this post was submitted on 17 Jun 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.
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If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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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)
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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.
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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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Keep it up man, you've obviously got more energy than most of us who think that slogan is shit.
ACAB is one of the things which give ammo to the conservatives on a silver platter. It makes us look stupid.
There are occasional stories about cops who risk their lives to save people. But, fuck them I suppose, because of that one time they heard a story about their colleague they knew was shady, shooting someone for smoking weed and they didn't organise everyone else in their department to protest outside the station until they were fired.
No room for nuance with these people.
Thanks, lot of time over here.
Accuracy is important, and so is making things better.
I have a big problem with authority and don't trust cops much myself, but mindless slogans like acab aren't going to fix anything any more than cultists screaming maga is going to fix anything.
"Defund the police"
"Black people cannot be racist"
"Trans women are women"
I'm sure we're actually all on the same page, with the exception of how valuable we consider the optics of these slogans.
I see right wingers present these slogans as evidence of our mental deficiencies.
They are either convinced we are stupid, or are trying to convince others we are stupid. We have given them ammo.
To this point, people have claimed they'll have ammo regardless, but I'm not so sure. People detransition from the (alt)right every day.
The more sensible we appear, the easier it is for them to consider whether they were justified in what they believed in the first place.
I'm okay with defund the police because it doesn't say "totally defund the police" because it's so often explained as "stop letting them buy literal tanks" and "regulate or reform police spending"
I'm okay with "trans women are women" because trans becomes a modifier of women, so it's an accurate description.
"Black people cannot be racist" makes no logical or practical sense and I have the same reaction to this phrase as I would if somebody told me "black people cannot eat ice cream".
The problem with all of them is that they lack nuance.
Sure, they can be used as incindiary and provocative statements to initiate conversation or oust someone, but more often than not, the words are not crossing the aisle.
When the left says "defund the police" the right hears "completely strip the police of all money" (I have actually seen leftists make the claim that this is not hyperbole).
When the left says "trans women are women" we mean "the definition of woman has changed from biological to cultural" but what the right hears is "accept our assertion that trans women are biological women or be branded a transphobe".
When the left says "black people cannot be racist" they mean "racism is mired in oppression. It's a waste of time trying to address biases towards white people because they aren't in a position to be opresssed" - but the right hears "black people are hypocrites".
None of this shit does any good to making the world better. It doesn't bridge a divide, it widens it.
On a similar note, did you hear the news about that "tik tok trad wife" who said the n-word? People found her employer and got her fired.
Good job dickheads, now she's doing the rounds on Fox News, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson etc.
Jordan Peterson, same deal. Brett Weinstein, same deal.
The left need to stop making these people.
Don't argue with the right or left, and don't use their slogans is good advice.
Have a valid perspective and stand up two individuals in defense of that perspective.
Problems arise when one takes the shortcut of chanting a slogan instead of saying what they actually mean.
Jordan Peterson made his own bed, that guy never sounded rational or balanced to me. I was confused how people were convinced by him until I found out that he used to be a preacher and listened to the rhythms of his speech. I can see how people can be tricked by that.
Publicly exclaiming racial slurs is gonna to get you dumped from society. I think people using slurs are assholes anyway, and using them on a public forum is about as aware a form of expression as taking a nap on railroads tracks.
Jordan Peterson would still be confined to influencing a small group of uni students if there weren't protests to remove him from his tenured position at the university he was teaching at. (Regarding the Canadian trans bill)
The protestors who got him fired made him into a global figure.
People who use racial slurs are assholes for sure. The point I was getting at is that the left keeps thinking they can break these twats, but it reliably backfires.
Another example: Dave Chapelle.
If people just ignored him then he wouldn't have milked multiple standup specials for the one subject.
Didn't Peterson get his fame from his YouTube channel?
I don't follow him much at all.
I see what you're saying though.
You have to call people out on their shit, also.
There has to be some happy medium between calling people out when they're being awful, which seems necessary to advance society, and hounding them relentlessly.
I feel like I draw that line exactly where too many other people agree with you.
If you take the initiative to report that woman for using a racial slur, that's at least as valid(I'd argue more valid) an action as that woman semantically broadening a racial slur.
But if you read a report about how she got fired for using a racial slur, and is being condemned, and then decide to go after her, then you're just wasting time, discrediting your perspective, and kicking a horse while it's shot.
Problem is that people like to fight battles after they're already won, because they're easier to be a part of then.
If everybody is agreeing with you, you probably don't need to keep saying what you're saying.
I think Peterson had a YouTube audience before he got fired, but his lectures then were mostly mundane ramblings about philosophy and psychology.
I think it's fine to call people out on their shit, but too many people see themselves as the arbitors of justice, with no room for rehabilitation or recourse.
The dumbest thing about the Dave Chapelle protests outside Netflix was the entitlement. They wanted to keep their subscriptions while demanding Dave gets kicked off.
They had it backwards. The correct course of action is to stop supporting Netflix and encourage others to do so.
For the consumer to demand that the publisher punishes the performer, so the consumer can continue to utilise the platform is just so spineless.
It's like protesting nestle. "Stop poisoning baby formula in third world countries, so I don't feel morally bankrupt from buying your bottled water"
Did the Chappelle thing go anywhere? I thought it was DOA, although I'm not familiar with the controversy at all.
He made trans jokes? Or jokes about how he didn't understand transsexuals?
At least with Nestle. There's a lot of actual corporate litigation going after the itself for utilizing child slavery.
Hasn't worked yet in legal forums, but there's definitely a concerted effort to place the blame on the bad actor itself, whether an individual or in this case, the company itself.
But the protestors identified Chappelle as the bad actor in his case right, so they didn't want to penalize the entire platform for one bad actor?
Boycotting all of YouTube instead of protesting the specific offensive YouTuber responsible for his own words doesn't make sense to me.
Like Nestle should be held accountable because The company is actively fighting for the retention of child slavery in their cocoa plantations to support their business operations.
I don't know what Netflix"s culpability would have been related to Dave Chappelle, a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their content and business model.