this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Lefty Memes

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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

Version without spoilers

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.


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

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[–] Zephyr@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I mean death is about one of the most common things possible for any living being. Leaders of hate groups do indeed leave their post, denounce their beliefs and repent from time to time and it's a far more powerful gesture against what they embody than just up and dying while preaching the same old thing, with their followers still as invigorated by their message and actions.

Now as for victims, it's a tough call there. Obviously there are lots of punishments victims desire that even the law denounces as cruel and unusual or otherwise illegal and typically we don't have much issue with that short of debates over capital punishment (which I'm also against but mainly because I don't believe any government should lawfully be able to kill its citizens outside law enforcement in extreme circumstances of self defense). Ultimately we're all going to die no matter what. Somewhere out in the future is the heat death of the universe, as for now to me I would prefer the symbolic gesture of one denouncing their old ways while they live and breathe instead of the trivial solution.

I have my own views and you have your own and I never said anything about any ultimate morality between you and I. You're free to take it that way if you please and you're free to want anyone and everyone to die as you see fit. I personally just don't and that's my own right and choice.

[–] orioler25@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

No, it fucking isn't. Please, generate a source that shows that more Nazis are stopped by being told they were wrong the whole time (they didn't know, you see, they thought everyone was having happy fun time) than by being forced to stop. How many people do you think they'd need to kill in the meantime before that is no longer more "powerful?"

I also love how you think you seem thoughtful for referencing rights of the state to take life, as though you give a shit about that either, to defend against killing these men when you're looking at an image that includes some of the most powerful individuals in this system. How fucking unreal to suggest that you can even make that "tough call," for people you have no right making a call for at all, and then act like you're even thinking about them by saying the system they were victimized by shouldn't have the right to kill the people who are complicit in the violence that effects these victims. Nobody's even talking about that, because that wouldn't even be on the board by the very nature of the violence that these men committed and how.

lmao, could you imagine, not having your "rights" respected? You're so thoughtless and complicit it's fucking sickening. I won't be interacting with you again.

[–] Zephyr@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I never said don't not tell people they're wrong. But for instance one of the most dangerous things in any faith are ex-believers and every religion knows they are dangerous because of how effective they are at changing people's minds. Leaving a faith is typically one of the greatest sins to said faith. That's not an accident, they understand marketing and how ideas die. Now some ideas are tough to kill. There's always going to be some person who wants to control everything at essentially any cost, I'm not sure that's going anywhere anytime soon. Same with the idea that X people are good and Y people are bad not based on actions of said people. That is tribalism isn't likely to go away anytime soon regardless of really anything we do short of genetically altering humanity. It's like the idea of war or hatred itself, it's too fundamental to our organism to go anywhere without some particularly extreme efforts. That's not to say ideas don't die. There's been a plethora of bad people leading bad causes essentially lost to time and that's because ideas do die for all sorts of reasons including people denouncing them.