Ask Lemmy

Hexbear, lemmygrad and (in great part) lemmy.ml are tankie instances.

They basically deny any crimes of Stalin, Mao etc…

"A self help group for people who struggle with solvent abuse."

Best answer in this thread.

I'll do you one better, why is Hexbear??

Oh another one of these

Short answer:

"What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi"

Similar level of assholety and low post quality. Better politics. Overall don't bother, not worth it.

Hexbear.net is a Left-Unity instance populated mainly by Marxists and Anarchists. They generally don't get along with Lemmy.world, whose admins defederated from the major Marxist-aligned instances.

Whether you block Hexbear is up to you, I enjoy my time there a lot but it's also because I'm a Marxist. The ones saying they are "pretending" to be Leftist never seem to be able to explain why a large group of people would all ironically have theory reading groups and ironically support trans rights for years, even before federating with anyone else. What would they have to gain?

If I were you, I'd ask on an instance actually federated with them. You'll get different perspectives than you will here, which is always the case when it comes to controversial topics like Marxism, where opinion varies greatly from instance to instance.

ITT: everyone says they're bad without giving any examples, telling you what to think instead of letting you form your own conclusions.

Hexbear is pretty overwhelmingly queer/trans and anarchist/communist.

If you've never run into a transfem communist IRL it's probably because you're not in many queer or left wing organizing spaces.

I'm actually pretty new to Lemmy in the last year and in that time I've seen way more .world posters being toxic about .ml/hexbear and making vague posts about how bad they are. I have to imagine that's why you're now seeing backlash to .world. Also most of the time I see people complaining about these instances and I dig into the modlog it's overwhelmingly because they got banned at some point for being reactionary and are bent out of shape about it.

Here's my take...

They're more cohesive and insular than most groups you'll find on social media.

They've brewed their own strongly held culture and ideology.

Many are also used to being ostracised by other communities due to sexual preferences or other personal attributes.

The result is, if you naively post in a thread in which they are active your opinion will get stomped on if it does not directly align with theirs.