Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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.
6. Don't irrationally 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
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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You know, it's odd. Whenever anyone suggests that AOC run for president, the refrain from centrists is "A woman of color can't win!"
Wonder where they went in this thread.
People also say a woman in general can't win but I say we have never had the opportunity to find out in the US. Not with an actual good candidate anyway.
It comes up like clockwork when people mention AOC running. It doesn't come up for Harris, and there is exactly one reason.
Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? We've had two women run, neither of them were perfect, nor even great, but both of them lost to Donald Trump. It feels a bit weird to say that we haven't had the opportunity to find out if women can win the presidency when the examples are two seasoned politicians vs a self admitted sex offender, convicted rapist, and Israel supporter (instead of just an Israel denialist).
At this point we know that people of color can win, Obama did it, but the last two times a woman ran for President they lost to the same terrible person. At a certain point you have to ask,
The fact that we're honestly looking at a potential 3rd Trump term, or the slightly more palatable option of JD Vance, vs literally anyone else is mind boggling and to me it points to #4. I don't care who it is on the opposing ticket, AOC, Harris, or the fucking Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. The Democrats aren't doing much to improve the country, but at least they aren't actively trying to ruin it.
Considering that the centrist wing stops saying a woman can't win when people talk about Harris running again, but use her and Clinton as evidence that women can't win when people talk about AOC running, it sure looks like your wing of the party is just trying to block a progressive from running.
I personally believe it's #2. I literally never met any true Democrat IRL that was happy about either Hillary or Kamala running for their policies that wasn't under the age of like 50. The feminism in power thing can only get you so far.... I did however hear from plenty of critically online people on Reddit downvoting and or MODs banning me when I talked like they weren't our presidential savior because they had a vagina or something?
The same goes for Biden for that under 50 thing in my experience irl btw.
My point is, the DNC sucks. They have picked bad primary candidates for many years now. I personally don't think it's their plumbing, it's because they were bad candidates. I could be wrong but to me, there's no telling that until you have a woman run as Democrat that isn't a centrist claiming to be a leftist.
Lmao what fucking record? So weird! That was a stretch don't you think? I never said I didn't vote for them but this isn't really about me, it's about the general public. Personally, no I don't believe a fat pedo rapis is a better candidate but obviously the general public does or they wouldn't have lost. That doesn't change the fact that they ARE shit candidates. They were then and they are now.
What the last many presidential elections should have taught the DNC by now is they can't do what you just did because it obviously no longer works. The lesser of two evils argument has literally cost the Democrats the presidential election more times than not in my lifetime. Kerry, Hillary, and Kamala fell short for that exact reason while Biden stumbled in incoherently just like Trump did twice.
The "for the record" was just to refresh what #2 was since you didn't quote it yourself.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here because that's a valid stance (your opinion vs the apparent public opinion) and I'll agree that they are bad candidates. However, by that logic I would argue that #2 isn't the answer then because as you said both are bad candidates and surely Trump is not a better candidate than Hillary or Harris? Would you agree with that?