My first months on Lemmy were spent on Lemmy.world, which was the biggest instance at the time. I had no experience with Hexbear because .world had defederated that instance. I sometimes saw it being described as a "tankie" instance, but it was nothing specific.

After I moved to .zip, I came across [email protected], which seemed to be free from anything overtly political and reminded me of r/Gamingcirclejerk, so I subscribed to it and occasionally made comments related to gaming.

Today I made multiple comments to a post about an article on the STALKER game developers having removed the Soviet symbols and the Russian audio in the remastered edition of the game. I would argue that in the thread, there were no comments from me that could be construed by a reasonable person as defensive of Nazism, fascism, or even hinting at it. For example, in one of the comments, I linked a Ukrainian law that prohibits the use of Nazi symbols, though I highly advise looking through all my ten comments as to avoid any misunderstanding or false impressions.

Conversely, one comment posted by another user dismissed Holodomor as Nazi propaganda, which I reported, but a moderator of that community just ended up calling me out for that and taking no action, followed by them banning me.

The thread containing all of my untouched posts is still available via lemmy.zip. My comments are also available for viewing via my user page. They are not available on hexbear due to the ban.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Musk can't be a nazi, he is white, loves trump, hates minorities, wants white power, supports putin and comes from a family with strong beliefs. There is no way mr putin would befriend nazis, as he is waging a war against invasion of nazis right this moment.

I think thats what they think.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

*comrade putin

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That's the funniest thing. Like, if you were an original Hungary-era tankie, at least you could say "the Soviet Union is the leader of the worldwide Communist movement, I believe what the SU says about itself." But Putin's Russia is explicitly not Communist or Socialist in any way. Putin's ideology is inconsistent but his public statements are all basically imperial or "blood and soil" nationalism. How do they twist this guy into being a "comrade?"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 51 minutes ago* (last edited 48 minutes ago)

Watching .world libs talk about Hexbear is always entertaining because it's like a bunch of kids sitting around a campfire swapping stories, with the bear growing 5 ft taller with each retelling.

You want to know why they think Putin's a communist? You know you can just go there and ask them. They'll tell you 1) they don't, 2) what they do think about Putin, and 3) why they think what they do. It's not hard, it's not like it's some big secret.

But I want you to bear with me and embark on a little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that you're a full on MAGA chud, like, you believe George Soros is the communist CEO of Antifa aiming to kill all white people. But then you're like, "Maybe I should try talking to these people so I can understand why it is that they want to kill all white people," and you leave your bubble and seek out communists and antifascists all over the place and make a genuine attempt to understand their perspectives (regardless of what you think of it), and then you come back to Truth Social or whatever and try to share what you learned. How do you think that'll be received? It'll be received very poorly. They'll say you're a communist trying to spread lies or that you were duped by them and what they actually believe is what they're said to believe, in the MAGA lore. If, on the other hand, you just repeat what everyone else in the community is saying about Antifa, putting no effort into understanding the actual beliefs of the people you're talking about, you'll receive praise and agreement, and those oh so precious upvotes. This is how their collective fiction is maintained, growing ever more divorced from reality.

Now, if you step away from lemmy.world and go to hexbear.net and make a genuine attempt to understand their perspective, and then come back to your community and try to share what you learned, how do you think that will be received? As opposed to just repeating what everyone in your community says? It's the same shit, it's the exact same social dynamic at play. If you want upvotes on .world/truth social, you have to accept the collective fiction about hexbear/Antifa and then develop and expand upon that fiction. Saying the truth will only earn you scorn, exclusion, and downvotes (see: this comment's ratio, soon).

But like, at least internally, you should have the self-awareness to realize that obviously there isn't any logical rationale for why someone would think Putin is a communist, in the same way that there is no logical rationale for why Antifa would want to kill all white people. Because it's not based on any real thing that people believe, it's a strawman created as part of a collective fiction that you're not allowed to challenge if you want to be a part of a particular in-group.