I originally summarized my observations replying to Blaze in a different thread
I figured I'd include them here because in case anyone wants to correct my interpretation.
I had asked how he feels about posting in a com alongside people who are calling other users 'degenerate roaches'
He brought up that Hexbear users using the word roaches to refer to people too, my response:
From that link pretty much all of the usage is talking about the literal insect, or talking about reactionaries/fascists using it to refer to muslims, immigrants and other 'undesirables'.
Out of the handful of remaining uses, it's stuff like in the hexbear thread on this meanwhileongrad thread:
This is the most questionable usage I found, and it's referring to fash/reactionaries.
That's not the main point though, the bigger issue was getting called a 'degenerate' that's pretty much a red flag that someone's a cryptofash.
citing db0 on this one:
compare the use of the term on shit vs on hexbear:
While looking I found this one on hexbear from 5 years ago, almost 90 upvotes shitting on stalin for criminalizing homosexuality, and quoting him calling someone degenerate. I read this as extremely critical of Stalin:
All the usage on hexbear I see is either self-deprecating or discussing (negatively) about people using the term.
meanwhile on meanwhile on grad:
hmmm, calling people degenerates and complaining about commies, progressives and furries. 
Goat seems fine with replies calling people he doesn't like degenerates:
more examples:
site admin calls it out, entirely downvoted lol
Like you might think I'm being melodramatic, but I really don't see how meanwhileongrad isn't a nazi bar.
As I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, it seems indeed bad to have such comments on both sides.
I really hope you re-assess both sides, because they are not equivalent.
I understand, there's plenty of problematic posters to go around, the issue I have is that it's normalized calling an instance which is overwhelmingly trans and queer 'degenerates', that's a major red flag, and it's behavior like that which was why hexbear defederated shit in the first place.
sh.it doesn't seem to have improved in that time
As a bonus here's some fun clips from this latest two minutes hate thread:
Goat has been really worked up lately, I arrived after the defederation happened, but I read the hexbear threads related to this not long after I started lemmy and his interpretation of events is comically conspiratorial.
The chronology was that hexbear had been off doing its own thing for like 3 years, and only re-merged with lemmy due to the technical issues maintaining a separate fork. That happened to coincide with the major reddit wave, correct me if I'm wrong but nobody here is taking orders from dessalines, right?
It looks like Hexbear tried to broadly fedarate, some users were looking forward to it, but others apprehensive and preferring to keep everyone else out. Once it became more clear how toxic and unmoderated most of the fediverse was, they made the decision to defederate.
Also is there a discord? The only matrix groups I'm aware of are for mods and the trans space. People should probably be aware that there's potentially nazi trolls hanging out there.
One last one for the road, goat upvote policing and accusing db0 of being pro-uygher genocide.
so what's the official hexbear line on calling people degenerates or cockroaches?
Ahh yes the uighur genocide that has literally zero deaths and literally any uighur you actually speak to from the region will tell you is complete nonsense.
Meanwhile, this same person will tell you that Gaza is not a genocide and that it's very complicated.
This whole history post is just complete nonsense lmao. There's almost nothing to say about it, this person has made all of this post up.
These people will absolutely just knowingly lie outright, and invent a whole new reality then get other people to repeat it as fact.
The real history is more like:
That's it. It's pretty boring honestly. Just about the only thing that is true that anyone says about this instance is that we used to sort by active and because we're so much more active at posting than literally anywhere else we would look like a huge coordinated swarm. It was natural activity, just people sorting by activity and popularity on lemmy, but our posting power was so high that it looked like coordinated dogpiling. Also we were kinda always rude to people spouting libshit. That's about the only true thing they say about us. I will not condemn that behaviour though it was always extremely funny.
All of these posts are basically just:
.world defederated us before we even federated, "preemptively as a last resort."
Ahhh yes. Preemptively as a last resort for non-existent hatespeech on an instance with a hardcoded slur filter.
I really struggle to understand this mindset. I think they believe that they are "right" and therefore things likes facts are irrelevant, they can make up a narrative for the "greater good" or somesuch, but I still really struggle to comprehend why they seem so adverse to learning anything or challenging their worldview, to the point that they will coat themselves in lies in order to protect their worldview from reality. I just don't understand this sort of thing at a fundamental level.
They have just determined that we are enemies and have absolutely no morals or principles. Anything is justified in fighting the enemy.
They're the same people that think killing civilians is fine if you're fighting terrorists.
The goal is simply to make people believe Hexbear is bad. That's it. Thousands of people on other instances are convinced we are something we are not because the lies take hold and then get repeated ad nauseum by other people who took them as truths. This occurs with other things, like any topic of the soviet union, dprk, china's "genocide", etc etc. It's propaganda that's aimed at a website instead of a state.
I guess I just fundamentally don't understand that sort of mentality. I can't fathom how anyone could live with themselves if they viewed the world in that way, surely they would have doubts about it if they need to lie to others and themselves constantly. Though they do tend to be very angry people, always lashing out, so maybe that's their defence mechanism, to turn their frustration outward onto others.
Depends. Look at it from their perspective, either as sincere believers in fascist racial superiority or as members of the boug/petit-boug who are fighting to maintain the system they know they benefit from.
The fascist racial supremacist simply sees it as undermining his opposition in his pursuit of supremacy, and reigning supreme is might makes right. Might can come from anything, including lying.
The bougs on the other hand are pursuing their interests.
We shouldn't assume everyone posting online is a worker. There are millions of boug and tens of millions of petit-boug and they all engage in lies for their class' continued benefit.
These would all be quite logical and rational reasons, from their perspectives and positions.
I suppose a part of it as well is they always accuse their enemies of lying and using underhanded tactics, so they would probably be able to justify this sort of behaviour as "leveling the playing field" or similar. It's "fine" because they need to do it in order to defeat their enemies, because their enemies are using underhanded tactics already.
And that's a good point about not assuming other people are workers, and even amongst the working class, there are many who have been convinced to fight against their own interests and defend the interests of the bourgeoisie very passionately.
It took reddit to make me realise I was doing this. Specifically it was first the rise of the FIRE communities and the realisation there were a lot of millionaires on reddit, followed by the rise of the stock communities.
Over time I came to realise that the boug engaged in stocks are all naturally taught to do propaganda. Their advocacy for whatever they're currently invested in extends to lying because they're monetarily invested in the stock and seek to see its value rise. Lying about it becomes par for the course. Lying in pursuit of profit. They all learn to become absolutely shameless propagandists in this way. Then they apply that outside of stocks too.
When it comes to their investments they lie absolutely relentlessly, and many of them are bigger posters than we are. They post and post and post. Not just on reddit or forums but on blogs, media they've made, social media, etc etc. They are fulltime posters beyond our level in many cases and they sit at home doing this every single day. The entire stocks + crypto sphere of terminally online people amount to tens if not hundreds of millions of bougs and petty bougs (combined) engaged in this routine and trained in this behaviour.
The cryptobros and wallstreetbets subreddits are great examples of that, people clearly trying to manipulate others in order to maximise their own gains at the expense of everyone else, while using language that implies that they want everyone to "win" while clearly sabotaging everyone else's efforts.
Class consciousness in the digital age requires people to become conscious enough to recognise class in other people via words posted on the internet alone. Without it, they're going to fall for the words of petty boug and boug posters doing online misinformation in spaces they otherwise don't usually think they commonly occupy.
It's a bit of a read, but "False Witnesses" followed by Brainwashing followed by Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" will get you a great understanding of how this works. Essentially, people license themselves to believe things that they believe materially benefit them or otherwise makes them a good person for opposing.
I have read all three (but thanks for the recommendation anyway, I could always use a refresher on them) and it's more of a philosophical "how could someone live like this?" than a more analytical analysis of their actions. It's hard for me to understand, even when I've been around people like this my entire life (which could be why I find it hard to understand, the worst people I've known have behaved like this, so I've always wanted to avoid being like them)
Ah, gotcha! Makes sense.
to the liberal, there are no good and bad actions only good and bad teams
We all have this form of liberalism within us. We are all just at different stages of suppressing it, and always imperfectly. Socialists are a bit better at it because we have to constantly self-crit to organize effectively, but of course even that doesn't always happen or happens to different levels of success.
Sorry, comrade, I have to correct you there. You can talk to a Uyghur Guantanamo Bay interrogator funded by NED-style NGOs and will say it is all real.
Yeah there aren't any of those actually living in the region though, and it's real easy to find people that live there on XHS.
Of course! I'm just making a joke about Rushan Abbas.
All I remember about goat is they would end their post with an exclamation mark whenever they're malding behind the screen. That and them being a cryptofash.