Maybe the purpose of a system is what it does...
Maybe trying to lower the rate/efficiency of the baby-killing machine is the wrong approach...
Maybe you should be thinking about destroying 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.
Ok, what's your plan for that?
Meanwhile, the exterminator just won the election while you were whining.
Kamala's participation and enthusiastic support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was a significant factor in her losing. As was her enthusiastic support for border militarization and conspiracies about illegal immigrants.
She dug her own grave. We were told to shut up whenever we mentioned how unpopular those positions are with anyone who's not a far right nationalist. She drove millions of voters away from her by being a neoliberal conservative. This outcome was entirely predictable.
Who did she drive them to? Someone with a better track record, surely?
To Trump. Her platform was essentially a "stay the course, maintain the status quo" platform which has been terrible for a lot of people.
The average voter doesn't know or understand what the word fascism means, what project 2025 is even if you explain it to them, or what trans rights are. They don't know whether illegal immigration is a problem or not. They live within massive propaganda machines that often confuse them and are taught to believe anything else is wrong on principal.
For many of those people, including many minorities and many women, the status quo has not treated them well. And someone who's entire campaign was built on maintaining the status quo was deeply unpopular with those people. Trump offered a radical restructuring of society. He offered a dramatic shift in status quo and a government with entirely different priorities.
That appealed to those people, who both do not understand politics and are confused about what any of it really means anyway. All they know is that life under Biden saw their lives get much worse and the other guy says he's going to change that and says he knows how. He doesn't, of course. But they don't know that. They don't live in the echo chambers we do discussing these problems. Their primary use of social media is sharing pictures with friends and family. They're annoyed by their friends who keep talling politics online, politics confuses and frustrates them.
Obama's campaign was built on change and it's what one him 2 elections. The first one by a landslide. Lessee of two evil politics, staying the course politics, is never going to drum up support enough to defeat fascism.
That's all well and good, but my point stands. Criticizing Kamala didn't get us anything except the person we didn't want. That's a failed strategy.
That's what I'm saying, though. Incredibly justified criticism of her did not lose the election. She chose to ignore criticism and focus on appealing to conservatives.
Right, it's not our fault for running a smear campaign and dividing the base, it's her fault for not changing into who we wanted her to be....
Whatever you think the magic bullet was, undermining her support did not help keep Trump out of office.
Maybe she shouldn't have done things that undermined her support, then.
Ah, the good old "look what you made me do" argument.
I voted for Harris. But I could read the writing on the wall. Every time I tried to warn one of you, you did what you did here. Just assumed that I voted contrary to your sense of entitlement and was trying to justify it.
And none of you have learned a fucking thing. If there's ever going to be a next election, y'all are gonna move right and shriek condemnation at anyone who has a problem with it, since the alternative involves treating your base like humans with agency instead of automatons that you can abuse until votes fall out.
75% of white men voted for Trump. It was categorically not the fault of people criticizing her support of genocide, her militarization of the border, or her continued appeal to conservatives. Your failure to recognize this is exactly what theyre counting on to continue with the exact same platform. No, they do have to change. If a future world where fascism is defeated is the goal than either the democratic party has to change into a party that will actually challenge it, or else the system of politics in America itself must be dismantled.