Why is Lemmygrad hated in the wider space of Lemmy?
Why is Lemmygrad hated in the wider space of Lemmy?
I've been trying to find a good Marxist instance, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear are widely hated. Why is that? Are there any good leftist instances?
Lemmygrad and Hexbear aren’t “leftist” in the confused sense that Americans usually mean “leftist.” They’re actually leftist in the original sense, meaning that they want to abolish private ownership of the means of production. To the extent they’re “widely hated,” it’s largely because the Anglosphere has been indoctrinated against real, actual socialism their entire lives.
I can't speak about lemmygrad since the instances I'm on all defederate from it, but Hexbear users have a reputation for being generally aggressive, grating, and immature. It's like that kid in class who keeps interrupting the teacher because they think they're funny and clever. e.g., some were screaming at me that I can't be an anarchist and I know nothing about anarchism since I'm married, replying with third-grade tier memes for some confusing reason
They are hardline Marxist-Leninists, something that is very rare in the western world even amongst those who identify as leftist or socialist. If their views make you uncomfortable, then you're not a ML, which is okay.
Left-wing politics is a very broad spectrum, and a lot of Lemmy users lean towards the more moderate end which brings them into conflict with the more radical communities that are Lemmygrad and Hexbear.
That's all there is to it.
Lemmygrad isn't "hated" by most of the wider lemmyverse. There's just a loud and obnoxious minority of people that will rail and rant about lemmygrad. They loudly rant about lemmygrad because they aren't used to seeing their worldview get challenged and by its very nature as a radical leftist community, lemmygrad is a challenge to the typical background liberal perspective.
It's no surprise we all end up seeing a lot of threads about "those mean tankies at lemmygrad" (and hexbear too) made by people who can't take their worldview getting questioned, or even shown to be flawed, or just not standing up to their own scrutiny, and who get mad when that happens. There are also of course people with ideological reasons to demonize leftwing politics and will spread shit for that reason alone. But overall, I don't think most people care enough except to think "oh yeah that's that instance with those radical lefties, they're weird but they do make some great memes sometimes."
Lemmygrad I can't comment on. As far as I can tell they basically just talk politics and I'm not interested in microwaving my brain by obsessing about politics online. Haven't seen them out in any of the threads I've been on.
Hexbear I've enjoyed honestly. They've got nice hobby communities and it's all I'm here for. Quality of discussion is usually pretty good. My take on people hating Hexbear is people have made their personality getting mad about politics and Hexbear don't share their views. People screaming "tankie!" just seemed deranged to me, literally who cares what a handful of nerds in the US think of China. Neither of you have any influence on what China does at all.
They're both good instances. People have been heavily propagandized to hate communists. You could make the kindest most welcoming space on the internet and if you put the label "communist" on it, it will be hated.
I've been trying to find a good Marxist instance, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear are widely hated. Why is that?
Because the majority of Ledditors are either liberals or full blown reactionaries and the ones who are not range from some cringey techno-libertarian who think FOSS will usher in socialism to some radlib cruise-missile socialist who strangely never deviates from the US state department. The very few who could legitimately be considered socialists are some kind of anarchist. They certainly aren't Marxist.
Are there any good leftist instances?
Outside of those two, I won't hold my breath. The easiest litmus test in the world is how they're responding to the genocide at Gaza. There's very few places where you'll get complete support for the Palestinian liberation struggle and not whining about the imaginary babies Hamas allegedly beheaded or trying to equate the conduct of a genocidal nuclear power to a paramilitary fighting for national liberation.
Because the lemmygrad opposes the American imperialist narrative of e.g. that CHiNa BAD, "we have to feed weapons to the far right ukranian state". A lot of people in the west are brainwashed by capitalist propaganda hiding under different masks. Including the left one. How do you not let yourself be fooled? Just when you hear another political slogan, always ask yourself in the interests of which class it is uttered.
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.
Generally, they aren't marxists, they're "tankies". And even fairly extreme socialists tend to dislike that. That's lemmygrad.
Hexbear is just filled with trolls that federated specifically to troll and disrupt the rest of lemmy in the name of their beliefs.
On either, you can find individuals that are perfectly cool to talk to. But it's like rolling the dice where only snake eyes win. And, even when you win, you can't be certain that it isn't a long troll waiting to fuck with you because some of them do that too.
I'm the only person I've ever seen on Lemmy running an instance from a nominally communist country (maybe there are others?). You can come hang out with me I guess. I'm not qualified to be a proper communist though -- I've read very little of the literature, and leave politics to the Party. Which I am not even actually a member of. I'm basically Boxer from Animal farm, but ended up happily married and with a decent standard of living instead of shipped off to the glue factory.
I'm am a mercenary science hermit though, so my instance is very quiet! There are three people on my instance, two are me and the other is a bot I wrote doing I-Ching divinations using physics.
Liberals.
I haven't seen or maybe haven't noticed much of lemmygrad. But hex bear has a culture of spamming the same handful of images, using them like punctuation in their posts. And they show up huge in my reader at least (I just found out they look small to them.) So it's like you're trying to have a discussion and someone comes parading through with like five crappy drawings that take up all the space. Also I don't mind having Marxists around but they tend to want to steer every discussion toward it, regardless of its relevance. Can't wait to be able to block the instance.
We're 3based5 the h8rs.
Just take a look at this question, all of the answers are from lemmygrad and hexbear users. You are not going to get a good answer from them because they're the people you're asking the question about.
They are not hated they're just annoying, no one really cares about their opinions the problem is is that they try and push their opinions on everybody else.
It's a bunch of Ledditor liberals saying that. Lemmygrad can be a little sectarian, but otherwise it is perfectly fine.
Neoliberal McCarthyism good fascism okay communism bad
blue eyes blonde hair good democracy people everyone else bad ebil totalitarian
Every Lemmygrad account I've been exposed to seemed to be a Chinese and / or Russian bot single-mindedly trying to sell the idea that despite all evidence to the contrary China and / or Russia are somehow not oligarchic dictatorships as far as you can get from Marx's views without going full fascist.
As for Hexbear, they appear to be adolescent or younger far right lunatic trolls affected by lead poisoning and foetal alcohol syndrome acting like they believe leftists and "woke" people would act, for shits and giggles, and just to try to derail any serious conversation in the fediverse.
Therefore they're both essentially spam, and despised as such by anyone who doesn't find them funny.
So, as others mentioned, they're tankies. They circle jerk about how "the west" is entirely responsible for every bad thing that ever happened. They blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the West, they deny the oppression of the Uyghur people as pure western propaganda...
Any time you cite something horrible Russia or Iran or China or North Korea does, they say "the west is just as bad," draw some false equivalencies, and then proceed to explain why that means that the West is the only bad thing and there's nothing at all wrong with Russia or China.
And... they're so aggressive about it. It's not just that their opinions are so detestable, but that they brigade other threads and insist that everybody who isn't actively bombing US government buildings is evil.
They're annoying. On the fediverse, that might be the highest sin.
Im not in alot of communities but I've never seen the heavy handed claims everyone makes about seemingly any lemmy user to the left of Biden. I've seen occasional snark, but nothing out of line for standard internet snark/trolling that those same people never mind when the right does it. 🤷
Some people are to hypothetical conversation what a boulder is to the wind.
With how much anticommunism goes down in the federation I sometimes wish the developers would hide some code that would kick people who do this off the entire federation. Don't use a fucking communist platform to get away from the failing capitalist one and then spend all your time being McCarthy's left nutsack. I know that's never going to happen because that goes against the developer's values, but god damn would it be justified as fuck if it happened, and it would stop like 99.9999% of the toxicity and CSAM that gets posted here.
Because liberals and other right wingers hate when they find out they're not actually "as left as you can get" and coming here and having that black mirror reflection is always a shock
Strange question. Nothing's wrong with them? Nobody's hating on them. Just people...
Hexbear is widely disliked due to their consistent bad behavior in other communities (among other reasons) in regards to takes they disagree with. They even have a community dedicated to organizing "dunkstrikes" on those they disagree with‡.
I can't go into too much detail for why they're hated as the last time I did (using one of my alts) I was site banned on lemmy.ml for 2 weeks.
Lemmygrad is basically Hexbear politically: they love authoritarians and hate anything "The West," especially NATO. Their takes on modern China and Russia are also pretty bad. But again I can't go into too much detail as a different alt of mine (and different than the one mentioned before) also netted a multi week ban for criticism of their takes.
Honestly finding a more liked lefty space is tough. Too many of them profess their love of dictators IMO. Which given peoples love of democracy makes them pretty unpopular overall. My recommendation is basically social democracy spaces (if they exist on Lemmy).
‡ They'll argue that this isn't the case by saying, "it's just a community to highlight bad takes." But unlike other communities that exist to highlight bad takes: it's stated mission is to "tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes", they don't forbid interaction (unless it's an instance admin or mod), and they require a source for the post in question.
I'll probably get banned for this comment (or it'll get removed) but that's basically the best I could do without being too specific about them.
Because settlers don't like being told what they are and what they do is vile.
Looks like this thread may have been locked
ITT: offended lennygrad and hexbear users giving good examples to answer the OP
For the same reason people hate the Nazi trolls. Extreme left or right does not matter. Normal people don't want that garbage.
I wouldn't be a fan of a nazi or islamist instance either. One for communists is hardly any different as far I'm concerned. They're all groups of extremists that I don't want anything to do with. Just look at the modlog of this instance for example. Exhibit B is the fact that this message will get deleted in couple hours and I'll likely be banned.
A lot of it is McCarthyism, though i've personally had my problems with hexbear and you should probably stay away from them.
There’s a lot of anger at communism as a result of all the lives it’s taken over the last century.
