The hexbear thing was bizarre imho, and made me believe the federation concept is unworkable. There were even people saying to also defederate lemmygrad, which has federated with lemmyworld for apparently years while causing zero probs that I know of (I am new here though). I looked at lemmygrad out of curiosity when I got here, had a few lulz, and moved on. They have their own culture and in-jokes and it stays there, which is fine. Chapo Trap House (CTH) on Reddit was the same way from what I could tell, but Reddit banned it at the same time as the metastasized cesspit The Donald so it would look less partisan.

I think lemmmyworld is probably best seen as a mostly no politics instance. That can be ok I guess. It means though that your leftist community is probably better off on lemmy.ml or hexbear or whatever.