Hello comrades. In the interest of upholding our code of conduct - specifically, rule 1 (providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all) - we felt it appropriate to make a statement regarding the lionization of Luigi Mangione, the alleged United Healthcare CEO shooter, also known as “The Adjuster.”
In the day or so since the alleged shooter’s identity became known to the public, the whole world has had the chance to dig though his personal social media accounts and attempt to decipher his political ideology and motives. What we have learned may shock you. He is not one of us. He is a “typical” American with largely incoherent, and in many cases reactionary politics. For the most part, what is remarkable about the man himself is that he chose to take out his anger on a genuine enemy of the proletariat, instead of an elementary school.
This is a situation where the art must be separated from the artist. We do not condemn the attack, but as a role model, Luigi Mangione falls short. We do not expect perfection from revolutionary figures either, but we expect a modicum of revolutionary discipline. We expect them not simply to identify an unpopular element of society 
, but to clearly illuminate the causes of oppression and the means by which they are overcome. When we canonize revolutionary figures, we are holding them up as an example to be followed.
This is where things come back to rule 1. Mangione has a long social media history bearing a spectrum of reactionary viewpoints, and interacting positively with many powerful reactionary figures. While some commenters have referred to this as “nothing malicious,” by lionizing this man we effectively deem this behavior acceptable, or at the very least, safe to ignore. This is the type of tailism which opens the door to making a space unsafe for marginalized people.
We’re going to be more strict on moderating posts which do little more than lionize the shooter. There is plenty to be said about the unfolding events, the remarkably positive public reaction, how public reactions to “propaganda of the deed” may have changed since the historical epoch of its conception (and how the strategic hazards might not have), and many other aspects of the news without canonizing this man specifically. We can still dance on the graves of our enemies and celebrate their rediscovered fear and vulnerability without the vulgar revisionism needed to pretend this man is some sort of example of Marxist or Anarchist practice.
it seems to me that there is a gulf between mods and many users regarding the expected level of political education necessary to participate on Hexbear.
the questions I answered to make an account gave me no indication that I would need to understand words like “tailism,” which I came across for the first time here a few weeks ago.
feel free to excoriate me for being ignorant and a fake leftist, I guess 🤷 if I have to have the free time and mental capacity to engage meaningfully with theory to be a real leftist, then that’s sad news for me but probably better for me (and you!) to learn sooner than later.
does it make me a bad comrade? probably 😞 genuinely, I am sorry. if it’s any consolation to you, I used to be a voracious reader but haven’t read anything for pleasure in a couple of years. I haven’t put more than a couple hours here and there into self-improvement or entertainment because my extra hours and extra spoons very rarely line up. staying alive is sometimes difficult.
He had done mas praxis that any of you mods
ok i have a chart that might help us figure all this out
grimly funniest part of all this is all the yankees showing their whole asses and betraying how feeble and vulgar their understanding of actual Marxist principles are. yeah, Luigi is just like Hamas dude.
Ban any “lionizing” of Hamas then.
And Putin for that matter. Or Assad. Or Hezbollah.
Mods this is totally fair but I must say I have already named my new Path of Exile character Mario__Mangione. Who’s gonna
me?I just wanted to use this time to remeber Brian Thomas , the CEO of United Health
A Man so Brilliant he made it the 8th most Profitable company in the World ! The World ! all whily beeing unable to expand outsite of the USA , he extraxted so much wealth! from only America , what a genius and Briliant Buisnessleader we have Lost . All because this Scum and enemy of the Workingclass, this persona that has “wrong thought” Killed him. A Father , A Husband … A Health Provider … Children! , why would you want to Associate or Celebrate such Heinous and Uncivil Acts agains the Perfect status Qou.
Dont you see that it is All Is Provided For ?
Ligie had wrongthought (“Non-violence keeps the system working at full speed ahead” for example .)
And there are Many People Like him in America ! , Heros like Brian Thomsen Protect you from them , dont you see ?
Without Legs , they can not hunt you …
Without Glasses , they can not see you
without Teeth they can not eat you …
so please , do not disrupt the natural order of things , and do not let this filth and sin of these unwashed Masses infect your pure thoughts of being “better than this”.
You dont want to end up like Luigi , do you ?
Luigi isnt happy now … do you understand ? And be became this unhappy because he had wrongthink. When you celebrate such heinous acts , you may be inspiring others to become unhappy as well…
I think this is more reasonable than nuking the dunking comms.
Obviously nothing materially changed from last week. We were praising a reactionary last week. He didn’t suddenly become reactionary when he was identified. Our awareness of it changed. That’s what we’re really reacting to here, is the change in our awareness, not who he really is. The community isn’t more unsafe than last week. However it might be more annoying and uncouth because it’s bad to praise bigots. The clear answer is to not praise him for being a bigot. Was he being a bigot when he shot a cis white CEO? Nope. So you can praise him for shooting all you want. Just don’t praise him for being a bigot. Or pretend like him being a bigot is completely unrelated to his politics or who he was/is. That’s not a big ask.
I think people are taking this as “Don’t talk about the shooting anymore and do a personal growth because you’re problematic” which isn’t it at all.
He walked the walk without talking the talk.
the cycles between mod overreach backlash keep getting shorter and shorter
Anybody on this site thinking we need to adopt this guy is just impatient. There will be plenty of time to co-opt more resentment against billionaires. That’s like… the entire ideological basis of Marxism. Relax. This dude sucks and the fact that he doesn’t maximally suck is a decent talking point for fomenting fervor in the meantime, but that’s it. Bad guy did a good thing. Highly critical support. Not very complex, it’s really just
Good post. While we are at it, we should ban lionizing Stalin for his reactionary viewpoints next.
I’m not gonna lie, this feels incredibly deft to me. Please call me out if I’m wrong but he’s not a nazi. He seems to have fairly average 20 year old white Yale graduate politics and all the baggage that comes with that. Of course he’s not a principal end communist and of course he has reactionary takes because he’s a white guy from middle America. Why shouldn’t we critically support him? These are the fucking things that they divide us over.
Given the absurdity of reaaons given for removing my comments and the style of this post, it seems like there is still a need for the mod team to do some self-crit around community management. No discussions, no explanations in light of mild criticism, just dropping the hammer from on high. Both of my comments were removed using bad faith assumptions that are inaccurate and zero people have talked to me about it.
I was already too embarrassed of this site’s trigger-happy flippant modding and mod-driven struggle sessions to recommend it to anyone else anymore. I thought even my irl trans commie friends would dislike it, and lo and behold, when they found it themselves, they did (though it was during the TC69 return). I contributed materially to the site quite a bit in the early years (not comments/posts) so I felt a bit invested.
But things are not going in the right direction and I have no confidence in the admin/mod team.
I’ll see some of you in other spaces.
As a newer user on this site, I couldn’t agree more. I mod a large-ish leftist subreddit so I do get the challenges of moderating effectively but seems like the mod team here just removes anything that vaguely hurts someone’s feelings.
There is a difference between feeling unsafe and being unsafe. There is a difference between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable. A lot of people don’t seem to understand these differences.
We should do a Book Club of “Conflict Is Not Abuse”.
I really wonder if you guys are significantly younger than me, because this style of moderation is entirely a “thing” in leftist spaces. The original ShitRedditSays was moderated this same way, and you kinda just take the good with the bad. The general posting style is entirely the same too.
At 40, I am probably considerably older than most users on this site. I’m not familiar with ShitRedditSays.
I guess the reason the paternalistic moderation practices here are surprising to me is that the person who persuaded me to join said this was a better alternative to Reddit. One of the reasons he gave was the ability to post the type of shit you can’t post on Reddit. I mod a couple leftist subreddits and I basically have to mod off anything that could be construed as condoning violence or illegal activity. If I don’t, I risk the whole subreddit being banned. I was told this was the type of place where you could post shit like “Killing CEOs is good, actually,” without it being modded off.
I did not anticipate heavy-handed moderation of viewpoints that the mods and their friends don’t like, but in retrospect that was probably naive of me.
It used to be better around here. There were always struggle sessions, but they were usually productive and helped the site figure out what it wanted to be. In the last six months or so, it just seems like the site is eating itself.
I’ve had a pretty positive experience on the site up until today.
Counterpoint hexbear was never good.
I think the evolution of social media forms like “reddit” has really lead to people putting on “airs” as to what being “part of the community” is.
You’re never going to have consistent amazing in depth theory discussions here or on the internet at large. Being part of the community on every site is the same you either are prolific at posting memes other people go haha at and give updoots to, or you’re doing jannie shit.
The idea that it’s anything more is an entirely individualistic social media marketing ideal sold to you by social media companies. The only way to get beyond the posting memes or doing jannie shit, is to have an extremely small curated site that’s only browsed by knowledgeable individuals, or by only having a site with your IRL friends on it. Hexbear is neither of those.
It’s a disappointing day for sure/:
And I was riding so high this week :(
This is why I wish he wasn’t caught. During the time he was on the run the focus was all on what a terrible person Brian Thompson is and how deeply evil the Amerikkkan “healthcare” industry is. Now all people want to do is talk about the guy who did it and not the ghoul who was killed.
