I think this is probably the fairest description. Hexbearians are dickish trolls sometimes. Unfortunately, because Hexbear was the biggest Lemmy instance for the longest time, a lot of communities found this initially overwhelming, plus the big jump in political perspective is too jarring and can seem nonsensical.

But I believe anyone who takes a moment to engage in good faith with the cool users, and ignore the trollish ones, will see you can have constructive, interesting and caring discussions and realise what the attraction of the community is.

Mao introduced some terrible measures, for sure, but it’s a long shot to say he’s “Responsible for” every death or imply it was at all deliberate. Famines in China were more widespread and frequent pre-Mao.