this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Thought I should add it was them informing me that certain countries banning same-sex marriage while endorsing heterosexual marriage is just fine, actually. They espoused an objectively homophobic belief, and when I referenced my own marriage, they switched to calling me ignorant about anarchism. There are anarchist texts exploring the issue and some of the potential problems with traditions like marriage, but it's not dogma. Nor do I view my own relationship as hierarchical.

TL;DR They were being objectively homophobic.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Political views aside, the way they promote their political views is unappealing.

Look through any of their popular threads. Everyone piles on any comment which doesn't align perfectly with the agreed perspective.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

That's all there is to it.

That's it? Nothing about their notoriety for posting pictures of pigs pooping on their balls as part of their lively defense of MLism?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they have a very alternative interpretation of geopolitics and they're loud about it. If there was a flat earth instance with users that spammed every physics thread there would be some grumbling just the same.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The hexbear and lemmygrad users/posts I run across in All mostly remind me of those street corner preachers. I don’t care one way or another about their ideologies but it’s tiring that they always feel the need to shout it in your face.

I don’t hate them but find them to be obnoxious and mostly cult-like.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

I believe you've answered your own question.

Lemmy isn't Marxist-only. The majority of Lemmy users are what the more vocal Lemmygrad and Hexbear users deride as "libs." As a thought experiment, imagine that you are one of us for a moment and then browse Local on one of those.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well it's because they are Marxist.
In the Lemmy culture Marxism has a very bad name because almost religious overtones of its adherents.

Which is of ironically very much what Marx was warning against. But that's how it works right now.

[–] Eldritch 9 points 7 months ago

Leninism is antithetical to Marxism. As you said. If they were Marxist there wouldn't be a big issue. They're Leninist as an angry 13 year old can be. Combined with the fact that people in the West, the US especially, have no idea what either one is. And that's the problem.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

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. 🤷

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (10 children)

That's not the part people have an issue with, the part where their users deny genocides, call everyone that has a less extreme left opinion of politics Nazis, end up being so "anti-racism" that they're racists themselves and take all critics as personal attacks, that's what people have an issue with.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Holy shit you got them to brigade your comment. They might as well be bots, I think Chat GPT's "intelligence" outpaces them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

As is tradition! What's funny is that they're supposed to be defederated from my instance so I don't know why they even see my comments... Their admin even called my instance "sh.itsfullof.nazis" in their defederation message because they were angry that they were confronted to people who disagreed with them when they brigaded our administration communities...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They have a community dedicated to organizing brigades so it's no surprise that they are brigading their comment

[email protected]

The rules in the side bar are very telling

Of course the last time I mentioned it's existence with one of my alts I got a 2 week sitewide-ban so this comment probably won't last long

Edit: Spleling

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Extremely accurate

I literally netted a 2 week sitewide-ban on one of my alts in this thread for a softer worded take than this

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

More often than not, when Americans say leftist they really mean left-liberalism a la Bernie Sanders, which is really center-left at most, and not actually leftist in the original sense, a sense which Americans have forgotten thanks to two Red Scares and the first Cold War.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

There's a difference between challenging other people's opinions and calling them fascists or Nazis just because they're not at the extreme left.

Even worse, in this very thread I've been called a fascist for the sole reason that my instance is sh.itjust.works, one of the bigger instances and one where your political opinion isn't a criteria to subscribe (especially not when I subscribed, they didn't even ask for an email!)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I could tell you, but the last time I responded to a thread like this I got banned for a couple weeks because toxic political personalities aren't very tolerant.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

ITT: offended lennygrad and hexbear users giving good examples to answer the OP

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