haha I think they meant chilli hot instead of temperature hot, but I can't say no to a nice gravy.

I go for salsas and chunky condiments (e.g. black bean chilli crisp, hot Indian chutneys) than just a liquid hot sauce, even then it's sriracha.

Haha I wonder if they just didn't want to share their secrets!

Make no mistake, this is far beyond one dude/ette. You'd need a whole (non-electoral) well-organized party to educate and agitate, and earn the support of many thousands or even millions of citizens through their actions, in order to build the necessary movement.

Again, it's been done before and under more oppressive conditions, but it's a tough road.

I even have hope for the slight voting majority which put Trump back in power. [whole paragraph]

Many of them, probably the majority of them, have core mutual interests with us at the end of the day. We are the worker class. Once you're able to strip away culture war crap and electoralist talking points, there's a large amount of shared ground.

There truly are some people who are too far gone, and some other people who benefit from looting the country, but if you can find shared ground and teach instead of argue, picking battles, I'd say there's a better shot at reaching through to some of them. In fact, to prove the point through exaggeration, if you're a decent communicator who's able to explain technical concepts in familiar language, you can straight-up outline Marxist economic theory to them without triggering an argument. This is more a playful example than a strong example, but it gets the point across, that you can sometimes draw out some smart insights from the rubble, because many of them are oppressed by the same system and fed up at it, they've simply been encouraged by that mass media towards the wrong way targets or the wrong solutions. For a personal example, I've seen union members complaining about legitimate grievances at work and the company's abuse of progressive language (e.g. abusing the term "diversity" as a cover to outsource jobs to unqualified cheaper foreign labor) but unfortunately haven't learned the tactful language to properly express their critique, so one could understandably mistake it for reactionary "them chinese took er jerbs!" rhetoric, falsely accuse them of racist values and push this person further anti-left. It's certainly important to be aware of wolfwhistles and red flags, but it's also important to not jump to conclusions either.

There are some lovely, smart and aware people in that huge country. It's not homogeneous. But overall? It won't get much better without a revolution. And that's a huge ask. It's possible, other countries have managed despite police repression and mass illiteracy, but it's a long journey, and I wouldn't be surprised if the people with the awareness and the means will just try fleeing instead.

The USSR (Soviet Union) and the PRC (China). The USSR is not Russia, and it doesn't exist anymore.

And of course it's fair, and in fact important to criticize them. We have the benefit of hindsight and can see how some of their decisions were serious mistakes. On the other hand, it's also important to analyze what they did good and learn from that too. Neither was perfect, both were improvements, and the terrible fates of Russia and Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union is proof of how much good the SU was for its citizens.

which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.

They both inherited countries plagued with regular famine and have both eliminated it. In fact, in 1983 the CIA documented the SU as having a better typical diet than the USA. Clearly they respected the food security of their citizens.

The SU managed to rapidly build low-cost housing after repelling a HUGE invasion of extermination from Nazi Germany. The "commieblocks" were critical in housing people after war. China has also made huge strides in home ownership and elimination of poverty. Meanwhile, poverty and homelessness is increasing under capitalist countries, with them doing little to resolve their housing crises. Clearly they respected the need for shelter of their citizens.

Keep in mind, that both these countries were devastated by world wars and civil wars. Their countries started off in serious crisis and had already had revolutions. If they didn't respect the needs of their citizens, they would have ended up failed states overthrown by their desperate population or quickly collapsing to invasions.

As for China, the government, despite censorship and political repression, still remains popular among its citizens, according to censorship-resistant US studies^[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/]. It's largely avoided war, hugely reduced poverty, and has become a world leader in technology.

There are many valid reasons to criticize these countries and it's important we do that. But they clearly respected the basic needs of their citizens. There are few other countries which have done more to reduce poverty and homelessness than them.

A lot of people have a purist attitude to politics. "Critical support" is a vital part in understanding these positions of Hexbear and others, that one can support a side of a conflict and still be critical of it. Geo-politics isn't a simple binary. No two groups will perfectly align, but that doesn't mean they can't see mutual lines of benefit despite their disagreement. For example, just because someone supports Ukraine doesn't mean they have to defend everything their government does, such as supporting the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. It would be absurd to assert that! Similarly, it would be absurd to tell the communists still crying about 1989 that they support the entirety of the capitalist Russian Federation, the same RF that destroyed many of the gains the USSR made for both countries by enabling oligarchs to loot the place and plummet life expectancy.

That's a big bag of wheat. Did they send a big spoon to go with it?

Idk, just feels wrong to brag about it or constantly bring it up so this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it on lemmy

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with encouraging and normalizing productive behaviors, like actions and reading theory. I've seen some communities normalize the whole "you're just an armchair posting online!" as a counterargument, or take digs at how they think most of the community don't read any theory. And I've seen a touch of the second on Hexbear, esp. when some bears visited Lemmygrad during the domain registration issue.

I don't brag about my antifascism and org work on Lemmy, but I really should start, to be honest. It's the little things behind the scenes that people don't realize gets done. Just make sure you're careful with what information you share, because fash could be looking.

is the same that I have with all the other ones

If I'm included in there, I don't post online about actions I take because I can legally get fired due to my volunteer work in a socialist political party, and some of the community actions I have taken involved dozens of arrests. So I have good reasons to avoid disclosing info and getting dox'd.

I suppose this applies to many others.

I had a burner account back years ago before it was federated with the rest of Lemmy.

I'd already well-passed the stage where I was spending more time online than doing actual movement building on the ground so the low-content and causal comms are too chatty for me to even bother. There's also some underlying abusive moderation (at least there was a couple of years ago), but that's something I've seen on everywhere from .world to .ml, this is volunteer work and beggars usually can't be choosers, there's nearly always someone on a staff team who just deletes things they don't like. Purging that behavior is tough without a healthy mod culture and mods who care enough to start a fight.

On the other hand, there's some good comms among the slop and they keep liberals from coming in every minute with dumb questions they could have checked with a single web search or just reading an FAQ, so that's a huge plus (tourists can go to lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml with any good-faith questions). Their dev work is commendable. For the place that it is, it's done alright for itself, there's a decent foundation from what I can tell, which is especially hard for a big-tent socialist site to build given the conflicting worldviews and values that arise.

If so, what are some misconceptions or seldom known facts?

It's pretty hilarious how many of them seem repulsed by /leftypol/. They're remarkably similar cultures, just less PDFs and "read a fucking book" culture, less catgirls and no ironic slurs.