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Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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!
Rules
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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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 irrationally 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.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
It's interesting to live through the death of a modern empire. Given how much access there is to history it really surprises me that no lesson is learned and no graceful transition is opted for.
Instead they follow the same route as all the empires of old, increasing violence and desperation practically guaranteeing hatred and reprisal when they are crippled and broken.
Of course all the elite will be dead by then so I suppose material analysis wins again as the correct lens to analyse history through.
“The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class. There is no such precedent in world history. The Communists have learned this lesson of history. Communists would welcome the voluntary departure of the bourgeoisie. But such a turn of affairs is improbable; that is what experience teaches. That is why the Communists want to be prepared for the worst and call upon the working class to be vigilant, to be prepared for battle.” - Stalin
Said it better than me haha, no original thoughts in the world.
Where do we opt for that when voting?
;D
The proles of the usa are not and have never been in charge. While I don't advocate complete disengagement from 'representative' politics it is important to understand it as a distracting machine to give legitimacy to the bourgeois rulers.
If you want to change things your power base must be significant and, critically, it must exist outside the machinery of state.
being the only dinosaur left unscarred from ww2 meant none of these family-of-sociopaths were ever forced to recognize we're kind of in this mess together. needing to completely rebuild your infrastructure from 0 kind forces a bit of empathy into everyone i think.
with how purposefully fractured the US is (long long history of this, many towns across the country are de facto company towns for the local real estate baron), this will only happen if the country has another Great Depression era. which is very much a possibility given the US's ever growing sovereign-debt crisis and a completely gutted internal manufacturing capacity/capability.
if/when the US finally defaults and USD crumbles as world reserve currency (which is already happening, countries are just trying to gtfo as sustainably as they can without crashing their own house of cards)...shit goes from bad to worse real fucking quick.
Nah this is US exceptionalism still. The circumstances of the usa are no more or less unique than any previous empire and the same forces rule.
transition to what, exactly? i think people might have vastly different opinions about this, so it's not easy to just go to a new thing
When you are about to die yourself, do you just let it happen or do you struggle and try to fight against it?
I don't think personification of nation states is a useful model when reasoning about how they behave.
Examples of transitions would be building up the independence and economies of previously oppressed states claimed in dominion, in order to build an economic bloc that can be relied on. Meanwhile winding back spending on military and force projection.
Nobody would ever do this, I just wish people could learn how to avoid the same mistakes as every previous empire.
At least life will almost certainly improve for south Americans.
Fighting back against fascism is great, but fighting for a slightly more benevolent form of fascism won't get you anywhere. You really think the Dems will abolish ice if they get Trump out if office?
They had a couple opportunities to already, and didn't.
It didn't start with Trump, does not likely end with Trump, did not end with Dems.
The only problem Dems see with ICE is their lack of training. If they ever get back in control, they'd increase ICE funding under the guise of getting them better trained.
i never said i support the democrats. in fact i don't. sorry if it came across that way.
Ok, fair enough. I don't know what the future will look like any better than anyone else. But imo fighting fascists is always better than just letting it happen.
This absolutely. No matter how hopeless it is, if you do not even try, they will win.