I want to take a step back from this conversation, because you are reading something deeply upsetting at my criticism of the original posts’ framing of this place as anything but a niche communist forum.

I am not sure that I understand what you mean by, “take a step back”. You have written a five paragraph response. Do you want to continue having a conversation or by, “step back” do you mean you want to take a different angle?

I also don’t understand what you found deeply upsetting because so far as I can tell, you didn’t tell me. But I do think what I said holds, that you were justifying flippant anti-catholic sentiment by the obscurity and unseriousness of this forum. That is a logic that works for any sentiment no matter how reactionary. This is what I mean when I say this forum only selectively takes itself seriously. It’s well-aware that, for example, supporting trans people is actually a serious topic with deadly consequences and a need for a movement to forward trans rights and protection. But it is also full of Anericans that do not understand the violent legacy, and even modern-day violences, of anti-catholic sentiment, and so it does not get anything but insulting dismissal even when people are simply noting the necessity of cultural sensitivity.

Hexbear is not a vanguard party, the off-shoot to a socialist union or organization, the haven for all thought leaders in American or World Communism. So being concerned on whether we stay on message, or we provide respect for anything, is a fine thought, but worth jack.

Hexbear is an offshoot of a subreddit for a podcast by not-particularly-funny white guys in New York. It doesn’t really know what it is, it inconsistently wavers between a shitpost site for lefty jokes and a principled organization rooting out reactionary sentiment that is against a proper socialist line. And it’s a small forum. It is a marginal place.

But the logic you presented is still invalid and is an easy vehicle by which to justify anything, including wrong or detrimental things. And it was not couched in language that prioritizes comeraderie or understanding, it was dismissive, which is the other tendency of this forum: to pick fights, to escalate, to invest very little in trying to understand one another and reach synthesis. This is also a consequence of this site’s origins and context. Its members dunk on reactionaries so much that they use the same social approach for all disagreements.

Fewer than half of the replies to my comments in this thread don’t mischaracterize my basic statements and one of them implied that an immigrant community that I help organize is just pedophiles.

If it was Bernie, or a Union member, getting themselves on the news, saying “good riddance” fuck that pedophile. I’d have serious criticism. But what do internet randoms have to do with it?

Right, this is a catch-all justification. It can justify right or wrong or mediocre things.

As a reminder, I am suggesting that responses to the OP are too dismissive and non-comradely and that calling the pope a pedophile is agitational for catholics. See the responses.

I have seen nothing in this thread that is an outright lie.

I mean, I don’t call these things lies because I don’t know what base understanding we all share. They don’t even need to be lies per se, just culturally insensitive or uncomradely. I could point out at least 1 fairly inaccurate thing but responses are already highly agitational and emotional so I am decreasingly interested in trying to explain.

Criticisms about its framing of the Catholic Church Child Abuse Scandal. The ways he had antiquated and advanced, or maintained, harmful misunderstanding of gender and trans issues. The way the Church and its Pope have a really low bar to clear for it to be deemed “progressive”.

I read this as you processing your own logic out loud. That’s 100% okay and valid but it really doesn’t get at what I’m saying.

I think people are allowed to vent. I think refusing to acknowledge the anger and harmful effects that religion forces upon people. Our comrades, and telling them to shut it down, because…what? Some non-existent audience? Some needed solidarity, at the backs of us?

If you don’t know someone with dead or abused family members citing anti-catholicism then you don’t work with Irish communists. I don’t expect many people to have done that. I understand the highly US-centric nature of this forum. Even those not in the US end up being US-centric due to all the other Americans in the space. But I do think comrades should try to listen to one another before the knives come out and dismissals start flying.

I know people who are very scared that their family finds out they were sexually active before marriage. One of them us currently being blackmailed using this and their blackmailer uses left and psychologizing language to do it. They come from a muslim community. Do I or they tolerate, “Mohammed was a pedophile” statements? No, we don’t, because we share the understanding that this is culturally insensitive and counterproductive and amounts to a “we don’t accept muslims” sign. There are people from that same community that process their experience differently, they embrace islamophobic statements and logic. I think my and my comerade’s approach is better. And every person in this story is negatively affected by reactionary islamic beliefs.

I want to emphasize as well that “venting” is often a license for toxicity in left spaces, including irl. And you can see the vitriol in this thread. I strongly disagree with, “people are allowed to vent”. Many times it’s a very good thing, often it’s a destructive thing. It really depends on what is said and where and to whom.

I’m not queer and even I can understand the absolute horror and rage that they feel when you are bombarded the message that God hates you. That you are made wrong, or even worse, “chose to be and act wrong”. You understands what does to people?

Yes.