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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
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.
- 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
There's also the social contract resolution to the tolerance paradox. Essentially, the tolerance paradox is that tolerating intolerance erodes tolerance. This means eventually if you allow intolerance to fester, they will seize control and you lose that tolerance.
The social contract resolution is that by being intolerant, you lose your right to be tolerated. This avoids that paradox, but superficially can look like intolerance.
I hope this didn't end up too much like word salad.
I was able understand it pre-coffee so it made enough sense so hopefully mine won’t be a word salad too
TLDR a long winded version of what you said about the social contract
But to add on, like you said tolerance is a contract that only protects the parties that follow its terms
Example: (pick a group of your choice) “Hey _____ person, I’ll respect you if you respect me” Yay everyone’s happy we’re all chilling together even tho I’m 100% certain we have different beliefs down to the core
But when that contract is broken apply that to the blank above, “Hey Nazi, I’ll respect you if you respect me”. They won’t hold up their end of the deal so why should I hold up mine
Yeah, absolutely, that's a much more readable summation than what I wrote.
As an aside, I really like the social contract theory. It's a pretty clean philosophical summation of how the majority of people in tolerant democracies see the world and provides the foundation for it, even if they don't think about it in formal philosophical terms. That essentially we are implicitly bound by the rules established by previous generations, those that set the rules (both cultural and legal), until such time as we form a political or cultural movement to change those rules. Then, anyone who comes after us is bound by those rules we set until and unless they in turn change them.
EDIT: I guess I should add that in the context of this thread, "be tolerant" is a cultural rule that has developed over the recent past, and thus if you aren't tolerant there are social repercussions (and in countries with hate speech laws, even legal repercussions) as that is the current rule.