Hexbear.net now at 710$ (Update: it’s now 2345$)

An instance full of toxic tankies who spam and brigade as their hobby. Nobody liked them except some tankies on lemmy.ml.

I've been quietly observing hexbear for a while now and I can tell you with relative certainty that people love to straw man them.

Here is an example:

People say they outright deny the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which is not true. They do believe 300 or so people died in that tragic day. What they do deny, though, is that Tank Man himself was run over by a tank and that people where indiscriminately shot and run over by tanks in the square. They believe the shootout occurred not because China is evil, but because some of the protestors decided it was a good idea to start killing unarmed soldiers.

I'm not going to describe in detail hexbear's timeline of events and evidence for it, because I myself do not fully understand it yet. But it seems this video somewhat explains it well.

People insist time and time again that hexbear users believe the massacre never happened to the point where they can't bother explaining themselves anymore because "what's the point if we are just going to get straw manned?"

People also like to call the massacre a "genocide", which is a massive overstatement. In comparison with the kill count of the holocaust, the death toll of the massacre is a rounding error. I would like to kindly ask people to stop calling it a genocide, as it detracts from the meaning and intensity of the word "genocide" when it is miss used like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory

Any who, can't wait for people telling how wrong I am for supporting hexbear despite never once saying they were right.

People say they brigade other instances, but that's just because they are very active. In fact, there are one of the most active instances on Lemmy.

This is not to say hexbear users are angels, far from it. They are known to not mix well with other communities, and their site culture can put people off quite a bit, and understandably so. They all also known for their custom emojis, which is a really neat feature their instance has, but they do like to use an emoji depicting a pig defecating as a way of saying "you take is shit", which is rather unpleasant and quite rude of them.

These are just my thoughts on hexbear anyways. I must say I don't really hyper analyze any instance, so I could be somewhat wrong, but I don't really care too much.

NOTE: right now hexbear is using chapo.chat as their temporary fall back domain.

Once upon a time there was a reddit sub called chapotraphouse. It started as being centered on discussion of a leftish pro-Bernie podcast of the same name but quickly exploded in popularity and became more about general left politics discussion. Over time, especially after Bernie's defeat in 2016 it shifted more and more left. The sub became a specter haunting reddit, having over a hundred thousand users. Eventually because they tolerated too much talk of killing slave owners (Spez famously said he thought if the world went to shit he'd probably be one of the people in charge of the slaves rather than one himself) as well as other things like being anti-cop they were banned in a both-sides-bad move along with The_Donald by reddit admins right after Trump lost re-election. This was after being quarantined some months previous. After that they built a lifeboat site for their users to gather at, that site eventually came to be a lemmy instance and eventually even later a federated instance so they were one of the first instances.

It's a leftist lemmy instance. Nominally left-unity with rules against just launching hate tirades against anarchists or Marxists it in practice leans Marxist though has plenty of anarchists, democratic socialists, etc. It's strongly anti-imperialist so tends to align with Marxist, Marxist-Leninists more than many (but not all) western anarchist groups on global geopolitics. It has stances that many Marxist parties would take issue with however including communities around drug use (the site is banned in China) and certain ideological beefs not really worth listing out here. It is in other words it's own unique culture.

In addition to being a leftist instance its posters are aggressive. People on reddit constantly complained and worried about CTH brigading (whenever the discourse in a front-page sub shifted left people would say that chapo was doing that) and though organized brigading seemed infrequent compared to how often people suspected it*, many of its users were incredibly active posters and there were a lot of them. So it has a kind of shit-poster history. Whereas some instances would just ban someone or remove their comments, they'll spam images of a pig pooping on its balls at people they disagree with first. Their way of interacting with those they disagree with is very strident and at times could certainly be interpreted as rude, they're very blunt and don't tend to do civil discourse. They can be antagonistic to an extent though it's not like they're a harassment site that will follow around an enemy user for days outside of their own instance.

*(it did happen in as much as they posted links to comments and posts they disagreed with until the quarantine when they stopped doing that, BUT they were accused more often than they could possibly do so as most of the sub was not about making posts like that)

And it should be mentioned they did have strong policies against bigotry which were enforced. They also had a large trans community. So they weren't fascists. They were not reactionaries. They did not have a culture of hate for marginalized groups. I've certainly had unpleasant interactions with users of theirs but I've also had pleasant ones. Some of them come off as real assholes, many don't.

An extremely outspoken instance filled with people who simp for fascist dictatorships but ultimately consider themselves communist and some socialists.

Most would call them "tankies" due to their willful denial of the 198(9) Tiananmen square massacre as "western propaganda" despite non-western sources agreeing it happened outside of China.

Imagine if super outspoken trump supporters had an instance and spent a lot of time trying to lecture other people about how they're wrong when nobody spoke to them in the first place, then when presented with facts and logic they would respond with gifs, emojis, and a lot of claims that you're a CIA front/shill.

Moron can't even get his CIA talking points right
The "June 4th incident" was in 1989, not 1984, and neither Hexbear nor China says it never happened. Hexbear's stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian'anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC's official stance on what it calls the "June 4th incident". This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat's cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.

I reiterate, Hexbear's stance isn't that the massacre didn't happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don't frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan's dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian'anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:

In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a "good friend" in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]

You're also just wrong about what fascism is and what AES states were structured as, so I recommend Blackshirts and Reds.
1984 massacre 700 gorzillion dead gommunism no iphone Animal Farm vuvuzela.

Checkmate tankies.
1989

Hexbear is (was) an instance that's become infamous for the awful behaviour of its users in other instances in the past. They are mainly authoritarian communists (often known as Tankies) who like to yell at people for having different opinions and especially love to troll.

To expand on this for those who weren't around during the days when they were federated with most instances, Hexbear's users are needlessly hostile towards anyone who disagrees with them, they had a bug that caused their emotes to become oversized on Lemmy which quickly flooded threads when their users spam them, and they have a reputation for brigading threads to "dunk" on people. They also really like to flood threads with graphic images of pigs shitting on their own testicles, because that's definitely what normal people do.

It's worth noting that they don't federate with other instances to participate in good faith, they do so in order to dunk on people and "dismantle Western propaganda" and "plant the beans of truth in other instances fields" and in general act in bad faith. Worse, their instance admins did little to stop this.

They were defederated from many instances for good reason, as their behaviour drove away a lot of new users. A lot of Hexbear users have alts on lemmy.ml and midwest.social, so the defederation doesn't stop their users from continuing to be dickheads.

And if you'd like some receipts, I have plenty of examples. Best viewed from an instance that federates with Hexbear, so you can see their behaviour for yourself.

https://lemmy.ca/post/3326347 https://lemm.ee/post/4543536 https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/2017079 https://lemmy.world/post/2498330

Edit: A tankie already got upset about this post, love to see it! :P

It's an instance for Communists. Unpopular with the liberal/moderate Lemmy crowd.

It's unpopular with actual leftists as well. Because it's a toxic mess.
- What is an "actual leftist?" Why would Hexbear not count as Leftist?
  
  Because leftists usually defend human rights, and the authoritarian regimes defended by some people on Hexbear (but also lemmygrad and ml) tend to attack those human rights when they are in the way of their ideology (not unlike the far right politicians).
  
  That's very vague and doesn't really say anything though. Why should someone listen to your take on it?
  
  It's complete nonsense. Hexbear/lemmygrad/.ml have views that are consistent with pretty much every real life communist party, especially those in the global south.
  
  If you don't like communism that's fine, but these textbook social democrats proclaiming themselves to be the true leftists are a joke. I think they just like the leftist label without having to actually walk the walk.
  
  I'm aware. The "tankie" instances have stances that are overwhelmingly in line with Marxist orgs and parties worldwide, so the "anti-tankie" users either need to admit to just being anti-Marxist or try to honestly learn more.
  
  I'll always like to learn more! Can you show me where Marx wrote to oppress workers, put the means of production in the hands of few and starve farmers to death?
  
  Nowhere, but I'd like to know what you mean by any of that.
  
  The stuff done by so called real life communist who pretty much always are oligarchs painted in red
  
  https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian’anmen-Massaker
  
  https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
  
  I can't see how Marx would approve any of that
  
  I'm sorry did you just pull the "not radical enough" card on hexbear?
  
  Mate I like your line but chill choom
  
  No. On the people hating on hexbear and saying they are tankies/not real leftists
  
  @Cowbee From what i saw, i don't see why you define yourself as leftist because your upvotes say otherwise and you didn't apologize nor tried to amend for it because it wasn't your. But you upvoted it.
  
  It was a post where some hexbear account insulted me.
  
  Don't know what you're talking about, to be honest. Do you have a link?
  
  @Cowbee
  
  There is lot links in this community. I selected few one :
  
  sh.itjust.works/post/26887977
  sh.itjust.works/post/26892019
  
  And there is a post where i saw your upvote and confronted you since you played as if you didn't took part of it, didn't know while being an advocate for hexbear's instance.
  
  That was one of my worst experience on internet.
  
  It left me a very sour taste and when i showed your upvote, i hoped you would apologize, recognize that you played a role, then stand up and try to talk to them. Something like that.
  
  However, you still ask us to change our view on hexbear while they continue doing the same thing...You may consider changing your point of view.
  
  I can't interact with MeanwhileOnGrad from either of my 2 accounts, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. I remember an admin abusing admin privledges to try to intimidate me into apologizing about who I upvoted and downvoted, so if that's you then I suppose that checks out.
  
  @Cowbee
  You don't need an account to see what those post are about. You know why you can't interact with them. You can see them.
  
  No, sorry, i'm not the right person. I'm not an admin but an moderator. I don't belong to the trial section of the mod team, i don't take position.
  
  Our vote are public, anyone can see them. For example on mbin. That's when i decided to sent that screenshot because you were defending hexbear anywhere.
  
  Not much more reasons that listening to yours, we are just some pseudonyms sharing opinions on a public forum.
  
  I feel that your comment was so vague it didn't end up saying anything though.
  
  It gives a hint to people about why some leftists don't consider what they call tankies as the real left way, they can read the tankies Wikipedia page for more details. I'm not expecting the communities being targeted by the tankies qualifier to agree with it, I was writing for the vast majority of people who are not from those, especially the recent wave of former redditors.
  
  Personally I suspect that Hexbear is inundated with bot farm trolls, but that's not what I was getting at. I meant that despite what said trolls insist, one does not have to approve of Hexbear to be a leftist. Many leftists (not centrists or liberals, but proper leftists) take issue with Hexbear.
  
  But yeah, Hexbear also gives zero shits about human rights. They mostly seem to be about breaking up any left-of-center coalitions that they can.
  
  I haven't seen any evidence for "bot farm trolls" on Hexbear and I use it, but either way the framing of the statement implies directly that Hexbear aren't real Leftists, and that if one is a "real" Leftist that they should take issue with Hexbear.
  
  Maybe take a look around the call center.
  
  Funny, but doesn't actually answer anything.
  
  Pretty sure they mean "actual leftist" as in "not just liberals and moderates." Because there are plenty of instances with an axe to grind against Hexbear for their bad behavior.
Thx!

A Communist/Anarchist instance.

Thx!
- No problem!

Specifically authoritarian communists, to be clear. They aren't fighting for everyone to have what they need, they just want to be leaders of repressed people.

Where is that Parenti quote...

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

It was from Blackshirts and Reds.
Lmao someone's never actually been there. You basically just described the democrat party
- Awwww, someone went as far as making an alt to attack people instead of defend themselves! It's almost as if what I said is true and you can't argue against it, only deflect 🤔
  
  This account is older than my hexbear account so that one is actually the alt. And I go on hexbear, I'm not deflecting lol it's just true. Saying they "just want to be leaders of repressed people" is just laughable when they have things like a mutual aid comm that actually helps people and is probably the most aggressively anti-transphobe instance
  
  How do you argue against an obvious lie? It’s not really worth it.
They're called tankies

People who don't like their ideology tend to say that they are a tankie community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

Thx!