It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to [email protected]
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs.
I created that meme in 2019. 
and it's still a fantastic meme 5 years later
We are truly posting amongst legends
They are reposting amongst feds
Hello passing BLAHAJ user. If any of you happen to be passing by you should also know that the death rate for the gulags over 70 years ago was also better than the current death rate in modern US prisons and this can be proven quite easily.
When ignoring the period of 1941-1944 (nazi occupation of the soviet union and ww2) where 70% of all deaths in gulags occurred, the program actually had an incredibly low death rate for its time. In fact, by 1953 the gulag system had a LOWER death rate than current modern day US prisons have. Fact.
According to this study the gulag deaths were approximately 830,000 from 1934 to 1953. As I said above however, it is important to know that 70% of all these deaths occurred between 1941 and 1944 (included) so they can be attributed to difficulties from the War Period and nazi occupation. Also, it's important to note that antibiotics didn't become available until after WW2, this contributes significantly to earlier higher death figures.
To put things into perspective. Using the same source as above for the USSR, and this report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics we can say that Mortality in the gulag in 1953 (236 deaths per 100,000 prisoners) was lower than mortality in US prisons today, both in state prisons (303 deaths per 100,000 prisoners) and federal prisons (252 deaths per 100,000 prisoners).
Feel free to double check these numbers(you should check anyone's numbers always). I know it's surprising to hear that as far back as 1953 they were better, but it is absolutely 100% correct.
This data also doesn't include the covid years, which would make this data considerably worse for the US.
The visceral emotional reaction you have to "tankies" is a product of propaganda, you should be having a far greater emotional reaction to anything to do with the US, particularly because it actually exists whereas the USSR does not.
Remember, you are not immune to propaganda.
I kicked all the leftists out of my community and now I can't understand why it's full of reactionaries! Oh well let's try kicking even more leftists out surely this time it will work
Should we try kicking the reactionaries out instead?
No, that sounds like something the evil Stalin would do!
It's authoritarian when you kick out reactionaries but it's democracy when you kick out leftists 
nothing is funnier to me than a liberal who's gotten ahold of the word "Reactionary" and thinks it means "in reaction to a thing"
"Don’t get me wrong, despite being libertarian Marxist. I’m wildly against Lenin, Stalin, Mao, hell Engles for that matter etc."
The duality of man
"I'm a socialist but I oppose all the famous socialist leaders and theorists"
"Hey guys, I'm heading out to the ideology shop to grab a couple of things.
Do you want me to get anything for you while I'm there?"
Uhhh yeah id like some materialism with a side of dialectics. But no Marx! If its Marx or his dialectical materialism, i send it back!
Me when I’m talking about Stalin on hexbear: “Stalin did a lot of good but I really think it’s important to balance that against the cadres like Bukharin who were unjustly killed in the purges or how industrialization could have been achieved in less brutal ways. And don’t get me started on how some of the economic decision making under Stalin lead to a lot of problems with economic planning later on down the line!”
Me when literally anyone else tries to shit on Stalin: 
Edit: in that thread I noticed how those libs just use “Stalin” and “USSR” interchangeably. The propaganda works so damn well. The US was able to convince people that the extraordinary circumstances the USSR faced under Stalin and during and immediately after WW2 (when conditions in the gulags were admittedly horrific but so were the conditions for most Soviet citizens during the war, especially for the 20-25% of the population that lost their lives thanks to the fucking Nazis) was the norm from 1917 to 1991. Even the most ardently anti-Stalinist bourgeois historian would acknowledge Corn Man ended the gulag system and for decades the prison system was basically fine and certainly better than what we have in the US today. But most libs think the worst aspects of Stalinism remained all the way through Gorby, because they have brains as smooth as silk and no lib actually bothers to study history.
“Stalin did a lot of good but I really think it’s important to balance that against the cadres like Bukharin who were unjustly killed in the purges or how industrialization could have been achieved in less brutal ways. And don’t get me started on how some of the economic decision making under Stalin lead to a lot of problems with economic planning later on down the line!”
If you're bored, I'd like to hear more about this. I don't know much about specific USSR history and development outside of the usual talking points
At some point I’ll make an effort post about it, although I think instead of listing my criticisms I may just focus on the one that I think did the most long term damage to the project of socialism in the USSR (the purges).
In brief, while I could get into the morality of purging cadres - whether we’re talking expulsion from the party or all the way up to getting killed - who didn’t actually do anything to deserve it, in the end I’m not really interested in passing any sort of moral judgement of Stalin. I’m only concerned about how that affected how that affected the Soviet project.
And IMO, it was damaging long-term. The party lost so much leadership, power, and influence by losing so many members. That loss created a vacuum that was filled by the bureaucracy. And those bureaucrats (particularly bureaucrats involved in the economy and production) led using the tools they had at their disposal, which was (to greatly oversimplify) to just do whatever you had to do to hit a production target. Source your production inputs however you can, just make it work. And that actually works great for the crash industrialization that helped the Soviets win the war!
But the problem is, you can’t run the economy that way forever. Eventually, in a socialist economy, you need more rational planning. But the bureaucracy under Stalin was actually hostile to things like cybernetics. Khrushchev tried to get around the problems this was creating (bad ideas but he was trying and was limited by the fact he was in charge in a time just before computers and linear programming and stuff like that entered the scene) but by that point bureaucracy was actually stronger than the party. The bureaucracy that cut its teeth under Stalin and was empowered by him knew one way to do things, and they weren’t going to listen to what the party thought needed to be done. In a way the ascension of Brezhnev was the bureaucracy reasserting itself over any further reforms. Things weren’t going to change and it’s no surprise that when you hear about the Soviet economy in the 80s, there’s all sorts of industrial shortages and inefficiencies, and I think you can draw a line back to Stalin for a that.
In an alternate reality where the purges are much smaller, you could have a stronger party with more diverse and better ideas leading the charge. I imagine a not dead Bukharin would have successfully pushed for adoption of cybernetics early in the game to manage the economy, and the USSR would be around today.
I wanted to caveat all this with: this is all my opinion. I am still learning and am open to challenges on any of this.
I hate the US as much as the next person but the meme itself is basically whataboutism.
How the fuck is this whataboutism?
The whataboutism is 75% of the thread going out to defend the US prison system by saying that a wartime prison before the age of antibiotics was slightly worse than current US prisons. So little discussion of the topic at hand.
Edit: oh fuck, found the millions of prisoners in Xinjang part of the thread.
I'll never understand people like this
"We left reddit because it isn't leftwing enough"
"Oh cool, so you're leftcom/communist/anarchist/etc?"
"What no, we're leftists, not you fuckin tankies"
"Um...so you denounce the imperialist hegemony imposed by the US and their allies?"
"I SAID I'M NOT A TANKIE YOU removed by mod STALIN KILLED 82 GORILLION AND USA BETTER THAN COMMIE SHITHOLES IN EVERY WAY"
Why not just stay on 
? Would you not have felt special enough otherwise?
It makes a lot more sense when you just replace "whataboutism" with "pointing out my hypocrisy"
ive yet to see anything other than reactionary posting from hb
It's over folks, they got us.
who looked at cromalin and thought "ah yes a reactionary"
these people have only encountered hexbear in the dark recesses of their mind where the scary marxists keep beating them up and they cry
Most of them have literally never even checked hexbear as if just looking at the site will cause them to instantly die of shock or something. Before I got banned, every time I asked a user (and one time a mod) if they've even been to hexbear they'd say something along "no why would i want to visit that site."
Then they call hb an echo chamber. 
I guess Bullying Works so well that it can function as a psyop, blahaj.zone users living in the Red Scare 
love that the fediverse has organically grown Red Scare witch hunts. None of that phony Fed GMO astroturf shit. Just drop some "leftist" redditors into the dirt and BAM a whole field of "say Stalin ate babies or else ur a tankie and I'll downvote you"
Weird how your anti communist community attracts bigoted people.
i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs
lemmy.slurs.zone, top inclusive queer space.
you gotta stop calling everybody slurs
seriously why are you guys using so many slurs
mods what the hell why aren't you doing anything about all the slurs
hours later
wow thanks mods for taking care of that this is why we're better than them
Actually since you blahaj zone idiots are simultaneously obsessed and terrified by our website and since youre 100% going to stalk this thread out of boredom because your shitty reddit clone is a ghost town on a good day, please go touch some grass, or, alternatively, actually self crit and try to get your tiny mind to understand why your anti communist community attracts bigots like moths to a swatsika shaped lamp. Alright im done taking a shit so ill log out, something you insufferably stupid libs should consider doing more often.
There's a bunch of guys who are literally throwing shit at my house
It would be authoritarian to make them stop, so I opted to call the police on the people who offered to help instead
The Soviet Union under Stalin is objectively better than the United States of America of today.
Actually let me explain to you how a sense of hopelessness sweeping through the populace and not being able to afford anything while the country funds non stop wars is a good thing
Jesus Christ I wonder how these people even attempt to explain a coherent set of beliefs about the world
it's boring but my guess is default to generic "progressive" lib consensus as a baseline with a mixture of whatever 
or robert fedvans and his crew are on about this week tacked on.
eventually the brainworms will start to form competing colonies and swiss cheese their brains in their inter-colonial wars
my honest, only guess is that they just don't think about it very hard. Can't have two contradictory held thoughts if you just don't have thoughts
Oh you're anti-authoritarian? How cute, yes, I'm sure the "democratic" values that are routinely suppressed by eg MASS INCARCERATION will be respected if there was ever an actual chance of something substantive happening via ballots. Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, Palantir, Disney, Comcast shareholders, 4mil fasc freaks in the small business class, and the Pentagon will just... Step aside...
calling me and each other slurs….
so, actual slurs, or is this just some “tankie is a slur” type shit?
I dont go anywhere on lemmy except this den of iniquity, so i have no idea wtf is going on.
I’m assuming actual slurs. Multiple “anti tankie” and “anti communist” subreddits had to make pinned posts denouncing posts about Jews pushing for communism and inclusivity and LGBT acceptance lol.
jesus
[created two years before hexbear existed]
a hexbear meme?
Tbf I have seen it on here before
Very cool that “hexbear meme” is synonymous with “unfathomably based”
I love the my (trans) community, but they are such annoying propagandized liberals larping as leftists sometimes. I really wish better for them and I can only hope wake up from the nightmare that is the United States.
i do feel like theyre a minority in the english speaking world at least, plus on the fediverse /c/traa is the most active trans community by a long shot, especially by daily numbers. im currently considering making a /c/gaaaaaaaay or /c/queeeeer alternative too since its been kind of a smash 
Oh my god that's the instance that prompted me to post that tankie question the other day.... So many things make sense now. I love being a newbie.
