Hexbear is widely disliked due to their consistent bad behavior in other communities (among other reasons) in regards to takes they disagree with. They even have a community dedicated to organizing "dunkstrikes" on those they disagree with‡.
I can't go into too much detail for why they're hated as the last time I did (using one of my alts) I was site banned on lemmy.ml for 2 weeks.
Lemmygrad is basically Hexbear politically: they love authoritarians and hate anything "The West," especially NATO. Their takes on modern China and Russia are also pretty bad. But again I can't go into too much detail as a different alt of mine (and different than the one mentioned before) also netted a multi week ban for criticism of their takes.
Honestly finding a more liked lefty space is tough. Too many of them profess their love of dictators IMO. Which given peoples love of democracy makes them pretty unpopular overall. My recommendation is basically social democracy spaces (if they exist on Lemmy).
‡ They'll argue that this isn't the case by saying, "it's just a community to highlight bad takes." But unlike other communities that exist to highlight bad takes: it's stated mission is to "tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes", they don't forbid interaction (unless it's an instance admin or mod), and they require a source for the post in question.
I'll probably get banned for this comment (or it'll get removed) but that's basically the best I could do without being too specific about them.