ID: photo of Martin Luther King Jr. waving at the crowd during the March on Washington, on it is his quote: "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
There is, to those whose strategy is to give themselves a pat on the back for doing the barest of bare minimum and successfully maintaining the status quo, rather than doing anything actually useful to oppose fascism (or the capitalism that will always decay in to it), or in the words of MLK himself those "more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" - it gives them a dopamine hit and an ego boost so potent they seem able to ride on the smell of their own farts for 4 years at a time while doing fuck all else to change society for the better (for anyone but themselves, that is) because they've already "done their part", and is seemingly all they need to convince themsleves they're the brave hero-saviours of humanity, rather than the enablers of fascism they actually are.
It's precisely why the second cult exists - to provide an illusion of choice (E: and of impact), and make "the left" (I can't even type that without cracking up, but part of the cult is being convinced they are "the left") feel like they're fighting the establishment, when in reality, they're holding it up just as much as the other cult is, some might argue, even more, because they'll turn on those actually opposing fascism long before they'll dare be rude to fascists.