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
view the rest of the comments
Oh, it's not capitalism doing all that. It's people. Regardless of the type of government, once people get enough power they start fucking things up for everyone else to benefit themselves. People are shit.
Hence why we should stop giving power to individuals
Individuals may be dumb, but they're even dumber in large groups.
Sounds very Randian.
There's a whole school of political ideology about explicitly not centralising power in the hands of a few people
Stalin and Mao aprrove this message. But their approval is irrelevant, it's not they they have any power...
Until there are plenty of wonderful examples of that working out well, long term, in large nations with large economies then it's as relevant as the Spiderverse.
Because when they started gaining momentum, they got crushed by powerful states.
I like how you keep having to add qualifiers.
It's like we can see the strata of all of your previous lost arguments.
For most of human history power wasn't given to the most shit, rewarding shit behavior. The last 12000 something years are relatively new
Humans lived quite egalitarian, matriarchal, and some indigenous societies have managed to somewhat stay that way
Huh, isn't this common knowledge? Wikipedia or something
Damn, if only we hadn't invented agriculture, we would have been much better off.
I'm not sure if that's the link that led to capitalism, but I'm not an expert
No, agriculture lead to civilisation.
What history have you been reading?
They just said human history. Work on your reading comprehension, bro.
Well shoot. And here I thought they were reading up on Martian history. My b.
Rofl
Seriously I love how far up their own asses some people have their heads.
Yeah rofling at history 101
I saw a documentary once and the supreme leader was chosen by a woman in a lake throwing swords at you. Times were better then. No one had to get on the dead carts until they were ready.
Societies went splendidly and were all utopian paradises before Capitalism was invented, that's why Ghengis Khan and the bulk of old timey figures we know the names of were all renown for their diplomacy and love and those floral crowns they passed out.
"The problem is people" is eco-fascist rhetoric. It's not indigenous people's fault that it's 100 degrees in the arctic.
Every capitalist society on Earth once started as "Indigenous people" that grew and evolved in to what we have today.
There's a lot to unpack here.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.
Indigenous to where? We're all the indigenous peoples of Earth.
And I never said it's all people. Not all people have blue eyes, not all people are gay, not all people speak any certain language or live any certain place, not all people obsessively amass personal wealth to the detriment of others and/or their environment.
The problem doesn't have to be all people for the problem to be people.
No it's the Chinese communist party building and opening a new coal power plant every week, year after year.
People's complacency is what really makes it work.
You can make strong arguments that our Soma is just the pervasive bullshit that is hoisted on us in a constant torrent. Everything at our fingertips even when a shitheel like Trump is in power.