Tabitha

Hexbear is for left-unity and has users that range from all spectrums of the left. The clear message here is, if your on the left, lemmy.world is not the place for you. If you support the free exchange of ideas, lemmy.world is not the place for you. The mods couldn’t even be bothered to lie about which rules hexbear users were supposedly going to violate.

Communists practice critical support. To quote Marx, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” We do not believe China’s economy is socialist. But the CPC has lifted more people out of poverty than any government in history, at the same time that living standards for the Western working class have collapsed. In so far as they support the working class, we critically support the CPC.
What you call ‘Tankies’, is a word that has been used to associate Marxist-Leninist’s with all kinds of bizarre micro-ideologies. But Marxism-Leninism is the primary form of communism in most countries in the world, and in that sense most communists will practice critical support towards AES states.

Where Marxists have free reign, they find converts. There is a reason you don’t find them on the television or in the newspaper. It is absolutely essential that they be shut out, and that myths about ‘Tankies’ supporting oligarchy, oppression, social conservatism and everything else they stand firmly against be spread. This is how propaganda works. It is also the extent of the ‘free speech’ that conservatives and liberals uphold as the highest of values. Free speech is permitted, so long as it doesn’t challenge the status quo. You can use your favourite slur, but you can’t criticise NATO.

This is the real reason why Hexbear cannot be federated.
There has been a large push to redefine Marxists Leninists as ‘Tankies’. They are this associated with bizarre, reactionary micro-ideologies, uninformed cliches about supporting Russia, etc.
Any interaction with hexbear users would quickly dispel such ideas.
Communists do not ‘support’ Russia, - the Russian oligarchic state represents everything they despise. But these are people who are highly engaged with politics. And their worldview is a lot more nuanced than the average person, who doesn’t have any particular interest in politics and so will only pickup the general gist of mainstream narratives, and accept them without much criticism.
So for example, in relation to Russia, while Marxists do not support their war in Ukraine, they do recognise that Russia was baited into that war by the West, and by a Ukranian state that was captured by a minority of far-right fascists following the Maiden revolution. That is geopolitical realism, and has nothing to do with ideology. No Marxist supports the economic system or cultural bigotry of modern Russia.
Socialism naturally aligns with the humanist value systems that most people hold, and which Western countries claim to uphold even as their actions contradict them. It is essential for those who would uphold the status quo to shut out socialist voices and paint them as extremists. Your confusion - ‘why would people who extol equality and tolerance support inequality and intolerance?’ - is really answering your own question. They don’t.