this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Lemmygrad is filled with the American patriot version of communists. You will excuses for the Uighur genocide and acts of repression against ethnic minorities for the good of the nation as a whole. You also get into weird cases of trying to redefine words because the words don't match their narrative. For instance, I was in one discussion trying to argue that China was a democracy because the government worked for the people, even if there was never any official method of communicating the public will.
Hexbear seems more geared towards being angry and bitter at liberals for not doing what they see as the right thing. There isn't any discussion on political theory, talk of political organization outside of violent revolution is frowned on, and the focus seems geared on one small part of the political spectrum while ignoring other parts entirely.
If anything, solarpunk may be the healthier leftist sub because it is geared in part towards solutions instead of focusing on problems.
What do you mean by this? What kinds of methods do you find acceptable?
There is absolutely talk of political theory on hexbear. Right now currently there's a bell hooks reading group pinned to our front page. I've learned a surprising amount from my fellow hexbear nerds. People drop reading recommendations constantly and if you make a thread with questions from something you're reading, you'll get engagement and answers. It's pretty cool.
Yes, we're communists. We aren't going to pretend liberals are worth engaging with politically. That being said, we are a leftist unity instance, so anarchists, MLs, maoists, what have you are all welcome. As long as you're an actual leftist and not some "just vooooote" liberal, you'll probably enjoy hexbear.
Some form of vote. And this isn't an argument on which system is better or not, just a definition of democracy compared to other forms of government.
It is very little and it doesn't get upvoteed much. If you are going to see posts from all, it isn't there.
But Hexbear talks about liberals a lot, far more than any other political group. It comes across as a communal hate time for one group. It feels strange to focus on one half of the political systems typically represented in democracies and not the other.
I touched on this in my reply. There is little in terms of discussion for organization or action. It doesn't come across as a group wanting to make change, but complain. And the hostility to voting feels like it comes from not wanting to do anything in the political sphere that will actually affect change.
Ok, so, first of all, people vote in China. Like, they do. They have elections there. If you're defining democracy as "a system in which people vote", then by that definition China is a democracy. (Full disclosure, I don't think that's a great definition and I don't think China is a "liberal democracy" like the US is, but at this point, we're getting hugely into the weeds of different political systems and I don't think now is exactly the time for that.)
Sure, the hexbear posts that make it to the top of the "all" feed aren't going to be the ones where we're talking theory, they're going to be the ones where we're dunking on people for shitty political opinions. Fair enough. That's true. It doesn't mean that theory posts don't exist, just that they aren't as contentious as dunking posts. That's an indictment of the internet and social media, not of hexbear specifically.
Hexbear does talk about liberals a lot, because they are the political group in power in the west. It's probably worth pointing out here that (american) republicans are, in fact, also liberals. So when we say "libs suck", we are also talking about the american republican party. Republicans are more open than the democrats about their genocidal tendencies, but fundamentally, republicans and democrats believe the same things and act in the same ways. They all think capitalism is cool and good, they just have slightly different feelings about which tactics to employ to keep capitalism as the dominant economic system. So it's not that we ignore republicans, it's just that it can sometimes look that way to people who think "liberal" means "democrat". It never has historically, but because political education in the US is so fucking garbage, a lot of people think "liberals" and "democrats" are synonyms.
And your last point is just wrong. We know that voting is never going to bring about real change, but that doesn't mean we only want to complain. The usual advice is to get organized. It's to find a local group that is on the ground helping people and get involved. Start working to build non-governmental power in your local area. Make connections, talk to people, help people, so that when world events are exploitable, we communists are ready to exploit them. It's fucking hard, especially in the US where our government has spent years and years trying (and mostly succeeding) to make "communism" a dirty word, but just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing. The idea that voting is something that will affect change is laughably incorrect. We could get into it, but let me just point out that the electoral college exists and that in my lifetime there have been not one, but two presidents who have been elected to office even though they lost the popular vote. Does that sound like a system in which the mass of voting people can bring about real change?
"Some form of vote"????????????
They...do vote??? There are elections??? Where are you pulling this??
vibes
And what the fuck are you doing here? Besides implying some magical "solarpunk solutions" to a planet being on fire and increasing choked with plastic (that probably don't involve abolishing capitalism because that would be a scary Hexbear thing to do) without specifying what those supposed "solutions" are what are you doing here besides complaining about Hexbear?
People do vote in China. You know that, right? Xi is not elected directly by popular vote but is essentially voted on by politicians who were voted in, something closer to a parliamentary style organization rather than the US system. If Xi was unpopular, the people could vote out the people supporting him in favor of challengers who support someone else for President.
Leftist unity, but only for the authoritarian left. Hexbears either intentionally ignore or are not aware of the academic case for democratic socialism or other moderate/libertarian left ideas. You just redefine them as liberalism because actually acknowledging that these ideas might liberate workers faster than the often failed journey through autocracy, is very inconvenient for campism.
This is the most "Portland Antifa Bookstore" thing I've read all week. You're not more "principled" or "balanced," you just want certain things to replace other things, (solarpunk lol), and you're fully committed to avoiding the easy solution at all costs. Comfy Americans who want to stay comfy with no tough moral decisions ever make the worst kinds of leftists.
Nobody other than one single man claims there is a Uyghur genocide
Then why do so many people talk about how they are voting for
? Admittedly that's mostly on Hexbear, but if anything I think we have too much electoralism and too many 
s.
We are watching an actual genocide unfold in Gaza right now and it is impossible for Israel to hide it from the world. When will we finally get a single image from China depicting this so called Uyghur genocide? There's not one image of death camps, mass graves, or dead bodies. How on earth is that possible? Internet access is extremely widespread in China.
Genocide doesn't have too mean death.
Non-death genocides are talked about quite a bit now when it comes to Russia in Ukraine and Israel in the West Bank
I'd say more, but then you'd call me a debate pervert.
And they would be correct.
"Just voooooooote for le green energy broooooo this time it will work broooooooo just vooooooote broooooooo"
there;s currently an ongoing bell hooks reading group, we just finished the wretched of the earth reading group, the daily megathread comes with a list of recomended works of anarchist and marxist theory, there are pretty frequent requests in the askchapo comm for works of theory on specific topics, the matrix room has its own pretty active theory discussion page, one of the recurring site taglines is a command telling the reader to read theory with a link to where to see it, and if you spend anytime at all active on the site someone will yell at you to read Settlers (ive actually seen people recomend this one so much that i actually know the url from the top of my head), The Jakarta Method, Blackshirts and Reds or Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue
::: spoiler edit while refreshing the page for an example of the tagline's telling the reader to go read theory coming up i saw this that you might find funny
ok, here are some actual ones telling the reader to read theory:
\
Are you seriously still on that shit?? After everything that has come out??? Also I give solarpunk like a month tops before it goes ecofash.
Ok, I'll bite. What is "everything that has come out"?
A bunch of journalists actually went to China to see the abuse for themselves and didn't walk away with anything to support that narrative. Best they could say to defend their case was "China is hiding the truth, that's why we didn't see anything" Over time, all the claims the right made about the "genocide" were slowly being deconfirmed to the point that it was becoming clear it was all made up. Is there a chance that some of the stuff actually was right? Maybe, but when you know it came from a place of bad faith you don't exactly need to waste energy debunking each and every claim from the likes of faith healers and flat earthers when they have a rich history of flat out lying to drive a narrative.
When people actively invested in finding out fucked up shit can't find any fucked up shit, it's a pretty good sign it's not happening.
EDIT: Doesn't help that a lot of the people making the biggest fuss about the Uighurs are all siding with Israel in their genocide. One of the big key things that genocide deniers do is make a big stink about fake genocides that they made up on the spot (Fx: the great replacement)
Do you have a source for this? Last I looked into the Uighur genocide, it was being reported by well-respected outlets (not faith healers and flat earthers) and had photos of people being marched into camps.
So for it to suddenly be "all made up" sounds rather far-fetched to me.
I believe it was the AP who did a report on it.
Can you provide a link to the report?
CBA, it's not going to change anyone's mind anyway.
How convenient.
๐ Don't act like you were actually going to look at it, nobody who asks for sources on the internet actually gives a shit about the source, they're just doing it to waste the other person's time and/or respond with some variety of "that's a bad source" or "I'm still not convinced"
It's like a tic, liberals will go "Source??" whenever they see something they don't agree with, but then will guzzle down nazi propaganda like it's a fact because it aligns with what they already believe. I have literally never seen them actually respect the time put into finding the source.
I asked for it because I knew it was bullshit you couldn't back up with a source that didn't exist. Before I commented, I searched for AP articles about it and found nothing, because it doesn't exist.