Note: being on Lemmy for about a year, I didn't live through the early days of this place. Here's what I can recollect, as neutrally given as possible.

TL;DR The recent conflicts between two politically different groups on Lemmy have radicalized many people, and many Hexbear residents in particular. Unless you are to discuss the far-left ideas and are very radical about disadvantaged groups, you are safe to block it.

Hexbear is a far-left (as in actually communist) anti-discrimination community, initially more of a safe haven to promote equality and foster a healthy and welcoming place for leftists to come together.

With core developers of Lemmy also being far-left, Hexbear naturally fitted the landscape along with the official Lemmy.ml, heavy far-left Lemmygrad.ml and others.

As time went on, however, all sorts of left-leaning and apolitical folks, not just far-left, came to the platform, filling other instances like Lemmy.world (now the most populated of them all), sh.itjust.works and many others.

As a result, Lemmy has two groups of people with radically different political views: one is a group of more or less organized far-left, and the other is everyone else, most commonly liberals. This distinction has caused a lot of conflicts and heated discussions based on political adherence.

Most notable case is latest US elections. The far left side generally called not to vote Democrat as Biden has failed to deliver on many of his promises and empowered Israel to commit war crimes in Palestine, while the liberal audience called to vote Democrat to not let Republicans take the lead, which may arguably lead to an even worse outcome than unaccountable Dems can make.

This divide has raised a lot of mutual hostility, brigading, and uncivil behavior, which has radicalized many on both sides of the conflict, the consequences of which you have got to experience.

What to do with that is up to you to decide. Hexbear is very politically uniform and very political overall, so if you're not here to discuss communism, you won't lose much and will gain additional peace of mind.

Hexbear, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the "Tankie Triad".

Hexbear is the worst most extreme of them and lemmy.ml is the least which is why they've managed to avoid getting defederated from world (either that or because they're like the third largest instance behind only .world and SJW)

Hexbear is pretty widely defederated

I would block hexbear. I've done it server-wide. They are mostly very loud trolls pretending to be communists. Some could be actual communists, but I don't buy anyone actually wanting to be in such a toxic environment and believe what they claim to believe.

ITT: everyone says they're bad without giving any examples, telling you what to think instead of letting you form your own conclusions.