I can’t keep track of this one-dimensional political spectrum people keep using. I thought tankies, socialists, communists, and liberals were all considered left wing, but I keep hearing things about some of these groups being on the right instead.
There’s not many all-in on authoritarianism that aren’t extreme left or right economically.
The political compass is better than a one-dimensional spectrum, but it’s literally twice as complicated.
You can pretty safely plot a symmetrical U shaped line running through the political compass and find almost everybody. That’s why one-axis works well for describing the political climate of the USA, it’s mostly in the right half of the political compass sitting on this line.
So tankies are very Communist (left) and necessarily very authoritarian to achieve their goals.
They represent the other half of the political compass that Americans usually do not see. So people on here frequently get confused when exposed to tankies.
And you also have the tankies talking about the Bernie-Sanders-style/social democrats (found at the vertex of our U shape) as “right” because if you follow the U line, they would be.
in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.
That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.
in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.
I don’t think highlighting the disagreement between “leftists” and “liberals” is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me “liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted,” but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.
Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.
How does your definition differ?
Please don’t tell me it’s just “they’re not always progressive and don’t always promote welfare.” : )
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
I would be one thing to say, “I don’t understand that group”, but it’s quite remarkable to say, “I understand that group so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
Eh, only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists. All the fascists have to do is walk in and say “NATO is bad, Ukraine is bad, libs are bad, vote for Trump because he is a big lovable goofball” and the other hexbears are like aight let’s own the shitlibs.
only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them. Fascists also massacre socialists — often with American support, as in Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Ask them how they feel about this. Hexbear users do hold some complex views on topics like China and Russia, but they have reasons for this and would tell you if you asked. You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them.
Maybe I should ask Jessica Watkins, who explicitly supported fascists, and is now being misgendered and put in the wrong prison by fascists, for supporting fascists.
Trans and genderqueer people can be just as stupid as Cishet people and vote for the leapords eating faces party. It’s not like fascism actually benefits people, it’s predatory to vulnerable people.
You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice.
I have interacted quite a bit already. I got lots of animal poop pictures and a lot of people requesting that I post a picture of my genitalia.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
I’ve seen a number of comments from Hexbears supporting DJT and not a single comment expressing this.
You’re reaching for some “fascists always pretend to be joking until they’re not” thing, but the Hexbear community originally formed around a deeply irony poisoned socialist comedy podcast called Chapo Trap House, and hexbears themselves are unsurprisingly also very irony poisoned. On top of that they were an insular unfederated community for three years, with no reason to make their banter intelligible to outsiders. They have a rich set of in-jokes and an emoji list a mile long. Your exposure to them is probably one thread where you argued with them and ten threads of lemmy.world users making shit up about them in absentia.
Here, I grabbed one for you, full of sus-looking comments. Just pick one and I’ll ask the user what their sincere thoughts are. It’s a thread from three days ago about trump’s mugshot. https://hexbear.net/post/422814?scrollToComments=false
Go ask them for their opinions about Russia and China. You’ll get unanimous agreement that Putin is a homophobic capitalist reactionary and Russia is not a socialist or left-wing state. For China, you’ll get disagreements, but most of the takes will be pretty nuanced either way. Some believe Deng’s reforms were necessary to avoid economic strangulation, others are deeply suspicious of the direction China is headed.
See, this is exactly what I mean by “I understand them so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
If you tried at all, youd understand that they’re position on “modern day Russia and China” is based on the idea of critical support. They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
I.e. on the Ukraine war, their position is basically “U.S. Involvement in any war is a net-negative to worker solidarity in the country of question”. None there support Russia’s invasion, but they think Americas involvement spells the end of any socialist coalition to begin with.
But again, “I understand them so little they must be a part of the opposition”. They have a different (definitively leftist) understanding of the war than you do. Doesn’t make them right-wing.
They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
When it comes to Russia bombing their cities and raping their women and children, is that positively or negatively influencing working class solidarity?
On hexbear, geopolitics exists as whatever hexbears feel like owns the shitlibs the most at that particular moment.
Sometimes, Russia is just months away from a well planned and strategized victory, against an evil Nazi Ukraine.
Other times, everything is a mastermind NATO move that’s all benefiting NATO, and Ukraine is just the meatgrinder victim.
What feels most alt-right about hexbear isn’t any particular position, but the fact that there’s no particular position. No logical cohesiveness, no rooted in solid reality. It’s superfluid ever changing dream reality.
I think the parallel with right wing extremism is because they’re both pushed by the CCP. They use a divide and conquer approach via LLMs on social media to weaken political opponents.
Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There’s a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.
That’d make sense, but there’s a good deal of stuff typically considered left wing (like antimisinformation and gun control) that is authoritarian too. Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it’s handled fairly, of course.
The troll in me kinda wants to see how people would react if I started calling them righties for wanting to stop hate speech, but I think I know better.
“In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.”
I can’t keep track of this one-dimensional political spectrum people keep using. I thought tankies, socialists, communists, and liberals were all considered left wing, but I keep hearing things about some of these groups being on the right instead.
When can we upgrade to the political tesseract?
There’s not many all-in on authoritarianism that aren’t extreme left or right economically.
The political compass is better than a one-dimensional spectrum, but it’s literally twice as complicated.
You can pretty safely plot a symmetrical U shaped line running through the political compass and find almost everybody. That’s why one-axis works well for describing the political climate of the USA, it’s mostly in the right half of the political compass sitting on this line.
So tankies are very Communist (left) and necessarily very authoritarian to achieve their goals.
They represent the other half of the political compass that Americans usually do not see. So people on here frequently get confused when exposed to tankies.
And you also have the tankies talking about the Bernie-Sanders-style/social democrats (found at the vertex of our U shape) as “right” because if you follow the U line, they would be.
Yeah, political compass is more precise, but I like splitting social and economics too, which makes a cube. Then I said tesseract as a joke.
But “us vs them” doesn’t work as well when “them” has so much nuance.
Liberalism hasn’t been left-wing for the past 150 years at this point
Can you tell me what liberalism is, then? Because to me it’s always meant “left wing on cultural issues.”
Asking a Lemmygrad user to explain something political won’t work out well
Maybe, but you have to know the definitions they’re using to understand what they’re saying.
in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.
That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.
in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.
I don’t think highlighting the disagreement between “leftists” and “liberals” is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me “liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted,” but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.
Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.
How does your definition differ?
Please don’t tell me it’s just “they’re not always progressive and don’t always promote welfare.” : )
My definition mentioned support for capitalism.
So a liberal is someone who supports capitalism with social welfare?
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This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
I would be one thing to say, “I don’t understand that group”, but it’s quite remarkable to say, “I understand that group so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
Eh, only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists. All the fascists have to do is walk in and say “NATO is bad, Ukraine is bad, libs are bad, vote for Trump because he is a big lovable goofball” and the other hexbears are like aight let’s own the shitlibs.
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them. Fascists also massacre socialists — often with American support, as in Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Ask them how they feel about this. Hexbear users do hold some complex views on topics like China and Russia, but they have reasons for this and would tell you if you asked. You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
Maybe I should ask Jessica Watkins, who explicitly supported fascists, and is now being misgendered and put in the wrong prison by fascists, for supporting fascists.
Trans and genderqueer people can be just as stupid as Cishet people and vote for the leapords eating faces party. It’s not like fascism actually benefits people, it’s predatory to vulnerable people.
I have interacted quite a bit already. I got lots of animal poop pictures and a lot of people requesting that I post a picture of my genitalia.
I’ve seen a number of comments from Hexbears supporting DJT and not a single comment expressing this.
show me one
*make sure it’s sincere though, because I’m gonna go over there and ask the user what they think of donald trump and why
I’m trying to look up the thread. I think my instance might have defederated, I can’t find my comments.
Ick.
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weaponize-irony-to-spread-hate
Go to the actual URL, hexbear.net
You’re reaching for some “fascists always pretend to be joking until they’re not” thing, but the Hexbear community originally formed around a deeply irony poisoned socialist comedy podcast called Chapo Trap House, and hexbears themselves are unsurprisingly also very irony poisoned. On top of that they were an insular unfederated community for three years, with no reason to make their banter intelligible to outsiders. They have a rich set of in-jokes and an emoji list a mile long. Your exposure to them is probably one thread where you argued with them and ten threads of lemmy.world users making shit up about them in absentia.
Here, I grabbed one for you, full of sus-looking comments. Just pick one and I’ll ask the user what their sincere thoughts are. It’s a thread from three days ago about trump’s mugshot. https://hexbear.net/post/422814?scrollToComments=false
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is Cuba a far-right regime? They just passed the most comprehensive pro-LGBTQ legislation package on the planet.
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Go ask them for their opinions about Russia and China. You’ll get unanimous agreement that Putin is a homophobic capitalist reactionary and Russia is not a socialist or left-wing state. For China, you’ll get disagreements, but most of the takes will be pretty nuanced either way. Some believe Deng’s reforms were necessary to avoid economic strangulation, others are deeply suspicious of the direction China is headed.
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This is just not true lol
Just a point of clarification: you think the USSR was a far-right regime?
They didn’t say the USSR, they said modern day China and Russia
See, this is exactly what I mean by “I understand them so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
If you tried at all, youd understand that they’re position on “modern day Russia and China” is based on the idea of critical support. They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
I.e. on the Ukraine war, their position is basically “U.S. Involvement in any war is a net-negative to worker solidarity in the country of question”. None there support Russia’s invasion, but they think Americas involvement spells the end of any socialist coalition to begin with.
But again, “I understand them so little they must be a part of the opposition”. They have a different (definitively leftist) understanding of the war than you do. Doesn’t make them right-wing.
Stop sucking off Winnie.
Lol
When it comes to Russia bombing their cities and raping their women and children, is that positively or negatively influencing working class solidarity?
Negatively.
When it comes to supplying lethal aid to Ukraine to continue the war, though, they’d also say negatively.
For the record I don’t agree, but that is their position and I understand it.
It’s blatant though? They use right wing talking points for everything and it’s all dog whistles?
“Geopolitics exists as a binary, and on some issues they agree with the opposite binary from me”.
Worse actually, “they might agree with me on one issue but they disagree on another, so they must be pretending to agree with me to begin with”
On hexbear, geopolitics exists as whatever hexbears feel like owns the shitlibs the most at that particular moment.
Sometimes, Russia is just months away from a well planned and strategized victory, against an evil Nazi Ukraine.
Other times, everything is a mastermind NATO move that’s all benefiting NATO, and Ukraine is just the meatgrinder victim.
What feels most alt-right about hexbear isn’t any particular position, but the fact that there’s no particular position. No logical cohesiveness, no rooted in solid reality. It’s superfluid ever changing dream reality.
I think the parallel with right wing extremism is because they’re both pushed by the CCP. They use a divide and conquer approach via LLMs on social media to weaken political opponents.
Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There’s a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.
That’d make sense, but there’s a good deal of stuff typically considered left wing (like antimisinformation and gun control) that is authoritarian too. Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it’s handled fairly, of course.
The troll in me kinda wants to see how people would react if I started calling them righties for wanting to stop hate speech, but I think I know better.
From Wikipedia
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