this post was submitted on 09 Nov 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
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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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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.
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To me, a leftist is someone who looks at the status quo and goes this is fucked up. We need to fix it.
A liberal looks at the status quo and goes "this isn't this bad." Think Bill Clinton or Tony Blair. Politicans who continued to maintain the status quo after their conservative predecessors.
If a leftist politician served after a conservative politician. The leftist politician would be like "fuck this" and upend the status quo.
What you are saying is only applicable for North America/ Europe. Liberalism is already the status quo there, which is why liberals defend it. However what is liberalism in the first place?
Liberalism: "Regulated capitalism is the least bad economic system. Also, the state shouldn't encroach upon the personal matters of an individual."
Leftists: "Capitalism is the cause of all problems. Fuck capitalism. The eventual goal should be to have a stateless, classless society. However, we disagree quite a lot on how to achieve this goal. This goal is called communism. Some of us say that we should do a violent revolution. Some of us believe that we can abolish capitalism using democratic processes. Some of us believe that to achieve communism, we need a temporary powerful state led by smart people, intellectuals, etc. to achieve material conditions necessary for communism. Some of us believe that the previous idea is absolute dog shit, and instead, we can achieve communism slowly, using non state actors like cooperatives, unions, syndicates and so on."
Conservatives: "Capitalism is good. The morals and traditions of our ancestors were better than the ones coming up now, and deviating from them would cause a lot of harm. We need to take steps to conserve these ideas."
Fascists: "All problems in society are because of group X. We need to get rid of group X by either converting them to our ways (if possible), deporting them from our borders, or cleansing our country of them entirely by killing them. Democracy is a slow and inefficient process. We should give power to a strong, smart leader who can get things done a lot more efficiently."
Sounds like conservatism in the US needs to be relabeled as regressivism.
I thought liberalism literrally meant that personal freedoms are the most important thing to that person and the belief is the government should not restrict them and needs to actively protect them.
That's one of their beliefs, sure. However, their economic beliefs are still kinda pro capitalism.
Fair, I'm just curious why ShaggySnacks mentioned the status quo thing when personal freedoms are being encroached on and revoked.