What the hell are Hexbear and Lemmygrad and what did they do that everyone’s blocking them?

To add an annecdote, hexbear has this handy link to an image: (nsfw) https://hexbear.net/PPB

Ask yourself why a discussion platform might keep this image quick-link and you may understand why everyone defederates from them.

Lemmygrad and Hexbear (I think) are instances filled with “tankies”, which means that they can’t shut up about how awesome authoritarian regimes that present themselves as communist, like China, and some others, like Russia, are, despite all the crimes against human rights those countries’ governments keep committing (according to tankies, the governments they support don’t actually commit any atrocities, it’s just “lies spread via anti-communist propaganda”, which they also use as a excuse for silencing anyone presenting criticism about their favourite regimes). Please keep in mind that lots of communists don’t see countries like China as communist, despite the countries calling themselves that.

As these instances have lots of tankies, they tend to have toxic communities. Their users also tend to hate trans people for some reason, and sometines try to harass people because of it, which is a big no-no to instances that want their trans users to feel safe, such as Blåhaj Zone.

Lammygrad are Marxist Leninist, Hexbear are dirtbag leftists. That makes them the natural enemies of center-left and centrist instances like .world. In my opinion it comes down to a disagreement over capitalism. One side wants to destroy it, the other side wants to moderate it.