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Lefty Memes
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!
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)
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,
as well as 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.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
Definitely not - the boomers are finally on the way out. The boomers have held on way past their time, and we can't afford to let Gen X have a turn... They're the ones who need to take a back seat - they're nearing retirement age if they haven't hit that point already, millennials are in our 30s and 40s
We need to support and join together with the younger generations. We might not be as young as we used to be, but we're prime age to start taking office and organizing/enabling
We Gen x have been practicing taking a back seat our entire lives. As a generation we still don’t outnumber the boomers. Or we just crossed them on the graph. Pre covid we were supposed to finally cross around 2027. Covid might have skewed the projections. Kind of explains why we are the way we are. Never could do fuck all unless the boomers also wanted it.
And now the millennials are the largest group. Yall got the numbers. Use ‘em.
You guys really are the forgotten generation... My dad claimed to be a millennial the other day, because he forgot there was something in between us and boomers
Millennials were told "put in your time, and eventually it'll be your turn", but we learned early on that "doing everything right" wasn't going to get us anywhere.
I feel like a lot of gen X are hanging onto that like a lifeline (not nearly all of course, there's plenty who don't drink the Kool aid, and took me aside to lay out the truth early). Like despite how only the lucky ones came out ahead, it seems like there's this fear of any change, like it'd tear away what little they've managed to hang on to
Maybe it's because it wasn't entirely a lie for the first half of gen x's career, maybe it's because most of the changes did tear more and more out of reach... Or maybe it's just bias since most of my older family did come out ahead and that led me to find friends with similar life experiences
Granted, I've found older millennials tend to be just as dogmatic if they got ahead, generations are just such broad ranges
What's your take?
I don’t know about the 1/2 half of Gen x careers being necessarily easier. I’m older Gen x born a few years after the generally accepted start for that era.
As a teenager and a young adult I saw that the structures that the silent and boomer generations set up and relied upon weren’t going to be there for me as a senior. Pensions being removed as employment benefits. the GOP demonizing social security and Medicare and underfunding the programs. Graduated from college in a white collar depression. Went though the same multiple crisis that the millennials did, just at a later phase of my life and career development. About the only real advantage my generation had was to be the right age bracket to catch the early internet boom. But also at the right age to catch the outsourcing to China / India boom.
I guess my point is that all the signs were there all along my life of the coming disruptions. I had the right combination of luck factors. Good stable childhood home. Enough food. Decent public schools despite moving as much as I did. Parents that paid for college. No physical or mental issues that prevented me from attacking a career path. Low inflation for most of those years. I did (and do) okay. I’ve helped myself now because I was pretty pessimistic about my future years.
It’s clear to me now we need systemic changes. I had hoped COVID would smack us around enough to give momentum to pivot as a society. But nope! It seems the divisions and right wing political extremism is even worse now. I don’t know where the impetus is going to come from now. For sure it can’t come only from Gen x. We don’t have the numbers. And enough of my generation have fallen down the MAGA cult black hole.