I’m sorry if this breaks a rule for this sub or isn’t in the right place.
I really don’t know, most of the time I just lurk. I had an alt on Hexbear because they get defederated all the time, and I really enjoy their content, but it got banned because I called out Nazi propaganda about Ukraine(It’s why I was banned. I’m not trying to talk politics I would like to focus on Lemmy), and I’m just very confused. The rules they referenced for the ban seem to barely apply to what I said, and in general, the server seemed like a cool place to be. I definitely felt like I was in a community where I belonged.
I’m just boggled and could really use some hand-holding on this one. In general, the rules of the Lemmyverse confuse me. I want to see everything, but the places I like most are usually defederated from the larger communities.
If this isn’t right please please, just point me to where I can ask.
Thanks!
It is one of the three major Tankie federations. Lemmygrad, Hexbear, and .ml. For starters, Tankie is a term originated as a pejorative on those that advocated for the Warsaw Pact invasion into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nowadays, Tankies happen to be uncritical towards places like China and North Korea, viewing them as good places that the CIA lies about to make socialism look bad (let’s not mention that China is more corporatist, even in Tankie responses when you point out that billionaires in China are a thing), and lots of them also happen to be campists, aka people that support a country as long as it claims to be anti-US. Don’t get me wrong, the US did a lot of shit that is not talked about, but when you claim to be a Marxist-Leninist and support the theocratic Iran over the Iranian MLs…
And also, they love banning people they disagree with. Probably the most coherent thing about their ideology, given their authoritarianism.
A few notes:
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“Tankie” originated from a split in the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1956, not 1968, regarding the Red Army answering the request of the Hungarian government to assist with putting down fascist pograms and lynchings of Jewish people and communists. Fascist elements had let out Nazis from prison, and were slaughtering communists and Jewish people.
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Communists are plenty critical of the PRC and DPRK, but their critique comes from a sympathetic position and not the standard western position. This is what appears to be “uncritical,” but you won’t find people even among communists saying either country is perfect.
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The PRC is a socialist market economy, not “corporatist.” The economy is driven primarily by public ownership in massive State Owned Enterprises, and the state is run by the working classes. Private ownership is meant for less-developed, non-essential industries, and highly competitive ones, which allows the social surplus to be directed primarily towards infrastructure and long-term development, rather than profits for the few.
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Nobody supports a government based on claims of opposing the US Empire, but based on actual movements undermining western imperial hegemony. For example, Iranian MLs are in a difficult position, needing to contest both the Iranian state while preventing the CIA and Mossad from taking advantage of instability to restore the monarchy and create a western vassal state. Building worker power to the point that it becomes dominant is what allows revolution to potentially succeed, rather than backfire.
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Regarding “authoritarianism,” all this really means is that Marxists support workers having state power. Capitalists support capitalists having state power. Authority is related to its class character, not something nebulous.
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I don’t know about that, but given your name, I would need a neutral source. I know, I know, neutral is capitalist propaganda to you.
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I know MLs that are critical towards the PRC and DPKRK. I am not equating Tankies with all MLs, because those two are different terms. “Their critique comes from a sympathetic position” implies there is critique of those, which I haven’t seen amongst those that like the PRC. Any time you criticize China, they roll out in defense, so it’s hard to see the criticism of it. See next.
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Why do Tankies tell me that the reason China has so many billionaires is because they’re controlled by the party? Isn’t that fascist mode of production? Also, having lots of public ownership while permitting private ownership is just social democracy, and no one of us claims Norway is any way socialist because of that. In fact, the Tianmen Square incident, that for a lot of you is fake news, was driven by Maoists who were protesting the turn from Maoism to a market economy.
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Hard to argue that when the term “color revolution” is used on any act against the non-Western powers that be. It’s funny you claim that the Iranian MLs need to resist attempts at monarchy, when they condemned the Ayatollah’s actions Tankies claimed they were CIA pawns suddenly. There is nothing about Khomeini that is “building worker power”.
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Workers having state power is not enough, just like workers becoming owners doesn’t bring on communism, a worker turned politician will also act more like a politician than a worker, and by such act centralizing the power. This is what essentially happened in all ML and derivate states, no matter if ML, Maoist or any other such ideology. The solution is to create a true dictatorship of the proletariat, in building a socialist society that the people will be willing themselves to defend. That means liberation, and not oppressing.
And don’t claim MLs and derived are the only Marxists. There are non-authoritarian forms of Marxism, like Luxemburgism, Autonomism and Dutch Left-Communism/Council Communism. The ML-derivate dominion on Marxism has hurt Marxism more than it helped it.
#1 is correct. The entomology of Tankie is that communists were supporting the Soviet Union in crushing a local revolution that didn’t follow Soviet imperial policy.
The criticism behind Tankie isn’t that someone is a communist, but that they are a hypocrite who supports their side in all actions over the base politics they support. After all, how can you say you support anti-imperialism when you support a stronger nation using force to prevent a grass root revolution in order to maintain their sphere of influence?
- Nothing is “neutral,” reporting facts still lends evidence to some narratives over others, and the manner in which facts are presented still has immense impact on how they are recieved. Either way:
In-depth answer
It’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
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“Tankie” is a pejorative for communists, not an ideology. Critique is not valid by its mere existence, it must be factually based. If I say China is bad because they employ widespread child slavery, this isn’t critique based on fact, but based on fiction. If I say gay rights in China, though gradually improving, still have a very long way to go, this is based on fact.
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There’s a lot to break down, here, so I’ll go line by line.
Why do Tankies tell me that the reason China has so many billionaires is because they’re controlled by the party?
If anyone told you that the reason the PRC has billionaires is because they are controlled by the party, they are confusing things. The PRC has billionaires because secondary industries, and highly competitive non-essential industries (like tech) are generally privatized. The reasoning for this is because the CPC made a decision to allow in foreign capital in special economic zones to boost development and help catch up to developed capitalist countries, as this is how they can best integrate with the global economy and protect themselves.
Billionaires are prevented from having political power through the already established worker-state, and by holding the commanding heights of industry, the principal aspects of the economy as public. The rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory. As markets do their thing and centralize, this makes these industries easier to fold into the public sector, and this is how the PRC advances to higher levels of socialism.
Isn’t that fascist mode of production?
Nope, fascism is when the capitalist state intervenes to prevent the working classes from siezing control of the economy, usually in crisis.
Also, having lots of public ownership while permitting private ownership is just social democracy, and no one of us claims Norway is any way socialist because of that.
Not quite. It isn’t about raw amounts, it’s about which aspect is principal, ie rising and dominant, public or private, and which class controls the state. Norway has private ownership as principal and a bourgeois state, and is reliant on the western imperialist system.
In fact, the Tianmen Square incident, that for a lot of you is fake news, was driven by Maoists who were protesting the turn from Maoism to a market economy.
Partially true. The part that is “fake news” is the idea that the PLA committed a massacre on Tian’anmen Square itself, what’s true is that conflict between the PLA and rioters across Beijing resulted in hundreds of deaths (the CPC reports 240+ on June 4th, 1989). Further, by the time of June 4th, the Gang of Four supporters that protested Reform and Opening Up were largely gone, leaving the western-backed student movement that wanted to liberalize the economy. The Gang of Four supporters and the students actually disagreed with each other.
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Iran is not a working class state. At the same time, it is a sovereign state. MLs in Iran need to overthrow it while building up mass, popular support, as a coup would collapse into western supported monarchy.
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Administrators are not their own class, but a subset of a broader class. Marxism-Leninism has established socialism successfully.
And don’t claim MLs and derived are the only Marxists. There are non-authoritarian forms of Marxism, like Luxemburgism, Autonomism and Dutch Left-Communism/Council Communism. The ML-derivate dominion on Marxism has hurt Marxism more than it helped it.
MLs aren’t the only Marxists, just the vast majority. The idea that MLism has hurt Marxism more than helped it is nonsense, western-chauvanism. No non-ML ideology has ever successfully established socialism, only Marxism-Leninism has. None of the ideologies you listed has made any real impact, and mostly serves as a way for westerners to finger-wag global south communists for not “doing it the right way” (nevermind that this “right way” is both non-existant and not necessarily better than existing socialism even if these western Marxist ideologiws were to establish socialism).
You have an entirely unearned smug attitude throughout this comment, it’s really nonsense.
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I’m probably going to regret this question, but why do they need THREE instances
Lemmy.ml is the dev instance and is the most default of the three. While it hosts a lot of “default” communities, the devs/admins have encouraged creating more instances over one default instance.
Hexbear.ml comes from the former subreddit r/chapotraphouse and was created as a new place when the old sub got banned. They shitpost the most loudly out of the three.
Lemmygrad.ml is the most “academic” of the three. If you hear anyone say to “read theory”, the discussion about it will likely happen there. It attempts to be the most serious of the three instances and actually tries to analyze some modern communist writings.
All three are banned in China, but lemmy.world can be read in China.
They’re communists and anarchists, you were banned for defending an open fascist just because they fight for Ukraine:
No one on .world knows anything about Hexbear. They’ve never been federated with it and they love to pass around campfire stories where the bear gets taller with each telling.
Hexbear spent several years as its own community after r/chapotraphouse was banned. It developed technically in its own direction before being integrated with the fediverse. This also produced a distinct, insular site culture, where many topics have been discussed to the point that userbase ends up arriving at a consensus.
Politically, the instance opposes the US, critically supports China and other “AES” (actually existing socialist) states such as Cuba and Vietnam, and generally views Russia as an “enemy of an enemy,” useful for breaking Western hegemony and moving toward a multipolar order, but not any sort of model to emulate.
They tend to not like it when people come in and assert their opinions without first hearing the community’s perspective. And as I said, the culture is pretty insular with some people not liking the idea of federation at all. If you’re strongly supportive of Ukraine, you’re unlikely to fit in there. If you still want to see the memes and stuff, then I’d suggest dbzer0.
You know that fifteen year old mindset when you just begin to grasp the idea of and your role in social responsibility but you’re still fifteen so you’re an absolutely obnoxious shit about it? Like “omg babies all abortion is bad”. “Only white people can be racists” “shearing kills sheep!!!” level shit.
And you know how some people never get out of that because they like the taste of what they think is moral righteousness but is actually just huffing your own biased farts while defining random “acceptable” targets to abuse?
…yeahhhhhh.
Purity politics can eat my shit.
Oh lordy, yes to this!
Unfortunately, it’s what has become of the internet. If you’re not correct enough, then you are now “other.” I wish more people could see what the tribalism is doing. I miss the old internet every day. For a small window of time, we were all made closer by being able to talk to each other. Ignorance was forgiven if it was acknowledged, if you showed growth. Then assholes with money and an agenda started controlling the conversation. I’m sure there are true believers out there who stifle and snub anyone who isn’t 100% on board with their ideology, but for a time we were building coalitions to change the world.
Nah, you’ve seen the shoreline and assumed that’s all there is, there’s a whole vast ocean out there
Nah, there’s plenty of internet outside that. Those behavioural groups clump together
Spot on.
Hexbear and ml are notorious for this type of behavior. I wouldn’t take it personally. They just act like authoritarian leftwing views are the only valid viewpoint and are incredibly thin skinned, especially when it comes to China and Russia. Consider your ban an informal initiation to lemmy. I got banned from one of their communities the other day because of something I said about Kamala Harris that they disagreed with. I also got banned from a different instance because I wasn’t nice when someone picked a fight.
Being confused about the rules for all of the different instances is normal. Just do what you’re going to do and don’t sweat it too much.
banned from .ml for criticizing Stalin ⛓️💥🕊️🕊️
Achievement unlocked
Can’t say I’ve ever spent any time inside the hexbear community, but all the external examples I’ve seen from them, not once have I ever seen anything remotely left wing. What they spout is pro-Chinese government, pro-Russian government talking points, and 0-100 death threats.
Authoritarian left, not libertarian left. Very into iron fisted centralized government.
There’s nothing left about Russia as it is today. Fully capitalist shithole.
China’s weird, it’s more like an auth center government IMO. Very much still promotes capitalism and mints tons of new billionaires every year, but also has some sensible social policies and superb public infrastructure. Means of production are still mostly privately owned, but land is government owned so billionaires are free to billionaire, but you can’t pass your home down your family forever without paying for it again since the land it sits on is on a 70 year lease which you may or may not get to renew.
IMO for the .ml and hexbear types, it doesn’t really seem to be about auth left, it just has to be auth and anti-western. Even auth right is fine as long as it’s not a western country.
I’ve been here for like a year but it does feel like being in highschool sometimes lol. I gotta work on regulating my emotions better.
Personal growth is always good, but don’t blame yourself for getting pissed at a tankie.
lol. No skin off my back. I just have friends in the area so I took the particular post a little personally.
Yeah, you just kinda have to not take lemmy that seriously. There may not be a bunch of crazy right wingers on here, but there are plenty of unhinged people still lol. Poke fun while it’s fun, and if a conversation/argument stops being fun, just block and move on. No one’s opinion really matters on here anyway.
My experience once was the first time I blocked a community.
Not for being called out on their pillory (did google get that translation right? The medieval thing you get thrown tomatoes at) but for for butthurt they became for saying China has as many corpses in the basement as the US and essentially being contra to their world views.
Instance gossip always reminds me of Mean Girls
You should not have to censor of moderate thoughts.
Huh. Interesting.
So the reveived reactions I gatheree werent even that exclusive.
In retrospect I did say some (excuse my lack for better words) words with a narrow world view lense, but the responses were anything but constructive.
This was very informative. I was slightly sheltered from the nature of the server because I didn’t log into my hexbear often and generally I just broswed the most popular posts. Thanks for the share.
This was very informative.
might want to consider that this information is coming from a place where people regularly rant about wanting to be free from ‘degenerate roaches’
but who knows maybe other things are a higher priority
Hexbear is where the r/chapotraphouse people went after they were banned from Reddit.
See also:
https://lemmy.world/post/1084297
So their vulgarity isn’t just them incubating in an echo chamber for 4 years, it’s a part of their ideology. That explains a lot.
Edit: Although, it is peculiar how ‘accepting vulgarity as a valid medium of communication’ manifests as ‘being toxic to the out-group’
Thank you, I had found the Lemmy post, but it was three years old. That’s an eternity in online forum time. The other links still make it seem like a cool place with cool people.
In dbzer0 defederations are rare, we had a community vote months ago to deferate from hexbear because of their bad moderation and the result was not doing it, the philosophy here usually is that if you don’t like some content or community, just block them.
Though, dbzer0 has been overtaken by Tankies as well. That may be part of the issue.
I mean… I’ve seen more people saying that phrase, than tankies in my local feed, and I’ve seen some memes that looked like imperialist propaganda on the Lefty memes community being downvoted to hell, there are some tankies, but I still consider this instance an Anarchists one rather than one overtaken by Tankies.
The only event of that sort I remember was feddit.org
But they defederated from us, right?The vote was to defederate from some communities, not the entire instance, but I don’t know what happened then.
A classical approach. That’s so refreshing.
I’m 100% certain they are Russian psyop campaigns.
In general, the rules of the Lemmyverse confuse me.
We’re a loose confederation of servers, so there’s not going to be any overseeing group keeping everyone accountable to a general set of rules. If that is a bug or a feature to you is going to impact your enjoyment, unless you continue to have multiple accounts.
I only really have some others for when there are server issues or the handful of times I feel like checking in on something defeated from World, so it doesn’t bother me often.
Can’t you just make another user profile on Hexbear?
oh yeah, sure. I likely will. I can’t say when, but before making a new account I’d like to understand the right way to act. Besides, I took a look at their application questions and I’m really not sure how my answers would land when their trying to keep that community purity someone else mentioned. Everyone deserves a space. I just have friends in Ukraine so I took that particular post personally.
I keep multiple accounts on various servers because I think it’s better to be able to read all the points of view. I like Hexbear and .ml but they do get pretty wild sometimes.
I can’t give you much advice since it looks like you’ve deleted your controversial posts on this account. What is there doesn’t seem any worse than half the people I see posting daily here.
Edit: plus do you want to mask yourself to fit in, or is it better to be yourself and find a place you fit in naturally?
Yeah true. I don’t post much but in the modern age when you say something in one community it will often get you banned somewhere else. The fact that I said I enjoy hexbear should key you in on what some of those posts were, but I tend to keep a neutral profile in neutral spaces. This profile wasn’t banned from hexbear, but I wouldn’t be suprised it it got banned now. It’s the current order of things.
It’s less about fitting in and more about keeping this profile more politically correct. Even if it fits in with the current modderation standards. I believe that in the age of AI anything said online is a data point.
I’m honestly not very familiar with Hexbear as it got defederated from here pretty early on in my time here I believe. I’ve browsed it once or twice to see what the fuss is about, but I can’t even recall what was different about it. I’m a very low drama person, and am mainly here to teach people about owls.
I’m general, just trying to consider how your reply will be met by others before posting can go a long way or considering if you’d say what you’re going to post to someone standing in front of you. I sometimes get a reply written for something, and even though I feel I may not be saying anything provoking, that it will just bring in other people that will want to make something confrontational out of it, and then I just scrap it. Not worth the annoyance.
They are communists, in League with the remnants of such, Russia and China even though they are both now the worst capitalist hellscapes.
They are a sort of top-down organization, they have enforcers and they will troll you, they will troll you from other instances, they’re rather known for it.
The people in charge are pieces of fucking shit, although they have a lot of users that are pretty cool, same as .ml it’s the same people. Leadership, pieces of fucking shit, users, mostly cool.
How tf do y’all keep such close tabs on who the people are in charge of instances and the fact that they use alts from other instances to troll people and all this other petty gossip bullshit? How do you seriously keep up to speed with that nonsense?
I just scroll and comment, bro. 🤷♂️
They don’t, they just like telling each other campfire stories about their favorite boogeyman.
Because some of us have run a foul of their Doctrine not knowing whom they were, and been exposed to an avalanche of trolling, and trolling from other subs or instances I guess.
What communities are these? Sounds like these are some toxic and/political communities. I try to stay away from political discourse online.
(Btw, that’s not how you use “whom” 🫣❤️, sorry for pointing it out)
Hexbear and ml, hexbear is by far the worst. New people come on and wander onto these communities and say something that upsets them and get trolled to the point where they quit let me altogether it’s actually a big problem.
I’m against censorship but many of these instances are not entirely wrong to De Federate from them, you have no idea how bad they are in this regard they are super aggressive. And their reach extends beyond those instances. If you piss them off there, they will get you banned here and there and elsewhere, and troll you.
To their credit, they were some of the original Developers as they were the first to be purged from reddit, and this is basically a Reddit refugee site.
Hexbear and ml
Those sound like instances, not communities. I’m assuming you meet all these toxic people in political communities?
ml was actually my first server on the mobile app. I had no idea it was a black sheep until other communities on other servers stopped giving me access. I can’t even remember now. I’ve been on world and just viewing offline for a while now.
get trolled to the point where they quit let me altogether it’s
This is why its a good idea for the bigger instances to defederate from hexbar
Yeah, but I find it important to know what the extremes are saying. It’s hard to know where you are sometimes and what can and can’t be said.
When I was on Reddit, I tried to stay in both of the extreme camps just so I could know how scared to be in my current home country. I haven’t seen any extremist stuff on Lemmy.world so it’s my main server.
No sweat on the correction. I’ll leave it so people can follow.
No sweat on the correction. I’ll leave it so people can follow.
Oh, no, that wasn’t directed at you. I didn’t see you say “whom” anywhere. I don’t think I replied to you. 🤔
I think lemmy.zip tries not to defederate from anything except pedo instances, but that could be wrong.
Where is lemmy.zip hosted?
Yeah, this. Lemmy in general is a smaller community, and it’s very charged. It’s easier to piss someone off, and it’s more likely that the person you piss off is going to have the power to ban you.
if I’d describe hexbear with 1 word, I’d choose “tankie”.
if I’d describe hexbear with 1 word, I’d choose “tankie”
I definitely felt like I was in a community where I belonged.
the places I like most are usually defederated from the larger communities.
I dunno bout y’all but 🚩
I’m not a tankie, but I do enjoy their memes. They don’t play well with others and they get defederated. But I promise, I’m not a tankie
I’ll be honest, I only barely understand what a tankie is in modern terms. But from what I gather, I don’t think most people are actually tankies. I believe you.
It’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
Thanks so much for that very detailed wall of text, but you lost me at Marxist. I’m sorry, I’m really not read up on political history and ideology and at this point in life I have so much other shit to think about than educating myself around those things.
But I thank you for the effort you put into that response. ❤️ I appreciate you.
Hexbear is a communist instance, the tankies get a little weird sometimes.
the places like most are usually defederated from the larger communities
This is a drawback to federation. I’m on my third instance because of stuff like this. I generally like lemmy but this is a reason it won’t ever become mainstream, be that for better or for worse.
It’s really hard to find history and lore about the various communities beyond “these ones are communist and these ones aren’t.” I tend to keep quiet most of the time for that reason. It’s not always what you say, but how you say it, and many people are operating from completely different historical touchstones. Like I said, I tend to keep alts so I can see all sides, but the world is so ban-happy these days, idk. I was pretty heated in the moment on those posts, but what can you do? shrug At least I’m getting the news and discussion I want.
Unfortunately I think being ban-happy is also a drawback of federation since some instances want to keep themselves “pure” to their identity
Yeah, but understanding a community makes it a little easier to interact with and contribute to. I don’t take it personally. I just wanted to understand it better. It’s a different online culture. same as any culture really. respect it while you’re there. I just didn’t know the unspoken norms.
You’d be better off in anarchist spaces if you want similar content without the support for invaders.
Are you allowed to make suggestions or is that against the rules? earnest question. There are tons of servers out there. I imagine Anarchist ones are also blacklisted in a lot of places.
Do you mean suggestions of anarchist instances?
There’s my instance (quokk.au), anarchist.nexus, Lemmy.dbzer0.com, and slrpnk.net as far as I’m aware.
And no blacklisting, we make up a sizeable portion of users due to the nature of the Fediverse being open.
Anarchist ones are also blacklisted in a lot of places.
Nope, they’re actually some of the larger servers (which is still pretty small all things considered, lol).
For lemmy, there’s the instance/server I’m commenting from: lemmy.dbzer0.com
It was built by the former head mod db0 of reddit’s /r/piracy, so piracy discussion is cool here too. They’ve also made a decent bunch of software for lemmy servers, like a database/review system for lemmy instances, and a CSAM detection tool.
The instance also tries to handle as many big instance/server decisions as they can democratically (donators/supporters and community members vouched for get to vote, and the rest of the server’s users act as tie-breaker).
I love the Piracy Wiki! I’m never sure if I fit in some places when applying. I might have a dbzer0 account, but I can’t remember if I got intimidated by their sign-up process or not. I’m not super tech-literate, just enough to be dangerous and think I can build a home server.
Our application process just asks one to name their favorite person or tool. Honestly people really panic about this and think it’s like a super-serious cred judgement :D We just use it to assign you a cool little flair icon.
They should check out lemmygrad’s application process.
