComments=true

      • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I question if they’re even communists, considering most commie-spaces throw them out,

        Oh tell me wise liberal, who are these true communists you speak so highly of?

      • SadArtemis [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I wonder if it’s because they realize that roleplaying revolutionaries does nothing to advance the working class, and that the main job right now is to pull the populace left and organize labor so there CAN be a sustainable socialist future

        Is that what they call their system that is spiraling backwards in many ways- engaging in "forever wars" and provoking WW3, destroying the biosphere and directly contributing the deaths of tens of millions from preventable causes and exacerbated climate catastrophes alike, trying to maintain their monopolies*, reserve currency*, and hegemony over the overwhelming majority of humanity rather than accepting equality and thus engaging in diplomacy and cooperation?

        *spoiler

        *industrial rentier and economic infrastructure rentier behavior respectively

        not to live out your wildest ML fantasies where you get to shoot all the anarchists and exile all the Whites?

        And by this... they mean, the "ML fantasies" of self-defense against those who at some point will refuse and actively work against and attack the creation of state systems or even just complex organizations that are necessary to resist and put an end to the aforementioned system. Whether due to issues with the concept of hierarchy in and of itself (anarchists) or due to... preserving their supremacy (racial, ethnic, material, sexist, etc).

        Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone, no one cares about the genuinely apolitical. No one gives a shit if anarchists want to start their "not-state" communes in the middle of the wilderness, or if white people are willing to live as equals (or otherwise want to go start their own "racially pure" communes in the wilderness and inbreed to death in peace without disturbing anyone else). People generally won't even care if someone has been or remains bourgeois, so long as their heart and thus their actions are in and directed towards the right place (Engels was a industrialist, Armand Hammer was "Stalin's favorite capitalist" and had an estimated net worth of $800 million by his death in the 1990s). The white liberal persecution strikes again.

        • iie [they/them, he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          I think goat capitalized Whites to refer to anti-communists, not white people.

          Then again, with the stuff he's posted in the past, who knows

          Show

          • SadArtemis [she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            I know rat-salute-2 just wanted to use their "innocent" words at face value to show how bullshit their persecution complex (because fascists, cracKKKers, and capitalists in general always have the biggest persecution complex while actually constantly persecuting others, entirely unprovoked, for the maintenance of their system) was.

      • Kuori [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        also all men

        the fascist is doing transphobia??? shocked-pikachu

  • makotech222 [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    old chapo subreddit did kinda radicalize me lol. I found it during bernie 2016 and never left. I considered myself a liberal that wanted universal healthcare back then haha

      • makotech222 [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        yeah i'm honestly so grateful for it. I always felt the contradictions in liberalism but never had the words to express them, or even knew there was an alternative.

    • Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      3 months ago

      Paraphrasing my stance on Bluesky: lemmy.world is for people who think that the only thing wrong with reddit is Steve Huffman.

      • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org
        ·
        2 months ago

        They're also supposedly making their own version of lemmy because they hate rust, nah they don't want to help those dirty commie devs :/

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      It is just reddit, but one of the whiniest parts that instead of just shrugging when their treat access was limited a tiny bit like 99% of them, went into the huge tantrum and actually left. Or, parapharasing old proverb, you can take redditor out of reddit, but you cannot thake reddit out of redditor.

      • SadArtemis [she/her]
        ·
        3 months ago

        instead of just shrugging when their treat access was limited a tiny bit like 99% of them, went into the huge tantrum and actually left

        So, all the wonderful folks from subs like "coontown," "jailbait," "incels," "beatingwomen," "watchpeopledie," "gendercritical," and "The_Donald" then?

    • blakeus12 [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      yeah, they just copied all of the big karma farming subreddits and continued as normal

  • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    They brainwashed me. I used to be white boy from the midwest just hitting baseballs and chewing tobacco and now I'm a minority immigrant from us-foreign-policy . I steal from grocery stores and poop on graves in Arlington National Cemetery. I wish someone could wake me from this nightmare so I can go back to watching football and disliking my wife. Mr. Hexbear... you're fired!

  • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]
    ·
    3 months ago

    So you're saying that a bunch of Hexbears didn't kidnap you and force you to watch a bunch of yellow tinted Parenti videos until you renounced America and/or all cishets?

    Shit, comrades, I think we nabbed the wrong person.

    • blakeus12 [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      it was so horrible, the hexbears broke into my house and forced me to burn an american flag. an eagle cried that day

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    The reason they saw the first one is because they've got (I think) one dedicated person trawling through Hexbear pretty frequently, since .world can't actually see this instance, and then that one dedicated person picks out what they think is good to share and they share that.

    While that user spends a lot of time on here just to seethe and take the occasional screenshot, they can't possibly be spending so much time that they see all the threads (let alone comments), so it was probably the fact that your old post got to the top of the front page that made the difference in them seeing it. Unfortunately, I think they're too much of a coward to play ball with you and forward your current post so other .worlders will see it. That one person is pretty likely to see this though, so at least your message will probably reach them.

    Complete aside, but did you see the part where they called you racist? I'm still baffled by that. Like, I can do a pretty good job of imagining how a lib would perceive this or that statement, but I looked through your whole post again when I saw that and couldn't find anything that could be misconstrued that way (nor could another user I mentioned this to).

    Edit: I double checked and the poster is on sh.itjust.works, it was just a portion of the commenters (including the big comment that got highlighted here) that're on .world

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, look at the OP here: https://lemmy.world/comment/12777548

        Emphasis mine:

        "Tankies turn giddy over the radicalisation of a child. Already, the child is denying genocide, praising stalin, racist and celebrating violence"

        • blakeus12 [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 months ago

          oh damn. ididn't even catch that lmao. how am i racist (besides being a cracker, which this poster definitely didn't mean)

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Seeing the way libs blame "tankies"/Russians/insert-enemy-here for radicalizing people reminds me a lot of how abusive parents react to being cut out of their child's life. They'll blame one of the child's friends, or their new significant other, or their therapist, saying the person in question "poisoned their child's mind," but the one person they will never, ever blame is themselves. The entitlement, the infantilization, the complete blindness to their own wrongdoing, it's all eerily similar.

    • heggs_bayer
      ·
      3 months ago

      Besides the fact that your analysis is spot on, it's especially tasty since the post OP is calling out was framing Hexbear as abusive.

    • blakeus12 [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      this is a really great way to put it. thank you

    • CarbonScored [any]
      ·
      3 months ago

      That is a scarily accurate analogy. The worrying thing then is I also have never witnessed an abusive parent be convinced out of their ways, I wonder what the best approach is there.

      • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        2 months ago

        Introspection (the lack of which is usually the source of chronically abusive behaviour) is a skill that takes a lot of time to cultivate. You cannot convince a person to become introspective anymore than you can convince a person to start speaking French. It is also necessary for the right social environment to be present for introspection.

    • SevenSkalls [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Or their university. Seen that one blamed a couple times.

  • Nakoichi [they/them]M
    ·
    3 months ago

    Nah here is fine and it made me happy to read on my last break tonight at work.

    Also read Palo Alto.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
          ·
          3 months ago

          Finished that recently, it's a very good book. Kind of a lot to digest, but following the line of california gold rushers to silicon valley tech preneurs was neat.

          • Nakoichi [they/them]M
            ·
            3 months ago

            The wildest part to me was how Stanford university was founded by a horse breeder and then a bunch of nerds were like "Hey what if we applied this to people?" And then they did, and in doing so probably served as major inspiration for the Nazis.

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Dw it's libs malding that their world order is ending. The jewel of imperialism, the US empire, built by slaves on stolen land had to expand and colonize to sustain itself up until now. When there is no more Destiny to Manifest, when there's no more false flags to blame on Spain, when your vassal states turn on you, you're running on fumes.

    As the amount of foreign, global south workers to exploit decrease, the empire starts cannibalizing their own population. Wages stagnate and cost of living rises. No concessions to the poor. No upwards mobility. Half the population are buying into a fantasy of a misremembered past sold by an orange steak salesman, the other half are trying to keep the decline to "steady" rather than "freefall" by doing the exact same liberalism over and over.

    They'll bitch and moan and point at the flaws of China or South America or anything that doesn't align with their worldview, they'll blame any shortcomings caused by their own ideology to Russian disinformation or entitled Millennials or ungrateful workers or idealistic college students who are simply opposing a genocide.

    They truly lost libs are living in a fantasy, the end of history, if they get over the hiccups that are Trump or a couple bad egg billionaires, they can continue in perpetual growth and prosperity like their parents' generation. They're unwilling or unable to look at themselves critically. Why is Germany pivoting hard right? Why France? Why are polls showing the NI and Scotland leaving the UK next chance they get? Why does liberal "democracy" keep spawning right wing nationalists everywhere? We have regular self crit and struggle sessions, and unless interacting directly with Libs, are able to critically support. They don't have introspection, they barely have hindsight.

    They're just deluded as the Maga dumbasses who truly think a second Trump term will somehow make their lives better because there's a wall along the US Mexico border and their Hispanic neighbor gets deported and every school teacher has a gun and there's no regulation in a Tesla factory. Its just as delusional to think if another feckless Lib is in the white house, somehow healthcare will get cheaper, climate change will be stopped before the point of no return, landlords will charge less for rent, and the Yankistani government will stop meddling in the middle east.

    They will say you'll look back in this period and cringe. But they won't have a place in the future to look back from.

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    They don't see any posts by hexbear users or on hexbear communities. You'd have to make an account on .world or an instance they're federated with if you want them to see it.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      They don't see any posts by hexbear users or on hexbear communities. You'd have to make an account on .world or an instance they're federated with if you want them to see it.

      When I discuss politics with a communist, I'm taught something I never knew before.

      When I discuss politics with a liberal, I'm told things I've heard a thousand times before as if they were new.