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this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Lefty Memes
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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).
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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:
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- Sexism
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- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
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- (National) chauvinism
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- 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.)
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How is being against a genocide immoral?
If your morality prioritizes staunch adherence to standards over harm reduction, you have a stupid sense of morality.
It’s the kind of morality where someone would rather let a child die than push them out of the way of a speeding car, simply because pushing them would harm them.
Your morality should lead you to making decisions that result in the least harm. Look at it this way: if all of the people who voted third party instead of Hillary because Hillary wasn’t [insert moral standard here] enough had sucked it up and voted for Hillary, access to abortion would still be legal nationwide. (This assumes enough people to get her elected voted third party over moral objections.)
Trump is the worst president in my life time, by a huge margin, and he’s even more in favor of genocide than Biden, demonstrably. So if your sense of morality causes you to help put him in charge of our country again, in my mind, you’re a fucking moron.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky — The Brothers Karamazov
Ok cool. Your choice is between genocide, and genocide but worse. You can proclaim how righteous and moral you are that all the pain everyone around you is feeling is not your fault, because you merely threw your vote away, but that won’t change the outcome, and it won’t make you anything but a moron.
It’s my fault Biden won’t declare his intentions to stop the genocide. I’m to blame everybody. My vote has doomed us all. The horror.
Dostoevsky never met American liberals lol.
voting isn't harm reduction
I’m not talking about drug harm reduction. I’m talking about the reduction of harm. Put another way, aiming to reduce the amount of harm your actions lead to.
well the good news is you can vote for anyone you actually want to take office, since only votes for bad people cause them to be elected.
That’s a nice platitude, but there are only two outcomes, no matter how much you might wish there was a third. Your options are to help, abstain, or hurt. Abstaining means you’d rather not help, so again, in my mind, you’re a moron.
Third party candidates are only viable when one of the major parties collapses, and the major parties only collapse when they consistently lose. So, if you actually want a viable third party, you should vote for the major party you dislike the least. Otherwise, you’re just perpetuating both.
no, it's a fact
voting for biden helps corporations and the war machine. it doesn't help stop fascism.
Trump is literally a fascist. A vote for Biden is a vote against fascism. You’ve got to be a troll.
biden is a fascist. calling me names doesn't change what biden has enabled for the last 50 years.
i don't need to choose either of them. neither is acceptable.
I've asked folks who aren't voting for Biden what they think the odds of their vote reducing genocide in the real world is, and all I've gotten is crickets.
Given that there doesn't seem to be much confidence there, the real world results are likely trump or biden.
Trump has folks in his party alluding to nukes when saying Palestine has to be ended quickly, even trump himself has stated that Israel has to end the war quickly. Therefore I suggest that Trump will result in far more lives lost than Biden.
Folks on Lemmy are typically left-leaning.
This means that a Lemmy user voting third party could've been a vote for Biden, which in a binary choice results in less lives lost. Yes, I know, Biden centrist, etc etc, but he's to the left of the absolute insanity that is the republican party.
However instead some folks value a clean conscience over real world results, and vote third party/abstain. If these votes would've otherwise gone to Biden, then they have made a trump presidency more likely, which has the real world effect of resulting in more lives lost.
I'm fine with people voting with their conscience, but I just want folks to acknowledge whether or not their vote makes a trump presidency (therefore more genocide) more likely. Most people just seem to think "I'm not voting for genocide so my hands are clean and I'm good!" and stick their head in the sand.
if he wanted to earn it
What'd he have to do to earn it? It's hard to think about Lemmy users as a whole, what about you in particular?
adopt cornel west's platform. or claudia de la cruz'. or jill stein's.
Ah, it sounds like you'd typically vote third party to begin with.
If that's the case, then your vote was never going to go to Biden to begin with, so all of the above doesn't really apply.
i haven't voted for a democrat for president since 2008, but it's not as though they don't know how to earn it. they don't want it.
And that is fair.
I should've been more explicit - what I posted is focused on folks who are single issue voting here.
EDIT: If Palestine is the only thing someone cares about, voting third party is likely actually hurting their cause. However you are choosing who to vote for based on many additional issues, which is why this doesn't really apply to you.
So, you’re okay with not having a clean conscience? Or, other voters should be okay with not having a clear conscience? If Biden winning is more important to you than having a clean conscience. Vote for him. But don’t pressure people that choose to have a clear conscience.
Unless thought police is on your bucket list.
From my perspective, they are implying that your belief that voting third party or abstaining gives you a clear conscience makes you a self-centered, arrogant fool. Because the result of your action (or inaction) will increase the likelihood of the more bad thing happening.
To me, that's not a clear conscience. That's ignorance. That's explicitly choosing to ignore the consequences of your (in)action. That's short-sightedness to the degree that someone would expect of a preschooler. One with behavioral problems.
That’s a lot of words to say you are okay with genocide. I’m not gonna castigate voters for voting against a candidate that enables it. Maybe I’ll change my mind once I get to middle school. It depends on how long recess is.
I did not say I'm okay with genocide.
Our choices this election are genocide with a side of an untoppped baked potato, or genocide with a side of radioactive flaming diarrhea.
There is no third option. The third option is that the waiter brings you one of the two and you have to accept it.
At least one way, we get a bland potato. It sucks, but that's the way this restaurant is run. We can't just get up and go to another restaurant. But, maybe if we can just find it to ignore the genocide (which, by the way, the chef is really limited in what they can do without the support of the rôtisseur, especially when he gets a couple line cooks to side with him), we might be able to have no genocide next time we come back. Otherwise, we're all gonna get sick being close to all the radioactive diarrhea and the whole place is gonna get shut down.
I only eat happy meals.
You're implying that asking people what they think the real world results of their choices are is being the thought police? That seems a little... diluted.
Then you shouldn’t care how people vote.
I'm not getting how you got to that conclusion, can you flesh it out a little more?
If you’re okay with people voting their conscience, then you can’t be upset when they do that. If you are upset when they don’t vote your way, that’s the policing of thought.
I'm not upset if they do, nor do I expect them to vote my way. I just want to encourage them to discuss the real world effects of their choice. I just want to make sure they're internally consistent in their reasoning. For example, another commentor said they've voted for third party since 2008, and my response was for them to simply carry on doing so.
You can label discourse as "thought policing", but then that casts an extremely wide net that cheapens the term as used by Orwell.
People who are choosing not to vote for Biden are doing so because of a genocide that is happening NOW. You want to question them on contingent hypothetical real world results of a Trump presidency that may, or may not, happen in the FUTURE.
You’re trying to scare voters by telling them a dragon 🐉 is outside, when a venomous hydra is already in the room with them.
You’re concern trolling and “just asking questions,” it reeks of desperation.
Oh so they can reason about a hypothetical future if they vote third party, but they can't do so if it's about a trump presidency? That's hilarious. Or are you saying they unable reason about a hypothetical future at all?
Holy shit my man I'm asking folks to tell me what THEY think is going to happen as a consequence of their actions. If their reasoning is so shit that that question shakes them to their core, get good.
Most voters are retrospective voters. They aren’t as concerned with the future as they are with the present and past.
I appreciate you defining that, but I don't see anything that suggests most voters fall under that category - any chance you'd be able to dig that up?
Sure.
Thanks!
Do you think retrospective voters use the past to try and inform reasoning about the future?
IMO there has to be some level of this happening, otherwise retrospective voters would only have an opinion on those that already have served, and would be essentially picking from those who have not served at random.
It’s been a while since I read the study, but I think that was part of it. They used the past to inform opinions about the future.
Voting third party right now also just perpetuates both parties. There are enough people in this country to elect anyone from the major parties, so a third party can’t win unless one of those parties collapses. The only way a party collapses is when it consistently loses elections.
The republicans won’t consistently lose elections as long as progressives don’t vote for democrats, so both parties will continue on. The majority of the people in this country are left of center, so the only way republicans win is by suppressing votes, and one of the ways they do that is by propping up progressive third party candidates.
If we truly want a progressive party, making sure republicans never win elections is the way to do it. Then either the Democratic Party will shift left and republicans will regroup under a new less extreme conservative party, or the Democratic Party will shift right as it absorbs all the republicans and a new progressive left party will rise. Both ways result in a more progressive set of major parties.