this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad

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I've come to two realizations recently:

One

The sudden tankie willingness to believe that Trump cares about a cease-fire in Gaza, and got tough with the Israelis and then they capitulated which Biden could have done at any time, sheds some interesting light on how the tankies think. They accuse anyone who disagrees with them of shifting their realities around, such that anything Biden does is good, anything the State Department says is always true, even if it contradicts itself or basic common sense or reality. I always thought that this was just a lazy reality-free arguing tactic, but in retrospect, I should have realized that it's a tell about their own thought process. Just like it's a warning sign if someone constantly suspects their partner of cheating, or is constantly on an absurdly hypervigilant lookout for scams and people trying to cheat them out of money, this is a key revelation about the way Hexbear itself looks at reality.

Trump is a capable diplomat, if believing that lets them trash Biden. Trump cares about Palestinians, if believing that lets them trash Biden. The cart is firmly in its place in front, and everything else including the horse can follow along depending on what the cart dictates.

Two

Hexbear's censorship, and wild hostility to anyone who comes to "their" place and tries not to toe the party line, really does do a pretty effective job of distorting the view of reality and consensus that their users are able to experience.

Take a look at these and compare:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/36382877

https://hexbear.net/post/4354590

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What you’re noticing I think is actually a pandemic in modern society. People cannot fathom nuance. I dunno if social media put the final nail in the coffin of a long-festering problem, or if social media and the ensuing collapse in discourse birthed the problem alone.

Politics have become a team sport. All discourse has become a team sport. It’s binary. “You’re with me or you’re against me.” Or “information supports me or it’s rigged.” Extending that: “you’re my ideological enemy and whatever you think I think the opposite.” It doesn’t matter if it’s logical or it’s entirely contradictory. All that matters is getting to say “NO! You’re wrong and I’m right! You’re a [liberal, conservative, fascist, etc.]” Whatever serves their argument.

The complete inability to have logical discourse based in reality, is itself responsible for the larger systemic problems. When there’s no common ground because the ground is either “yours or mine,” and when it changes in every discussion, there’s just no hope to ever do anything about problems. And the problems are mounting. And the ownership class is capitalizing on this constant culture war bullshit—and I mean “culture war” in the sense of each “ideology” having its in group and everyone else belonging to the out group—to run wild on what’s left of this current paradigm.

It’s hard not to feel doom when realizing this foundational problem. It undercuts any kind of underclass solidarity, so the class war is really just an ever-worsening class slaughter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Politics have become a team sport. All discourse has become a team sport. It’s binary.

I've started to notice that this particular brain rot is becoming more and more common among Democrats as well. To a distressing number of people I've encountered on the Internet, be it here, Reddit, or elsewhere, Democrats ran a perfect political campaign and their candidates and policy were flawless and above question, so it's entirely the fault of the voters that we got Trump again. Never mind that Democrats actively facilitated a genocide and largely ignored their base in favor of appealing to moderate Republicans who were never going to vote for them anyway.

The number of people in this country who are just incapable of seeing (much less understanding) any kind of nuance is dropping rapidly, even among demographics who should be aware of this trend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Oh, absolutely. It’s a boundless problem. It happens with left wingers as well. It’s a disease in the way people think and engage with the world around them. Ideologies are badges now. They’re uniforms people wear. Similar to mental disorders on TikTok, Instagram, or, previously, on tumblr. That’s why I think the common link is social media. I know tribalism isnt a new phenomenon whatsoever, but widespread, more foundational tribalism on every single topic, kind of is.

People are arguing about reality. As soon as the right drifted away into fantasy politics, the bottom dropped out on discourse altogether. When about half the people are just straight up questioning long-known facts, the reality we all shared and could agree on suddenly became much more shaky and full of holes. Not that reality has changed, obviously, but when the discourse surrounding what we consider facts is questioned on this kind of scale, arguing that facts do, actually, exist just opens a sinkhole. And it’s not getting smaller. Because what are facts to everyday people if not something that we discuss and generally agree upon?

And the fact that this kind of magical thinking is spreading is more than troubling. It’s straight up doomsday shit.

So in a world where all of this is true and people invent an entirely new version of themselves to put online (and then lie to themselves that it’s actually them), pinning the “I’M A PROUD [democrat, Republican, communist, etc.]” to their chest is step one before they actually learn shit. They pick an identity and then look at every issue through that lens. Because they’ve found people online that belong to it and they choose that identity. Instead of learning and then realizing their ideology, they choose a team and then learn usually as little as possible to appear as if they belong. And get defensive and argue online with the “other” side, with wholly incomplete and usually inaccurate information that they looked up specifically to belong to an ideological group.

Fuckin crazy. You see problems like this, look at the state of discourse and really wonder…is there any coming back from this? How do we even start? Well, education. Obviously. But we all know that’s not gonna happen. We’re moving in the opposite direction as fast as we possibly can. (Because that serves the ownership class).

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago (13 children)

They're brainwashed and also fascists. They don't stand for communism at all and never had.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 days ago (12 children)

Tankies= Republicans

That's all you gotta say. They love the orange fucker.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

To build off that, I was going to say it is easier for them to understand authoritarianism than liberalism. They more closely relate to using power to enforce will rather than consensus and damned the consequences.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Eh, I think that only applies to Hexbear. The ml instances seem to hate anything US (or western, for that matter) without picking sides.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Not in my experience, but ml seems less obviously pro trump at least.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago (8 children)

I have been calling this out since my first interactions with those instances. They are heavily infested with right wing trolls making "leftist" noises. And the ones who aren't actually trolls are either so blinded by their disdain for liberalism, or just too young to notice.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

Yeah. I'm genuinely curious how many of them are right wing trolls, how many are useful idiots, how many are normal trolls, how many are subject to mental illness and will sincerely believe anything and yell it at everyone else because of brain chemicals, how many are some other category, just what are the details of the real demographics there. I wish there was a way to know.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago (11 children)

Tankies are the alt-right fabricating an alt-left. Tankies are a deliberate disinfo campaign most likely out of st petersburg. Remember the russian troll farms? See how easily they penetrated the right wing in america? The left are free thinkers and are a harder nut to crack. Their best shot at this is to cosplay far left and push liberals further left. Tough to foment a civil war when only one side is fighting. TLDR; Hexbear is most likely 90% mother russia phoning home.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

The left are free thinkers

Idk, there are a lot of leftist echo chambers. Please avoid anything close to the "we're right and everyone else is wrong" argument.

But yes, agree with much of the rest. I also think there are a lot of trolls from China in the mix as well.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (2 children)

You make it sound as if the "left" in the US is as left as it should be and pushing it further is a bad thing. The "left" in the US are full on capitalism appreciators, even under the Obama admin which liberals look upon fondly large mergers and consolidation of power were allowed to happen. This country is lost if we act like one side is doing its job (doing things in the interest of the populace and not corporations).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

In the United States being on 'the left' is arbitrarily just being 'left of far-right'.

The 'Radical Far Left' is anything that isn't devoted to capitalism. This isn't a Republican talking point but the central prerequisite to American politics that thinks Bernie Sanders would've had executions in central park.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

That's certainly part of it, is my guess. But it can't be all of it, just a whole community of Russian trolls talking to each other. How many useful idiots are there?

And Dessalines likes Hexbear. Presumably he's not a Russian troll. How many others are there, and how did they come to their decisions? I believed a bunch of dumb stuff when I was young. How much of it is that?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

While yes, that is a thing. This is however literally a community meant to discuss this sort of thing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

This is my contribution to any discussion about Hexbear or Hexbear communities.

I'm a reasonable man and I'm willing to talk to anybody. But Hexbear and the communities it harbors are simply unbearable to me. I have no other instances and no other communities blocked.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

Fascists gonna fash.

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