Depends if you’re hungry.

The modlog is public. You can see exactly what comment led to the ban if you search for it.

The US state department lawyers and the British House of Lords have evidence. That’s why they’re pursuing convictions of the Chinese leaders involved. No, wait— sorry, I misremembered. They both concluded there is insufficient evidence.

That’s partly because ‘tankies’ read theory. Liberal theory, Marxist theory, all of it that they can get their hands on. According to both liberal and Marxist theory, liberalism is the main ideology of capitalism. When ‘tankies’ oppose ‘liberals’, they are talking about the ‘progressive’ left of the Anlgo-European empire and what that ‘left’ calls ‘conservatives’. So if conservatives laugh when ‘tankies’ make fun of liberals, the joke’s on them because the ‘tankie’ means them, too.

There is absolutely no defence of fascism from ‘tankies’. That term usually refers to Marxist-Leninists, who praise Stalin and Mao for their stances against fascism, colonialism, and imperialism. If nothing else (and there is a lot ‘else’), anti-fascism is a central tenet of ‘tankie’ ideology and practice. Anti-fascism is/was a core tenet of all Marxist parties. If you think that a ‘tankie’ is ‘defending fascism’, you have misunderstood what they are saying and/or have inferred something from their words that they did not intend. Horseshoe theory is an intellectually bankrupt ‘theory’.

You are right about this:

We are inherently a position of compromise[.]

As Mao said:

… liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration[.]

This and the other types of liberalism are often what ‘tankies’ are challenging when they criticise ‘liberals’—not what counts as ‘liberal’ in the extremely narrow US electoral politics sense of the term.

Marxism is dialectical and historical materialism. It is the analysis of contradictory and internally-connected relations and processes. To detach NATO from the actions of its member states is anti-dialectical.

Additionally, as you say, words have meanings. When people criticise NATO it is as a stand-in for the imperialist world order. It includes the IMF, World Bank, the WTO, the ‘international’ courts and rules, and all their elements and capitalist lackeys. You’re making a semantic argument, which misses the crucial point: that NATO and its member states are concerned only with the wealth and power of their bourgeoisie, regardless of Russia.

I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have an agenda, that we can’t have world peace until there are no more imperialists, which includes and is often, in ordinary language, represented by NATO. If you interpret that as support for Russia, there’s not much left for us to discuss.

I stand corrected. I’ve only browse a few communities so that was my impression, but what you say makes sense.

aren’t around for actual intelligent debate

You’ll find that Hexbear users are all for intelligent debate between themselves, other comrades, and even with liberals when said liberals are willing to listen. From the post on Hexbear that sparked the dotworld defederation:

Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda.

Sounds like there is a strong push for intelligent conversation but others aren’t willing to have it.

It’s not possible to be ‘left’ in any real sense of the term and not be ‘anti west’ in some form because west is structurally an ongoing regime of genocide and exploitation.

They are left-unity. That means some are communists but others are of other ideologies e.g. anarchism. So no, they are not saying ‘fuck you if you aren’t a communist’ because that would alienate half their user-base. The ‘left’ is much broader than whatever counts as the ‘left’ in the US (which mostly isn’t ‘left’ but only ‘left of… XYZ’).

Do you not think it’s a bit ironic to say that they’re unwilling to debate or reason in the context of dotworld defederating before there’s any chance of engagement? If there’s anyone unwilling to debate and reason it’s those who made and support this decision to defederate before they have to suffer the indignity of debating and reasoning with even more people with views contrary to liberalism.

You can pretend that NATO member states are separate from NATO if you like but we can’t really continue a conversation if you think the people behind NATO are not also the same people behind the wars and/or embargoes of the above states. Just because the swap the mask every now and then doesn’t mean it’s a different actor.

I fear that we have reached an impasse in this conversation already. To continue talking would risk talking past one another. All I can do is proffer this meagre offering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2451jFeZp0

That’s the kind of ableism that would get someone banned on Hexbear or any instance that cared about inclusivity and opposed bigotry.

Edit: I can see how it would create a lot of extra work for dotworld mods to have to deal with all the reports if they federated with Hexbear and had to deal with an influx of people who call out bigotry and stand for justice. (Scrolling down, I see this offending comment isn’t the only one in this thread.)

World peace would be a step close, for a start.

NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

https://www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html

It would seem that NATO itself disagrees with you.

Edit: NATO are the imperialists. By any definition. Please read any of the following authors’s works on imperialism/empire: Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin, David Harvey, John Smith, Michael Hudson, Zac Cope, Anievas and Nisancioglu, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Paul Kennedy, or Niall Ferguson.

What was NATO doing in Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq? How many Russians are there in Iran, Korea, or Syria?

What about Meta? Will they be federated with? If so, or if there is discussion before an announcement of defederation with Threads, then this argument doesn’t stand. I’m not saying you’re being inconsistent, but that it’s inconsistent with the rationale for the general decision to defederate from Hexbear.

It’s a left-unity instance not a communist one, I think.

The six million people killed in NATO’s war o[f] terror are easily forgotten about and some people don’t want pesky reminders thank you very much.

Please don’t make me think about all those people my regime reasonable war- democracy-loving government murders.

This is a gross mischaracterisation. Please read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. This is the basis of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, etc’s thought: all these figures are Marxist-Leninists, who reject the idea of utopia. Everything is contradiction. The Marxism you refer to, which is mainly Marxism-Leninism, is not teleological.

Echoing/adding to Tabitha’s point, it gets tedious very quickly to argue with liberals about China because they’re rarely well informed.

Marxism stands for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’ and the ‘concrete analysis of concrete conditions’. China does not get a free pass. But it’s not very productive to argue with someone who isn’t concerned with material reality in China because they’ve been led to believe falsehoods spread by liberals.

One of the reasons you don’t see the critical side to the ‘tankie’ analysis of China is because you might never have got to the point where you’re talking about China (as opposed to what westerners think about China).

If the ‘tankie’ has to debunk a blatant lie for the millionth time, a constructive conversation cannot follow unless the liberal is willing to move past that point. The liberal must first accept that they might be wrong and then continue the discussion beyond where it usually ends—which is usually where the liberal accuses the ‘tankie’ of arguing in bad faith for daring to investigate an issue beyond the headline.

(Again, to caveat this, by liberal, I mean pro-capitalists, not the ‘progressive’ liberals of the US.)