this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Anarchism
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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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I'm not sure I really agree with your first point, I think finding a way to find allys in all leftists would be worth it, even if it has a dark history. Things can be better.
But holy shit their reaction was intense. And the idea that their arguments were in defense of left unity was pretty silly... 99% of it was just "anarchists wrong and evil", and there is wild amounts of sectarianism going on just within hexbear that I'm sure lent energy to this.
I respect how you reacted under pressure. I really respect any admin of a website that can show that much restraint when dealing with personal attacks and people you explicitly disagree with.
But yeah the lethality of leftist infighting is maybe a topic that deserves more delicate conversations than memes.
not only is that not what we said, but db0 actually said that about us
I was there, I can form my own opinions, thanks. It was hyperbole, but that was the general level of arguments being made.
If you want left unity, it was a nonsensical way to behave. It was just more sectarianism. It does make sense as a way to behave if you just wanna argue... So thats what I assume the real intent was.
the meme being posted was "modern MLs are bloodthirsty monsters who will kill you if they ever get in power"
When you view a group as evil, that view tends to result in double standards for behavior, which is what you're doing.
I'm probably going to dip because I'm too mad to be civil right now
Hi, if you read what I said I also did not like the meme originally posted. I'm just trying to be constructive about it instead of angey and loud.
Edit: "angey" was a typo but it makes me laugh
They posted an inflammatory meme meant to stir shit up between folks that share 99% of the same values and should be working together instead of having slapfights on the internet about shit that happened 100 years ago under entirely different material conditions, and for the record I piled on against them too as did some of our other anarchist comrades because it was reddit tier brainrot. If someone post a meme similarly lazily and unfunnily making the same joke about "anarkiddies" we would remove it and chastise the poster.
What do you want me to say? Sorry I'm not as angey as your standards demand? That all that dogpiling and toxic behavior was chill and fine because of a fucky meme? I declare hexbear.net the sovereign leader of all of leftism, I'll say whatever you want, just chill tf out
I'm very chill, I was just pointing out why it seems like we are aggressive.
The removal of downvotes on our end mean people have to actually make the effort to tell you that you are wrong and why, and not just downvote and move on.
Trust me it is a much better system than downvotes, we have had a long time with developing policies to foster productive discussion.
When someone is so aggressively wrong or clearly posting troll bait, then of course they will perceive the pushback as aggressive as well.
Yes I know about the downvote situation.
I lurk on hexbear often. I don't usually comment because of... Well, this kinda shit, since it is hard to describe.
And I don't need you to explain to me how you think I'm misunderstanding how aggressive you are. I can form my own opinions about how aggressive hexbear user behavior is.
Were you gonna comment something like this? *Edit: Because this is what we are responding to, and what you were getting lumped in with in the other thread. Unless this is what you are holding your tongue from saying while you lurk hexbear, then you're gonna be fine, you don't need to be fucking terrified of posting on hexbear if you can be respectful.
I'm a real person in the year 2023, I'm not some caricature from 1920.
Motherfucker you responded to me. To my comments. You are actively doing this kind of shit right now without me saying any of that. If you wanna complain about the meme go do it to someone who agrees with it.
I didn't mean to come off that aggressive. But in my own defense, you already told me, earlier in this exact comment chain, that you disagreed with the meme, so I figured it was obvious I was not accusing you of agreeing with it. That was my whole point: you shouldn't equate hexbear venom in the comments under that meme with our normal, unprovoked behavior or act like you might get the same venom for whatever innocuous shit you would say. That's still demonizing us.
I expanded both threads and ctrl-f'd your name, after you stressed the point. Everyone was civil with you. Maybe one person was a little stern. My comment with the image wasn't even there yet when you gestured vaguely at hexbear and said "Well... this kinda shit." What shit? The obvious interpretation was that you were referring to the very conspicuous hexbear dogpile against /u/db0's meme and not to some lukewarm responses you got offscreen buried in the comments.
I was drafting a conciliatory response when I saw this comment. I still apologize for how my earlier comment came off. I was not saying that meme represented your feelings. I was emphasizing that it didn't, and pointing out how inflammatory something has to be for hexbear to come down on it this hard.
And y'all had a chance to prove the meme wrong by not turning it into a dick measuring contest with spamming equally shitty sectarian shit that on hexbear would get you kicked out (anarchists are worthless, anarchists can't coordinate, etc.),. And it always ends like this. Anytime i mention that in the hungarian revolution the workers councils were a way more significant factor than any western influence and they literally set up groups to hunt nazis the same agresszive smug shit arrives from people who never read anything about the topic apart from the fucking Aptheker book. I feel like the ML userbase (who are right about basically anything when it comes to capitalism) would rather off themselves that even admit that any ml leader even marginally engaged in self-serving abuse of power. Of course anarchists who aren't familiar with the site wont be happy.
How many people did we shoot in the thread? Are you that easy to pander to?
Ask them about Khrushchev and co's destalinization or 70s Mao or Gonzalo.
afaik hexbear unanimously hates Gonzalo, which is throwing me off trying to interpret this comment. not being snarky
All three are examples of ml leaders who took huge Ls abusing their power that nobody is afraid to criticize. I'm not familiar enough with the boiled baby guy to say whether he was actually an ml or if it was another pol pot situation.
Gonzalo was a self-proclaimed Maoist, part of the reason we say ML-MZT and not MLM in English
If you want criticism of a self-proclaimed ML (and don't count Pol Pot because that claim was not even paper thin), Khrushchev is someone we all hate who has slightly more of a claim to the title, though naturally I would argue that he is a revisionist.
If you want criticism of an actual ML, we criticize Stalin and Mao all the time, but usually not on "selfish abuse of power" terms because that generally isn't what they did compared to simply being a bit reactionary or foolish (often right and left deviationism, respectively, though that is a slight stretch for the Four Pests case).
Naturally, if it is an ideology we believe in, then actions we disagree with are generally going to be outside of what we consider those principles to be.
I don't know much about the Hungarian uprising. If the Soviet response was unjustified and draconian when they could have worked something out, that's fucked up.
Do you have any reading recommendations?
Thanks for your kind words. I will admit I did get snappy towards the end of the day as I was getting tired and they had gone to straight up brigading tactics with half a dozen hexbears shitposting random replies, so there wasn't even any point to reply anymore. It had just become a classic pile on situation because I hurt their feelings.
I'm not here to stop anyone. MLs can be allies when they act like anarchists, which they tend to do when they're not in power. But you have to be cognizant who you're getting in bed with.
Do you think that all ML's harbor some innate desire to just start murdering anarchists for no particular reason when given the chance or something?
This weird self-induced paranoia can't be good for you.
No. I think that the praxis of MLs eventually leads to ice axes in heads "for the good of the revolution". I believe you currently never would imagine you would make such an action. I also believe that your hierarchical states will inevitably lead to it
Ah, yes. I suppose Marxism-Leninism inevitably drives people to murder, just like Islam inevitably drives people to murder.
All Marxist-Leninists are the same, just like all those swarthy Muslamics.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable view of reality you've got there lmao
Ice Axe.
For men.
I mean, you're not proving some heads don't need "ice-axes".
It's also weird to complain about Trotsky getting
when he has way more anarchist blood on his hand than Mao
It's weird to call it an ice axe too
It's so fascinating to see you miss point so thoroughly! It just goes to show one needs more than book smarts
Tell me again that you aren't seeking conflict
Well you certainly lived up to to your alias today
Yeah. I'm smart as fuck dude. It's an ice pick that Trotsky got killed with btw. An ice axe is a piece of mountain climbing equipment
So smort!
Yo! This guy can't even spell the word 'smart'! Even with our modern technology and autocorrect. He still got it wrong. What a brain moron.
I am really fine working with all leftists when we go against nazis. When the goal is the same, the methods are the same or complement each other and they don't try to take control of "my" space/group, I can work with MLs