I’ve come to two realizations recently:

One

The sudden tankie willingness to believe that Trump cares about a cease-fire in Gaza, and got tough with the Israelis and then they capitulated which Biden could have done at any time, sheds some interesting light on how the tankies think. They accuse anyone who disagrees with them of shifting their realities around, such that anything Biden does is good, anything the State Department says is always true, even if it contradicts itself or basic common sense or reality. I always thought that this was just a lazy reality-free arguing tactic, but in retrospect, I should have realized that it’s a tell about their own thought process. Just like it’s a warning sign if someone constantly suspects their partner of cheating, or is constantly on an absurdly hypervigilant lookout for scams and people trying to cheat them out of money, this is a key revelation about the way Hexbear itself looks at reality.

Trump is a capable diplomat, if believing that lets them trash Biden. Trump cares about Palestinians, if believing that lets them trash Biden. The cart is firmly in its place in front, and everything else including the horse can follow along depending on what the cart dictates.

Two

Hexbear’s censorship, and wild hostility to anyone who comes to “their” place and tries not to toe the party line, really does do a pretty effective job of distorting the view of reality and consensus that their users are able to experience.

Take a look at these and compare:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/36382877

https://hexbear.net/post/4354590

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    22 hours ago

    I have been calling this out since my first interactions with those instances. They are heavily infested with right wing trolls making “leftist” noises. And the ones who aren’t actually trolls are either so blinded by their disdain for liberalism, or just too young to notice.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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      21 hours ago

      Yeah. I’m genuinely curious how many of them are right wing trolls, how many are useful idiots, how many are normal trolls, how many are subject to mental illness and will sincerely believe anything and yell it at everyone else because of brain chemicals, how many are some other category, just what are the details of the real demographics there. I wish there was a way to know.

    • Possibly linux
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      20 hours ago

      They are left wing

      Just extremely far left (the farther you go the less sense it makes)

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        15 hours ago

        Nah, there are very obviously a whole bunch of Russian trolls in all of these spaces. They legit just parrot Russian narratives about the war and US politics. It’s extremely transparent.