I don’t usually use forums or Lemmy, I usually just post comments on SocDem blogs but they didn’t seem appropriate places to post my story. So here goes, I just wanted to share this with all of you.

Aug 8 I checked out Lemmy, I did lemmy.world then lemm.ee then hexbear.net next. I am an SocDem so I wanted to see socialists in these places. Yes, I know they are different kinds of “socialists” and not really full socialists like us. I went to Hexbear, which everyone knows is famous for its revolutionary socialism.

We started talking about politics and socialism. I was trying to talk about the right, they were like yeah no doubt the right was bad. But they wanted to talk about Western hegemony, Western hegemony this and that. This is when we started to get into a debate.

I told them that what they called Western hegemony is different from the rules based order. They said the rules based order is Western hegemony. And I said I agreed. That is what I am saying. Real Western hegemony is a rules based order. And they said yes, that is what we are trying to get rid of. And I said no, but we don’t even have that right now. We need more Western hegemony. And everyone at the same time was like “nooo” we are socialists, we are against Western hegemony. Socialists oppose Western hegemony. And I said but not social democrats. Social democrats are the socialists who support NATO.

I think that is when it started to get a really bad vibe, really tense in the air. The hegemony thing was funny, we disagreed but I think they thought I was just confused. Everyone was uncomfortable now. Then someone said the rules based order won’t allow international solidarity. And I said exactly, that’s it, international solidarity is against the rules based order. And they kind of agreed, and said yes, we don’t have real international solidarity, just imperialism, and we needed to respect Russian security concerns. I said no, we need less support for Russia, Russia is the enemy. And we need to defeat Russia to have socialism. Then they were all like “noooo” again. You know that thing people do in groups when everyone all says “nooo” or expresses some disapproval at the same time.

And one of them said “but Putin is a neoliberal transphobe” and then they kind of spoke back and forth in emojis. I didn’t really understand it. And they asked me what I meant.

So I said okay, I had the floor, I was going to tell them about social democracy. I tried to explain to them that Putin was exactly like Hitler and that China is genociding Uighurs. I said the democrats have our best interests at heart and they had to increase military spending to counter foreign threats. They are trying their best. They said what do we want instead of communism. I said we want to defend the international order against anyone who defies it. They said that is what we have now. I said no, it would be even better. One of the guys said it was imperialism. And I said it is not imperialism.

Eventually one of the posters spoke up. He said he knew what social democracy was and that we were basically fascists. He asked me if the IMF should be the only choice for developing counties. And I said yes. And he asked me if I thought people outside the imperial core were brainwashed. And I told him yes. He said what about immigrants and racism. And I said that that wouldn’t happen under Western hegemony. But yes, Democrats could put immigrants in cages if they wanted to. They had to respect Western hegemony.

Then he called me a fascist again, and someone else said I was a fascist. And then they basically all started shouting fascist at me, and one of them posted a pig with shit on it’s testicles and told me to go fuck myself. I remember yelling “you’re being authoritarian!” and things like that. “Stop suppressing my free speech.” Then the mods banned me for 1984 years.

So they were rude and authoritarian. I knew the tankies were not real socialists, but I never knew they would do something that bad.