Which is why we need to spend our energy this election on motivating voters who are already on side but think voting is pointless, rather than bothering to convince fence sitters who aren’t already convinced by a Trump’s behavior.

Get your friends in swing states to vote! Get them to get their friends to vote! Harris has this, especially if we can motivate even like 5-10% of non-voters!

Yes! Make the situation goofy so Trump has a harder time with his strong man shit! We need something like this for the fist picture!

Common usage the the norm are literally the same thing.

Prescriptivists act like ‘the norm’ is some ordained perfection and everything in their own lifetime is an aberration, but that’s just temporal exceptionalism. Do you really think you just happened to be born at a time when the people writing style guides pointed at the be all the all of the English language and all advances are just corruption?

What? No. You pay your internet service provider for internet service that they provide. You don’t pay them to use what you already own. If you have an ink cartridge in your printer the ink and the printer belong to you already.

Maybe it was 196 mods? It looks like some of her posts were removed that were completely innocuous.

I’ve read the State and Revolution, I’m well aware of what the dictatorship of the proletariat is. Lenin endorses the use of state violence to coerce members of the proletariat who don’t support his cause. I guess i can go dig out my copy and find a supporting quote or two if you really need it. I had a couple of Marxist professors who made sure we covered that and Das Kapital pretty extensively. It’s been a minute, but I remember it standing out because of the sheer contrast between Lenin’s perspective and Engels’.

I mean personally they immediately dogpiled me, which has never happened with another instance’s users. But I also immediately blocked all the right wing instances on any accounts that didn’t start defederated from them, so I’m sure that has substantial impact.

I definitely think they’re nowhere near at leftist as they think they are, though, just by virtue of their tendency to stuff memes in their ears and loudly shout libliblib. It reminds me of the racist nimbyism of ostensibly progressive people who aren’t ever able to examine their own ideas and behaviors critically.

To me leftism requires some degree of intellectual honesty and humility or it’s just the kind of self-serving performative lib bullshit they accuse everyone else of as a literal hobby.

As far as Beehaw goes, I usually use at least one or two other instances to have a bit of a wider reach, but it certainly does make a comfy sort of home base.

Edit: I find the blahaj staff’s treatment of a user politely disagreeing with them pretty disappointing. Not winning anybody over in this thread.

The issue with .ml isn’t that they’re tankies, it’s that they have fully open registration and are huge. The whole instance is a massive vector for abuse that makes it effectively impossible to stop determined trolls if you’re federated with them.

I mean, I tend to interpret ‘tankie’ to be people who support Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas. Basically, the idea that in order to institute communism you should aim to take power and force everyone to comply with your new state through violence against dissenting parts of the populace.

Personally, my reading of Marx and Engels is a descriptive one rather than a proscriptive one. If the forces of workers haven’t spontaneously risen to throw off their chains and seize the means of production, I don’t think you can force it. The victory of communism is one of human autonomy that comes as a natural result of capitalism’s unsustainability. That’s not the same thing as systematic reform, but it’s not the same thing as attempting to impose the change on the populace either.

I don’t think it can happen until the workers are sufficiently pushed into a corner and decide to do it themselves.

Reading this and looking at the moderated comments, I’m largely on side with your criticisms, but hexbear is not the most welcoming instance to trans people by a long shot. I’m a disabled trans woman who works with the public and uses it as an opportunity to seed social change. I act as an outside agitator for some local workers struggling with their management. I’ve done canvassing for Planned Parenthood. I’ve lived on the street and been part of intentional self-supporting homeless communities. I absolutely reject corporate oversight and I’ve made sacrifices in my own life to reject capitalistic imperatives. I put my money (or lack thereof) where my mouth is and am leftist as fuck.

And yet the moment i disagree with one of them on anything it’s the ‘lib’ dogpile from a bunch of armchair doom scrollers from the comfort of their heated-seat toilets. I don’t feel the vibe that i do from people in the real world I’ve talked to who’ve been through struggle and know first hand what’s wrong with capitalism and American pseudodemocracy. I feel the vibe i feel from ignorant ass private school teenagers who think they know everything.

Personally, I find Beehaw and Solarpunk a lot more welcoming. Same to .film before it poofed.

Hexbear is to my experience the least welcoming instance to anyone who isn’t cosplaying a leftist channer poe troll.