this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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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,

as well as 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.

7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

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[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago (28 children)

And this dumb ass shit is how you get a second term of trump you fucking troglodytes.

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[–] Cyv_@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Voting is the bare fucking minimum. You want more change you have to do more. Help candidates you like by volunteering your time, vote in primaries especially, and your local elections. A city council member might end up mayor, might end up senator, might end up presidential hopeful. Push for ranked choice voting, write your reps and tell them that is what you want.

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[–] Gork@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh. I never thought about how Big Bird actually was controlled before. Neat.

[–] jaschen@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apparently by defense contractors.

[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

#birdsarentreal

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only way to 100% solve this is by:

  1. organizing, supplanting party insiders from the ground up over years, with hard work and dedication through many years, with no guarantee of success

  2. risk it for a biscuit

  3. accept messy incrementalism into your heart

[–] PyroNeurosis@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Eh, global thermonuclear warfare might do in a pinch.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I'm gonna put that on the "bad options" pile and recommend therapy.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

The feet are the financial industry.

And the cloaca are the healthcare providers.

[–] Lauchs@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (23 children)

It's almost like the generations and groups that care about not going to war and whatnot don't go out and vote...

[–] Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anti-war lefties tend to be comfortable voting for third party candidates.

[–] Lauchs@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. The only practical effect of which is to enable the Right.

[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

Voting for the center-right Democrats enables the right as well, as necessary as some may feel it is to prevent the openly fascist candidates from winning. Democrat PACs give money to run ads for the most insane fascist Republican primary candidates, with the strategy being they are easier to win against, which has worked for them before. Hillary's campaign helped Trump's campaign in a similar manner. Over time this drags politics to the right.

This is a downward spiral, you can pick the fascist aesthetic of it or the one that says "don't worry everything is fine."

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[–] MudMan@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Yup.

It's a specially weird attempt at a cynical flex for the US today, given how demonstrably cause-and-effect the vote will keep abortion rights in specific places.

Also, I'm not in favor of stopping arms supplies to Ukraine and Biden's position in Israel is more moderate than recently suggested and leaning more moderate as political pressure mounts, so I'm not even aligned with the premise anyway.

[–] takeda@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's almost like of US would stop military spending, no dictatorship would join them, and would continue to arm themselves.

It's very easy to criticize it when you never experienced an actual war and never lived in a country that was invaded, because other countries are afraid of attacking your country.

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[–] Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

I feel like the government is often a quest giver. The executive branch will let all of these companies run free so long as they do some project for the government on occasion. Like the NSA server deal with Microsoft. This is of course even more true with defense contractors, which get absurd contracts to "keep engineers trained" and the government tries to give the Mail Truck contract to Northrop-Grumman.

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