Lemmy.world Hexbear Statement

Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

“Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
“The West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to "dismantle western propaganda" and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

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712 comments

As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat "fighting liberalism on the fediverse" like it's activism? Go outside.
- Liberalism has an actual definition, and it is not the colloquial definition used in mass-media to refer to "the left half of what is acceptable."
  Liberalism is an idealist (another word which has a very specific definition) political philosophy which champions private property, constitutionalism, republicanism, rule of law, and free trade. It has a philosophical canon, flowing through writers like Locke, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, etc. Further economic works, like Smith's "Wealth of Nations," are built on this philosophical underpinning.
  Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.
  Liberals find themselves banging their heads against the walls of the institutions time and time again, because from their perspective, these institutions are just a reflection of ideas, and as long as the justification for an institution on paper is sound, there is no reason to think it cannot be reformed. An institution like the US Congress, or the Executive Branch is never at fault. It is simply a good institution simply being run by bad people. Marxists (and Anarchists) reject this quite simply, by looking at the material incentives involved, and the long ghastly history surrounding these institutions.
  "Combating liberalism" does not mean being a piece of shit to anybody to the right of Bernie Sanders or Jeromy Corbin. There is a genuine struggle to ensure the new crop of social media platforms don't simply end up defending the legitimacy of the established institutions at the expense of genuine radicals who find themselves at odds with the actual longstanding policy and practices of these institutions. To avoid situations like when mastodon.lol banned CODEPINK, a prominent anti-war organization, for being "Tankies." This is Liberalism, and it should be combated.
  
  Liberalism: a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
  I think you are conflating the free enterprise to mean endorsement of late stage capitalism instead of a system of actual market competition. Please don't base this on the complete market capture demonstrated in the US currently. If anything the US is more like an authoritarian oligarchy with the illusion of democracy peddled through conflicting culture wars in the media. While there are great ideologies in play in something like socialism the reality is unless you could end the idea of money tomorrow their will always be inducements and incentives to hoard and leverage outsized resources outside of which ever community produced them in the first place. It's why US resource capture on smaller nations works effectively, and it's why Russian oligarchs have most of their wealth outside of Russia, etc.
  Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.
  Liberal vs Marxist has nothing to do with being a materialist or idealist, and trying to conflate them like they are is very disingenuous and misleading. Not to mention that is not what a materialist even is. A materialist is someone who values possessions for comfort, think a hyper consumer, where as an idealist is routed in ideals, like equality for all, regardless of the difficulties in trying to accomplish such a task. If anything by your definitions a Marxist would be an idealist fueled by an ideal (communism) , and a liberal would be someone on either side as they value personal freedoms and ones ability to choose either ideology.
  Either you are trying to be intentionally misleading or you need to take a step back from your own propaganda as you are parroting off information that is completely ill informed at best or intentionally misleading at worst. There are definitely issues in US institutions, but a liberal is not going to defend the shortcomings, they would be proposing ranked choice voting, imposing age limits, redefining our checks and balances, and making sure these systems are inherently democratic. We don't even have a true left in the US, we have a moderate center and then people like Bernie who are just barely into the left political territory in the global scale of things. A conservative would be someone who values conserving existing systems and institutions or leaving them as initially intended as they aim to conserve status quo. Seriously take a step back my friend, seems like you have been lost in an echo chamber for a while.

712 comments