When I refer to communists, I mean people whose goal is to reach the stateless, classless, moneyless end-goal society known as communism, in which workers own and control the means of production and receive the full value of their labor. This includes tendencies such as classical Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, as well as some others, like Trotskyism or Posadism, which are a bit different but still definitely communist. Just about all communists today are Marxists of some form, but Marx and Engels did not invent the idea when they wrote the Manifesto, nor does the Manifesto lay out any sort of path to reach the goal of communism (it’s more a statement of purpose for a movement than a set of instructions).

Socialism is a more nebulous term, encompassing everyone from reformists who seek to use electoral means to achieve their ends (something I and most other Hexbears believe is a non-starter, though many of us fell into this category not so long ago) to revolutionaries who are simply trying to escape the “negative branding” of Communism. There are also people who claim to be Socialist but are actually capitalists who support a welfare state, generally known as Social Democrats (we at Hexbear view social democrats as liberals, and generally don’t like them very much; there is some disagreement on the use of politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC to the leftist movement, but we mostly aren’t super fond of them). To further confuse the matter, communists frequently refer to revolutionary states (e.g. the USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, and others) as “socialist,” positioning the concept as essentially the middle ground between capitalism and the end-goal of communism.

And since you asked about China: views on China vary on Hexbear, but are almost universally more positive than you’ll see in a liberal space like this. Not everyone trusts that the CPC will seek to “hit the communism button” by 2050 as they claim they will do, but basically everyone recognizes that the US state department, and the US media who walk in lockstep with it, is constantly lying and otherwise obfuscating the truth to cast the country in a negative light, as they have been doing for decades. We do not believe that China was committing a “cultural genocide” against Muslims, as those claims rely almost entire on a single, deeply anti-China source named Adrian Zenz, and we also don’t believe that China is the authoritarian hellscape the US media and state department portray (people in China do vote for their local officials, the government officials with whom they have the most contact, and over 90% of Chinese people approve of the central government’s policies and actions, per a Harvard University poll of the Chinese public).

Color me dubious that this comment was worth typing out, to be honest, but since you seem to be engaging in good faith at the moment, I have done the same.

It was conceived by Marx based on the Machiavellian quote “The ends justify the means.”

rofl tell me more about my own ideology please, this is absolute gold

(And here I thought it probably wasn’t worth engaging with you lmao)

There’s no difference between the likes of you and fascists.

Pretty sure literally every marginalized group would disagree with you on that, but ok lol

lmao you seem to have built a bizarre caricature in your head.

Just so you know, we like communists (mostly, we are communists), we’re generally OK with socialists (if they’re actually socialists and not just adherents of welfare-state capitalism, aka social democrats), we despise fascists and want to see their ideology eradicated from the world, the “far left” isn’t really a coherent concept to us (unless you mean ultraleftists, but it’s pretty clear that you don’t, and that’s a whole ball of wax), we are almost entirely opposed to nationalism, though there would likely be disagreement on its value in the context of a liberatory struggle (like what’s been going on in Africa lately), and we don’t like liberals because they support capitalism. Also we probably know better than you do what those things actually mean. And yes, we hate the US, because it’s an evil empire.

Stopping by this thread to offer a window into the Hexbear response to this statement. This thread is all serious and miserable, but we’re having a great time over there laughing about all of this and dunking on the worst of the comments.

Edit: Oh and also here and here.

PS: I am absolutely loving the downvoting, it’s hilariously cute; I legit can’t stop giggling right now

Apologies if I made unwarranted assumptions, and thank you for your efforts to keep this community free from toxicity!

a bare minimum of good behavior

See, the correct definition for this here is “no transphobia”

It’s cute that you think you can fight back against reactionary BS by arguing with it, but history does not bear this out. What you end up doing is creating another space where people can post Tucker Carlson’s latest Very Concerned mouth diarrhea, only distilled into a more toxic form that even Tucker couldn’t get away with, as long as they say it politely. Your way has led us here, to a political situation where people are actively trying to eradicate trans people in law.

I am completely appalled at this instance right now for allowing this absolutely vile comment to persist on here, but since some reactionary admin decided your disgusting falsehoods should remain up, allow me to provide an extremely easily-found data point you “couldn’t find” in your search:

New Study Confirms Extremely Low Regret Rates for Gender-Affirming Surgery

Regret rates for sex reassignment surgery are among the LOWEST for ANY type of surgery OF ANY KIND. They’re even lower than the complication rate! (Yes, really!) How’s that for hard data?

Given the fact that this was incredibly easy for me to find (a single Google search pulled it up easily), I can only conclude that you “couldn’t find” evidence that transitioning is beneficial because you weren’t actually looking for it; you were looking for evidence of exactly the opposite point.

If this comment is indicative of things you said to your relative who took their life, then you should absolutely feel partially responsible; this kind of patronizing pseudo-concern BS is exactly the kind of toxicity that makes trans people feel that they will never be accepted by the people in their lives.

You were right; whoever overrode you is being too nice to bigots. I’m honestly sickened right now.

There is only one necessary converation around trans people, in which trans people say, Let us exist without being harassed or persecuted, and everyone else says, OK. Anything else is just allowing bigots a platform.

If you’re a liberal, as most Redditors are, you probably won’t like it much, but Hexbear.net is far more active, and has plenty of news posted. (Keep in mind that “liberal” here covers all of the US political spectrum that doesn’t qualify as fascist; i.e. moderate republicans are liberals too. Hexbear is a communist instance.) It’s not mentioned on join-lemmy yet because it’s a fork, but there are efforts ongoing to merge back to upstream so federation is possible (one of the main roadblocks is the much-higher volume of activity, which is uncovering bugs that don’t show up under lighter loads).

I don’t agree that there should be strictures that enforce similarity to Reddit on instances if they want to be recommended. You’ve apparently been using Lemmy for three days now, based on your git repo history and your top-level comment in this thread. As a longtime Lemmy user, allow me to point out that Lemmy is not, and should not seek to be, exactly like Reddit. To enforce that would be to stifle potential avenues of improvement (like, as I’ve mentioned, removing downvotes).

Also, growth for growth’s sake is not something I think should be sought after; your policies seem to be entirely focused on growth with no concern for quality or community, which I don’t agree with.

I strongly disagree with #2 through #4.

2. Just because redditors expect downvotes doesn’t make them good. When Hexbear removed downvotes, the community feel improved dramatically; downvotes both promote toxic debatebro behavior (by making people upset when they catch a wave of downvotes) and allow cowards to attack people silently from the shadows, without having to actually state their shitty views and be criticized for them.

3. NSFW content tends to alienate people. Besides, there’s no way to tell via code whether an instance allows NSFW content or just allows people to mark content as NSFW (two very different things).

4. Yeah because that was such a positive aspect of Reddit, just ask violentacrez.

God forbid it becomes “centrist.” This is not your space; go make your own centrist instance if that’s what you want; you have no right to dictate the nature of this one just because you’re here. This space was set up by communists to be communist.

Can’t wait until Hexbear federates here and libs stop trying to take over.

Because that would end up making a good portion of potential users feel uncomfortable using the site. There is no lack of pornography on the Internet, go look at it elsewhere.