• randint@lemm.ee
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      Yeah, the Chinese government is totally very democratic and is receptive to the criticism of its citizens! They never censor words and topics they don’t like on their social media platforms!

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      You know, that actually makes sense. 14-year-olds. It would explain a lot about hexbears.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.ml
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      Just got banned from Hexbear for saying something negative about China and the US at the same time. They have no tolerance of any discussion that challenges their preconceptions.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    Very interesting how all those “pretend socialists” only exist in the third world, and all the “real socialists” existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by “pretend socialists”, and the so called “real socialists” in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the “real socialists” in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.

    No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all…

    What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?

    • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
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      Nelson Mandela was not a great man. At least not great enough to be so admired while F.W De Klerk had his funeral protested (F.W De Klerk helped end Apartheid).

      Nelson Mandela did no more besides be a figurehead and help make a constitution that no one (not even when he was in power) follows. The ANC is corrupt to this day

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        I’m South African, I know who F.W de Klerk is. Don’t lie about what he did, there’s a reason he was unanimously booed while receiving his joint noble peace prize. He didn’t help end apartheid, he was forced into a position where it was the only viable option. Pure pragmatism. He was a member of the NP for many years, he willingly joined that organisation at the height of apartheid in 1972. If he was actually interested in ending fighting apartheid, he would have joined a liberation movement, not the apartheid party.

        de Klerk was an apartheid president that was so corrupt he ordered the incineration of evidence of his, and his parties, corruption and crimes against humanity to be carried out by industrial steel smelters. Not to mention what he did with all the “third force” shenanigans towards the end of apartheid that almost caused civil war. It’s been revealed that he knew all about it. Or all the racist things he said later in life that revealed his true character, such as refusing to call apartheid a crime against humanity. Yes, I also used to be a liberal that thought de Klerk was a good guy that helped end apartheid, that was until I actually decided to do some research into the matter. Nelson Mandela said it best when it comes to de Klerk:

        “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator…He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation.”

        Yes the ANC is now extremely corrupt, it was effectively couped by corporate interests in the late 90s and early 2000s. Remember the move from RPD to GEAR? Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel? Ramaphosa running away to make money in McDonalds and mining instead of succeeding Mandela? Leaving the door open for Mbeki to become president, a self described Thacherite who instituted austerity measures, underfund Eskom and give South Africa it’s first bout of load shedding, and denied that HIV causes AIDS, killing hundreds of thousands in the process? This all paved the way for Zuma’s corruption and ineptitude, and for Ramaphosa to come back, even after his shameful involvement in Marikana. Yes the ANC is shamefully corrupt, incompetent and useless, and it’s interesting to look at exactly how it got to that position.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    us-foreign-policy

    Westerners deciding who’s doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.

    Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.

    Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don’t give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he’d be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.

    Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn’t relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky’s work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky’s feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.

    Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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          I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren’t going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?

              • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
                Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn’t it?

                • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
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                  People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they’ve never figured this out.

                  So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:

                  Omg communist countries are fascist!

                  actually no socialist!

                  lol oppression

                  Vs

                  hey why do so many socialist states end up being super authoritarian?

                  hey yeah thats a huge problem, but lets ignore it because west bad

          • BigNote@lemm.ee
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            Yes, because engaging with hexbears is a waste of time. They are not here in good faith. Either that or they don’t know any better, which in practice amounts to the same thing.

              • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                That’s a fair question and in all honesty the answer is no, because based on what I can easily see and understand of hexbears, they aren’t intellectually serious people and to the contrary are more akin to a kind of 4-chan trolling community than anything worth actual intellectual engagement.

                I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to see any evidence as such.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don’t. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.

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              As if it’s somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don’t actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                  What argument? 20+ arguments were made. Which one am I meant to address?

                  If I focus on one you’ll jump on me for not addressing the 19 others, which is why it’s a bullshit tactic.

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
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        That’s precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.

  • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlM
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    I agree. Fascist countries like Denmark, Germany and Canada often get called “socialist” and they have been disastrous for the reputation of socialism.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        It’s such a fucking pain in my ass to have to block every single community from Lemmygrad and Hexbear. I’m so tired of seeing their dumbass 7th grade love of fascists and racism.

        • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          One of the many things I love about Blahaj is that we’re no longer federated with Hexbear, there was a bit (frankly a shit ton)of drama getting there but those days when we were federated I blocked more Hexbear users than users from any other instance.

          Join us on Blahaj, we’re explicitly queer friendly and we don’t have to deal with Hexbear anymore.

          Of course once we can migrate accounts that will likely be a far easier sell.

          • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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            Blahaj is run by far-right nut jobs and used by them as well. They hate anyone left of Regan

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            I’m guessing you’re an anarchist, which I appreciate and so I totally understand why you may not like these instances, but do you ever feel like some of the people criticizing Lemmygrad and Hexbear are Right-wingers themselves?

            I fully support Leftist critiques but some of these claims are kind of wild. Someone claiming hexbear is racist? How would it be racist, from a Leftist perspective? It just seems to me like Right-wingers are attacking them with these ridiculous claims to get them to be defederated or at least to get people to stay away and not understand the humor. If someone critiqued them for defending the State when communism should include the dissolution of the State apparatus, the recuperation of initially revolutionary movements by global capitalism, etc. then I’d appreciate the Leftist critiques but it doesn’t seem to me to be the case. And it doesn’t seem to me like there is any monolithic position at hexbear either. I actually was further pleasantly surprised to see they had an anarchism community and also a Christianity community at hexbear, it doesn’t feel to me like they have a hard Stalinist party-line and don’t accept differences among the Left.

            I do get the feeling they don’t like Right-wingers though.

            • socsa@lemmy.ml
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              Hexbear unironically defends Russia, which is an extremely racist and homophobic place. Likewise, China is also an extremely racist place, which is increasingly opposed to LGBT advocacy as “western degeneracy.” And of course, they fall over themselves to defend tyranny, as long as it pays lip service to socialist ideals, while denigrating social democrats as insincere “shit libs.” Then they post their little arms crossed emoji thinking they’ve made some point.

              By and large these people are children who legitimately have an extremely narrow view of the world they seek to critique. They see Lenin write that “imperialism is something everyone other than Russia does” and that’s about as far as they look into the underlying philosophy of imperialism.

            • cooljacob204@kbin.social
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              I’m just gonna talk about your first paragraph. No they are not right wingers lmao. I fucking hate that you can’t be centrist or democratic socialist without some asshole (not you, you’re just asking) saying you’re a right winger.

              I believe the west has better equality, stability, quality of life, rights, morals, so and and so forth.

              And I think we need to greatly expand our social programs.

              However if I defend the west then suddenly I’m a right winger? Fuck off with that classification shit. I just don’t subscribe to Russia and China somehow being better then the US or the west in any sort of way.

              This is why these social movements never get any movement in the US. They’re too busy self hating and worshipping facists in the East.

              • ikiru@lemmy.ml
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                Thanks for your response and I appreciate the thought you put into it. I agree we need to greatly and desperately expand social programs. I also don’t think Russia or China are perfect, much less socialist, but I wouldn’t say the West—including the US—is categorically and unquestionably better in every sort of way. That being said, the Left does need to be broader in the West and everywhere else, which is why I think I’d rather hold solidarity with Leftists in these instances who I may not fully agree with rather than attacking them alongside Right-wingers and fascists.

                And, sorry, but, no offense, a centrist is a Right-winger to me and it proves my point.

                • cooljacob204@kbin.social
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                  My point is I’m only a right winger in a small niche bubble which is completely not the reality of things.

                  To most of the world I’m a lefty and to actual right wingers they would probably call me a communist (and sure incorrectly but not my point).

                  Right winger means maga idiot to most of the ppl in the US not democrat who wants to greatly expand our social programs and nets.

          • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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            This is what I mean, nothing you guys say ever makes even the remotest of sense. I can’t fucking stand that channel and everyone on your instance talks like their typical fans. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

            • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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              Why are you promoting their anti socialist talk points then? You have clearly fallen for the Fox News bullshit

  • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    You have a lifetime of anti communist propaganda to overcome. You’re close, take the last step and realize you’ve been lied to about AES countries. No place is a utopia, but those countries are lights in the dark.

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    Cuba is a beacon of progress and humanity in the Americas. Fidel Castro was a hero. Also a pro at dodging the CIA’s kill squads.

    • Asuka@sh.itjust.works
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      Cuba did some good things - in education, in medicine - but if it’s such a wonderful country, why is everything there a decaying flashback to the 1950s where everything is falling apart?

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Lmao, that’s a testament to communist Cuba’s success. No other form of government could withstand a US embargo for a year and not collapse. Cuba has withstood for DECADES and has surpassed the US in life expectancy. The buildings are kinda shabby, but homelessness, infant mortality, illiteracy are all LOWER than the US, the richest country in the history of the world.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Because the US has been embargoing it for 50 years to prevent it from getting everything it needs.

        The UN regularly votes on the US embargo of Cuba, and only the US and its lapdog Israel support it.

    • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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      I’m confused, are you saying he’s using it wrong?

      Here’s a copy paste from Webster.

      often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

      Replace the word race with party and you’ve got an incomplete yes, but not necessarily inaccurate description of Stalins USSR.

      Seriously not trying to just be a troll or shill here, so if you feel I’m wrong please let me know how and why. I am legitimately, in good faith, curious about the perspectives of some communist here. It is an ideology I am somewhat interested in.

      • temptest [any]@hexbear.net
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        A different response, which comes from a different angle to those pointing out that Marxism-Leninism is not fascist:

        The word ‘fascism’ is used so fast and loosely outside of a technical context that I wouldn’t say one interpretation is necessarily right or wrong. It depends on context. (Incidentally, same for ‘socialism’, even principled well-read communists can’t agree on a definition.)

        For example, if we’re talking about the actual Fascist ideology (think of Mussolini and associates) then I would even hesitate to include Nazism due to the very different roots: they’re both nationalist anti-liberal anti-democratic, anti-socialist ‘third way’ ideologies and they did ally in the war, sure, but to group them both as ‘fascism’ trivializes core differences in how they formed, why they successfully formed, how they appealed to their followers (fascism actually recruited many self-identifying socialists in Italy and its important to recognise why to prevent it), and why they were ultimately antisocial and unsuccessful in their goals.

        This isn’t just some academic masturbation nitpicking or anything: I believe that the ignorance of Classical Fascism by lumping it in with the far more obvious and baseless idiocy of Nazism makes it harder to recognize and counter, especially when neo-Nazis are such ridiculous cartoonish farces. Fascism stemmed from National Syndicalism and has core economic ideas like corporatism (from ‘corpus’) that could fool people, and sounds much less stupid that Hitler’s bizzare esoteric fantasies about Aryan racial supremacy: even Mussolini considered Hitler crazy.

        The point of me making this distinction is that the dictionary definition you gave isn’t even wrong in describing fascist ideologies, but, I don’t think that list of common traits should be mistaken for a definition. Those traits are the results, not the foundation of the ideology, and a neo-liberal state like the USA can easily match many of those traits despite being a very distinct ideology. Any you will absolutely see people saying ‘USA is fascist’ as a shorthand for nationalist, racist, imperialist, oppressive, blah blah blah, but it’s definitely not post-National-Syndicalist faux-socialist corporatist collectivism. We should obviously fight both but they are not the same and manifest differently.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Replace the word race with party

        That’s a pretty significant difference, don’t you think? Exalting racism and exalting a political organization that opposes racism are diametrically opposed things, not equivalent.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Personally I like the definition that the historian Robert O. Paxton uses. Now, he’s a liberal, but he does have good insight into fascism and he doesn’t fall into that trap of deciding that communists and fascists must be the same thing. His definition isn’t materialist, but it’s a good start.

        To paraphrase, his definition is “a suppression of the left among popular sentiment.” By left he means things like socialists, labor organizations, communists, etc. Fascism is a situation where a country has found its theater of democracy has failed and the capitalists need anything at all to keep themselves in power, even if it means cannibalizing another sector of capitalists. The fascists are the ideological contingent of this, who put forward a policy of class collaboration between working class and capitalist, instead of what socialists propose, which is working class dominance in the economy. Fascists exalt nationality or race because that extends through class sentiments. It brushes aside concerns like internal economic contradictions. I once had a comrade say something like “Fascism is capitalists hitting the emergency button until their hand starts bleeding.”

        Communists using a vanguard party is to defend their own interests against capitalists or outside invaders. The praise of the CPSU in Stalin’s era was precisely because it acted as a development and protection tool for the working class. It did its job and people were wary of any return to the previous Tsarist or liberal governments. Women began going to school, women were given the vote for the first time. Pogroms ceased. In less than one lifetime of the CPSU administrating the country, people went from poor farmers to living in apartments with plumbing, heating, and clean medical care. That’s why there was such praise of the party, because they actually did things people liked, and they didn’t want anything to threaten them.

        Also, what does it matter if there’s one party or two? The working class have a singular, uniting interest to overthrow capitalism. Why are multiple parties needed? Anything the working class needs to negotiate for can be handled within a socialist, democratic structure, not two or three competing structures against one another. Take a look at Cuba, which has one party, but doesn’t use their party to endorse candidates. Everyone’s officially an independent in the National Assembly.

        • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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          This was an enlightening comment and I appreciate it. I may not agree with all of it but it definitely shows there are some perspectives I haven’t considered. A parliamentary or council type system could definitely provide enough representation of different working class communities within a single party. I wonder if they had term limits, or if their representatives would fall into the same hole as the US Congress.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The common socialist position is that term limits are anti-democratic not just because they keep people from voting for who they want to but, more significantly, it tilts the scales in favor of structures that do not have term limits. In the US, for example, elections are essentially completely controlled by private companies from the media to the National Conventions, and term limits check the power of popular candidates (and therefore popular sentiment) versus capital, which does not expire in 8 years.

            • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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              If i remember his book correctly, at start he explicitly denies marxist definition of fascism, and then in course of the book his research lead straight to it being correct on at least two separate occasions, them makes full stop and end the topic when he realise what would he have to write next.

              I don’t know if thats merely ritually exorcising communism in order to have his book accepted by liberal academia (like in case of Geza Alfoldy for example) or he really is this intellectually dishonest, because he clearly did realised. Anyway it was funny as hell and the book isn’t even bad.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Possibly because of the way he’s found his career. Paxton is very popular in France and was very instrumental in introducing liberal historiography into French WW2 history. For him to throw a bone to Marxists would be undermining how he earned a name for himself in the first place.

                • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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                  Yeah i see that in polish social sciences too, especially by older authors, it’s hard here to keep position in the academia without paying at least lip service to anticommunist witchhunt. Unfortunately even those people are already dead and the new ones are not even shy about being opportunists, most books publish nowadays are almost worthless since it’s either anticommunist propaganda, pophistory or bland compilations from older ones.

            • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              I do think it was an attempt. They just didn’t even know that a coup attempt involved more than walking in the door and demanding Trump be president. The next one in America will involve mass killing, and it will be from a similar demographic.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Yeah we’re still in a position where American fascism doesn’t even recognize itself in the mirror. It doesn’t realize it’s a movement that needs coherent aims. It’s still stuck in the American paradigm of politics as consumerism. A comrade the other day here said the explicit kind of American fascism is having a hard time getting off the ground because they refuse to adopt socialist rhetoric, like European fascist movements in the past.

                • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  Yea that’s well said, also American fascists luckily have no history to look back to that’s before the US state formation. So instead of wanting a new system, they just want their guy to play President as they sit on the couch.