I don't just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of "legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community" 
takes.
I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we're Russian/Chinese bots.
Sure they still do that but they've slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.
Despite all the numerous failures that democratic socialism has had, its the only tendency that has had any actual success in "western liberal democracies". Someone is welcome to correct me but I'm not aware of any successful Maoist revolutions in liberal democracies. They all get stomped out immediately by a fully developed capitalist state.
Meanwhile we currently have Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez successfuly getting elected and their parties are still in power. But thats because they weathered the reaction. You have to be ready for the reaction comrade.
Evo and Chavez can only win precisely because those countries are not fully developed Liberal democracies but instead periphery comprador resource extraction states (prior to the revolution). I’m not aware of any “democratic socialist” in western nations that has ever won power either and not just immediately became a succ traitor like in Greece
Name a more developed or more western "liberal democracy" than Bolivia or Venezuela that had a successful revolution. My point is its the best example we have to go off.
To me the evidence points to those western liberal nations needing to break and collapse before they have any hope
They tend to become fascist when that happens. Besides if you're in one of those nations, "we need to break and collapse" is a dead-end political movement.