this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
1063 points (88.8% liked)
Lefty Memes
4352 readers
586 users here now
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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's not how the system works. All voting third party does is equivocate approval for the two front runners. Do you approve of the insurrectionist fascist and the neo-liberal equally? Are they exactly the same to you? Do you think they are equally supportive of election reform?
The fascists with minority support only have power because kids who don't understand the electoral system either abstain from voting, or vote third party. If everyone held their nose and showed up to vote lesser evil, the Republican party would wither away into being a third party themselves and a progressive party could actually gain footing.
Your candidate doesn't stand a chance precisely because people like you keep pretending the system works differently.
Hows that goin for ya? Making any progress in the decades you've been trying that for? 'If everyone just did this', yeah? How about if everyone just voted for the candidate that supports ranked choice? Just get everyone to do X.
Pretty well actually, considering the glacial pace inherent to changing a political landscape. It's made it onto the ballot in several states, and is used several local and state-wide elections here and there. The Fair Representation Act has been brought to th the floor in 2017, 2019, 2021, and again this year but it hasn't been voted on yet.
How's that going for ya? Elected a third party candidate to the presidency yet?
so Im looking into states that have implemented this, to see if electing democrats had anything to do with it. Looking at Alaska and Maine at least, democrats had nothing to do with it, they were citizen initiatives brought to election referendum, neither democrats or republican representatives introduced or voted on it. Notably, the Alaska state legislature has more republican members than democrats.
I think you missed my point of us being in the same boat. You're not likely to get enough people to vote for people they dont like to crowd out republicans in Washington, and Im not likely to get enough people to vote for people they would otherwise love with a D or R by their name.
The Fair Representation Act has been sponsored by a Democrat every time.
It's orders of magnitude more probable to get the slim minority you're talking about to align D than it is to get the overwhelming majority I'm talking about to rally behind the same third party candidate. It's not even worth comparing, the concept is laughable at best. To even hint at that happening this election is bordering on clinical levels of delusion.
If you want to campaign for your candidate next cycle, be my guest. Start early, organize, fundraise and get the message out. Next cycle. This cycle, you're dividing the anti-Project-2025 voting bloc. This cycle, you run the very real risk of ensuring there is no next cycle. Remember that.
Yes, a democrat, with single digit cosponsors out of hundreds of democrats in a democrat controlled house the last time it was brought up. If the democratic party wanted ranked choice voting, we would have ranked choice voting now. the democrat controlled house didnt even bring it up for a vote. That's the thing, it's republicans=conservative and democrats=progressive for you, but a large number of democrats are conservative to me. I dont think a fully democrat controlled congress passes ranked choice voting. I dont think they pass lobbying reform. Hell there are democrats that still vote against minimum wage increases. I dont think a fully democrat controlled government looks much different from the one today.
What's gonna be different next cycle? You think Trump's going away? You'll be right here again in 2028 telling me democracy is at stake if I dont vote for your choice.