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  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Hexbear is fascist. They’re pretending to be tankies, but every single post on there is right-wing and bigoted. It’s so damn obvious.

    These people absolutely just make shit up relentlessly.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

      libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)

      e.g.

      unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”

      libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”

      unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”

      libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”

      leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”

      libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”

      • charlie@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The concept of a national deficit is so hard for me to grasp.

        So a deficit is when the government spends more money than they take in from taxes, cool. So government just raises taxes when they end up doing that, sort of like how I up my tax contribution if I end up owing at the end of the year. Wait, they only raise taxes on the working class? Because the capitalist class, through their money, is able to organize and consolidate power? That’s shit but surely it doesn’t get worse.

        Okay, so where do they get the money to spend if they’re spending more than they take in? It’s gotta come from somewhere, I’m sure they just print more and that can’t be bad. Oh, so when they print more money that makes the existing money worth less… Well that goes for the capitalists too, so at least that’s even. Oh, you mean that they get to park their money in appreciating assets while mine gets spent day to day and my wage stagnates so my purchasing power and meager savings just fucking declines… It surely can’t get worse.

        Yeah, I remember that appreciating assets thing. Get it over with, how does that fuck me over? So the government issues bonds, basically guaranteeing a set return on the money capitalists spend on them. How can the government guarantee that? Isn’t the market too volatile for that kind of guarantee? Ah, of course they would make up the difference with taxes, which I just learned are dis-proportionately paid by the working class.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.

        They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.

        And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?

        And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate.

          The bit where they had Bush giving candy to Michelle Obama six fucking years after the “end” of the Iraq War.

          “He has the presence of mind and the sense of humor to bring me a mint,” Obama said of the former president, per ABC7. “And he made it a point to give me that mint right then and there, and that’s the beauty of George Bush.”

          Actual quote from Michelle Obama.

          In October of this year, Obama discussed her close relationship with the former president while making an appearance on TODAY to interview with Bush’s daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.

          “I’d love if we as a country could get back to the place where we didn’t demonize people who disagreed with us. Because that’s essentially the difference between Republicans and Democrats,” she began. "That doesn’t make me evil. And that doesn’t make him, you know, stupid—it’s just a disagreement and that’s how I feel about your father. You know? He’s a beautiful, funny, kind, sweet man.”

          HE MURDERED A MILLION PEOPLE OBAMA!

          (I never know how to refer to the spouses of major political figures. First name, for women especially, seems demeaning but not in a useful way, while last name is confusing, and fuck me if I’m putting “Mrs”.)

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Hadn’t thought about Clinton bombing that pharma factory in Sudan for a while. : |

          Try telling them that there was no political reality where Russia would allow Ukraine to sieze control of Crimea and had it to NATO. Watch them seethe at you for denying the holiness of national sovereignty. Watch their minds bounce off the idea of strategic interest like a duck bouncing off a jetski. Oh, and try telling them that pretty much everyone in Crimea in some way worked for or worked to support the Russian Black Sea Fleet, so Russia didn’t have to invade because they already had a huge military base there. They just took the old flags down and put new ones up.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              You know that is one I haven’t seen any libs reckon with? Most of them are firmly convinced Russia invaded Ukraine because Putler is evil with no real analysis beyond that, but the fact that Ukraine has been yelling about joining NATO for years, while NATO has repeatedly said that will never happen, should have raised some kind of flag at some point.

      • yoink [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

        all the old putin tough-guy memes are plenty of proof of this - you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing that one picture of him on a horse

        • Sephitard9001 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          To defend Azov, I’ve had a lib send me a picture of Putin riding a horse where it’s reins had a metal swastika buckle and tried to imply that Putin is a nazi using the same logic but

          1. That wasn’t Putin’s horse, he was borrowing it on a visit.

          2. His visit was to Mongolia where Buddhism is the largest religion.

          I expect swastikas in Buddhist countries. Swastikas in Europe only mean one thing.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis.

        Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.

        I honestly cannot remember how they talked about him in the before times. It certainly wasn’t with this level of mindlessness, but I’m also pretty certain they hated him back them too.

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          it depends whether you define the “before times” as pre-2022 or pre-2014. I think before 2014 he was just another world leader to some extent. he was initially hated a lot post-2014 I remember but because the invasion of Crimea was so quick (relative to this invasion) it was hard for a ton of self-reinforcing narratives to be set up in the media, and this was before the rise of calling everybody a tankie or calling out China on every political post, so within a couple years it was back to “strong-man Putin”. Russiagate obviously made his reputation tumble but if you weren’t really into that, you could still have been neutral on him leading up to 2022.

    • LaBellaLotta [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.

      I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.

      They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.

      All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.

        Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.

        I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Sankara’s constant reminder is great but I still don’t quite know what I should be focusing on to break through this. It’s like… What creates an internationalist? What stops someone from only caring about what’s within their own borders? If we figure it out we make this all much easier on ourselves.

            • grym [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Helping the person realising that the international approach makes a lot more sense and is much better at explaining their lives?

              So many topics now, if not basically all of them, are international in nature. Their origin, explanation and development is international in nature. Understanding why the economy is shit, why inflation, why war, why your national politics are dependant on international pressures , why ecological topics all require international understanding, etc etc. To me, the realisation that the international point of view was just better and easier to explain and understand the world forced me to learn because I wanted explanations, and on important topics (less aesthetic or cultural ones) the lazy reactionary narratives aren’t enough because they break down, don’t fit or don’t provide good solutions.

              Also, interacting with the rest of the world. Talking with non-westerners about politics has always been enlightening and better, in my case. Like, at work, all the colleagues I talk politics with all the time are immigrants in some way, they have an outside look on my country and once I start talking about geopolitics and how insane the westerners are they open up and the conversations are incredibly interesting. The western colleagues sitting next to us at the coffee break always learn a lot, they see people who know what they are talking about, confidently, they see colleagues who are usually superficially shy and not too talkative (gotta be careful what you talk about as an immigrant to westerners) open up and share things about their lives and they realize there is an entire world out there they know nothing about.

              I think the majority of people can be reached in some way, the difficult ones are people such as the ones on reddit or Lemmy, they are not casually reactionary, they have been deeply propagandised and have internalised those things, they defend them, they identify culturally and personally with them so its much harder.

      • ZapataCadabra [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        American high school books usually have a segment about “authoritarianism” which is basically just there to say Hitler and Stalin were the same.

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.

        If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:

        1. You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point

        2. You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov

          • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.

            It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.

            It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.

            I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.