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] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require 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.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
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
Having a sub class of folks who are not citizens is definitely a problem. We need immigration reform. Having illegal immigrants who are willing to work for less than minimum wage is definitely a problem.
Even Bernie has said as much.
With immigration reform we can set the path for these folks to get citizenship which will raise wages for everyone.
I have zero faith in congress’ ability to do this though.
ICE definitely needs to be abolished. Open borders is probably a bad starting point though… but I like that idea more than having ICE.
This is the crux of the problem. Nobody has faith in Congress' ability to do anything.
They are getting so old they can barely wipe their own asses.
The fact that immigration is even a thing here makes me chuckle. We literally killed the people who lived here, planned a flag and said that's ours now. It's such a laughably ridiculous concept. Every one of us here is a descendants of immigrants who came here looking for a better life.
I mean, native Americans/native indians still exist. So not everyone
I mean yes, but they were systemicatically murdered in a genocide, and forcibly removed from their land.
Anybody who survived that period was forced to integrate with American society or face systemic persecution and often death.
Hell, we went to war with a number of tribes bcz we wanted their land and resources. The point isn't that Native Americans don't exist today.
Its that their culture was systematically destroyed and their homelands burned to the ground or taken over.
Yes, I acknowledge all of that. Which is why I was correcting you when you said every one of us is descended from immigrants looking for a better life. It's wrong to act like they are completely gone, not because it makes our ancestors look bad, but because it erases the people and cultures who are still here with us and persevere.
i think, alas, the spirit remains true since indigenous people have been systematically barred from the levers of power. however, i still appreciate your comment because building something new that works for everyone will have to include, and frequently be led by, indigenous voices
I understand and agree with your sentiment, but supermajorities of voters in dem repub and independent parties want criminal immigrants deported. That’s why so many independents went with Trump this go round. They don’t like just rounding up everyone for the purpose of achieving some record of deportations just for shits and giggles though.
Establishment dems were downplaying crime and immigration issues while establishment repubs and Trump were exaggerating them. Immigrant criminals and gangs and cartels are a real problem and people on the streets see it, especially immigrants in those same communities.
With immigration reform and doing things like giving daca and similar immigrants who have been here since they were babies a path to citizenship makes sense. And so does having refugee and asylum options, especially in places where US foreign policy has directly caused the hardships that have and are causing folks to flee their own country. That’s basically all of central and Latin American and the carribean and also countries in South America, Palestine, Ukraine. US foreign policy is beyond fucked up.
Our monkey brains are still fixed on tribalism and racism which makes us infight though, allowing the establishment politicians to pit us against each other while the uniparty continues to serve the corporate and donor class… and Israel.
Please point me to all of these supposed immigrant gangs. I'd love to read about it. All of the research data that I've seen points to immigrants committing violent crimes at a far lower rate than actual citizens of the U.S.
If you don't have actual data to back up your claims, you're just spouting misinformation at best, or intentional disinformation at worst.
Cartels are a different problem entirely. Those are drug gangs from other countries. So, in don't even know why you're bringing that up in the context of immigration.
Absolutely, immigrants in general do commit far less crime than citizens based on what I’ve read and seen.
Republicans would have us believe gangs are in control of the cities and all kinds of craziness… this is not what I’m suggesting.
But there are examples of gangs and criminals doing things in relatively recent news cycles…
I was saying Dems tend to look the other way, Repubs exaggerate the problem… we all know we need immigration reform, and Trump was speaking to the issue when he campaigned. Dems downplayed it or suggested it didn’t exist at all.
I work every day with immigrants. I’m conversationally fluent in Spanish because of it. I support immigration and reasonable paths to citizenship. But under our current system we have an underclass of people being exploited by the owner class. That’s not acceptable to me.