Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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huh, didn’t realize there were still so many electoralist holdouts on hexbear until the last half year or so. not making a judgment one way or another or trying to feed internet drama, just an observation. it had seemed for a while that the space had turned pretty firmly against that theory of change post-Bernie.
They rear their head every time a new AOC/Bernie comes out and then dog pile everyone else, chasing off the more radical and especially anti-imperialist members of that instance (curious). I think the refusal to have a burning zionist flag emoji did cause a lot of non-white users to leave.
I knew of a few popular users that have dipped because of the surge of radlibs. One’s gripe was specifically about users dunking on Sakai. Other than that, there is a surge of combative users too. Purpleworm is one to take a look at. I’ve never seen someone lose their fucking shit over a meme like that, lmao.
okay I know I wanted to not stoke internet drama (and this is mostly separate from electoralism stuff) but I will say: that struggle session and the big one late last year really showcased the core issues with the site IMO. culture of administration has always had an undercurrent of bogus Poster’s Vanguardism, but admins seem to have radlib politics with chauvinist tendencies (in a majority ML instance, so a user base that’s broadly more politically developed than its leadership) and the site has no real democratic input. these contradictions came to a head at various points in the last year, after a year or two of peace & relatively chill vibes.
that’s not to mention the impression many have of contempt for the userbase from site management, or the impression that you can get away with a lot of hostility (or tbh outright bullying) if management likes you enough and/or you have enough clout, but that’s a discussion for another time.
Sadly thats all too common in irl local chapters/ organized groups as well. I know too many cases where essentially a unofficial clique of friends pick out a pet-issue or cover for someone with reactionary views (or even like being a creep towards female comrades) and then push out any who make a fuss. Of course they will provide a splurge of socialist worded nonsense to justify it.
It gets on my nerves seeing it online replayed.
Pretty sure there has been an organized operation to make hexbear less revolutionary that has been gaining significant traction over the last year. By this time next year it’ll be a blahaj.zone clone with a better take on the ukraine war.
Less that, I’ve been more wary of their takes on China and recent color revolutions springing up around the world. Electoralism non-sense does feel like a warning sign all things considered, though.
do you mean by state actors? i feel like hexbear is too low impact for that personally. (letting disgruntled people who use the site in bad faith into positions of power, that i do think has happened.)
tbh i think it’s mostly underlying contradictions and negative tendencies in the site culture/administration that have always been there, but came to a head in the last year or so. admins have always seen themselves as Vanguard of Posts (rather than what they should be, which is peacekeepers of a chill, cozy community whose focus and culture should be directed by the users). my impression is that that undercurrent kind of erupted after a year or two of relative peace & chill vibes.
A year ago during the “unaccountable and inconsistent moderation” Struggle sessions I was willing to think it was just a random mistake that put the wrong people into power. But those struggles were never resolved and they just kept banning people and addressing “issues” that were not the real problem.
Now here we are where trashing China and staning for a democratic party NYC mayoral candidate are the norm.
If anything the Vanguard of Posters have been ejected from power and the “chill vibes” crypto-liberals are running the place.
I’ve also seen a massive uptick in ‘irony-posting’ (I don’t have a name for it) reminiscent to what I’ve seen on
spoiler
c/doomer [not linked]
Where so?
just a lot more DSA posting since Zohran, a few users over there are active members.
Aaaaah, I’ve seen that. I thought you were talking about main-stream electoral stuff and I was gonna get whiplash that it was starting up this early. Yeah, for as much as that is worth, that really shit the bed when Zionist Mamdani started spitting Israeli propaganda on TV.
Some were very involved in his campaign and do try to recruit on there.
Honestly, I don’t mind comrades joining the DSA just because it’s a great salt tactic. I’ve personally had a few lib-adjacents I’ve pulled away from the DSA. I just think it’s a fool’s errand to expect anything to ever come of it other than a radicalizing pool.
Funny thing is that they don’t really mind at all. The issue lies with the domination aspect of some pro-electoral people that essentially demand complete subjugation to their view and see whoever is currently the left celeb du jour as the hail mary for change.
Agreed.