The hexbear instance. I have a fascination where everytime I see a post I can’t help but try to understand the thought process logically. I can only ever come up with deliberate misinformation or genuine dillusion.
I realised the rest of this comment is just me stream of consciousness trying to understand something so feel free to stop reading here.
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea. They are probably the furthest country in the world from what I’d consider socialist. Every government does bad things you don’t have to defend them because they ideologically allign with you on paper. And the same logic goes for any country that doesn’t allign with you having only bad ideas and obviously they then must be fascist/ follow nazi ideology. Like what?? Is there no nuance here. Please if there are any actual genuine humans on hexbear can you talk to me about that instance. I what’s going on over there?
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea.
There’s a couple of points I would make in response to that.
First, a problematic aspect of the internet is that your existence is defined by the last thing you posted. Which is to say, if someone says that a story about North Korea is fake, then to a reader they are a “North Korea defender,” regardless of whether they hold more critical beliefs about it that they didn’t happen to voice in that particular comment. And there have been plenty of sensationalist, fake news stories about North Korea, as well as about other countries the US doesn’t like.
Second, most Hexbears are Marxist-Leninists, and an important thing to understand about that ideology is that it isn’t about one specific set of policies that are universally applicable. When an ML defends a country, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that country should be held up as a model for other countries to emulate.
So if they’re not a model to emulate, then why defend them? First off, because the only means we in the West have of influencing their policies is through our government using military force, clandestine operations, or crippling economic sanctions. Second, because even if a socialist government is a failure, the extent to which it failed is important, because it will be held up as a criticism of socialism in general. Many Western leftists believe in simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and AES (actually existing socialist) states, and will be some of their harshest critics to that end. But others, myself included, would argue that that’s the wrong approach, because it allows false and exaggerated claims to go unchallenged, which will then still be used to criticize the left no matter how much one tries to distance themselves from it. Like, people will call Obama and Harris communists, so it doesn’t seem to matter how much distance there is.
Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is a good starting point for understanding the perspective.
The hexbear instance. I have a fascination where everytime I see a post I can’t help but try to understand the thought process logically. I can only ever come up with deliberate misinformation or genuine dillusion.
I realised the rest of this comment is just me stream of consciousness trying to understand something so feel free to stop reading here.
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea. They are probably the furthest country in the world from what I’d consider socialist. Every government does bad things you don’t have to defend them because they ideologically allign with you on paper. And the same logic goes for any country that doesn’t allign with you having only bad ideas and obviously they then must be fascist/ follow nazi ideology. Like what?? Is there no nuance here. Please if there are any actual genuine humans on hexbear can you talk to me about that instance. I what’s going on over there?
There’s a couple of points I would make in response to that.
First, a problematic aspect of the internet is that your existence is defined by the last thing you posted. Which is to say, if someone says that a story about North Korea is fake, then to a reader they are a “North Korea defender,” regardless of whether they hold more critical beliefs about it that they didn’t happen to voice in that particular comment. And there have been plenty of sensationalist, fake news stories about North Korea, as well as about other countries the US doesn’t like.
Second, most Hexbears are Marxist-Leninists, and an important thing to understand about that ideology is that it isn’t about one specific set of policies that are universally applicable. When an ML defends a country, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that country should be held up as a model for other countries to emulate.
So if they’re not a model to emulate, then why defend them? First off, because the only means we in the West have of influencing their policies is through our government using military force, clandestine operations, or crippling economic sanctions. Second, because even if a socialist government is a failure, the extent to which it failed is important, because it will be held up as a criticism of socialism in general. Many Western leftists believe in simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and AES (actually existing socialist) states, and will be some of their harshest critics to that end. But others, myself included, would argue that that’s the wrong approach, because it allows false and exaggerated claims to go unchallenged, which will then still be used to criticize the left no matter how much one tries to distance themselves from it. Like, people will call Obama and Harris communists, so it doesn’t seem to matter how much distance there is.
Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is a good starting point for understanding the perspective.