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
view the rest of the comments
Liberalism has been a weird one to try and tackle in the US today, at least in my friends circle. I’m a leftist through and through, but have friends that still fall into the liberal bucket. But they have absolutely no desire to compromise with fascism, and they have the same criticisms of capitalism and the current market as myself. Despite this, they still sometimes take offense to my criticisms of liberals and still feel some sort of ownership over it. So I think as times progress onward, it’s going to get harder and harder to define it, especially with how the US has clouded all of these terms.
That said, there’s still a shitload of liberals in the US that think we can simply vote these problems away and basically do nothing else. They aren’t willing to get their hands dirty if it comes down to it and will instead do whatever they can to fly under the radar and put on blinders. They fail to realize that the Democratic Party is the other side of the same fascist coin.
This is pretty much the default stance for most people, I believe. The issue, is that without deprogramming the Anticommunist Red Scare Propaganda, and without reading Leftist Theory, this is the endpoint of this position, essentially doomerism.
This is why it's important for Leftists to constantly agitate, organize, and spread theory. Electoralism is a doomed game, organizing is what's important.
If you are from US, then thank you. For me (observing from another side of the pond) it seemed that everyone saying "kill the other side" is not healthy. Thanks for another confirmation that not everyone thinks so.
A unified working class helps everyone.
I’m gonna start recommending Combat Liberalism to them.